Good to hear you had a nice time in the land of my birth ;o)
I've even been to Bay Used Books! Not a bad store :o)

Why don't you try getting yourself a Gmail address? I use mine almost exclusively now, you can make filters, search it, have a ton of storage space, and it's never crashed on me or lost anything at all, and all my LJ comments always show up... just an idea. From the first day I got a gmail account, I knew I'd never go back to hotmail. :o)