A little of this, a little of that...

I've cleared the decks of all the "little files" (total cumulative word count of around 6,000, which is not a payday to sneeze at), so now I have only The Monster on the plate. I probably did not go after it with the enthusiasm I should have (a phrase I once heard Glenn W. Turner use, about how a bullfighter had to go into the ring "with mustard on his sword" comes to mind), but I have put a modest dent in it.

Tomorrow through Saturday will be fairly busy days, but at least I won't have to be churning out 6,000 words a day to make my deadline.

I took the opportunity to take a closer look at the card of old French stamps I picked up at an eBay auction and found a curious stamp, shown here next to a comparably sized stamp:


Although the design on the stamps may appear to be the same, it isn't. The person on both stamps is Louis Napoleon, but the design on the left was printed between 1863 and 1870, while the design on the right was printed between 1862 and 1866.

The feature of the stamp on the right that caught my eye is its size; it's supposed to be the same size as the stamp on the left, but apparently, the perforations were misplaced, and the top of the stamp (the part with EMPIRE FRANCAIS) is missing. (It makes me wonder what the stamp above this one looks like, but I digress...).

There's nothing in the catalog mentioning it, so it doubtless falls into that "freak" category that may make it worth a few cents more at retail, seeing as how a "normal" stamp like this is worth about a dime.

Still, it's a curious stamp.

* * *Conversations, plots, and conspiracy, I tell you! Earlier, my LJ Idol partner and I spent a fair amount of time burning the ether to get our bearings. Things are looking interesting.

Cheers...