jaeleslie

Chunga arrived today. It is just a good thing. That's all. Yes, the US mail is working at least well enough that I have received said fanzine today. I hope no one here is going to now get all bent out of shape that they haven't, because it's certainly not my fault, but I'm sorry to have brought it up if you are. Despite all the vagaries of the US and international post, this at least was not something I have ever had any control over. My own mailing list may be in a state to depair over (on a ten-year-old computer and a printer that's not on speaking terms with any other computer, and full of out-of-date addresses that no one bothers to check until we get irate letters from fans I don't know who haven't lived there for years and can't work out how I could have been so careless as to get it wrong and forgotten to hand-deliver perhaps) but at least someone else in the world of fannish fanzines has got it together. And I have not yet had time to read every word of it from cover to cover. This is at the moment a good thing, many delights still promised. But thank you Max, and thank you Claire, and thank you Andy and Randy and carl. I am going to read all that over again. I am possibly more pleased with it than if I had written it all myself. It is nice to feel one can have a small part in encouraging someone else's fine work.

I have not had time to search out more than fragmentary online accounts of how the Worldcon has been going (thank you, Maureen). Here I am worrying over how I am going to entertain Tobes when he gets here. Madison fandom seems now singularly unhelpful with this, as some are out of town, and some are busy, and some are completely unimpressed with my attempts to describe his ineffable strangeness and charm. Even after I have entertained them for hours on end with a Labor Day Kook Out! and plied them with fine beers! See if I go doing them any more big favors!

So next weekend I am going to have another Kook Out, just like the last, with a slightly different spread of course depending on what's in the fridge on Saturday. Think about what His Tobesness might like to see in his whirlwind visit. The UW campus and the view of the lakes and the most beautiful state capitol building in the country and maybe State Street and a brewpub. Maybe he will just want to sleep. Maybe the Forevertron on Hwy 12 if we have time for a drive up that way and he feels like it.

The screen tent we borrowed for the last kook out is still up in the back garden, which is really just past its peak, and the tent is making it hard to mow the grass but it really is a good feature when you have a lot of food to set out on the trestle table and lots of insects this time of year. I tell you when we first got it set up, it seemed for a few minutes like such a palatial pavilion that it might be a good idea to give Tobes a sleeping bag and just let him stay in it. But I really have to get the basement cleaned out this week so there will be room for him to fold out the fold-out sofa (which Nevenah once informed me has one of those terrible bars that press on your back right across although she was happy enough to stagger in at all hours to sleep in it) and hope he doesn't hit his head on the cieling on the way down the stairs, as this is definitely the Short People's Basement. And Short People's Publication Center (collation table currently set up in the back garden...)

Ah well, must go upstairs and cook again. Pasta with marinara sauce (ground beef left over from Kook Out) and steamed romano beans.