…the happier I am that I am not going to San Diego in a couple of days for the madhouse that is Comic-Con International.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of friends that I only really see once a year, and it’s when I take the trip out to San Diego. I mean, we are talking about a lot of friends. So not seeing them? That really stinks. Plus it’s good for networking with publishers and creators, and to just get a good idea of what the proverbial pulse of the industry is beating these days.

But first CCI announced that the 4-day passes sold out. (It wouldn’t have been a worry for me, my pass would’ve been taken care of months ago.) Now, the Convention Center in San Diego is huge, holding something like 130,000 people in it. For it to sell out? That’s madness. And now individual passes for Saturdays are sold out, too. And then I start thinking about how crowded it was just back in 2005, when it wasn’t as bad, and it still looked like this:

(click here for an even larger view of the terror)

Oh dear lord. What was I thinking? Yes, I will enjoy not being in San Diego this upcoming weekend. Even though I will miss all my friends terribly. (Especially Kelly Sue, if only because I figure I could try and rub her belly and then make a run for it before she clocked me by way of response.) But this weekend? Well, I’ll think about two good friends running the San Francisco Marathon and note that it would be less exhausting than being at Comic-Con. And then? Take a nice long nap, I think.