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Something I've always enjoyed is reading comic strips. I think I've mentioned that. It used to be that I could only see what was in the Arizona Republic, which wasn't that many. We had most of the typical funny strips, and maybe four of the serious ones (which were at the bottom of the two adjacent pages and which I then skipped). Today I can more or less read whichever I like. I don't read them all, but I read a fair number.

It gets to be that I cannot handle the burden of reading them. Sometimes it's for a day or two, and sometimes it's for longer. Recently, which things like the big sketch-writing month, auditions and illness occupied a good amount of my time, I was kept from reading my comic strips for much of the last two months. One or twice I made small efforts to get caught up again, but I found that the backlog was most persistent.

Just as soon as the sketch writing was done with (I hope not permanently), I reasoned that there was no better time than this particular day free of real responsibilities to get caught up. For me it works best to do these things all at once while the desire has seized me. That's what worked when I fell behind on the sketches. I don't have the discipline or the patience to catch in manageable, day by day fashion. It's got to be a grand gesture.

So it was that I set myself to the task of reading all the waiting comic strips the other day. I started shortly before mid-day, and worked at it almost unceasingly (save for a shower and a trip to run errands to the library and the grocery store) until about midnight. That's how long it took to read something like a month's worth all all the nation's best comics, funny, serious and editorial. Maybe I look crazy for doing it, and maybe I am, but it was my choice and it's done.