Free for All Friday No. 34

Time for you readers to contribute your own comments and questions!

—Inky

Holiday Weekend

This coming Monday is Memorial Day in the U.S. and Spring Bank Holiday in the U.K. One of things I love about Filofax diaries is that they show the holidays for many countries, and I'm fascinated when multiple holidays to fall on the same day. There's usually a connection.

In this case, there isn't.

For most American workers, it's the first holiday of the year since New Year's Day (unless their employer observed Presidents' Day in February). It started out as a day to honor fallen Civil War soldiers and now includes all American war casualties. As with all holidays, the true meaning is being lost in the name of frivolity and commercialism.

Traditionally, the day is marked by local parades, cookouts (hot dogs and hamburgers grilled and eaten outdoors), and the year's first trip to the beach or pool. Retailers, especially car dealerships, often have big Memorial Day sales to encourage people to spend the day off spending money.

Solemnly, the day should include a visit to veterans' graves, and leaving flowers there. Supermarkets sell ready-made bouquets for this purpose, often in red, white, and blue. In a moving ceremony, the President lays flowers on the Tomb of the Unknowns. Oh, and if you have a flag, you should fly it at half-mast, as shown here.

I couldn't find anything about the reason for the Spring Bank Holiday. Perhaps the Spring and Summer Bank Holidays started out as a way to get a day off from work while the weather is nice.

And that's something we could all use a lot more of!

Meetings and Projects

Meeting Planner and Project Planner are two forms that I made heavy use of when I was using the Day Runner system. Filofax had its own versions of these forms, but the company has discontinued them. I've gotten my hands on one pack of each in A5 size. If we're lucky, our resourceful reader Steve will create printable versions.

I've scanned the forms and added them to the Flickr Philofaxy set.

UPDATE:
Here are the forms for download from DIY Planner, courtesy of Steve:

Project Planner:
http://www.diyplanner.com/node/6582

Meetings Planner:
http://www.diyplanner.com/node/6581

Thank you, Steve!

Free for All Friday No. 33

It's that time again!

On FFAF #32, our readers got a really great thread going about their preferred Filofax sizes and how they use them. If you haven't checked it out yet, it's really great reading!

—Inky

Inky's Not Going Anywhere

Hi everybody and thanks for your support.

I think the ratio of positive to negative comments on this blog speaks for itself -- and I don't even moderate them!

I do have an exciting (I think) new post planned, but I haven't been able to get good enough pictures yet (I will this weekend).

For the curious, in my most recent communication with Philofaxer, he indicated that he had moved on from this blog. Although he's welcome back any time, and his writing was the best!!! That's one thing we can all agree on.

One of his reasons for staying away (Anonymous, if you're listening) was having been offended by negative comments. Please take that to heart if you truly want the original Philofaxer to come back some day.

Free for All Friday No. 32

Every other week, Philofaxy has an open thread. Funny thing, we always seem to end up talking about Filofaxes.

—Inky