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.
