Sunday, March 16, 2008

The days are just packed

Yesterday I received an amazing birthday gift from my wife and her parents:



It's The Complete Calvin and Hobbes: Every single Calvin and Hobbes comic ever printed. Over 1,500 pages of metaphysical humor involving a boy and his pet tiger covering the ten-year span of Bill Watterson's professional career as a cartoonist. I used to read these comics constantly when I was a kid, even though, as Watterson says of the Peanuts comics, "most of the strip's subtleties went right over my head." I read them now on my computer thanks to a nifty Dashboard widget that displays one each day, but to have all of them easily accessible and bookshelf-packaged like this...good gravy, it's one incredible gift. And yes, I realize that two of the books pictured above are upside-down...I was too lazy to re-take the photo after I already had it uploaded to my brother's server.

Today we leave for Washington DC, where we will spend a week looking through files at the Library of Congress for my wife's graduate school research, as well as going to some of the local haunts including the Air and Space museum, a tour of Congress, a visit to the Supreme Court Oral Arguments, as well as visits to many of the local restaurants.

Now it's off to update GameNerd and then head to church. Nick, if you're reading this, happy birthday, man. 10 years ago we were at The Warehouse where The Leftovers played an impromptu show for our birthdays, and if I was in Lincoln now I'd buy you a soda and we could shoot the breeze on the bridge over I-80.

1 comment:

Chaviva Gordon-Bennett said...

Note: My favorite thing to do in Washington D.C. is to go to the Library of Congress to get a library card. They will act funny and assume you are some idiot, since you can't get one if you're out of state, but that's when you say you're a student and give them your permanent address and get the library card. I mean, I never used mine, but I loved having it (I did this freshman year of college on a visit).

There's a delicious pizza place that is semi-underground in Dupont Circle. I wish I could remember the name, but I can't. But you go down some steps to get in and the slices are SOOO GOOD. I recommend it.

HAVE FUN!