hushed gray: the Kevin chronicles

Friday, July 27, 2007

I be tired again
And the week's not yet over. Have an early-morning appointment with the mechanic, and whenever that's done it's off to work once more. I've been all antsy since I found out I'd have to work; trying to shoehorn any sort of work on the car (whether I'm doing it or someone else is) on a day when I also have to go in to work is just asking for trouble, but the visit to the mechanic was scheduled first.

So far this week the mail has been rather disappointing. The American Lung Association, in search of another donation, sent me a very nice "breathtaking views" calendar for 2008, but other than that it has been pretty blah.

Speaking of views, though, on Sunday I finally got around to doing another writeup on one of my landscape stamps. That brings me to a total of four--I haven't made much progress on that. This was one of the hard ones, though; while I wasn't able to find specific information about the beach itself (which is located in Latvia), I did uncover a few nuggets on the Internet about the general region, so that's where I focused my efforts. More to come.

Now, while I don't own a TV I do see my share of news and the accompanying commercials at work. And enough entertainment gossip is presented as "news" that I occasionally have a near-pop culture experience. With all that said, I think the Naomi Campbell Dunkin' Donuts commercial is right clever. It amuses me, even, which is odd considering I would normally consider this sort of thing to be drivel. (If you don't know who Naomi Campbell is and know a bit of background, I wouldn't bother watching--the commercial will seem stupid.)

It's near about nap time. Later y'all.

posted at 12:04 am | permalink | 1 comment

Saturday, July 21, 2007

You just never know
I can hear the sound of rainwater running off the edge of the roof. We've had two thunderstorms here this evening--one probably around 5-5:30, then the other within the past hour or so. And the rain has really helped cool things off. Very nice change indeed from the upper 90's we had earlier in the week.

If you've visited Philosateleia, you may have noticed near the top the text link to the Good News Web site. Well, I recently conducted a trade with a stamp collector in South America, and in her most recent e-mail to me that collector wrote the following: "I would like to tell you that I looked [sic] your link about something good to read. This encouraged me to write to you." The collector went on to write that she and her husband are missionaries. Now whether or not this woman found any of the articles to be of particular use I don't know since she didn't say, but I found it interesting and encouraging that someone did indeed click on that link. Hopefully there are others.

Although it's not yet even midnight on a Saturday night, in the words of Toby Keith "I'm not as young as I once was." I'm going to consider moving in the general direction of bed, maybe get an early start for a Sunday. Farewell feathered friends!

posted at 11:22 pm | permalink | 0 comments

Friday, July 13, 2007

What a week
An interesting one at the very least, ranging from lots of work (last night I was doing 3½ minute newscasts because of a dearth of advertising) to an apparent reawakening of creativity. But then on the other hand there's the news of Mr. B's death yesterday. I guess you have to expect it in an older congregation, but I know we have some folks who were pretty close to him that it'll no doubt be tough for.

So let's see...at long last a new issue of USA Philatelic (the USPS sales catalog) did arrive last week, and last weekend I was able to do the summer update of my stamp album and get those pages posted on Philosateleia. I also spent a couple of mornings/evenings during the week working on a refreshing of UCG Jacksonville's site, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. On the directions page I embedded a Google map, a first for me.

Plans for today include the typical run for groceries and tidying up to some extent around the apartment. Beyond that still unknown, but I won't be bored.

posted at 9:56 am | permalink | 0 comments

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Independence Day
I realize this is a 48-star flag, but I think it's the most attractive flag stamp the U.S. has ever issued. And it was issued exactly 50 years ago today.

48-Star Flag (1957_48_star.jpg)

Happy 4th of July.

posted at 12:12 pm | permalink | 0 comments

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Where does the time go
I'll soon be calling it a night, but for some reason I'm in the mood to do an update here, however brief it may be. I haven't posted much of late.

And it isn't because there hasn't been stuff to talk about, I've just been staying busy. Staying busy with work and the everyday chores and tasks and routine. And trying to find ways to break out of some of that routine. The amount of stuff to do seems to expand to fill slightly more than the amount of available time--and while routine serves a valuable purpose, I do need to break out of certain aspects of it, be it through job hunting or changing the order in which I do things or whatever.

I still haven't gotten a new issue of USA Philatelic--and without it it's going to be somewhat less easy to do an album update. Which isn't that big a deal to me personally--it's not like I've had time to work on my collection anyway--but it would be nice to get the album pages done for my Web site.

Speaking of Web sites, this evening I deleted the files for my "professional" site (resume and transcript and such), which I probably hadn't done anything significant with in a couple of years. It was outdated to the point of being irrelevant, and I didn't see a great deal of benefit to keeping it going anyhow.

I'm still musing over the idea of password-protecting this Web site--the journal, the photos, all of it. It kind of goes against the idea of the Internet as a free and open place, but maybe I don't want random passers-by looking at my life. Whether I'd simply create one user name and password that all family members and friends would use or whether I'd set things up so everyone (on request) would have his or her own user name and password I'm not sure. Thoughts?

We had a nice thunderstorm this afternoon. The area had something like six inches of rain in June, but we need that much more to reach "normal" for this point in the year.

posted at 11:20 pm | permalink | 1 comment