I missed #SPUD, I was working away for two days, with early starts and long train journeys and three intense, complicated meetings, one with the Greater London Authority. The GLA building in Union Street is like a space station inside, awash with people.
I missed the local elections as well, and didn't learn the results until this morning: even without my vote Leicester has 53 Labour councillors and 1 Liberal Democrat. The sole remaining Conservative, who lives around the corner from me, lost his seat. A bit sad, as he was the Lord Mayor this year.
I see from Asher's SPUD post that 979 accounts powered up 145,431 STEEM, compared with an average of 106,304 for each day in April:
Date: 5-1-2019
Unique account power-ups: 979
Total number of power-ups: 1364
STEEM powered up: 145431.6950
In April, an average of 106,304 STEEM was powered up every day with the average number of accounts powering up each day being 832.
The largest power up day was the 5th April with 301,184 STEEM transferred to vesting, and on the 17th April, 1100 unique accounts powered up some STEEM.
I haven't worked out my average power up or anything fancy like that. Pretty much everything I've earned has been powered up and I've been investing for nearly a year now.
My first few forays in buying STEEM were a bit hit and miss, with the prices falling every time I made a purchase which was a bit disconcerting. Then I developed a buying plan: I have a set amount of fiat that I set aside each week, and I buy whatever STEEM I can for that amount.
The best purchase was 135 STEEM, and the lowest has been about 40 STEEM. But I don't worry too much about that, I just buy my STEEM each Saturday morning (just like when I was a kid and we got our pocket money and I went and chose a comic and some sweets).
Occasionally, during the week, if the price has dropped really low, I might buy an extra fiver's worth - the price of a coffee and a bun, or a glass of wine and a packet of crisps. That's one of the things I've enjoyed - that you can buy very small amounts of STEEM - a couple of pounds here, a couple of pounds there.
I have a buying plan to reach 10,000SP. Thanks to the opportunity to boost my earnings through 
Last week I wrote about delegating SP: there are a number of good reasons for doing that, pretty much all of them are about growing the platform. I delegate to some activities because it brings a return to me; but in doing that, I'm helping to grow new initiatives and businesses; and to grow a bigger middle class by enabling bigger votes spread more widely across the platform. For someone like me who doesn't have a lot of time to spend on STEEM, that's a good way of managing my investment and helping the platform.
Yesterday, I read that we've reached 2,000 Dolphins, which is fabulous news, and the #tenkminnows and #maybeaminnow initiatives started by 
I have about 900SP delegated to different initiatives to help grow smaller accounts, and many thanks to 
I have now fulfilled my delegation plan for the time being, so additional investment and growth will go towards increasing my dolphin voting power, which is a very nice place to be. About a third of my VP is used to support regular contributors to the platform; a third I keep for manual curation, and a third for voting for comments on my posts.
One of the things I've really enjoyed is how the numbers of comments on my posts are growing. That's been one of the best things, really. Sometimes there are only two or three, but more often, conversations are moving into ten, eleven, twelve comments and for some posts, twenty-five to thirty comments. It has taken a long time, but it is really good to see.
The thing I'm starting to think about now is developing my selling plan. I have an objective: to maintain my SP stake while recovering my FIAT investment. It will be interesting to see if that can be done. Possibly a lifetime's work.