Objective-c animation block doesn't seem to fire - iphone

Question

I have a method in my UIView subclass "Card" to dismiss an instance by fading its alpha from 1 to 0. I do a similar thing when I add the card to the superview and it fades in fine. But when I call fadeAway, it just disappears immediately. The presentation code is in my controller class. Here is my Card.h and Card.m
#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
#import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>
#class Card;
#interface Card : UIView {
int upperOperand;
int lowerOperand;
NSString* theOperator;
int theResult;
}
#property(nonatomic) int upperOperand;
#property(nonatomic) int lowerOperand;
#property(nonatomic, retain) NSString* theOperator;
#property(nonatomic) int theResult;
- (void)fadeAway;
#end
#import "Card.h"
#implementation Card
#synthesize upperOperand;
#synthesize lowerOperand;
#synthesize theOperator;
#synthesize theResult;
- (void)fadeAway {
self.alpha = 1.0f;
[UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL];
[UIView setAnimationBeginsFromCurrentState:YES];
[UIView setAnimationDuration:2.0f];
[UIView setAnimationCurve:UIViewAnimationCurveLinear];
self.alpha = 0.0f;
[UIView commitAnimations];
[self removeFromSuperview];
}
- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame {
if ((self = [super initWithFrame:frame])) {
// Initialization code
self.backgroundColor = [UIColor redColor];
self.layer.cornerRadius = 15;
self.alpha = 1.0;
self.layer.borderColor = [[UIColor blueColor] CGColor];
self.layer.borderWidth = 4;
}
return self;
- (void)dealloc {
[super dealloc];
}
#end

Answer 1

Since you're removing self from its superview immediately, I don't think it ever has a chance to perform the animation.
You might want to look into setAnimationDidStopSelector:. There's a discussion on this here: Animation End Callback for CALayer?
Another idea is to delay the removal of the subview. For example,
[self performSelector:#selector(removeFromSuperview)
withObject:nil
afterDelay:2.0f];