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]