Sox,

If you mean Philcon, Gary and I will be there. This time, maybe we can meet for more than a few minutes. :)

{{Java cat}} Much sympathy for your loss.

I looked back at my post last year to get a link to it and saw it was all of five lines long. No linky for you!

That doesn't mean you get off Scott free, though! This year has been quite eventful.

In many ways, my life is so much better. My circle of friends in Madison is growing. We came together over Star Trek and have moved on to Avengers fandom at the same pace. It's nice having geeky friends to do things like go to the local martini bar and get themed drinks to match each of the Avengers. We all bought matching t-shirts with a logo that looks a lot like the Obama 2012 t-shirts but have a combo of Cap's shield and the arc reactor for the 'O' and then it says Rogers•Stark under it. Gives most people a double-take when they see it.

My best friend of 27 years got booted out of England (her visa had been expired for two years and they only just found out!) and moved in with me. It's so great having a roommate who knows me inside and out. This will be the third time we've shared living quarters and we've just fallen into the same old routines, with the same banter and the same totally goofy love for each other. It's one of the reasons I'm not around the board nearly as much; I've turned her into a Doctor Who fan and we've been watching 3-4 episodes a night. I'll collect a toaster now please!

Another reason I've been so absent is that I had to give up cable to fund my trip to the F2F this year. It was totally worth it! But it means I'm not watching much TV (other than Netflix) so I can't keep up with my favorite shows as easily and have to stay out of a lot of threads. Supernatural! ::sob::

Despite the lack of pay raises at work (2 1/2 years now), since I'm a state employee, things are going well despite a bad beginning to the year. I was paired with a program coordinator whose personality and mine just did not mesh. I finally threw a hissy fit and threatened to quit, which actually had them panicking and promising me things would change. I've never done anything like that before and honestly didn't expect it to work. I ended up trading one set of crappy duties for another, but at least it's crappy duties that don't come from a condescending bitca. The new coordinator I have to work with is so sweet and she thanks me every time I do something for her, she's a pure joy to work for and makes the drudgery of the task easier to bear.

One of the things I did learn from my hissy fit back in February is that I've not been coping with stress in my life very well at all. I lost four pounds in one weekend over a three-day program off-site working with the bad coordinator. The last day of the program I found myself driving home in tears. On the following Monday, the first thing I did was call my doctor and get referred to a shrink. I'm back on bipolar meds and I feel so, so much better. So much better, I finally tackled the fact that I had gained over 50 pounds in the past 5 years. At this point, since February I've lost 44 of those 50 pounds. I haven't felt this good in years despite the fact I've had to have steroid shots in my right foot to deal with a torn plantar plate. C'est la vie, it comes with age.

The last little bit of news is work related, again, and it makes me very happy. This is despite the fact my supervisor seems to think I'm under-worked (which I very much am not, but she's never appreciated what I do and has always looked down on me) and can therefore take on more tasks that will completely overload me without extra compensation. I did manage to negotiate a minor trade and got rid of a piddly task that barely took up an hour of my time per month, but winning any concessions from this woman is a major victory. Anyway, the division (continuing studies) is trying to convert more of our non-credit course offering to an online self-paced format. I've been asked to help out the instructional design team with that, which means learning more CSS and HTML (which I know the basics of) and Dreamweaver (no experience at all). Yesterday, I was in a (continued...)

( continues...) full-day class to learn the basics of Dreamweaver, which makes me very happy. This particular task will give me some of the skills I've been dying to get more experience in and, as my boss noted, will make me more valuable and marketable (the silver lining in the rain cloud of being an overworked state employee.)

So, that's pretty much it for me. I turn 55 today, so I can finally start taking advantage of a lot of "senior" (sob) discounts. I'll take every advantage I can get in this economy.

Sheryl - I do mean Philcon! I don't know what they have me scheduled for yet, but we should keep each other posted.

Sail, that's a lot! But it sounds really good. I'm glad to hear it.

Sox, that's exciting about the potentially career shaped object!

Happy Birthday, SailAweigh!

Thanks, Tom!

Many happy returns, Sail! Milk those discounts for all they're worth.

Happy Birthday Sail!