Done and done with August.

T'were I truly a dedicated Sherlockian, I might have spent yesterday working over the remaining blanks on the annual John H. Watson Society Canonical Treasure Hunt, but instead the day was happily spent at the local Erin Feis where I could indulge those Celtic quarters of my roots and listen to a very delightful band with a bagpiper. The one moment of Sherlockian thought all day was trying to decide if I wanted to buy a keychain with the Moriarty crest on it or have another pastie.

But as with everything, there comes a time when one just has to bring it to a close and move on, so this morning I compiled a final list of answers and sent it off to my team's captain slapped my hands together in a "done and done!" gesture, and moved along. I still have to finish transcribing the leaked pilot to West of Baker Street, the Sherlock Holmes TV show that doesn't exist in this reality, before September and the fall season kicks in as well. After all, what good is an episode recap of a leaked pilot if the season has already started!

It will be good to have this mad August over, in any case, and get back to more interesting stuff. I was tweeted a link to what one assumes are some kind of transcripts of some improvised cases of Sherlock Holmes from a Chicago improv group, and I'm still puzzling over those a bit. As the group performs in that area of Chicago where one finds it slightly difficult to find a place to keep one's automobile handy for escaping the city after the show, I probably won't be seeing the show in its best-consumed form. But having participated in a lot of group-writes of Holmes stories, which are basically silent literary improv of a sort, it's interesting to try to see what stage-folk produce when attempting their version of it.

And I think the last bit of this month will involved some clean-up of the old Sherlockian library room, which has been a mess occasionally referred to in this blog. When one has an extra room or two in the house and can devote the whole of one to Holmes, it would seem like a very good thing . . . at first. But once one ceases to go in there other than to find a particular book or toss something into be sorted later . . . well, the sorting bill comes due at some point.

Ah, August. What a month you were. So looking forward to September.