Another day, another airplane. As I write this it’s Thursday morning, and I am hopping on a plane to Washington, DC for the American Library Association Convention in a few hours. Yes, I could drive. Yes, I could take the train. But I love flying, and I can get more done on a plane since I drop into a zone and really break away from the day-to-day. Here’s something I miss: I used to play music when the plane took off. I would line up the perfect song, so racing down the runway and taking off was choreographed. I know, I am easily amused, but there was something about cranking up “Jet Airliner” by Steve Miller or something a lot more esoteric that made flying a lot more fun. I actually would plot this out in advance, and there was a trick to getting the song synched to work just as the plane started hurling down the tarmac.

Though we began celebrating as soon as the weather turned warm, the summer season officially kicks off this week, and boy is it a scorcher out there! With temperatures reaching the 90s, we’re all perfectly content to stay indoors and lose ourselves in some juicy beach reads. And we recommend you do the same.

I've been attending San Diego Comic-Con pretty much every year for more years than I care to count. Before becoming editor of GNR, I lived in San Diego, so it was always easy to head downtown for the show and see what was new and exciting in the world of comic books. As editor of Pages magazine, I even got to cover it from the book-publishing point of view way back when, which was fun. But this year, I'll be attending in two wildly fun and new ways (for me, anyway). First, I was an Eisner judge, so attending the awards will be vastly different than in years past (and I have to say, I can't wait to see how the awards turn out. Knowing how much work went into the selection, I'm really looking forward to hearing the winners announced). Second, I'll be moderating a panel this year entitled "Comics in Libraries," taking place on Saturday at 11 a.m. in Room 8 --- see my blog post below for more information on it).