A Rant, The Contest Winner, and a Tidbit!

    Hello all. As we all recover from the blizzard that hit the northeast, I have to give a big FAIL to the NYC Sanitation Dept. here for their response to this latest storm. We have had similar storms in the past and they always managed to get us all back up and running within 24 hrs but as I write this (6:00 pm Wed.) it has been 60 hours which is two and a half days since the snow stopped falling (22 inches)and my street has yet to see a snow plow. I can say the same thing about the side streets around my work garage 4 miles from my home. Monday afternoon, our jackass mayor (Bloomberg) was boasting how this was just another day in New York City and how all the Broadway plays were open for business and that all would return to normal shortly. What he fails to realize is that NYC is 5 boroughs and not just Manhattan so while his precious little kingdom of downtown was taken care of, the rest of us have been struggling to just get around and go to work. I won't even get into the fact that I couldn't even get my car out of my driveway until last night and that is still a big pain in the ass and dangerous to be driving on these unplowed streets. I wasn't even going to write about this crap but as I started typing it just came out. A good rant once in a while is good for you I guess. Anyway, thanks for putting up with that and now onto a good topic.

    The winner of my little jumbo repack contest is now to be revealed. HERE is the original contest post in case you forgot about or missed it.

   Here are the keepers from the 32 that I set aside from the original 100 card repack.

 

    By my count there are 16 that I need for my various collections. Funny how it ends up being exactly half. Once again you can see the Greg Nettles auto in the center (I am going to say it's real like a couple people commented) and the bottom left corner is the Ken Griffey Sr. that I forgot to picture in the contest post.

    Here is the other half of the cards which I already had so they will go into the pile with the rest that are going to the winner.

    Here's the winner's pile.

   And as promised I will also include some cards from the team of the winner' choice. So now the winner is................

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 Nathan!  Congratulations on guessing 16 for the winning number. Nathan is my latest follower and seems to have just found my blog recently. That guess happened to be the last guess and was made yesterday. Send me your mailing info and what teams you collect (baseball and football) and I will send out your prize.

And I leave you with another tidbit.

    In the heyday of sailing ships, all war ships and many freighters carried iron cannons. Those cannons fired round iron cannon balls. It was necessary to keep a good supply near the cannon. However, how to prevent them from rolling about the deck? The best storage method devised was a square-based pyramid with one ball on top, resting on four resting on nine, which rested on sixteen.. Thus, a supply of 30 cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the cannon. There was only one problem...how to prevent the bottom layer from sliding or rolling from under the others. The solution was a metal plate called a 'Monkey' with 16 round indentations.

   However, if this plate were made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make 'Brass Monkeys.' Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and much faster than iron when chilled.
   Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannonballs would come right off the monkey.. Thus, it was quite literally, 'Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.' (All this time, you thought that was an improper expression, didn't you.)

Thanks for Reading!