Oh, I forgot to mention that my SiL with whom I am currently staying, has 2 cats: a skinny male, monkey thug named Sobey and an orange tabby named Larry, who is female.

I learn things here that are often extremely relevant, witty, thoughtful, or just damn well worth repeating. As asked, therein lies the dilemma. I have tried explaining the website to family and close friends, but as a lurker, it’s that much more difficult to explain how I learned something through active non-participation. Add to that it’s fandom roots and I completely lose my audience as my RL family and friends have not one iota of love for science fiction (or fictional storytelling in general) and are very suspicious of my Buffy lovin’ ways.

This doesn’t stop me. I am usually somewhat vague about the source and will hand wave an explanation that includes “I found this online.”

I am really enjoying learning more about regular and infrequent posters. I confess I’m a little sad that there haven’t been more true lurkers, people like me who don’t have a personal link to a Buffista and haven’t posted much or at all. I guess I’d hoped to feel less lonely in my quirky lurkerdom.

I’m marveling at the speed with which this new thread is moving.

I confess I’m a little sad that there haven’t been more true lurkers, people like me who don’t have a personal link to a Buffista and haven’t posted much or at all.

I think there are more of them out there! They just haven't delurked yet. Come on out, people! We'd love to meet you.

And honestly, all stances on olives and muffalettas and bacon and spaces and serial commas are just fine.

I will often do "we were talking about" with the pronoun undefined, wrt conversations.

My family knows of the 'istas (this is how I tend to refer to us), as do some of my meat-space friends, usually in non-specific "Internet people" terms

Please lurkers, come out and play!

And one of those benefits of being a writer is that so much is done online, I can use "online friends" and no one questions me anymore.

I refer to my knowledge as learned from the "online message board".

I think I shocked poor Sox's mom when she asked me how I knew her daughter and I replied that I met her online. It was kind of fun. My mom makes her own friends from the internet, and my dad picks up people on planes and brings them home for dinner, so they are not bemused by references to the board. Facebook, on the other hand...

My Mom knows about the Buffistas, I've told her about all about y'all and showed her pictures (especially of the cutie head Buffista sprog). When I went to the first F2F it wasn't weird because I'd actually gone to meet some people online in DC before. That online community fell apart (partly because the forum owner got pissy and flounced off with the website).

When TT was not going to be an option was I really worried that things would fall apart but luckily there were plans and we've grown.

Also that other online forum looked a lot like the way TT and now b.org does so I had a really hard time getting used to other formats. So I was really glad we stuck with this.

I've invited buffistas to my parents' for Xmas morning! Kat and lori had xmas dinner with us.

I can always claim I met Sox at Sparky's wedding! Which is also where I met Sparky.

Buffistas hung out with my mom and stepdad in a whole other state, while I was back home in Ohio! My mom and stepdad were in Vermont on vacation, and megan walker and Trudy were also in Vermont, and they all planned to meet up at my brother's restaurant (Trudy had met my mom when she previously visited Cincinnati, so it wasn't a totally out-of-the-blue thing).