So last year about this time I wrote a blog post about myself. I s'pose it's time for an update.

Thanks to a suggestion from Wingnut's awesome roommate, I've begun making plushies. It's been a slow start, and a long process, but I'm starting to get good. Right now there are only two pieces, but the third is almost finished. I'm really excited about it. I started sewing when I was a kid, because my family was poor. Like really, really poor. The only way that my brother and I would be able to have Halloween costumes was if I made them, so I did just that. I still have some of the remnants from Holloweens past that still fit. I never really grew, so most of my middle school clothes in general still fit.

I eat a 90% gluten free diet because my husband is celiac. It sucks, because it turns out wheat is really good at doing a lot of stuff, but sacrifices for the ones you love, yo. I haven't noticed any health benefits. I've gotten really good at creative cooking. Luckily meat is gluten free, because I love me a good steak. Medium rare.

I still have a true and loving relationship with my husband. I feel so mind blowingly lucky to have found someone to care for who cares about me back. Someone I can spend time with talking about games, science, books, philosophy, and sometimes absolutely nothing. I don't think I could ever express how genuinely, profoundly meaningful I find my life with him is.

After being married for a year and a bit, it still catches me off guard occasionally that I am. When people call and ask for Mrs LongGermanName, it usually takes me a while to realize I am being addressed. But to be perfectly honest, it doesn't feel any different than when we were dating, except that we got a lot of gifts for signing a binding legal contract. That still baffles me.

Non-graphic health stuff:

In the year that I've been on staff, I've moved up several times. I started as what is now the "MLP Forums Staff", except I was green instead of pink:

Pink is way cooler. Kinda jelly. Anyways, I was promoted at the same time as Dawn Rider. Not long after, the RP head at the time parted ways with the site and I assumed his spot in practice. Title came later. I'm now head of Roleplay, along with the Support section. Support is basically a fancy term for Global mods without a particular focus. I also work with the Commissions section, processing payments and resolving the issues that occasionally crop up.

The staff of MlpForums get a bad wrap. I think this is true of any forum, although there are some pretty poorly run forums out there, don't get me wrong. We get accused of being elitist, only using the forums to bring down punishments, etc. Here's the thing though. We all work, or go to school, and we all have lives. The time we do have to be on the forums is usually dedicated to answering reports, support tickets, general questions, PMs, emails, you name it. Recently I've tried responding to threads more often as I have time, just to be more accessible to the member base in general. I try, but I can't always do it. That doesn't mean we're trying to segregate ourselves. It just means that we're busy.

Also, I'm an introvert. I don't initiate conversations that aren't specifically forum related. That isn't because I don't want to talk to people, but because deep down, I'm really friggen awkward. It's part of the reason why my profile is set to private. Seriously, nobody can kill a conversation quite like I can. I still have the sense of humor of an 8 year old. I find fart jokes to be overwhelmingly funny. I regularly engage in belching contests. It's infantile, and I'm okay with that. I'm also a bit of a troll, although I try to keep that in check on the forums, although if you dig a bit, you should be able to find some of my more artful trolling posts.

I guess in general, I'm trying to communicate that the staff are people, too. It can be difficult to imagine a person on the other end, especially when giving out (or getting) warnings. We aren't untouchable beings. We're fallible. We make mistakes. And we don't moderate MlpForums for the power of it. It's because we love this community, and genuinely care about the people in it.