Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday, New Dad Trust,
Happy Birthday to you!


I've been known to forget my own mother's birthday, but for some reason I'm drawn back to the forum now every year! It's so good to see familiar folks still here and the banter still going on. . .kids and grey hair notwithstanding. DC, Xed, Ittot, JM, so great to see you all. Anyone hear from Cassandra? Wolfie? Govtlawyer? Congratulations on all your new life chapters and interests. Two of mine (the 3-yr-old and the 21-month-old) are actually napping right now. . . love those times when naps synch up. . . not a coincidence that I dropped out about the time DD #1 came home, followed by DH in 2005 and in 2006, DD#2.

Sorry to have been AWL for so long. I even had to create a new profile for XQQ because apparently XQueequeg got synched to a Groupee registration that wasn't mine. But it's great to see you all. . . maybe I can stop by more often when the kids are napping. . . Xed, any more great fanfic?

Trust -- so what does a new dad do to celebrate your birthday these days?

--XQQ (who turned 40 myself a few days ago, though the grey was there long before!)

Happy Birthday, Trust. You're 32 or 33 now?

XQQ! You beat me to it! And while we are recognizing birthdays, a happy belated to you as well as a much later Happy Belated to Xed-out!
Trust, a dad? So cool. XFiles Forum..The Next Generation. The weird thing for me is that my daughter is now approaching the age that all you young-ins were when we started talking XFs 9 years ago. She just left to go back to school-*sigh* It's such a mixed-emotions kind of experience. I miss her, but I also enjoy my life at home when she is away.
Sorry to be away for so long. I don't sit at the computer at home quite as much as I used to. Working with kids every day really tires me out! But I love what I do and I plan to do it for as long as I am able.
I will try to check back in again later. Maybe more people will show up for the birthday celebration.

Cassandra,
So good to hear from you! And X-ed, happy belated birthday to you too. I remember it's December. . . you're like me and your birthday gets caught up in Christmas celebration stuff too. Actually, Trust, was I a day early with yours? I remembered the 17th but it's been a while. . . hard to believe this group coalesced 9 years ago. I think I first started lurking in 1999 and got up the courage to post only months later :-)

Cassandra, hard to believe that little middle-schooler daughter of yours is away at college now! I still remember meeting up with you guys at an exit off I-95 en route to Disney. Does that mean you've left your Disneyworld forums (grin)? In about 5 years when we dare attempt it we'll come to you for Disney wisdom.

X-ed, I just read about your auto woes. I hope things are coming together. Are you having a beautiful Canadian winter? We just spent a weekend in the North Carolina mountains so the girls could see snow for the first time. It barely worked: there had been 4-6 inches before we arrived so they got to play a bit in it, then go snow tubing at a ski resort nearby. But the weather ended up in the 40s that day so we were playing in the snow without even our jackets on. Still fun, but we need to head to the real North sometime.

And I just saw Pegasus had posted a few months ago. It is really good to see some familiar faces, er, personas around the boards.

Wow. Does time ever fly! I couldn't believe that my last post here was almost a year ago!! That last post mentioned taking up horseback riding and that blossomed into two 5 day trail rides in the canyon lands of Utah - terrific scenery and experience.

Hope all of you are doing well. Sounds like a lot has happened last year with new babies and all. Wish our whole group would keep posting here but without the "glue" of the X-Files it seems difficult.

Hi again! Congratulations Deep Cover on your Chicago Bear's victory today! I believe you predicted they would be going to the Super Bowl a few months back? If The Colts don't get their act together in the 2nd half, we will end up with a Trust v. DC Super Bowl!
XQQ- Yes, I still visit (occasionally) my Disney newsgroup, mostly to skim through recent trip reports in order to keep up with any new rides or changes. I am not the "expert" I was, but I would be happy to help in the future.
Well, back to the football game. Hope we hear from a few more old-timers who check in every January. Like Pegasus said, without the XFs to keep us coming back, it is hard to keep things going. I know for me, the XFiles was the main reason I made my first baby steps into cyberland and actually talked to strangers! The number of bookmarks I have now, compared to then, has grown exponentially over the years. I am sure that is also a reason that I visit less. In the last few years, I have also added IMing to my computer repertoire, as it is the only way my daughter communicates!
BTW, we finally had our first snow today!

I don't expect anyone to respond to this, I guess. I know I have gotten out of the habit of checking in here regularly, but my daughter got me into this show "Supernatural", and I was wondering if anyone else has watched it. We are only about halfway through the first season on DVD, but in many ways it is reminding me of some of the stand-alone XFs. There are a couple of XFs people involved in it too-John Shiban and Kim Manners.
Also, an extremely belated Happy Birthday to syxx-June 30th I think. I suppose that's not that extremely belated, considering the date of my last post!
Hope everyone is enjoying their summer so far. I just realized I should have started a summer thread....oh well. Do you believe cassandra jr. is going into her senior year at college? Hey, I just turned 55 in April and I am having trouble believing that too!

yes it is very slow around here, i not watched supernatural but have heard good things about it and keep meaning to check it out.

Cassandra, I've been rather remiss about visiting and posting here.

Moved to a new place at the end of June. Sold the old townhouse and now am in an almost new half duplex. Got rid of the old, awful neighbours.

Did hear that XF2 is now in the works (for the 7558th time).....

x-ed:congratulations on the new house and being away from bad neighbors. I can't remember, are you still dealing with the same boss that you didn't like years ago?
One of the many things that I like about Supernatural is that it looks like it is filmed in Vancouver or in locations that were used on the XFs in the early years. I have only seen season 1, so I don't know if it was still as good the 2nd season. I plan to get the DVDs when they come out in September and try to catch up before season 3 starts. I don't know how long they can play out the main story line, but it's been a fun ride so far. It would be nice to talk about it with some of the old XFs group.
Hope everyone is having a good summer!

