It never seems to fail. I go away for two days, and it takes me two days to get myself pointed in the right direction again. Then this light cough that I’ve had for a couple of weeks sees its chance and attacks when I’m not looking, and turns itself into a full-fledged cold. Nothing more than a runny nose, itchy eyes, husky voice and that wonderful achy-all-over feeling. The usual over-the-counter stuff helps — it does exactly what it’s supposed to do — but so far it’s also letting me sleep 10 to 12 hours a day.

    So if you’ve emailed me recently and haven’t gotten a reply, that’s the reason. Right now I’m medicined up fairly well, so maybe I can get some things done tonight. Or maybe I’ll just go watch some DVDs or read a book or two. We’ll see.

    Among the incoming email messages that piled up while I was away included that contained a few more cover images to go with my James Pattinson post, along with a photo of the author, and a cover image that goes with a recent review of a book by James Anderson. These were supplied by British mystery specialist bookseller Jamie Sturgeon, who deserves a round of applause and has gotten one from me so far, but you can join in.

    If you’re interested in the do’s and don’ts of preserving pulp magazines as well as other paper collectibles, Walker Martin suggested that I give you the link to Laurie Powers’ Wild West Blog. He’s right. It’s an excellent piece, full of all kinds of good advice.

    And if you’re interested in traditional (or classic) mysteries, Les Blatt reminds me to tell you that his website is still running and he’d love to have you stop by. What he does, besides the usual postings is a weekly podcast for the books he reviews. Check him out at www.classicmysteries.net. The books he covers are well worth your while.

   As I usually do before heading out of town, I’ve been busy packing up and getting some reviews posted that I wanted to squeeze in before I go. Rich Harvey’s Pulp Adventurecon #10 is an all-day show on Saturday in Bordentown NJ, and I’ll be there:

   I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning with Paul Herman. We’re planning on doing some bookhunting along the way, then staying tomorrow night with noted paperback collector Dan Roberts over in nearby PA. (What’s really neat about Dan’s collection is that it’s all out on shelves where you can actually see it, and he has a lot of shelves. Unlike having four do-it-yourself storage areas that you can’t get into all four of, since right now the door on one is busted, and even for the other three, it has to be during regular business hours. Sometimes I feel as though I have to make an appointment several days in advance to see my own stuff.)

   As for the Bordentown show, I always have a great time, and I’m looking forward to it.

   As I do every year, I’ll be spending Columbus Day weekend in Cadillac, the small town in Michigan where I was born and grew up. My sister and her husband still live there, and my brother and his wife drive over from London, Ontario, where they live. (I fly, and I’ll be leaving mid-afternoon tomorrow.)

   I won’t be back until late on Tuesday, so of necessity the blog will be quiet until then. And I’m sure it will take me a few days to catch up on everything once I’m back. This current short but scheduled hiatus, in other words, is likely to be followed by a period of scattered and intermittent postings, I’m sorry to say.

   But will I run out of reviews to publish? Books and movies, both old and new? None of the above, and not any time soon, that’s for sure!

I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning for Columbus OH and this weekend’s 2009 PulpFest convention, the first under the new name and new management. They’ve done a tremendous amount of advertising and stirred up a lot of excitement about their show, more than there’s been in a long time. The fellows running the old PulpCon had done a good job over the years, but attendance had been dropping and they didn’t appear to be very receptive to new ideas.

PulpFest is primarily a venue for collectors of old pulp magazines to get together and talk about their recent acquisitions as well as those that got away, and of course to look for more. The center of the show is the dealers’ room, but in the evening are various panels and presentations, all in a very relaxed atmosphere. Many of the attendees have been coming for years, but anyone coming for the first time should feel welcome right away.

Some of you reading this I expect to see there, including several whose names should be familiar if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, such as Walter Albert, Walker Martin, Mike Nevins and Dan Stumpf. Stop by and introduce yourself if you’re there and I don’t see you first!

I’ll be back home on Sunday, but it may be a few days into August before the blog is very active again. Whenever I go away I pretty much stay off the computer, so no reports on the big bash until I get back. See you then!

    It took some cropping to do it, but my nephew Ben came up with a fairly decent photo of me taken the evening before his sister Joey’s wedding. It’s hidden in the comments following my previous post about the big day, three before this one, so you might not have known about it without my telling you. Don’t all rush there at once.

Wedding of Jocelyn Susannah Lewis and Sheldon James Morris.

      Ceremony on June 6th 2009 at Elsie Perrin Williams Estate, London Ontario.

