You either get a fever or you're neurologically diseased: Colorado and Kansas Day 7 and 8 and 9/home

So, these days weren't nothing days by any stretch of the imagination. Day 7 was mostly driving,  it's about a 9 hour drive from the springs to KC. We left fairly early so we'd get in fairly early...I really felt pretty shit the day we drove to KC, but pretty shit in a way that was mostly feeling better? Still assy, but assy in a sexy way. Not sexy. Just normal. 

All I wanted was ramen, so I looked up places in Kansas City where I could find vegan broth and keto friendly toppings. We have given Jinya in KC enough fuckin' chances, it was time to try somewhere new. I found KC Craft Ramen. And it fuckin' delivered.

Look how fucking cute it is in there! Anime was playing on every single TV, and there were figurines EVERYWHERE. Two of our kiddos collect the figurines, Vivi and Laurel. We for sure sent pictures to both of them. 

They seated us outside, which was perfect, since I was sick. 

But we still had a TV! Playing Pokemon! Perfect for Derek!

Their menu was pretty great, and most importantly, they had keto friendly noods for me, and vegan options for me. I was in ramen heaven! 

Gotta get the spicy edamame, obviously. 

So I forgot to ask them to remove the corn from my ramen, but I was still feeling gross, so I indulged in some grain. Delicious. And the cold, crisp green onion shreds on top were a game changer. I crave that shit on everything now. 

Derek got his usual char siu ramen, and while I thought the pork looked like it was lacking color and flavor, he reported that it was amazing. 

After ramen, we went to a card shop and got me something I have been coveting for ages. 

I fucking LOVE playing Magic the Gathering. Love it. One of my clients was a huge fan of playing, as well, and we would sometimes have our outings be going to coffee shops and playing MTG for a few hours. I had largely stopped playing because I had nobody to play with, and I have all of these cards (around 2500 MTG cards from releases before Bloomburrow) just sitting and collecting dust. Some of them are pretty decent value cards, and they're all in great shape. I've been trying to unload them for awhile, though, and while I was glad I got some use out of them for the two years I was at Easterseals, I have just lost steam for playing. Derek has asked me why I don't join any of the various nerd nights in town, and the answer is pretty easy: I'm a girl. My experience with dudes who play MTG is they are not fucking friendly to me, and whenever I beat some dude at a random card night before, they always said I was just lucky, and they're really dismissive. So randos burned me out on drop in games. Derek says the community here seems pretty nice, but eh. I'd rather just get rid of my cards. 

While I am still actively trying to unload my previous MTG cards, in August of 2024 MTG released a set called Bloomburrow, and it's based on pretty much every animal related piece of media I loved as a kid, drawing a LOT from Redwall. I fucking LOVED the Redwall series. I tried reading my favorite one, Mattimeo, to the kids a few years back, but neither of them were interested. When I discovered this MTG offering, I fucking needed it. 

So I started buying commander decks. Play boosters. Pre-packaged decks. I got the pre-release deck. I have been collecting these almost the entire time they've been released, and I love them. I have 67% of the regular issue cards, and 87% of the commander deck issue cards. I have two gorgeous binders (one for commander, one for standard issue, obviously) where my cards are very lovingly sleeved, then tucked away, in order. I keep meaning to put up an Ebay shop with all of my rares and rare foils, because I have a fuck ton of them. I have gotten to a point in my card collecting journey where I "need" the collector booster packs, though. And friends...those cost some cash. 

But I got one. Two, actually. We got two of these for me.

Now, they have since WAY shot up in price...a collector booster box is currently going for 897 on TCGPlayer, and I didn't pay nearly that fucking much for the two the we bought in KC. I bought two for far less than that price, actually. We ALMOST bought a third, and still would have paid less than the price of one currently, but I said that was too extravagant. I'm regretting it now. However, even with two collector booster boxes, I got a LOT of doubles. They're still rare cards, but I ended up being glad I only bought two boxes, because I'm still swimming in doubles...but I DID get some really great cards out of them, rounded out my collection a LOT. 

You can see my binders and my spreadsheets. I'm not fucking around here. 

So I'm at the point in my collecting where I need to just...buy the specific cards, because it isn't economical to buy boosters anymore, and given the current price of collector boosters, it CERTAINLY isn't economical to buy any more of those. I got to take advantage of a fucking AMAZING price window from a guy who didn't really know what he had, and he has since figured it out and raised his prices accordingly. I know this because I went to go buy another box from him our last time in KC ( about a month ago, as of this writing) and his prices currently match the barely under a grand pricing everywhere else. 

UNFORTUNATELY. 

Most of the cards I need now are the rare, pricey ones. I'm not going to mind tossing 20 or so bucks at a card, but some of them are actively in the hundreds. Some of them like this super lucky pull I got:

I screamed when I pulled this, I was so fucking excited. She's currently going for around 300 ungraded, and 5-650 graded. I pulled a few other big ticket cards, but she's my biggest. 

And this is literally what I spent my evening doing. Blissfully opening up MTG booster packs and sorting them into piles when they didn't go into my binders, and updating my lists for my new cards so I can keep track of which ones I have and which ones I need. 

The next morning, we had some business to attend to at the National Archives. I've been chronicling my grandfather's life, starting with my search for his soup, here and here, and I'm just about caught up in my blogging to get to the next couple of parts, and here is where that rubber meets the road. 

So.

Derek and I went and got coffee from a local roaster, it was magnificent, and headed off to The National Archives. I will not be writing terribly in depth about this in here, for this blog it will suffice to say that we spent about an hour at the National Archives, and the trip didn't bare much fruit, but it wasn't a total loss. 

After the national archives, I asked Derek to stop by the book library, and while it was sadly closed, being able to stop by was enough. I've always wanted to see it!

And after that, I felt like raw ass and told Derek I just wanted to go have more ramen and go back to the hotel. Which is exactly what we did. I won't share the ramen photos, we each had the same thing (except Derek got popcorn this time as a hospitable offering), and then we went to bed. We had a fairly big day ahead of us the next day, though it was going to be mostly driving. 

We woke up at a decent time, packed our shit into the car, and headed out to the Kansas City Zoo. We had high hopes for this zoo, and it...it let us down. While I was on the tail end of my illness, Derek was pulling into the beginning of his, so we were both not in a great headspace, but really the only nice part was the aquarium, and I started crying over the octopus. It makes me so sad that we gawk at these intelligent, amazing beings and they're prisoners. All of zoos make me think about that, but octopus really get me. Monkeys, as well. But we didn't go to the monkey section of the zoo, we left after the aquarium. What a fucking downer. 

And then we drove home. 

Phew. There we go. We have since gone BACK to pick up Vivian, went BACK to KC craft ramen with her, have taken a trip to Iowa, and are planning a trip to Vegas next year, and I am just now fucking finishing this blog. Incredible.