Between a busy work season and a general re-direction of my energy towards small ends, I've been kind of slacking around here, and that's not likely to change anytime soon. Sorry about that.

I got talked into going to that charity poker tournament at the State College Knights of Columbus yesterday. I ended up doing really, really poorly - went out inside of the first half-hour with an all-in on "Broadway" - a 10-J-Q-K-A straight. Wouldn't you know that those two kings that came out on the flop matched the two "cowboys" in the other guy's hand, meaning that I had been betting into a perfect four-of-a-kind. Gotta love that "walk of shame", when you're one of the first three or four to walk out of a room of ninety, complete with running camera from one of the local TV stations recording it all for posterity. Oh, well. It was "charity". Although I was told that the Knights do this every month. Dunno what their legal excuse is when they don't have a kid who fell off a balcony as cover.

No, I'm not bitter. A little rueful, maybe. But not bitter.

The Bellefonte Cruise is coming into town this weekend, which means that I'm leaving town. One of Bellefonte's relative virtues is that it's usually a quiet town, aside from the occasional aging biker gang's funereal roar. The Cruise is a definite exception to that general rule. Racing engines, loud PAs, Fifties-revival bands playing in front of the courthouse, and... the stereo contests. The stereo contests right across the street from my apartment. My thin-walled apartment.

See y'all. I'm going to Jersey to staff a convention in Secausus. Don't bother breaking in, I doubt you could get a fence to buy anything in my apartment, unless your fence is a thrift store with a side-line in anime DVDs, SF novels, manga, and Civil War history.