Saturday Sherlock - Study in Scarlet/Scandal in Bohemia

At long last, the return to Our Heroes as we wrap up Study in Scarlet! What I find most interesting about this book is the rather hilarious description of Holmes as quiet and tidy, considering how he's going to be described later

Rather than read only a single chapter of Sign of the Four, which is next, I'm going to jump ahead chronologically to A Scandal in Bohemia. And I'm going to pimp Stanford University.

For a couple of years, S.U. had a reading project where they wanted to give people the feeling of what it was like to read classic serial publications as actual serials. So you could sign up and get Hard Times and some Sherlock Holmes delivered to you weekly in little newsprint booklets. (My life feeling as out of control then as now, I saved them all up to read later. *sigh*)

All of these booklets are up online as readable/downloadable .pdf files. I highly recommend them because I just flat out like the way they're presented - using the same typeface and illustrations as the original Strand Magazine, plus with neat little notes at the end explaining some things. (I particularly like that these are endnotes and not footnotes/annotations scattered throughout the text distracting you from the actual story.

A Scandal in Bohemia can be downloaded here.

Classes

One of the reasons why I wanted to get the house done last year was that last year was when I took "off" from everything to try to concentrate on the house.

This year, not so much. I'm going to fewer conventions, but I'm still *going.* I'm also going to a fair number of classes. I was talking with Doug today and realized that I've already taken two (socks from the toe up; brioche knitting) and have signed up for two more official ones (cheese making; kitchen knife skills) plus made a trade to have an unofficial bread making class.

And that was all before I sat down with the local Rec Center flyers, the *other* community college spring non-credit classes, the lecture list from a local gardening group, and First Class downtown, in search of one specific class but in the knowledge that I'd want several more (yup. Homemade lotions and bath salts, anyone?)

I could say "No, I need to turn my attention back to the house." But damnit, these look really cool. And I'm expanding my horizons, etc - gives me something to look *forward* at while I get rid of all the ghosts of hobbies past the clutter in the house. So: new resolution. Learn at least 12 new things.