Hi, JohnSweden! Aw, Edinburgh, what a great place.

Hey, hi, hi! I've been absent from the board for a while, but I try to keep up to some extent on FB and twitter. FB the least. I'd delete it, but both my kids use it, so I like to see what they're posting and I do drive-bys of various Buffista type communities.

Anyway, been in my current job as an admin in the radiology department at our med school for 4 1/2 years, but looking to find a different job within the university. It's an exciting and challenging job, but the supervisor is a sh*thead. I had to ask my shrink to add an anti-anxiety/antidepressant to my meds. And as they say, you don't leave a job, you leave a supervisor.

My kids are doing great. My son finally moved up from Arizona where he was living in a flea bag hotel full of drug dealers and sex workers. Sometimes sleeping rough when he got too far behind in rent. SSI is crap. We managed to get him a job at my university in custodial and he just passed his probationary period. I am so very proud of all the hard work he's put in to make this work. So, too, the daughter. She just got a huge raise at work. She now charges $80 per haircut vs. $68. It makes her one of the highest paid stylists in the salon. She worked damn hard to get there. Only, I can't afford her any more. :(

I've become a HUGE fan of figure skating. I've been to 2 competitions in 2018, have one I'm going to next week and then Worlds in March 2020. Not sure I'll go to any after that. Judging in the sport has become a joke and I'm not sure when my fave is going to retire; I don't think I'll have enough interest to travel for it after that, but I'll still watch streams. I have a number of favorite skaters, and anyone who follows me on twitter knows the most favorite is Yuzuru Hanyu. Love the rest of Team Japan. With a few of the Russian ladies thrown in for good measure. Oh, and a couple of Chinese pairs and the cutie Russian pair of 17-year-olds that turned senior last year. Guess it's too many to list without making a list!

After 20 years of being unattached (last time I dated was 1999), I've finally got a girlfriend. Someone I'd been in love with for 8 years and we finally got our act together 3 weeks ago. We are a couple of dumbasses. You know those miscommunication fics? The ones I personally find exasperating, because how dumb can they be? Why don't they just TALK to each other? Yeah, it me, and her. But, hey, we got there in the end.

If you're on twitter, aren't currently following me, and would like to, you can find me @themythical4A. I'm also on Instagram, but I don't post. I follow and like other people's posts. You can find me there as fanyu4life.

Oooh, edited to add: Numberslut!

SailAweigh! Good to see your font! Congrats to your kids on their progress, and to you and your SO for (finally) getting together! I'm stalking you on Twitter right now.

Awesome! I'm trying to collect all the Buffistas. ;P

Sail! All that is good to read. I better go follow you on Twitter. I don't regularly check it, but now and then I pop in and it's nice to see what people I know are saying...[ETA ha! I already follow you! Now maybe I'll be able to connect your twitter handle with your b.org name, though]

Hi, -t! Yeah, it doesn't help that I changed my twitter handle about a year ago. And will probably do so when Yuzu finally lands a 4A. Assuming he is the first person to ratify it in competition.

Sail! So good to see you here. Lovely kiddo updates. Congrats on overcoming communication challenges! May you both make up for lost time.

Hello, everyone! I feel like I keep up with a lot of Buffistas on Twitter and FB, but I've been thinking of coming back here of late. So when I saw the delurking thread announced on FB, I decided today should be the day.

Let's see, what's going on in my world...I've been in the same job as a compliance analyst in a UW central office for 8 years now. I enjoy the work and my coworkers, so I'm planning to stay for another few years at least, while I figure out whether I want to focus the next 20-30 years of life on writing, something with politics/activism, some kind of lay or ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church, or a little bit of all three.

I haven't been writing as much of late--I gave myself a sabbatical in 2015-16 that ran headlong into the 2016 election and turned into writer's block. But I'm working on an obscure-fandom fic (in Lois McMaster Bujold's Sharing Knife 'verse), and have vowed to post at least a couple chapters by the end of 2019.

In family news, Dylan and I recently celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. The child formerly known as Annabel is now a 15-year-old trans boy named Alex who's a sophomore at pretty much the quirkiest small alternative high school in the Seattle Public School system and is thriving there. We're still adjusting to the new name and new pronouns, and we're still figuring out how and when to communicate the changes to our conservative extended families, but needless to say we support him fully. It's been remarkable to see his new confidence and happiness in the last few month since fully claiming his identity. (For the past several years, he'd been identifying as NB and going by his initials.)

So, that's the news. I've missed this place, so I'll probably be around a lot more in the future.

Hi guys! Big doings! And congrats to Alex.

Good for Alex! Sounds like he's got the best environments and people around him to help him grow. It sounds like you have some exciting goals for yourself, too!