Your Sunday Boring Postcard from Michael5000

SCANDIA GAARD
GIG HARBOR, WASHINGTON

Located high atop Peacock Hill overlooking picturesque harbor alive with fishing boats and private pleasurecraft.  This unique landmark envelopes old Scandinavian atmosphere in a quality gift shop, outstanding Nordic museum and delightful coffee shop, all surrounded by acres lawn and scenic mountain beauty.  Open everyday except legal Holidays and December 25th - January 2nd.


[all sic.]

Provenance: Purchased at a postcard dork trade show, April 2011.

The Bear Chronicles

At the Oregon State Capital
Which is in Salem
May, 2011


Befriend The Bear on Facebook

Flag Friday XXXI

Flag Friday is a periodic discussion of the world's national flags; the project is explained and indexed here.

These discussions are about graphic design, and perhaps about nationalism and national symbolism in general. They should not be taken as critical of the countries, ideals, cultures, or people that the flags represent.

St. Lucia

Parsons: Says it has the "best corporate logo," which "makes me want to invest money there."  He gives it a "B-", 65/100.

Michael5000: It's a very good corporate logo!  Apparently the nested triangles are supposed to represent the two distinct triangular peaks on the southwest coast of the island.  Who knew?

By the way, does the background seem a little pale to you?  It did to me too.  Apparently they lightened it in 2002, before which it looked more like so:

Personally, I think it was a step in the wrong direction.  The dark blue really sets those striplets off.

Grade (for the new flag): B


Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Parsons: Thinks it's "original," and feels it is a "good effort for a country whose name sounds like a 50s rock'n'roll group."  He gives it a "B-", 65/100.

Michael5000: I like it.  It's original, using very basic shapes to create a proper flag that is immediately recognizable.  In fact, the flag is easier to recognize than the country is.  If I had to list all the countries in the world, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (population 120,000, or roughly equivalent to the Morgantown, West Virginia metro area) is probably the last one I'd come up with.

Say, didn't they do well to change up from the original 1979 - 1985 design?

Grade: A-

Samoa

Parsons: Without comment, it gets a "C+", 60/100.

Michael5000: This is nice.  We've got the Southern Cross motif we've seen on the much busier flags of Australia and Samoa's former colonial overseer, New Zealand, but here it's nicely under control on an otherwise highly simple design.  My only objection, really, is that the white-business in a blue whatsit (I should try to remember the technical flag terms someday) on a red background is stepping pretty darn close to the flag of Taiwan and the former and likely future flag of Burma.

Grade: B


San Marino

Parsons: Citing its "Good Colours," he gives it a "B", 70/100.

Michael5000:   Ack!  Busy!  Busy busy busy!!!  My eyes!  My aesthetic values!

I bet Parsons was looking at the...  ah, yes, it would seem that there's a civil flag.  Let's look at that.

Well, all fine and good -- kind of like the Poland/Indonesia bicolor, except with a much cooler tone.  However, I'm afraid that the evidence here on the internet suggests that San Marino goes with the state flag more than the civil flag.  And even though being San Marino is inherently all about being kind of old school and anachronistic, I just can't give my approval to quite so baroque a flag design.

Grade: C-


Sao Tome and Principe

Parsons: "Black Stars too adolescent," remarks Parsons cryptically, assigning a "B-," 65/100.

Michael5000: Apparently the black stars represent the two islands.  I wish I could see an actual flag of ST&P instead of a flag diagram, because the tennis-ball green looks kind of improbable.  I'd like to check it out against a sky, but on the entire interwebs I can't find a single picture.

In the absence of photographic evidence that it looks cool, I will have to vote with my fears.  I'm giving it a:

Grade: C+ REVISED: B

Your Thursday Boring Postcard from Michael5000

VIEWS OF JOGASHIMA

Provenance: Gift of Mrs.5000, Christmas 2010.

The Wednesday Quiz nibbles at a carrot

It's not:

Shhh.   The Wednesday Quiz is resting.


By something resembling popular demand, a slightly-different-but-much-the-same incarnation of the Quiz is under development at the L&TM5K reference library.  Your knowledge, intuition, and bravado will continue to be tested on a weekly basis... soon.  Give it a week or two.


In the meantime, here's a cute bunny to look at.

Quarterly Report to the Shareholders, Spring 2011, part II

Running

During April, May, and June, I ran 199.87 miles.  Obviously, I don't really track mileage by quarter or I would have added a few laps around the block there.  I'm now well ahead of pace for my "advanced" goal of running 600 miles for the year; in fact, I'm currently on about a 700-mile pace. And I've been really enjoying it.

I ran three organized events, a strange 10.4 mile run as well as a more traditional 10K and a 5K.  In all three of them I was pretty happy with my pace.  In the latter two I actually got ribbons.  In the fairly competitive 10K, this was simply because they were giving ribbons three-deep for every age, and I was the third of three 42-year-old men.  In the less competitive, they were giving ribbons five deep, and I was 5th out of 13 men 40-44.  That felt like a real ribbon.

A subsidiary goal was to have at least a four-mile 2011 minimum for every date of the month.  There's only one date left to worry about for this one; somehow, I've not managed to run on the 3rd yet this year.  A second subsidiary goal was to finish the year with at least a five-mile all-time minimum for every date of the month.  That has been accomplished.

Completing my "box" of streets is starting to seem surprisingly plausible:

Yellow represents streets that were newly run this quarter.  (I've been looking forward to the more visible orange of summer).

As the grid fills, my routes are increasingly odd.  Here's a little video that I tried to put together about how I've handled it.  The first half of the video is set to a perky little number by a band called "Hang Tan," but unfortunately the slide lengths are painfully long and the sound cuts out about halfway through.  This is due to Google Picassa's inability to correctly calculate the length of the exotic "mp3" file format.  (Not a joke.  I mean, I guess it's a little lame to complain about the free software that pours out of the Google machine, but a lot of it just doesn't seem to work very well.  Happily, this blogging platform has been much improved.  But I digress.)

Bicycling

At 97.8 miles for the quarter, I barely beat my January to March mileage.  I am WAY behind pace for my alleged 1000-mile year.  Did I mention that this has been one of the wettest and coolest years in recorded history in these parts?

Subsidiary biking goals:

(1) have "all-time" minima of at least 10 miles for every day of the month.

I pushed six minima over the 10-mile mark; 10 to go.

(2) set new records for monthly mileage for at least nine months this year.

This was not a challenging goal, since the biking spreadsheet is so weak.  So far, 6 out of 6 months have set mileage records, but in no case had the previous record been over 25 miles.

Gardening

I added time spent gardening to the physical fitness spreadsheet in April, figuring it might help motivate me to spend more time in the yard, which is after all very good exercise.  Naturally I quickly set a number of records, yet without really spending a significant amount of time gardening.  Gardening records will be tumbling right and left this week, however!

Caffeine and Cola

I am currently in full-blown addiction.  See work issues, yesterday's post.

Weight

I remain plateaued at just barely under 200 pounds.  I have shifted to a new and better gym, but have not got in the habit of attending and am not weighing myself regularly.

Tomatoes

I continue to successfully avoid the consumption of tomatoes.

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Any questions from the floor may be posed at this time.

The Postage

This series of colonial stamps, showing a Fang warrior, were first printed in 1910.  After 1924, they were overprinted with "AFRIQUE EQUATORIALE FRANÇAISE" in accord with a reshuffling of the French African colonies. 

According to allworldstamps.com, both of the above stamps -- since they are in pristine, unused condition -- are worth £0.10. If the 2c one had been used, it would command four times that price.  Too late now.