I wasn't even planning on posting anything here today, but I wanted to get that stuff about Virginia Tech off the screen. We've all been inundated with it for the last week, and you don't need to be assaulted with it when you come here, too. This should be a happy place, full of glittering rainbows and free Egg McMuffins when you buy one at regular price. So I thought I'd talk about something I got in the mail yesterday that made me happy; Volume 1 of "The Complete Peanuts".

For those who don't know, "The Complete Peanuts" is an effort by Fantagraphics books to collect every single Peanuts strip ever created into a series of 25 books, with two years worth of strips per volume, over a 12 year period. I didn't really become a Peanuts fan until I was in my 20s, but since then I've read just about everything I can get my hands on about Charles Schulz. He was a soft-spoken, talented man who essentially created the template on which all modern comic strips are based, and the chance to own every single strip he ever drew was too great. I finally broke down and bought the first one, and I plan on collecting them all over the next decade or so. I've got some catching up to do, but when my son or daughter is old enough, I want to be able to pass along this entire set to them, then make them sit at the kitchen table and read every strip, all 18,000 of them, until they hate me.

Oh, they'll thank me later.