Hi Leala! What a great idea! Most folks on here call me Lady (short for LadyWordsmith). This month is my 14th year anniversary on Dragonmount! I mostly hung over in the Kin in the earlier days, but enjoy chatting with anyone. I started reading WoT in high school as well! In 1994. I met my best friend for life while she was reading book 1, and our first conversation included "Give me just a minute I have to finish this chapter. They're being chased by a big black flying thing!" And then we read them together and used to pass notes back and forth in the halls during the school day (she was a year ahead of me) with comments and sketches and guesses as to what might happen next. I kept them all. 🙂 The older I get the more I find myself loving/connecting with all the characters in different ways. I was younger than the Emond's Fielders when I started reading it, and on my last re-read I am now Moiraine's age, and wow does that become a different read each time! (I spent this last read more often going "Come on Jordan...this character is not ALWAYS this annoying. You could have given us their less grumpy moments. We know they have them" than hating on any of the younger characters who are all prone to be precisely the way they are because they are young. (I have spent the past 20 years also teaching high school and college students right in that range and I am often like 'yes, an intelligent 18 year old would totally do this even though we know it's not going to go well"). And I just enjoy how well Jordan wrote his characters realistically in those moments. That said, when I was a kid I identified SO very strongly with Egwene and I still love her. And while Perrin has always been one of my absolute favorites to read of the boys, the older I get the more I appreciate them all, and the more I enjoy everyone even when they're being realistically frustrating. I definitely feel more like Moiraine now at this point in my life though. I definitely turned out Blue at heart! (Which, I share with my Mom, who is the other HUGE WoT fan in my family). Nice to see everyone. 🙂

Thank you! I'm glad your moving in has been going well and I hope things are settling in well. The kittens have been a balm on the soul. I still miss the two we lost, but the new ones are lively and loving and grateful to be with us. The little things are important. Congrats to your son! Mine is currently 19. That's a lot of travel to take care of parents! Best of luck with that and I hope they're doing okay.

*Pours a hot matcha latte with vanilla and white chocolate, also heaped with marshmallows, and snuggles down cross-legged on a cushion by the fireplace.* One of the best things that happened this year, was that I completed writing the first iteration of the new curriculum for my students! Our high school English department this year decided that none of the proposed existing replacements for our (admittedly very old, but also going away...) curriculum were good enough, so we decided this summer that we were going to write our own, based on everything that was working really well about the old one, but with all the updates and changes we had wanted to make but couldn't do easily (we are an online public school, so programming is part of the challenge). I teach 12th grade (which at our school is a combination of British Literature, media literacy, and of course senior level writing skills). Very proud of my team, as some of them had never had to write their own curriculum completely from scratch before, but they are all fantastic teachers who know their subjects, and I'm extremely proud of them for how amazingly they have tackled this together (particularly since it was my idea initially, and I am only newly our team lead for our department as of this year).

They are adorable! Glad the move is coming along.

Hello everyone! Wow we got quiet. Anyone still about? Do you have plans for the holidays? What have you been up to? We have a quiet holiday planned. The last few months have been dramatic (in both good and bad ways), so we are looking forward to just relaxing, spending time with family and friends, and enjoying the down time. Short catch-up post: I have finished writing the new curriculum for all of my course, which is a huge relief. I worked on it all summer and just finished it at the end of November! In August we lost two cats (both young, both unexpectedly due to invisible sudden-onset health issues we had no reason to expect, and neither did our vet. One to what we think might have been bone cancer. The other to, possibly, heart issues). In both cases we spent several days in kitty ICU while they tried everything. We are all fairly traumatized, though healing. We took out the carpet in the main living area of our house, and learned to tile a floor (we could not afford installers), so we now have over 500 square feet of the wood-looking tile floor. It took nearly two months and it's so nice to finally have my living space back in order. (It was not initially planned. There were concerns at one point that something environmental might have impacted the two lost cats, and we didn't want to risk the rest. Who also have now been tested within an inch of their lives and we have incredibly detailed medical knowledge on all of them now. Thankfully they are healthy). In any case, the carpet was old and needed to go, and this is much easier to maintain and less smelly. In October, Their Majesties (SCA) invited me to join the Order of the Pelican. My elevation was this past Saturday. So there was a lot of planning and chaos and getting all that set up, though it all turned out well. 🙂 We also got some new kittens! (Should not be a surprise). Two black-and-white twins a friend of mine was fostering, who are pair bonded and very sociable and cuddly. And, as one of the cats we lost was my son's, he got to choose his own new cat, and we now also have a beautiful little ginger female Maine Coon who is a couple of months younger than the black-and-whites (though we brought them all home the same week), but nearly as big now. Including photos for cuteness. And now I'm working on an illuminated piece for a friend being elevated to the Order of the Laurel 'this' Saturday at our local Yule event. I think that sums up the major events since June.

The job sounds awesome, Lily! The Con was definitely a blast. Lots of work, but a good time. Which is nice, because I'm going to be spending a lot of the summer working on developing new curriculum for work for next year. At least we'll be getting paid for the additional time since it's outside of our regular teacher contracts, so the extra income will be appreciated.

Awesome! We are finally done with the school year. I spent Memorial Day weekend in Kansas helping a friend with her department at Naka-Kon. 😸 She runs the Cultural Events department that handles more traditional Japanese activities, as well as the opening and closing skits (the Con mascot has an actual ongoing storyline and cast of characters to interact with).