Joe, I'm only now getting back to this. Two things:

If you would archive ALL of the messages you want to keep, then pull them up by the feature that lets you look at who you have received messages from, they're alphabetical and you can find your heroes easily.

For your font question, you'll often find that designers (of both print and web documents) will combine complimentary serif and sans serif fonts. This choice is in there along with flush left or right, or centered, bold, italics, etc. It has to do with making it easy to read and attractive to the eye.

There is a wonderful little book called The Non-Designer's Design Book, (1994, Peachpit Press) by Robin Williams (different Robin Williams). It's very helpful for understanding how to use these things, and it does translate well to the web. Amazon link.

SRS