No pictures today. We could think of little more than how much we wanted to be in our cozy little house in Pasadena. My journal says nothing about the day’s activities, and my memory is that practically all our time was spent in front of computers at our latest hangout.

One thing I managed to do was pick up a copy of the latest thriller by Ian Rankin, which was not yet published in the States. I knew it was out in the UK, so hoped that I could find it here in New Zealand, and I did. It gave me a good way of spending all the time we would have in Auckland on the return trip.

The journal is also silent about the details of the flights home. By the time we got to the Queenstown airport Saturday morning, I was feeling as if a cold was coming on, and when we boarded the flight from Auckland to Los Angeles, I was in full contagious mode. I felt very sorry for the Englishwoman sitting next to me on that flight: she would be continuing on to London in the same plane, and I saw no way she could avoid catching whatever it was that I had.

Beyond that, the flights home were unremarkable. We collapsed in exhaustion and pleasure once we got home, and with our memory-banks well filled.