4th Edition D & D: I'll have time to read it eventually

I picked up my core rule books of 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons from my mailbox today. It arrived yesterday while I was away giving a seminar (or possibly today earlier than I checked my mailbox). I am about to finish Dune (I only have the appendices left) and then in early July two Dragonlance books I really want to read will be shipped to me. I'll read some of the new Player's Handbook between now and then, but I'm mostly planning to go through those books first before I really delve into the new edition.

I haven't made any effort to find a gaming group for the summer (and ideally beyond), but maybe I'll get around to it at some point. There is some sort of game day on Saturday, but I'm going to have to miss it because I am visiting Bristol tomorrow and going to the first of two back-to-back conferences on Sunday, so I really need to do work on Saturday. In particular, I have some papers nearing the finish line and others making reasonable progress that would be nice to advance further (and, ideally, one I want to advance enough to be comfortable showing it to people at the upcoming conference!).

I might post some thoughts on Dune later, though that's likely to wait for my year-end review of books. I'm definitely planning to discuss some 4th edition stuff after I go through it in detail. (I only glanced at it for a minute because I want to read some baseball articles, work a bit on a paper [perhaps], and play some Super Mario Galaxy.

In other news, congratulations to all my Somerville students who finished their exams today! (I don't think any of them read this blog, but congratulations to them anyway.)