It Is What It Is

That was one Epic Fail Weekend.

First, we discover that all the effort we put into making 150 ornaments for this year's XMAS tree was wasted, because the dog wants to eat them. And she nearly knocked over the tree several times over the course of the weekend. Lovely. (She also ate my favorite sweater.)

Then, I discovered I had a previously unknown food allergy. Swell. (Fortunately, it's something I can easily avoid.)

Third, I caught a rather nasty virus that put me out of commission for most of the rest of the weekend. Awesome. (The Nyquil is.)

Fourth, my computer caught something, too - totally lost my Internet connection for about 6 hours on Sunday. FTW!

The weekend wasn't a complete failure: I did manage to get all the rough data compiled in my Great Breyer Tack Project, all 30 single-spaced pages of it. I have nothing groundbreaking to report yet, other than my shock that the No. 7500 Wood Corral - the long, foldy one - has been in continuous production since 1983. I had no idea. I wonder how much footage that translates into?

It still has a ways to go before it becomes the longest running production item ever - the Palomino Western Horse and Polled Hereford Bull both have at least a decade on it - but it’s certainly the longest running item currently in production. If you’re looking for an excellent "gotcha" question for a Breyer trivia contest, there you go.

Other than the tack project, the only other things I’ve been able to manage in between the various crises are the last bits of my sales for the year. I didn’t quite get what I hoped for anything on eBay - except for a couple of items that bidders absolutely positively thought were Chalkies, despite my entreaties to the contrary.

What is up with that, anyway? Every time I post pictures of something just a shade whiter than average, I suddenly get barraged with requests for pictures of the bottoms of the hooves. The first couple of times I complied, until I realized what they were trying to suss out of those photos. Nowadays I just e-mail back "It’s not a Chalky."

That used to stop them in the past - but now they’re e-mailing me and telling me I’m wrong! What the heck?

Normally I’m not a big fan of the "Do you know who I am?" line of response, but if there ever was a situation that called for it, there it is.

Look, not everyone has the same level of knowledge in the hobby, but I whenever I’m dealing with any hobbyist - in person, on the phone, or electronically - I always assume that he or she is not an idiot. You didn’t just happen to accidentally bump into me on the Internet, at BreyerFest, or call me completely at random.

That’s how I try to write my posts here: I work with the assumption that your visits aren’t completely an accident. It took a little bit of knowledge for you to find me, or at the very least, an interest in Breyer History. I share what I know, and you share with me: we might not be equals in terms of quantity or quality of information, but we each know enough to have meaningful exchanges.