My first “Daily Phuket” of May 2021 and the photo is a view that I see most of the day, every day. Only what is on my screen changes. Still, my laptop is on its last legs and sometimes it takes hours before everything is working correctly. Today, that screen was filled with lesson plans for most of the morning. I wrote five over the course of two hours or so. Week 1 is finished for grade levels M2, M3 and M4 and I also completed Weeks 2 and 3 for M2. Tomorrow, I will (probably) create the materials I will need for those lessons before writing the plans for M3 Weeks 2 and 3 followed by the same for M4. Each lesson plan except for M4 comprises two lessons as I will see most classes twice per week. I feel pretty good that I am already preparing for the upcoming school year even despite warnings on Twitter saying that the June 1st may be pushed back to July. I hope not. June is good enough as far as I am concerned.

This afternoon, I worked on the first logo designs for my upcoming trip, tentatively planned for May/June of 2023. I had some inspiration late last night and ended up adding nearly two weeks onto the venture. As it stands now, I will be traveling for just under a month if there are no real delays en route. The entire trip really hinges on two things: the pandemic coming under control enough by then so that travel is once again the joy it once was and my being able to maintain my level of savings to pay for the trip. If this work stoppage goes past June or reoccurs later in the year, I may have to start dipping into my trip fund. The only one who knows of my plans (at least as they were prior to early this morning) is my sister; I created a video explaining the various elements and she was thrilled to discover my ultimate destination. I had everything planned except for the route I would take after reaching that lofty goal and now I have a really great plan (although I do need to investigate the difficulty or not of obtaining a visa to one of those final desired spots). Anyway, I will try to write a summary of my plans to formally announce the trip sometime in the near future.

Well, nothing else to report other than I have been blogging like mad over the past few evenings. Saturday, I wrote four articles for my Postcards To Phuket blog and another last night. I also (finally) continued my “A Cover A Day” series on Philatelic Pursuits with an installment each day. I did some behind-the-scenes work on the latter site (a new-format Entity Page for Afghanistan and some tweaks to menus and various other pages). I spent several hours searching for a scan of one particular cover yesterday that I wanted to include in my sporadic WWII series but ended up pulling the original out of a box so that I can re-scan it. While searching, I began sorting covers, postcards and stamps into topical folders as I have several plans for upcoming series. The sorting will make it much easier to choose something to write about more regularly.

Additionally, I have been reading quite a bit. On Saturday, I began reading The Hunt for Mount Everest — a newly-published book by Craig Storti detailing the hundred years and more PRIOR to George Mallory becoming the first man to reach the base of the mountain. There are details about the Survey of India that led to the realization that the barely glimpsed far-off peak was in fact the highest summit on the planet, the ill-fated British invasion of Tibet in 1904, and the various clandestine explorers who risked so much to sneak into the closed areas of the Himalaya just to find the path to reach Qomolungma (as it is called in Tibetan, meaning “Mother Goddess of the World”). It is truly fascinating reading and I’m already more than halfway through with it. In fact, I think I will read for a couple of hours before getting some dinner and then deciding what I will blog about tonight.

Other than writing about stamps and sorting digital photos of scans of items in my collection, I still have not opened any of my albums for more than two weeks. I cleared my side-table yesterday to work on an album but never got around to it. I will try to do some mounting tomorrow or Wednesday.

Yes, I am staying busy but it is all at my own pace doing things I enjoy doing (well, with the exception of writing lesson plans but once you get one done the next one and the next one after that just seem to come quickly). Life staying at home is not so bad…