This particular set of photos was taken by Joey’s brother Ben. I’m not in any of the ones I’m showing you. Someone in every picture I was in is grumpy-looking and/or has their eyes closed, not always me. If you want professionally-edited photos from special occasions, you may consider seeking photo retouching services.

Those who are also planning to get married should consider looking at a prenup example to learn what should be included in their own prenup agreement.

Sheldon, Joey, my brother Merwin and his wife Carol.

Sheldon and Joey after the ceremony.

Sheldon.

Joey.

Joey, Sheldon and a restored 1959 (or early 1960s) Triumph.

   Judy and I got home yesterday around 4:30 in the afternoon. It’s 550 miles between here and London, and while it was easy enough, taking two days by car each way, we regretting not leaving more time for visiting with my brother and his family.

   We had no problems crossing the border, but my daughter and her husband did. You can read about their adventure here on Mark’s blog.

   The weather on the day of my niece’s wedding was truly beautiful — a bright blue sky with the temperate in the low 70s — and everything went off well. A day to remember. I hope to have some photos to post here soon.

   It will take another day or so for us to recover, but after that I have a backlog of material to post. I’ll get to it as soon as I can!

   Canada, that is. Ontario. I thought I might get some reviews posted today, but it’s taken more time to get ready than I’d planned on.

   Judy and I are leaving tomorrow around noon. It will take us two days to get there by car, but we’ll be in plenty of time for my brother’s daughter Jocelyn’s wedding on Saturday. My sister and her husband from Michigan will be there, and my daughter and her husband from Illinois are driving up also.

   So it’ll be a small family reunion of sorts as well — the most Lewises in one spot in quite a while. Judy and I looking forward to it — not the driving part so much, but we don’t need to push ourselves, so that’ll be OK — but I’m going to leave the computer at home.

   This blog’s going to be idle for a while, in other words, so hang on till about this time next week. I have plenty of reviews and other stuff piled up for posting as soon as I get back — of both books and movies, lots more of what you’ve been seeing here recently — and the way things look now, there’ll be a few more contributors who’ll be appearing soon.

      Take care, and so long for now.

                     — Steve

Even though a new computer’s on its way, I thought I could do no harm in spending yesterday seeing if I could track down and get rid of the virus that waylaid my present one. It took a while, but to my surprise, given my lack of overall computer skills — anything beyond the basics is like magic — I think I’ve done it.

I don’t want to speak too soon, but everything’s working the way it should, and maybe this blog is back in business. When the new computer arrives, there’ll be another short break while I get it hooked up and humming, but later tonight I’m going to see about posting some of the huge backlog that’s accumulated.

Or at least that’s the plan.

As anti-virus software, Norton really let me down, first of all, for letting this last bugger in (called Zlob), and then for not knowing how to fix it. For what it’s worth, once I was able to restore my computer back to Sunday, when Firefox was still working, I was able to download a program called Spysweeper, which I used to clean out what I couldn’t eliminate manually. It found 15 viruses that Norton had missed. As I say, for what it’s worth.

There’s some sort of virus or a “rogue anti-spyware” thingy on my computer that makes Firefox iffy and has shut down Explorer completely. I have a backlog of posts for this blog that I’ve been working on, and I can still receive and send email, but until this junk is cleaned out of wherever it it, there’ll be a another short period of quiet here, I’m sorry to say.

I’ll be back as soon as I can!

[UPDATE] An hour or so later, from my wife’s computer. Firefox is gone, and Eudora is getting temperamental. This is going to be longer than I thought.

[UPDATE #2.] 05-05-09. The computer’s a goner. I’ll be ordering a new one this afternoon, but this “vacation” I’m on is going to last another week or so before things are in order and I’m set to roll again. It’s been frustrating, aggravating, and total waste of time dealing with this, to say the least.

[UPDATE #2A.] Later the same day. I was way wrong on my previous estimate of when the new computer can be delivered. Then of course comes the dreaded part of loading the software and all of the other luxuries of computing we’ve discovered that we, collectively, cannot live without.

The bad news is that it will be three weeks, not “another week or so.”

If I were to post reviews and so on without cover images, and add them in later, maybe I can avoid going nearly a month without posts. It won’t be easy, as the major portion of this operation is all the way upstairs, and I’m down here a level on the othe side of the house, but it can be done. I’ll have to do some thinking about it.

In the meantime, I am not lacking for things to do — like doing some spring cleaning around here.

That’s last spring, mind you.