A few items of note from the recent past:

• Rick and Sondra stopped by last night to watch the sixth series finale of Doctor Who. They also dropped by a few weeks ago for the wrap-up of Torchwood. It’s always fun having them visit.
• A few days after getting my HTC HD7 phone, I was part of the first wave to get the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango update. I love this phone — the live tiles are fabulous, the OS is snappy and fluid, data (like status updates) aggregate in one place, and the battery life is a major improvement over my Samsung Epic. Three cheers for Microsoft.
• Spent most of last week doing a boatload of editing for Demand Media. The Tech Beta content channel (a partnership with Salon) was unusually full of stuff to review, and most of it was of uniformly high quality, so editing was a breeze.
• ArtPrize hums along. Or, rather, ho-hums along; the major criticism this year is that the artists seem to be playing to the lowest common denominator among the voting public, so the art has been either too cautious, too insipid, or too juvenile.
• The office gang is planning another Chicago trip, this time for Oct. 24. Should be nicer than last year’s frigid December get-away. We will do the Amtrak thing and spend the day eating, shopping and telling jokes. Should be fun.
• I’ve started keeping a diary, in OneNote. More like a chron log, but still.
• Visited my mom yesterday — retrieved some of my last boxes from her shed, as well as a “family heirloom” table that’s now in my living room. Plus, Gunner (her German Shepherd) was thrilled to see me.
• This weekend has been unusually productive, which is nice. Although I still hate doing laundry. I did get caught up on reading — RSS feeds, magazines, Twitter, etc. The WP7 helps but so does sitting on the back porch with my TouchPad with a cigar or pipe and a glass of Scotch.
• Now that it’s October, I’m getting mildly irritated that the Michigan Secretary of State *still* hasn’t sent my renewal tabs. I ordered them weeks ago, but … nada. Looks like an in-person visit at the local branch office from now on.

All for now. Enjoy the day.