northern

How can medication for acid reflux cause it get considerably worse, instead of better?

I'll be asking my doctor that next week.



In other news, I had a spurt of activity lately with my volunteer activities.

I'm on the board of directors for a small non-profit mental health agency. We had to hire a new Administrative Assistant, and I was on the hiring committee.

Our ad in the local newspaper attracted quite a few responses, many from people who actually appeared to be qualified.

We short-listed the applicants to six, and scheduled interviews over a three-day period.

The interviews average an hour in length.

Trust me, that's a lot of activity for me.

We actually faced the problem of having several well-suited candidates, though after much discussion, we did select someone.

Now we'll wait and see if we selected the right person.





So I figured I'd tell you about my hobby of collecting business cards.

Since I was a kid, I've collected them.

Can't quite figure out why. Maybe I was just impressed when people had business cards. Seemed important.

I've always had business cards. Well, not since birth, but pretty close.

I got my first cards when I was about 11.

Seriously.

I would send away for tourism information from various exotic locales, and being an enterprising young man, I figured I'd get a better response if I pretended to be a travel agent.

So, Ace Travel Co. was born.

When mail began arriving at the house addressed to the company, my dad thought it was amusing enough to order some business cards for me.

Keep in mind, this was decades before you could spend just a few dollars and order them online.

Actually, that's one of my few good memories of my dad, but let's not get emo here.

I was thrilled to have my own business cards. Yes, it made me feel important.

And I've had business cards of some sort ever since.

Of course, when I started working I had 'real' cards.

But even when I had to stop working, I still had business cards printed up.

I felt naked without them.

And I collected other peoples' cards.

So, if I saw them in a store, restaurant, office, or some event, I'd grab them.

Quite some time ago, about 11 years I think, I read an article in the paper about a guy who in his retirement had set up the International Business Card Musuem.

I was amazed that someone else collected business cards, and even more amazed that this guy had accumulated over 100,000 different cards.


A couple years ago, my modest collection had grown to the point where I realized I needed to organize them. I bought a couple binders, and a lot of plastic business card holder sheets, and filed them alphabectically by the company name.

Then I remembered the musuem. I wondered what had become of it.

So I Googled it.

Found that sadly, the guy who had it died.

But found out that his collection was dispersed to several other collectors.

You mean there were even more people collecting business cards?

Cool! (Yes, in my uneventful life, that qualifies as cool).

I discovered there was an online group, the International Business Card Collectors, so I joined. Existing only online, it was free.

I became member 401.

I found that there were also some offline clubs, complete with printed newsletters.

I joined them too.

The American Business Card Collectors (I'm member 913), and the Bluewater Business Card Collectors (a Canadian club, I'm member 176).

It really is great knowing that there are other people out there with the same odd hobby.

Most people treat business cards pretty poorly. They throw them in a drawer somewhere and forget about them.

Or, gasp!, they throw them in the garbage.

Some people, through their job, acquire quite a lot of cards, but when they move on to a different job, they throw the cards out.

I actually feel pain at the knowledge of that.

Some collectors have hundreds of thousands of cards, a few are approaching the million mark. One collector, Walter Day, had millions when he died.

I have a pretty meagre collection by comparision. I haven't actually counted, but I'll guess 5000.

There are a couple reasons I have so few.

One is my location. Look for Elliot Lake on the map, and you'll see that I am literally in the middle of nowhere. So there aren't many opportunities locally.

The second is because I'm so shy. Even if there are cards on display, I feel so self-conscious about grabbing a couple that I have to be pretty certain that no one is looking.

And yes, I take more than one. As strange as this may sound, collectors actually trade cards with each other. So I have started to build a reserve of duplicate cards so that I can trade them for cards I don't have.

Some collectors specialize in certain cards. One popular category is tattoo shops. The cards usually have an example of the artists' work on it, so they're pretty impressive looking. One collector has a special interest in Re/Max real estate agent cards. Another collects cards of people with the same last name as their own. One collector is trying to get a card from every town across the United States.

But most collectors are like me and will happily add any card to our collection.

I hesistate to say it, but if you'd like to add to my collection, just send me a message and I'll give you my address. If you have a shoebox full of them, I'll even pay you for the postage. And don't worry, I won't take advantage of your good will by using the contact information on your card. I know I'm a stranger, but take my word for it anyway.

EDITED TO ADD: I'd be happy to send you my collector card. Yes, people who collect business cards have business cards that tell you they collect cards. Message me, and I'll gladly mail it to you.