I was reading Salon and spending too much time on the boards...

Yep. Not sure how I stumbled on the Buffy threads in particular but I’m guessing it was 98ish.

I still mostly lurk, but I think I discovered the Salon boards when "Earshot" was pulled at the last minute and I was looking all over the place for where I might find it online. Not that anyone here would actually tell someone how to violate the copyright laws.

[link]

And that post was made fifteen and a half years ago. Yikes.

I don't think I ever lurked, because I didn't know it was a thing. Now I have to find my first post.

We have this discussion enough that I put the date of my first post in my bio or whatever.

^ This is when I wish we had a Like button.

Heart

I was definitely around in the Salon days but have no idea when I first posted!

The first time I was on jury duty it was a week long criminal trial involving gun possession. I was relieved because I'd just done my Backpack Europe thing, had no job, hadn't seen local news in several months, and was prime pickins to end up on some month long sequestered Jersey mob trial jury.

The second time was a civil trial that took two weeks and it was great because my job (which I hated) paid my full salary and it ate no vacation time. The Manhattan courts are close enough to Chinatown that we had fantastic cheap lunches every day and the weather was particularly lovely. We gave the dude in the car accident almost as much as we legally could on the logic of "What if this spinal injury causes further complications down the road and he needs more care?" so that felt good. It was long enough that I was excused from jury duty for something like eight years.

Things my old ass self has been pondering lately:

When photocopiers heated up and kept jamming and you had to let them cool down
When a cup of yogurt was 8 oz in a little waxed paper cup
Getting up to change the channel (misplaced our volume remote for two days - brutal)