Presented forthwith are several short notices of a personal nature. Feel free to enjoy:

– Thanks to the kind reminders from my amazing convention friends via the various social networking services, my head’s kind of been in con space all week. As it stands, there are only 36 hours or so until I arrive at Marscon. I suspect there’ll be more to say on this later.

– If you have the means or lack the scruples, I highly suggest getting your eyeballs on a screening of last weekend’s episode of the BBC’s Sherlock, “The Hounds of Baskerville”. In my humble opinion, the best episode of the programme thus far (which is always good, thanks to the great work from the lead actors), pushed over the top by the spot-on “X-Files” vibe throughout.

– One of these days, the middle child will figure out how to apply attention to detail when attempting to conceal crimes and transgressions from his parents. Until then, we’ll just have to marvel at the audacity of his failed schemes. However, once that point arrives, I hope he chooses to use his powers of intellect for good rather than evil.

– I will get through A Game of Thrones before the first HBO series gets released to disc. This I vow. It’s a vow I believe I shall be able to keep – I have less than a hundred pages to go and until the beginning of March to manage it.

– I finally broke down and purchased a digital download copy of Miracles of Modern Science‘s Dog Year this week, which I’ve been listening to in the car for the last couple of days. As I suspected since I heard that NPR piece a couple of weeks back, it’s pretty damned amazing and eminently listenable. I’d been unable to track down a physical CD of the disc in any of the usual venues (and a few of the unusual ones), though the miracles of modern technology (hah!) have allowed me to create one. Sadly, though, I lack liner notes, which in this case would be rather important to me, as they would save me some time in figuring out the exact instrumentation used on this rather exceptional record. It turns out you don’t need guitars to rock pretty damned hard.

– I kind of love the process of writing adventure plots for role-playing games. It’s a shame that the current D&D scenario I’m writing is probably going to be just a one-shot, as I’ve ended up planting a bunch of hooks that could totally be the start of a really enjoyable long-term campaign.

– I think I slightly pulled something important during my weight training yesterday afternoon; the right elbow’s a little sore this morning. I suspect it probably had something to do with that sharp, sudden “test” of the building PA system that surprised me and caused me to momentarily lose my grip on the lat pull-down bar. Whatever the cause: Ow.

Thank you for your attention.