There are days when I humor myself, and last Sunday was one of them. The weather was gorgeous, and I sat reading on the deck before what I call "exercise guilt" intruded (this is not to be confused with "book guilt"). I grabbed my iPod and took a brisk walk around the neighborhood trying to mimic the people who I always see from my home office window on Fridays happily strolling along. Since walking sans a purpose does not work for me unless I am on the beach, I was using this opportunity to get landscaping and porch ideas since I want to reinvent ours as they are rather dated.

We’re back! Thank you to all of the readers who wrote notes to congratulate us on our 13th anniversary. I responded to many, but not all of you, and will try to get caught up on those that I missed over the weekend. (More on why that was delayed in a few.) I shared your sentiments with the staff and we all really enjoyed reading the comments on the blog. You really made the start of our vacation time terrific with that sendoff.

Summer unofficially came to an end with Labor Day last Monday, but my summer reading list still remains daunting --- that list being represented by two big stacks in my apartment. One is a pile of graphic novels and manga; the other is a stack of prose books I’m trying to get to. Both piles diminish slowly, it seems, mostly because I keep adding to them --- and then I waste valuable time rearranging them. The art of arranging and rearranging my reading lists is one I take great pride in; it was honed when I was a child and perfected over the years. It came in especially handy with comics, which had to be read in a certain order. I like to save the best for last, so the crème de la crème was always at the bottom of the pile, motivating me to read quickly through those above it; and while I did so, my anticipation would build as I knew each new book was going to be enjoyed more than the last. It wasn’t always 100% right, but it’s a system I’ve kept with all this time.