AZ's Thoughts and Ramblings

  Something topical that actually happened in the collectible world was the verified acquisition of the 1/1 ring from the magic lotr set. For context, to capture the spirit of the story of the ring, WOTC created a super special version of the one ring card. They made a singular copy of it and put it into a random english collector booster. This card had the entire TCG world going crazy. Huge bounties going up to 2 million USD came out within the week of the set releasing. Collector booster boxes were retailing for well over $500 per box and the upcoming gift bundles were hitting prices that were well over what could be considered spending the money for fun. From a business standpoint, this was one of the best things that WOTC could’ve ever done for themselves. They basically guaranteed that until the ring was found, the whales would be pulling this product off the shelves. I’ve seen people sitting around with 10-20 boxes all sitting there in hopes of reselling or opening the on...

  In lieu of writing something super substantial today I have dug up and made some progress on some old story stubs I had laying around in my folders. These are all not finished and should be considered first drafts. I’ve either finished the piece, added a small anecdote about plans for the piece, or a little bit of both in the case of the last entry here. This isn’t really a series, but I would at least like to have this here as a reminder to push myself to actually finish things since that’s something I’ve always struggled with. So without further ado, here are three creative pieces I have in various states of completion. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “I always liked the purple ones.” “No way, you’re lying?” “How do you know?” “Because the last time we were here you only wanted to lay in the yellow ones.” “Why should where I want to lay determine what ones I like the most...

          There was an activity I did way back in the year 2021 when I was a junior in my first ever writing workshop. The goal of the activity was to go into google maps and find a spot that’s familiar to you and basically write about it. The goal was to sorta basically draw out whatever memories and associations you had with that place in order to maybe see if there was some kind of narrative/story you could pull from it. To understand the rest of the story, I’ll explain a bit of my current routine while I am away from an actual gym facility. There are two routes I use to go on runs/walks to help spice things up and to accomplish different things. There’s the old airfield where I go because it’s closer and more convenient and the second is this road that goes along a marsh that ends in a CVS as well as a Dunkin that I like taking when I want to eat some breakfast on the way back or maybe buy some supplies. For the activity I decided to use the second rout...

  So one thing I was super into back in the day and even now I guess is the game minecraft. The game just had sooooo much appeal to almost every part of my life. The vanilla sandbox offered up the perfect purposeless fun that you could play for as long as you wanted. You could log in, build a house, explore a biome or two, mine, and sometimes even kill a boss in current versions. It’s just so simple, yet so very fun that I would never really put down the game for a super extended period of time. It was the game where I met some of my oldest friends and we spent so many nights just on servers doing whatever we wanted from smp to mods and to the thing that really sort of defined our identities, creative servers. In those creative servers, it was some good fun chaos. In fact(not to be a shameless youtuber here), if you want to see some of that silliness is still on my youtube channel in this video One thing we did that was really cool and definitely the best part of those creative...

  When I started this daily writing thing, there was something else that I started doing as well. Some form of commitment to daily exercise. During my time in school, I found myself getting swamped with work a ton, meaning that the time I had left to go to the gym was a lot less than I would’ve liked. As a result, I ended up not feeling as physically fit as I would’ve liked. Part of it also doesn’t help that almost every time I seem to meet my mom she tends to flip flop between “oh wow you’ve lost some weight” or “You need to exercise because you’ve definitely gained some weight. Sometimes this happens like every other day. Personally, I don’t get it and it has become a bit annoying because she seems to argue back with me whenever she gets in that “I’ve gained weight” mindset. I’m not arguing that I’m the most fit, I acknowledge that I could be in better physical shape, but my metabolism isn’t so slow that yesterday’s breakfast gave me a double chin. I wish I could say it doesn’t...

  So… something that is interesting about my life is that at the age of 23 I still only have a driving learner’s permit. Meaning that for  all of my teenage years and now the entirety of my adult life so far, I haven’t had the full ability to drive legally. Now, that may seem weird and even a little sad, but there is another layer to this. Even though I can’t really drive, I’ve never really had to. Let’s go back to when I was in high school, the typical point in most people’s lives where they learn to drive. I went to a boarding school. What that means is that I took all of my stuff and lived in a dormitory on campus. I never had to leave campus for food as we had a dining hall. Living on campus meant I had access to a gym, library, mail, and even the professors. All without ever needing to go farther than what walking would provide. There was even shuttle service to and from the airports during breaks as well as transportation provided to many places off campus like malls, ...

  The rain never bothered Angela. She had spent her whole life living next to windows, especially during the rain. The way they pittered and pattered against the glossy surface of the glass always comforted her. Wren, her dog, would always try to find the center point of her family’s old apartment to find some kind of shelter. Her younger brother would barely acknowledge it, preferring to be off doing some kind of studying or gaming. Her mom would’ve probably said something like “Why are you wasting time looking out the window! There is a lot to do around the house you know?” The thought made her smile as she sat at her desk. It also brought up a feeling of melancholy. The current storm she was facing quickly darkened her surroundings as dark, wispy clouds began to float in. Surely they would bring lightning with them and that gave Angela some pause. With some urgency, she began to draw her curtains. Before they could fully close she gave one last look at the rain, trying to fi...

  How hard is it to count to 20? Well that question has different answers depending on some different contexts. In real life, most people can accomplish this without any outside assistance. You can even use your hands. Four hand’s worth of fingers is 20. 20 is a number of mcnuggets you can get from mcdonalds. 20% battery is considered low. For me, 20 is the amount of damage I need to win a game of magic. Now, that’s pretty obvious, in most 1v1 formats of Magic:The Gathering you and your opponent both start at 20 life. Yet, for burn, 20 life is the only thing that matters to you and your opponent. That’s all that would ever stand between you and a match victory. Through that simple single goal, there is some kind of charm to one of Magic’s most iconic evergreen decks. That same charm is what captivated me and has kept me playing that deck for a while now. As I said before, the goal of burn is to reduce your opponent's life total to zero as fast as possible. How is this different...