How I Spent My November

November came in like a tornado and left just as fast. I would be lying if I said I remembered everything that went on this month or that I was as involved in the hobby community as much as I would‘ve wanted.

The start of November saw me painting and getting some sweet Warhammer minis painted (as well as other miniatures) and finishing up some Gunpla projects.

I ended up getting hurt at work, not a major ordeal, but one that kind of left me a bit frazzled for a bit. A human bite was involved which led to an urgent care trip (that was about a two or three-hour wait).

For those of you who don’t know, human bites are bad. There’s a risk of bacterial infection and STI transfer if the bite is bad enough. Mine wasn’t terrible, minor skin breaking and some gnarly bruising, but it did leave my left hand shaking for a while afterward. I often hold minis with my left hand and occasionally paint with it. Shaking hands and small minis that need paint tend not to work well together.

The painting ended up going on a short hiatus.

However, that didn’t mean I stopped all hobby activities. I have begun to rekindle my love for trading card games by recollecting TCG games like Magic the Gathering and Pokemon. I forgot how much I love collecting, organizing, and playing with the cards. My partner and I even learned how to play the Pokemon TCG and have a few decks now!

(I’m now waiting for my TCG player order to come in so I can build a Ferarigator deck.)

I’ve been sorting out all of our cards and trying to assemble the master set, the complete set of cards, for what we have of MTG and Pokemon. I do this by sorting out a set into numerical order.

You can often find the order in the bottom left corner of the card. It applies to most modern cards. Older cards might be different, but most of the time anyone can pull the set list to see what order they go into.

I then slip them into a nine-pocket card sleeve and a D-ring binder. I use D rings because they tend not to warp or bend the cards. If the sets are small enough and released around the same time then they go into the same binder. It may be a little goofy, but I also have a Google doc with some of my Pokemon master sets listed that tell me which cards out of the set I’m missing.

On another bright note, I was very fortunate to be gifted a laptop by my partner for the holidays. I become more consistent on the blog posts and live streams. Also, this means the Buildforthekids2023 giveaway can happen.