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The weekend last weekend was especially busy.

Saturday afternoon we stopped by a party given to honor and give good wishes to Kira who is taking a job on the East Coast. It sounds like a real step up and a good job, so my wife and I wanted to show our support. Actually, we went to that party twice; first early to show our faces and then later after a show that we'd purchased tickets months in advance for.

See, Alton Brown, the food television personality and author has been doing live shows. We'd seen the first one of his last tour in Palm Desert several years ago and loved it. He has a new show that was at the Hollywood Pantages for two nights, and we had tickets for the second night, which was last Saturday. This interrupted our party-going... Anyway, the show was well-worth the ticket cost and well-worth hunting up if he's going to be in your area.

Back at the party a few hours later we had some great conversation and very much enjoyed the time with folks. I hope we'll be able to catch Kira if and when she makes a West Coast visit in the future.

Sometime during the week I took the opportunity to finish that Polish TV show, watching the DVD for With Fire and Sword 2. Meh.

We keep getting bits and pieces of work done on the yard and house for preparation for Carnivore's Feast. In addition, we've had a few evenings of hanging out restfully in the backyard using one at a time of the two newly constructed firepits, which has been very pleasant. One of them clearly is engineered to be the sort where folks hang around it and chat while the other is engineered to burn large and bright. Each has its place.

We had some folks over yesterday to run in my D&D world. As far as I can tell, everyone had a good time. Because of the impending party we'll be skipping a month and heading into May for the next one.

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I'm closing in on my reading goal for the year.

First book this week was Pottermore Presents Hogwarts: An Incomplete & Unreliable Guide, a fairly silly bit of a book about the school in the Harry Potter series of books. Fun for someone who's read the series, useless for anyone else.

Next was Osprey Vanguard #29: The M47 & M48 Patton Tanks a very similar book to one that I've read in the past from their New Vanguard series, it discusses a 1960s state-of-the-art tank. I remember making a plastic model of this one, for what it's worth.

Lastly I read Osprey Vanguard #30: Polish Armour 1939 – 45. It discusses not only the tanks the Poles had on hand when they were invaded by Germany in 1939, but also the tanks that they later got from the Allies later. Portions of the book details how they managed to get out of Eastern Europe and join the fight on the Western Theater of Operations by getting through Iran. Wild! I found this one particularly interesting for that reason.

More later!