Cassandra, unfortunately, he's still around.

The other boss is on medical leave til August. Her mother is in palliative care and I don't think she'll be around much longer. Between the job and home, she's pretty stressed out. So, since June, I've been running things. It's been tough since I've been out of the loop on a lot of things. And half the staff is on holiday, so things take twice as long to do. But things do work out in the end, seamlessly, or so it seems.

Our office moves to a new location in August. A historical building in the downtown area - an old department store, actually. Quite the place back in the day - terrazzo flooring, Tyndal limestone. I wasn't able to get to the conference in the Boston area - too bad I couldn't catch up with Trust. Ah well.

The new place is nice. Fairly new. Built in 2002 but doesn't appear to be finished til summer 2003. So it's 4 years old. Not a fixer upper. Half-duplex bareland condo, which means me mowing and shovelling snow. Has an attached garage - no digging the car out in winter.

Am off for two weeks. Starting to go car shopping in the next while....

How's Cassandra Jr.?

HI!

Xedout, so nice to see you here. And Cassandra!!! I HAD to pop in to say...

It's been about 8 or 9 years since you turned me on to Harry Potter. I've read all of the books as they came out ever since. I'm going to pickup the 7th and last one on midnight this Friday. Kinda' sad it will be the last.

So, thanks for encouraging me to look into the books! Did you preorder yours?

Walker, happy reading!

Thanks!

It took me a little less than 14hrs to read it. I devoured the book. LOTS of action. Great lines.

And I have Cassandra to thank for turning me onto the book all those years ago. 1998?

walker- you are so very welcome! Yes, I did pre-order it and I went to b&n after midnight to pick it up. Just like with book 6, I tried to read the whole thing, but fell asleep around 4:30. Finished it the next day and loved it! The best one of all. I stayed off my computer for 4 days so that I wouldn't accidentally see any spoilers. Cassandra jr. and her friend were first in line and they both finished it by Saturday morning. I can't even imngine being able to read that fast! Of course, they are both on their 2nd time through now-taking time to savor it all. I thought I would be sad to have no more books to look forward to, but surprisingly, I'm not. Just like my 7 seasons of Buffy DVDs- I can do a marathon whenever I want to and they will always be there. Speaking of Buffy-not only was this HP weekend, but after getting no sleep, my daughter and her friend came down to VA and we went into DC Saturday night for a Buffy Sing-Along! A la Rocky Horror, it was so much fun. Needless to say, I am still exhausted. Just can't bounce back the way I used to!
xed- Cassandra jr. is going into her senior yearof college; still a theatre major with kind of vague ideas on what to do after graduation! She talks about wanting to move to Toronto, but I think she has dreams and imaginings more than concrete and practical plans- so very typically 21! Of course, I was unhappily married for a year by the time I was her age, so I think she's doing better than I did! I love the fact that we share interests and she introduces me to new things that I often end up loving- music, TV shows. And I got her into HP years ago, and now she's way more obsessed than I am!
Great to see you walker and so glad that you have enjoyed HP. Enjoy your summer!

Cassandra, Jr. had better start to save her pennies. Toronto is a very expensive city. It is a good theatre town and also home to lots of Hollywood North productions. She also should look into the pesky hurdle called immigration. London might be a good option, if she loves the theatre. If she's young enough and qualifies, she can do a student work abroad program that allows her to work a bit during a 'working holiday'. Of course, Vancouver might be good too.... It's good to have dreams, and even better if some come true. It just needs a lot of hard work.

I guess this should be a Fall thread now - but happy belated birthday to everyone!

I've still got my two kids - the one that was one year old when I found TN1's original forum is now 11 years old and a pistol, and her 6 year brother isn't far behind.

I'm the Munical Liaison for NaNoWriMo again this year, for the LA area, and otherwise, I'm busy keeping the house and stuff together.

I'll try to post more often!

Gasp. It's been 10 years???? Well, I think I stumbled on to OnTap around season 5 or so.....

Kind of fun to celebrate Trust's birthday all year long, and to see all the old friends still here, 10 years later (wow, X-ed!). Actually, I think I discovered the OnTap group in December 1999 -- what season would that have been?

We trick-or-treated three times this year, once at our Boo in the Zoo, once at our church's trunk-or-treat, and once at a friend's party on a good candy street My 4-year-old went as a firefighter twice and a fairy once -- the former made her grandpa, a 30-year veteran volunteer fire chief, very happy. My 2.5 year old went as a tiger the first time, a giraffe the last time, and decided she couldn't be bothered with a costume the second time. She still had a great time.

Other than mothering, I'm busy working with a group lobbying our local school district to offer Mandarin immersion and Mandarin foreign language at the elementary school level, and leading a series of workshops on the fair trade movement for our church. Vague plans to teach again part-time next fall. . . by then it will be fun to use that part of my brain again.

Good to be in touch, asynchronously, anyway!

Good to see you, XQQ. Perhaps this board will see more action now that movie #2 is in production.

Been busy with the house move back in the summer, the office move in August (have I got stories!), getting my new car, and just general life.

Had a few kids at the new place on Halloween. Nice to see the little ones.

Hi Xed! Your new condo sounds like fun. Do I remember that you enjoyed flower gardening before? Sounds like a good opportunity now. And what's the new car like? We've been doing well with two carseat kids and a Honda CRV and Accord, but by the time we start carpooling other people's kids around next year we may have to break down and get a minivan.

We had one firefighter and one tiger at Halloween this year. . . though at another earlier party, they wore fairy and giraffe costumes and liked those too. Glad you got to enjoy some trick-or-treaters at your new place. too.