Good morning, Hank, it's... what day is it?
[Voice Off-camera] Sunday!
It's Sunday! In LA.

Hank, that lovely introduction was filmed three days ago back when I was still young and promising and it wasn't six o'clock in the morning. I'm sorry, there's not going to be a Question Tuesday today; I'll do it soon, but in the meantime, let's kick it old-school.

(Intro)

Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday, July 1st, and as you can tell from the grey, speckled walls behind me: I'm in an airport. Get used to these walls, Hank: You're going to be seeing a lot of 'em between now and October.

So Hank, you may be wondering why I sound like Kermit the Frog with late-stage emphysema. It's because I've spent the last five days talking. I've been here in sunny Anaheim, California for the American Library Association annual conference which is like, I mean --

[Disembodied voice] Attention Los Angeles International Airport travelers: The TSA....

[*sigh*] Oh, has-, has-, has the TSA limited the items that can be carried on to the flight? Thanks for that helpful information, TSA: I don't know how I would have known it if you hadn't said it four minutes ago. And four minutes before that. And four minutes before that. And, indeed, every four minutes that I'm in an airport in my entire life. Which is, of course, a full twenty percent of the time.

But anyway, Hank, I've been at ALA conference readin' books and talkin' about books and thinkin' about books -- Nerdfighters! -- and whenever I go to ALA conference I get so excited that I like, literally, cannot shut up for four days. I mean, Hank, this is consistently the most fun I have, professionally, every year, because I love librarians. They are so fun to hang out with. Librarians are like, the secret superheroes of the world. The conference was absolutely fantastic and I had a great time, but, uh, one funny thing did happen to me.

So, I was at the convention signing copies of "Looking for Alaska" and "An Abundance of Katherines", and generally, Hank, it must be said that when you're signing autographs for people, they like your book, like, that's why they're standing in line to have it signed. And everyone was nice, except for this one woman. She was this very sweet-looking old lady and she handed me her copy of "Looking for Alaska", and she said "I really love the first half of your novel. But the second half, it just completely fell apart." And I was like, "Well, I really like the first half of your comment!"

Other than the lady who didn't like the second half of "Looking for Alaska", my conference was mostly people coming up to me and saying "Where's Hank?" "Is Hank here?" "Did you bring Hank?". And the answer to all of those questions, Hank, is, of course, that you could not be at ALA convention this year because you were busy training your body and mind to get in shape for meeting tens of BILLIONS of Nerdfighters on the Great American Tour de Nerdfighting 2008 in which awesome shall happen IRL.

Hank, speaking of awesome, I continue to be amazed how much you and the Nerdfighters and also all the librarians in the world are made out of it.