Wow didn’t realize this was so recent of an update. It’s also spot on. Wrote that thesis, graduated, finishing rabbinic school now, and got a job to be the Rabbi of U of Maryland next year. Pretty wild.

Sure.

In the years since the first post, life change a bit. In late 2012 I left London and moved to Melbourne, Australia. Came here on a working holiday and planned to stay for 2 years. I mostly worked as a substitute teacher, except for a brief stint where I worked on a tomato farm (long story).

In 2013 I met my now partner, B. We dated for a year and a half, and then my visa was expiring. We had to make a choice, call it quits, or go all in and work towards getting a de facto partner visa. We chose the latter. This involved us moving to Vancouver for a year.

We have now been together almost 7 years and live back in Melbourne where we met. I have permanent residency in Australia and will be eligible for citizenship at the end of this year, Duo-citizenship, obviously. I'd never give up my Canadian.

I am also no longer a substitute. In the most roundabout way possible, I landed a full time job using a skill that is dime-a-dozen in Canada but a novelty in Australia: I speak French.

So I am now a French teacher. I really like it. A lot more than I thought I would (by background is science, not languages).

Wow, so much time has passed since I wrote this.

I work full time now as an insurance broker specializing in Medicare plans. I got married a couple of years ago and my wife and I want to have kids. I don't get to play Heroclix as much anymore and miss it. Pokémon and Pokémon Go are my main games these days since you can play in spurts. I still keep up with the comic book movies, but reading them has been hard since they are in storage.

I miss playing Mafia, but I can rarely keep up anymore. I am looking to change jobs some time in the near future, but I'm not sure when. Things aren't perfect, but they are getting better.

Here's my update:

Now 38 and living in Massachusetts, I met my now-husband Kedryn the Dishbreaker at my first HCRealms meet up in 2012. We've been together for almost 8 years and happily married for over 4 years. I work for a local software company now, but my interests remain largely the same. I bake a lot more, and now that we finally bought a house, I plan to get back into painting minis.

This place is forever going to hold a special place in my heart, in part because of the friendships but also because it's how I ended up with the person I am with today.

I would love to try to get regular meet-ups established again, similar to our meet-ups from the earlier days, but I understand that distance and time are logistics that can rarely be complimented.

Wow. Still married, still 4 credits from a BA I don't care about anymore. 4 year old son who has way more energy that I ever will but makes everything much more exciting.
Less cats though, down to two of the original through, but there are two more in the house as we've moved back into my mother-in-law's place...
Still with the same company, but several promotions and a furlough later I'm now looking at a career change.

Playing a lot of Pokemon Go, Jurassic World Alive, Harry Potter Wizards Unite, most of them with my kid, and he loves dinosaurs and pokemon as a result.
Was playing at a local scrabble club hosted at a friends bookstore, but that's not meeting now. Similar for DnD and DragonQuest, we're exploring discord and email-game options now.

Gonna have to get back in the swing of this, so expect me to suck at this as much as before!

And, you know, meet-ups are ill-advised for the foreseeable future.

This is true. I was more thinking that if people were interested, we would look at something for next year (or possibly Pax Unplugged, which is where Kedryn and I get to hang out with Stan).

And as before, us Left Coasters will sit here in jealousy