It's January. The weather can't be trusted enough to plan any road trips very far ahead. I have the normal, middle of winter-blahs. I should be putting more of my comic books and comic strips collection on eBay, but I keep putting off getting stuff ready. Hoo Boy.

But I have been picking up piles of non-casino gift cards as I run around, and I found this interesting. I read on the board of the collegiate gift cards at Lowe's, and I thought this would be great. So I went to the Lowe's that was open in Milwaukee, but they didn't have any -- there are no Wisconsin colleges in the mix. Guess there are not enough Lowe's in Wisconsin for them to include the University of Wisconsin Badgers. Sigh. A second Lowe's opened in the Milwaukee area on the south side, closer to me, but it also had no collegiate cards. Rats.

But I finally got a decent weekend, and decided to brave the awful driving conditions of Chicago to go around the bottom of Lake Michigan, hitting the Indiana boats on the Lake and the Chicago area riverboats on the way back. Have not been this route in a long time (people from my area really hate to drive through Chicago!) and figured I would get new cards at many of the casinos. Did ok, except after going 150 miles, I reached Blue Chip in Michigan City, Indiana and found they are switching boats over to put a new, bigger tub in use, and they picked this weekend (Sat the 28th through Mon the 30th) to CLOSE DOWN! Argh! How can they do this to me! Why the heck would they do it on a weekend, why not during the week? Aren't riverboats busier on the weekends? They always look like it.

But before I made my trip, I checked the Lowe's Website, and found a map of all the Lowe's in the US. (If anybody wants to visit all of them, there are three in Hawaii, one each on three of the islands.) The Chicago area I didn't check that close. I saw none near any of my riverboat stops and in the short time I checked on it, could not see any locations really near my planned route. Plus I worried about the trouble of getting off/back on the toll roads without getting lost. But I had noted that in Michigan City, betwen the Blue Chip Riverboat and the Interstate there was a Lowe's. When I stopped I found Lowe's cards for Notre Dame (the Fighting Irish), University of Indiana (the Hoosiers) and Purdue (the Boilermakers). This calmed down the anger I had for going all the way to Michigan City for, at least a short time, nothing.

So I offer you folks these three cards for trade. I have a small supply of each and I need any and all Lowe's collegiate cards besides these three. Send me an e-mail with what you can offer in trade before mailing anything, as I don't want to get the same card from different friends.

Excuse me now. I have to go to the Blue Chip website, down load a picture of the boat, and put it on the wall. Now where are my darts...