Instead of working much on the game engine over the holidays I ended up finishing part of my basement. While it wasn't very fun, it did knock several items off my wife's honey-do list and earned me a bunch of brownie points.
What work I did was related to transparent forms. I've created a base transparent form that I can add the various game panels to and display them over the top of the map. Creating the form was simple, what I don't like is that I had to use a Form to do it. I would have loved to be able to use a control that I could have added to my main form's control collection. Unfortunately Forms are the only thing that I see that can easily support transparency. I may come back and revisit this later, but for now it is working using a Form.
Jay