I finally finished New Moon by Stephanie Meyers, and I have to say the vampire/werewolf/teenager love triangle left me cold. The main character, Bella, is whiny and unsympathetic, and she's exactly the sort of emotional heatsink that I'll be telling my son to avoid in ten years or so.

Finishing the book allowed me to move on to my proper summer reading list, starting with Century Rain and The Space Opera Renaissance. While both books were already on my bookshelf, I did still find myself buying another book for the list: Peter Hamilton's The Dreaming Void.

A science fiction podcast featuring original short fiction. It's perfect when you need a speculative fiction fix, but don't have the time to jump into a full-length audio book. For years it was edited by Steve Eley, but in Spring 2010 he stepped down and handed the reigns over to long-time podcaster Mur Lafferty.

Madison, my Labrador Retriever, died on Monday after 13 years of unrelenting enthusiasm for life, liberty and the pursuit of food. She was the quintessential Lab -- super happy, eager to say hello, an amazing swimmer, an even better retriever, and the kind of dog who knew how to take time to stop and eat the roses. And brownies. And cup cakes. And...

We knew she would be a challenge from the beginning: as we were signing the check to buy her, she tried to pull one of her litter-mates through a fence by his tail. It took us six months to train her to lick instead of bite, and two tours of puppy school to get her to agree to basic obedience commands.

Unless she was on the water ... in which case the only thing she'd pay attention to was her kong-on-a-rope. Or maybe ducks -- Madison once tried to catch a mallard on the Delaware River, not realizing that ducks could, you know, fly. I had to jump in the river and swim after her to get her attention. Fortunately she turned around before we got to New Jersey.

One of my upcoming "Summon WebScryer" columns for Knights of the Dinner Table is going to be on geek holidays, those annual events of keen interest to (and usually created by) geeks. Knowledge of these events is usually spread online, and they're frequently the subject of Facebook updates, Twitter tweets, and blog posts, not to mention more than a few podcasts. Here's my preliminary list ... what am I missing?

• Free Comic Book Day: Free comics books from Marvel, DC Comics, Dark Horse, Archie and others.
• Free RPG Day: Free role-playing games from major and minor publishers.
• Read an RPG Book in Public Week: Promote role-playing game awareness by reading an RPG book in public.
• Game Master's Day: Reward your GM for all the work he or she does in running your campaign.
• National Novel Writing Month: Write a 50,000 page novel in one month.
• Game Chef: Craft a role-playing game on a given subject in one month.