It’s been six months since I took over as editor and, boy, you folks sure know how to keep a guy on his toes.

To say the first half of 2016 has been busy would be something of an understatement. Along with all of the usual local events popping up at every turn, we had a presidential candidate drop by Fountain Park earlier this year, a couple of health scares around the office and we even brought in The Times’ first ever crop of interns.

Covering schools and sports, I attended the usual three graduation ceremonies last month, watching as hundreds of students eagerly progressed to that next big chapter in their academic careers.

There are six sports running through the spring season, so I had the opportunity to watch quite a few local athletes play in various home games, matches and meets over the course of the past three months, too. Heck, we even had a state championship girls track team to celebrate at the end of their run.

With news reporter Bob Burns out of the office for a spell, I had the opportunity to drop by quite a few Town Council meetings this year, allowing me to become more familiar with our local government and meet all of the nice folks who make this town tick.

Over the past couple of weeks, I capped all of that off with a trip to Phoenix Comicon and the Electronics Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles which, while fun, also have the ability to tucker a guy out.

But we’re not done yet! This weekend leads into Independence Day, another big celebration here in town. I’ll be making my way around the Fountain with camera in hand on July 4, so don’t hesitate to come up and say “Hi” and let me know what we can do to continue improving the paper in order to better serve our readers.

After all of that, I’m happy to say that things should finally calm down around here for a little while. Summer school will have wrapped up, nobody is crazy enough to compete in sporting events through July and even local clubs and organizations cool their heels through the hottest month of the year.

I’ll probably be able to enjoy that slower tempo for about a week, at which point I’ll start to go stir-crazy here in the office.

In other words, just because it’s the summer doesn’t mean our job gets put on hold. If you’ve got an upcoming event, a church activity, a club outing or an occasion that might make for some interesting summer coverage, don’t hesitate to give us a holler or email the details.

As you can see in this week’s issue, letters to the editor don’t seem to be slowing down just because of the summer months. There’s a lot going on around the world these days and we’ve got a couple of local elections on the horizon, too, so we continue to invite our readers to offer their two cents here in the pages of their hometown paper.

Other than that, we’re just going to keep on keeping on. Get out there and have a happy holiday weekend and we’ll see you right back here on July 6.