Thank you so much, everyone who wrote to congratulate us. I think I've heard from almost half of my readership. It's like having a birthday every day to come home and find new emails filled with people's excitement over our success story. I confess I sit and stare at the photos on my page sometimes, hardly able to believe it's mine. And then I think to myself, "Man, that's geometric. It looks like a collection of childrens' blocks painted yellow and cream. I'm going to be living in a toy house." It makes me giggle.

We had the house inspection done on Sunday, and nothing turned up aside from ungrounded three prong outlets (utterly typical of older homes), and a gas pipe that's rusting and should be replaced before we move in (hopefully not too expensive). Everything else is sound as a bell. We're thrilled.

I'm glad I went out Saturday night to a big fannish party in Oakland or I would have missed the chance to see five British friends who were in town the first part of this week. I thought about staying home and just getting together with them on my side of the Bay, but then I chastised myself for being lazy about the hour's drive to Oakland, and invited Janice Gelb and Michael Rawdon to get a ride with us so we'd have company. I saw quite a few folks I haven't seen in months, and I hadn't seen some of the British fans for years in some cases. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to John and Eve Harvey, Paul Kincaid and Maureen Kincaid Speller, and Martin Smith. We made plans for later in the week, but this cold scuttled any social plans entirely, and now everyone's on their way home to Merry Olde.

"Eh, there was a time we couldn't get rid of you!" John joshed me. "You were like a bad penny, always turning up for parties and conventions." I suggested Victor Gonzalez had taken my place now as the Fan Who Loved English Fandom. He's easily as besotted as I was, and although I still feel very close to a number of British fans I no longer participate in fanzine fandom by actually publishing my ish. I publish this diary instead. It's not the same.

Going to Corflu made me aware of a longing to pub my ish again. I got a lot of really good fanzines there, and I was honored by having one of my last articles published in the 1994 Fanthology. I thought about the excellent paper version of Anita Rowland's Book of Days she did two years ago for Potlatch, and thought, "I could do that." So I am. I'm slowly selecting entries from the last three years of Aries Moon with the intention of turning it into a paper fanzine. I've got the Corflu mailing list to start with, and I can get a few more addresses by requesting them from other fanzine editors.

For now, though, I'm going to upload this and slink back to bed. I had only four hours sleep the night before because of this cold, and now I can't stay awake longer than 45 minutes at a time because of this cold. And unless I feel a lot better tomorrow I'll probably stay home again. In which case the least I can do is feebly pack a few china cups. I'm starting to have packing nightmares. And I finally thought of the one thing I will miss about living down here: the hot tub. I use it every week, month after month. I'm going to have to put in a hot tub in the back yard eventually. I love soaking in hot, hot water. I can't get enough. In fact, first I'll have a hot tub soak, and then slink back to bed.

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