"Travelling"

Apologies, folks. I'm a total jackass.

By which I mean to say, I had originally planned on writing a rather long and insightful (or, at least, entertaining) post, but I simply don't have the time. I am winging off to Mexico tomorrow to spend the Christmas holiday with the in-laws, and I thought my travel time was to begin in the afternoon/evening. Turns out: no. My plane leaves at 9am, which means I have precious little time to get everything packed (and the house in order), before catching a little sleep and getting the kids up, a couple hours earlier than they're used to. I'm doing this on my own, of course, as my wife is currently in Paraguay; we're meeting in the middle.

[my children, while under the age of seven, are veteran travelers and real troopers when it comes to this kind of thing. Unfortunately, they are fuck-all worthless when it comes to packing and organizing or even (with regard to my youngest) dressing themselves or cleaning their own nether regions]

SO...as I am pressed for time, I will simply give you the skinny in bullet point form:

• I will be out of the country till New Year's so anyone ordering books are S.O.L. until January, when I will fulfill any and all orders in my inbox.

• Likewise, I will be (mostly) unavailable to answer the various emails and comments I sometimes receives.

• I am very hopeful that you ALL have a HAPPY and SAFE holiday season. I know that's not always possible, through no fault of your own (observe Monday's tragic Amtrak derailment in my own neck of the woods), but I'll send up a prayer that everyone makes it through to 2018.

• I've been doing a lot of reading and research on the old Traveller game this last week. And not just ANY edition of Traveller but, specifically, the original 1977, first edition of the game...which happens to be (oddly enough) different in many respects from all the later editions, even the 1981 "re-print" (the only one available in PDF at the moment, as far as I've found). I found an incredibly interesting resource over at the Tales to Astound blog, and have spent at least a dozen hours or so reading through his entire string of "classic Traveller" posts. Very enlightening stuff, especially the relationship of the game (both its themes and gameplay) to the original version of Dungeons & Dragons. Fascinating, and definitely recommended reading for the Traveller enthusiast. Hopefully I'll have a chance to revisit the topic in a future post.

Aaaaand...that's about all I have time for. I'll try to get out a post or two while I'm in Mexico, but if I don't, know that I'm wishing you all a "merry, merry" one...whatever it is that makes you merry this time of year.

: )