The Online Experience: Now With Sampler!

This year’s Sampler is done and… it was an interesting experience. On the plus side, the software upgrades forced me to finally clean up the Sampler’s master file, so future issues will have… fewer issues, going forward.

Anyway, the link to the PDF for the 2020 Sampler is on the right; that box will be a permanent feature here as I slowly convert and upload as many older Samplers as I can. I still have the files for everything up to 2001, but some of them are either in Adobe PageMaker, or may involve fonts that don’t exist anymore, so I’ll probably end up having to scan a bunch of stuff anyway.

It’ll be a couple days before I have physical copies of this year’s Sampler available because I ran out of both paper and toner, and I have no plans of venturing any farther than the local gas station through Sunday afternoon.

I’ve already bought all my snacks, so I am good to go! (Frozen pizza, frozen lemonade, taffy, and a fine selection of cheese and crackers from the British Isles!)

If you want a physical copy of the Sampler, feel free to shoot me an e-mail so I can put you on the list. That way when I am ready to print, I will have a good idea of how many copies to run and how many envelopes I need to buy and/or dig out of storage.

Heck, if you’re local and you just want to stop on by, you can also send me an e-mail - I won’t be far from the computer all weekend so my responses may almost be in real time! However, since the weather here is being BreyerFest-like (upper 80s, with high potential for horizontal rain), I may occasionally be wandering outside to simulate that particular aspect of the convention experience.

I also bought a few horses Wednesday afternoon and left them in my car (I park under a tree, they’ll be fine!) and will open them later in the weekend. My purchases included some Surprise Stablemates, a pretty nice Favory Ariella set, and the Harley; there’s a story to tell about the Harley, but I’ll do that another day when I’m feeling a little less scattered.

As far as additional shopping goes, other than my Ticket SRs, all I will probably buy this weekend will be the Classic Greenman, the Stablemates (though I agree on everyone about the price on the “Best of BreyerFest” set - yikes!) and (gosh, I hope) an NPOD box. I do have my eye on a couple of things on eBay; I haven’t been shopping on there in a few months, so I need to do a bit of poking around to see if I can uncover any hidden treasures.

I am not putting any faith in the Raffles. I don’t think I’ll even watch that part of the festivities. They will e-mail me if I actually happen to win anything, right? Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.

I don’t know if I’ll watch the auctions or not. If I had the money (I don’t!) I’d bid on either that pretty-pretty Gloss Pinto Shetland Pony or the Very Metal Purple Nevermore, but both are now well over what I’m willing to pay already.

I do like how they tried to have an auction piece from every decade of Breyer History. Props to whomever painted that Stock Horse Stallion - I don’t think he’s ever looked better!

I never got around to getting any of my sales items up because I don’t have that much to sell right now. I never felt a pressing need regardless, since I don’t have either a hotel bill or travel expenses to worry about covering, and the bank account are in good shape.

As for the rest of my plans… I’ll probably be winging it, like everyone else. I’ll get up early, put on my Purple Breyer Spirit Jersey, pull the snacks from the fridge in the basement and see what the heck happens.

(I also wish I could have had more active involvement in all this, but... well, let us not go there this weekend. Focus on happy thoughts and pretty ponies.)