Update-Update-Update

Well, we sold my wife's late mother's house. After nearly a year of getting nowhere, we went with a new realtor, got an offer in three hours, counter-offered, had it accepted and had a handshake deal in less than six hours. Contracts were signed, closing dates set and later postponed but at the end of the day...WE DID IT! We spent the past week paying off all of our debt except our mortgage! Even paid off the @#!!$$ piece of $%#@ car...just a few days after having to pay to get new tires and new brakes!

Problem is that none of this has kicked in yet. I don't FEEL debt-free. I felt guilty when I bought a turntable the other day to play our still substanial record collection. It's still in its box. The only other indulgences I've allowed myself thus far are a handful of back issues of PSYCHOTRONIC (several featuring work by my Christa co-author, John O'Dowd) and my own copy (as opposed to one I borrowed awhile back to review) of Mark Evanier's KIRBY book! This is what I call "the ten dollar rule." When I was a teenager, I'd beg my mother for ten dollars for this, that or the other. If and when she finally gave in, I'd take the money, head off to Woolworth's, decide I didn't really need or want this, that or the other all that much and inevitably return the money to her. Sigh.

Other than that, I've been dealing with new blood pressure medications (the old ones only seem to give me the side effects!), prepping bookdave to start middle school in a couple weeks, scraping layers of paint off my front porch and preparing for our annual inventory at work after losing a valuable employee.

Speaking of work, I continue to miss all the most interesting visitors! We already wrote of William Shatner recently. Since then, I missed a return visit from Ron Jeremy (seen here with one of our employees with all identifying info removed to keep the company off my back) and now this week John Waters! I'm told he was quite delightful!

Finally, a special shout out to reader Lisa_Mynx who this past week read Booksteve's Library in its entirity in a non-linear fashion, dropping many comments along the way and even sending along the above Sub-Mariner portrait that matches those we ran recently of the Human Torch and Captain America and Bucky! Thanks!