OK, so something Slabby said to me in the AU today made me realize something. I'm long overdue on some sort of explanation as to why M and I don't spend as much time on here anymore as we used to.

It pretty much starts back in the late winter/spring when we were gearing up for our trip to Indy for the Star Wars convention. Out of that we started hanging out a lot on a big Star Wars fan site that sponsors local 'split-off' fan groups. We joined up with the KC one hoping to find other locals who were going to Indy. What we didn't know was that the site was about to take off.

The KC chapter had been limping along for a long time. But as we showed up, two enterprising members of the group were getting ready to make a big push. About as soon as we'd joined, they debuted a new website and bulliten board just for us: kcstarwarsfans.com We jumped in and were members 4 and 5 on their boards.

About this same time on RP, there seemed to be a lot of poision seeping into the well. Many beloved members had all but disapeared, and often it felt that they, and us, were being marginalized or cast as odd because we had political views that differed from the norms here (sometimes radically so) or because people were tired of the 'geek talk' we were so jazzed about. And we were a bit jilted at nobody wanting to meet up with us in Indy (Not your fault, Boosie :hugs: , you had other things to worry about; but I can't believe that there weren't ANY other RPeeps that were there that weekend, even if it wan't the folks we regularly talked to).

So, more and more, we posted here less, and there more. There's more to it than that too. M simply CAN'T post as much as I do, because I can get away with it at work better. She honestly doesn't even post over there as much any more either.

Also, we're both now officers in that group and moderators on their boards, so we have a duty to keep an eye open over there and help keep things active. And on top of that we've been hot-and-heavy in the wedding planning.

And sometimes it's just plain nice to have the folks we meet on the Internet be close enough we can hang out with them IRL regularly. The group isn't an Internet only thing, we have at least two real life events a month.

Now, I've been drifting back here more lately. There are certain things I don't get over there. There's a maturity and ecclecticism and quality to the humor and discussion here that I can't quite satisfy there. And of course there's the music (Though M never really like it all that much, so another reason she's less drawn here now). I still get my RP fix every day, and I'm always lurking, but I try to stay away from the 'black holes' and stick to the slower-hitting game and humor and politics type things.

But don't worry RP. The music is like crack to me. And you'll alway be the first place M and I could talk to each other all day w/o going through two corporate email filters. And the first place where we learned what an online community could and should be (We've poured so much of what we've learned and experienced here into the other site). Now I just get to be a guy with 'dual citizenship' I guess.