Is it just me, or does this seem like a really hectic time of year? Though my boys do not finish school until mid-June, the fever pitch that harkens the end of the school year already has kicked into gear. Between events like the school concert and the arts fair and baseball games two nights a week, I feel like I am racing from one event to the other while juggling an intense schedule at the office as well.

Wednesday night I got home around 8:30 to find Cory, my younger son, the one who usually is so buried in a book that he barely acknowledges my arrival home, standing by the door saying, "I need to make homemade chocolate chip cookies for school tomorrow and we have no butter." Well there went my plan to sit on the couch and eat some dinner, read and relax. In his defense, he had mentioned this and the lack of butter the evening before, but all three people who could hit the store blanked on remembering to get there.

I love to take pictures when I travel, and I am noted for shooting a lot of photos when I am on the road. What's interesting about my literary travel is that I rarely shoot an author photo or anything at book festivals and events. I bring back a hundred anecdotes, but rarely do I snap a picture. I had a friend who told me he never shot pictures of mountains, because they never looked as special when you got home and looked at them. The memory was dwarfed once you looked at it. I think these experiences are the same way for me. It's not about how the author looks, but rather about what they said. I find myself running their conversations like film in my head.