New Year's greetings to all!  It has been a very long time since I've
posted to the group, but I felt now is as good a time as any for a brief
de-lurk, especially with all the down time I've been enjoying over the
holidays.  It has been a strange and rocky journey for me and my fiancee,
Sophie, over the past few years.  Some of you old-timers may remember one
or both of us; we were regulars on the old FCS ferret chat; I was known as
Bluejay, she was known as Virtoupe, then eventually Virbule.  Many dooks
to Nadine & Lars (who created FCS), and the fuzzbutts for bringing us
together.  With me being from Pennsylvania and Sophie being from Quebec,
however, the past couple years has been an ongoing struggle with the INS
on figuring out how to get her to be in PA with me permanently.  Not being
able to afford an immigration lawyer, it has been an experience of trial
and error.  I am happy to report, though, that our green light to get
married is just around the corner, and 2000 should see us as Mr. & Mrs. : )
 
With this major hurdle overcome, we are hoping for great things during our
life together (the first being to overcome near bankruptcy!)   Although
we'll still be very busy and most likely won't have enough time to follow
the FML regularly, we do hope to become more involved in the ferret
community.  (Look out, TRFC!)  We still have five lovely fuzzbutts.  At one
point, we were up to six, until we lost Sophie's precious little Virus to
lympho.  I spent many evenings holding the poor baby in my arms and crying
my eyes out, before making that horrible final decision.  (You can see the
last photo taken of Virus, along with some of little Virgule's stories of
the others, here: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/3716/furets.html )
We've added one little couch monkey, Shelby, whom we adopted from parents
who no longer wanted her.  She's a gorgeous little sable girl with pure
personality.  Joined by Flower, Chester, and Globule, they are a fine,
healthy bunch, and a real handful. : )
 
A warm hello to all who've never met us, and to those who may remember us,
we're still here!  May everyone have a happy and successful new year!
 
Michael (Bluejay)
http://members.tripod.com/~michaeljay
[Posted in FML issue 2915]