Wednesday's strip about getting astronauts to Mars without boring the spit out of them generated a great e-mail from NASA engineer Lee S.:

I am an engineer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and I work on the telemetry processing systems that handle the current internet connectivity for the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. I have forwarded this particular strip to a number of engineers and controllers here for their amusement, and promptly received a hardy LOL from one controller. Good stuff! Keep it up!

No word yet on whether they forwarded the strip up to anyone on the space station: Most of the station's internet time is dedicated to LOLcats and Facebook, purely for scientific reasons.

Sheldon reader Ben M. has been fighting the good fight against cancer for a while, now. And he just let me know he's moving to Houston for further, specialized cancer treatments. As part of that move, he asked if I'd be comfortable mentioning the eBay sale of his prized original art from this Sheldon strip.

This is a strip that a *lot* of you have asked about over the years, so I know one of you will be overjoyed to snap it up. More importantly, I'm happy to help Ben out in this moment -- as he's been one of the kindest, nicest people a cartoonist could ever hope to meet. I first met Ben at Emerald City Comic-Con, what, three years ago? Four? And he's always, always, always been quick with a kind word or a helping hand. So this is the least I can do for a genuinely good guy.

Ben's framed up the strip in a really cool way, as well: Go have a look!

Just a heads up for those following our Saturday-only scifi feature: There won't be an installment of Drive this weekend, with apologies.

But it'll be back, rarin' to go, next weekend! All tanned and rested and in fightin' shape.