Things, a few of them.

I have my first piece of writing published on an actual professional website.
Shameless self promotion is very much my thing, but I'll resist this time and instead urge you to venture over to Adventure Sports Holidays to satisfy your adventure sports holiday needs.

I would also say that you should all listen to Jimmy Eat World's new album Invented. Really really good.
Also, check out The Sleeping's album The Big Deep and Bad Books, Kevin Devine's project with Manchester Orchestra.

Finally a quick note that given my academic and blogging hero The Plashing Vole now follows my blog (albeit, I'm sure purely as a gesture of polite reciprocation becuase I follow him) you may notice an immediate and steep decline the the quality of the blogs in an attempt not to plagiarise anything he said in lectures.