Another day largely like all the others in recent memory. The only difference is that I am sleeping quite a bit later with each and every passing day. While I still wake up initially around 5 a.m., I have been falling back asleep after a short period of getting my bearings. Today, I finally rolled out of bed just before 10 which is extremely late for me. I blame my new blackout curtains and the overcast skies rendering my bedroom a virtual tomb.

Once I got up today, I decided that I wanted to work on stamps but not on the website. I began by finishing my pile of “newly arrived” material that needed to be scanned. Some of this dated back to last October and November! My last batch of four scans comprised 140 stamps from Norway. I cannot wait to edit these scans into individual images so that I can catalogue them. While waiting for each scan to finish (a 1200dpi scan will take around 4-5 minutes), I began sorting all of my stacks of scanned items. I spent at least three ours “sorting” but seem to have made an even bigger mess than I began with! Today’s image was towards the end of the process. As you can see, it is largely postcards and philatelic covers with some “miscellaneous” thrown into the mix. I really need to get proper album pages for these so they can be displayed rather than living in plastic bins. Someday….

I did end up working a bit on the website tonight — publishing two articles about recent stamps issued by Russia and more updates on my massive list of all the stamps issued in 2021 thus far. I want to get this last task done so I have time for more articles, including several that catalogue particular topics.

I also read for a bit; I am nearing the end of Stargazer by Anne Hillerman (Tony Hillerman’s daughter; she continued his Navajo Mysteries series following his death) and would like to finish it tomorrow, giving five books read in April. We’ll see what tomorrow brings as I have some end-of-the-month work that I would like to do as well. (Notice that I did not say, “need”.)

I should also return to planning for the next school year before too much more time goes by. The Ministry of Education has just postponed the start of the year to 1 June (pushed from 17 May) so that gives a bit more time. I want to get at least the first month’s worth of lesson plans written (the school requires a really time-consuming format) and I have a plan to create information pages to print onto sticker paper to affix into the students’ notebooks. That way, they have the information that I am explaining during each lesson but can concentrate on my instruction and then practice it without wasting time trying to write it down. I will need to buy some ink and sticker paper to get started on that undertaking soon.

For tonight, I am beat. It is only 10:30 and I think I will shut things off and go to bed. Hopefully, I will then get moving much earlier tomorrow morning. Good night.