Will be a bit of delay - had my liver transplant this week!

Got the call Weds early AM that they had found donor, had the transplant Weds late afternoon, and it's been successful.  Docs think I will be able to go home mid-next week,  so I will be back posting hopefully late next week.  All the signs are good formy body adapting new liver, and I already feel much more energetic than before surgery. Even the docs are slightly surprised by how smoothly things have gone.

Update and Upcoming New Series of Posts NEW ISSUES OF THE WORLD

Been away working on my Australia collection, have finished the data entry into Stamp Mate for the Commonwealth Issues from 1913 to 1966 and now working on page designs.

On a personal note, some not so good news.  A couple years back I was diagnosed with NASH (aka Non-Alcoholic Cirrhosis of the Liver), and for the past six months I have been on the transplant list for a new liver. Overall my health had been stable, and I was a bit "below" the critical level to be at the top of the transplant list.

Then last week went to my liver doctor for routine checkup. Had blood work done.  The next day get a call from the Doctor saying I need to have an MRI done that day (never a good sign).  Had the MRI, and the next day get the results back - they have found small tumors in my liver.  At this point they do not seem malignant, but their existence means I will now be more highly ranked for liver transplant. Doctors now saying the transplant will be in a few weeks, whereas before they were saying a few months.  I am now on Medical leave from work, and for now I am hanging in there pretty well, just waiting for "The Call" to get my liver transplant.  The good news is that liver transplants have a 97% success rate, and as I am still youngish (46) my doctor expects me to make a full recovery after transplant. But until transplant, I am still dealing with major health issues - a lot of joint pain and fatigue being the biggest complaints I have at the moment.

But fingers crossed all will be good and I will be able to attend the APS Stampshow 2018, being held here in Columbus OH in August!  Having never been to an APS Stampshow, I am definitely going to do all I can to attend one here in my own back yard.

For more information on Stampshow 2018, check the APS webpage for Stampshow 2018 Columbus OH


As for the new series I am launching on here.  I love new issue stamps. I think for the most part stamp design over the past few years has been very good for many nations.  And the fact that postal administrations are not issuing so many copies of each stamp (many large countries issue less than 250,000 of an issue!) means to me at least that the new issues of today actually will likely retain their value much better than what happened in the 1960s to 1980s, when huge print quantities means that stamps of that era very often trade in bulk under face value. So I will be doing monthly posts for many nations showing the stamp issues they have released over the previous month. This will start in Feb 2018, and hopefully you will enjoy the posts!

I will still also be working on the My Collection series of posts, but with Australia it will be a bit before I have any part of the collection ready to post.

Starting a new series here on my blog to highlight my collection...need opinions

I've decided to start posting pages from my collections onto this blog to show how my collection is evolving over time.  Still debating though on how I want to show the pages. Should I show only the Vario pages with stamps?  Or would it be better to show a page with its corresponding layout page giving catalog info etc. (as I illustrated in the last blog post).

Another question I have is should I enclose all pages of the collection, including those that are currently blank or nearly blank, or just pages that have a good number of stamps on them.  It would of course be possible in future to edit the images of the blank pages as they fill up, which would give everyone a chance to see how the collection "grows" over time.

Opinions? Ideas?  Would really like some feedback before I start up this project as I'd like to have a set "format" for the posts from the start.

This blog has not posted its last :)

Yes it has been longer than expected since my last post on this blog.  That unfortunately is the reality when the demands of the Real World (TM) take over your time.  My employer, Kroger (an American grocery chain), closed the store I had been working at for over eight years and relocated us to a brand new, state of the art market.  And as head of the seafood department at the previous location, I was given the responsibility to head the seafood department at the new location.

The result was working on average 50 hours a week from mid-October through the holidays.  Manic does not even begin to describe how business has been for my department, as it is now a much larger area with much more variety than before (anyone fancy soft-shell crabs or whole octopus for example!)

The trade off, however, has been that I have not had the kind of free time away from work to engage in my various hobbies.  With the New Year, however, it appears that things at work have become established to a point where I will hopefully not need to work as many overtime hours per week as when the store first opened.  And as an added bonus, the increase in sales in my department have led to an increase in my income, so not only do I have more time to engage in philatelic activities, I'll have somewhat more resources than before.

My intention is to start a more regular posting regimen in February 2017.

Vacation time..and two new acquisitions to the specialized catalogue library for Poland and Ethiopia

I had hoped to publish at least one more catalogue review this month, but alas real life work interveneed.  And tomorrow I leave for a 2-week vacation out of town, so there will be no updates until probably the first week of August.

In the meantime, I just received today a copy of volume 1 of the Fischer Katalog Polskich Znakow Pocztowych recently released in Poland, covering the main stamp issues of the Interwar Era, the Socialist Republic period and the modern Polish state.  Will hope to get volume 2 soon, which covers regionals such at Danzig and the German Plebiscites, the General Gouvernment issues from the Nazi Occupation, and other related material.

The new edition of Fischer's Poland Specialized Catalogue, volume 1.

I am also waiting for delivery from Italy the four-volume specialized catalogue of Ethiopian stamps and postal history up to 1974 published by Vaccari. They were on sale at Vaccari direct for about Euro 80, which for a four volume set is very cheap.  Two volumes deal with the stamps, with the second volume dealing with Postal History post-Italian occupation, while a third volume covers the classical postal history from the mid-19th century to 1936, and a fourth volume of addendum and furhter notes and updates.

The two main volumes of Vaccari's Ethiopia Specialized Catalogue

So lots of material in the pipeline coming for later this summer here on my blog. Stay tuned!