Hi everyone, this femboy squirrely butt is here to finally give a quick update of what's been going on lately. As some of you may or may not know, this past August I finally finished my thesis project and the following month my work has been published and I've officially obtained my Master's of Science degree in Forensics. So for the past 4 months I have been more than qualified to be at least an accredited crime scene investigator. Yes, furries CAN accomplish academic achievements like these. -3-


Anyways, as much as this M.S. degree is awarding, unfortunately I haven't been able to obtain a full-time career from it as of yet. As much as I love this subject and devoted 8 years of undergraduate and graduate studies for this major, part of me is having some regrets choosing to go towards this path because of how little job opportunities there are in both public and private sector and thus making it a very competitive work field. At the age of 27, while I may be better off than many many others my age, it's not where I currently want to be in life. Especially since I invested so much time and finances towards this degree. But I'm still staying optimistic and applying to many different positions and maybe I'll obtain a slightly different career that, despite not being what I originally majored in, may open new doors to a completely different career path and turn my life 180 degrees for the better. Though in the mean time at least I have my back up by maintaining the job that I've held on to for 9 years, working as a Pharmacy Tech. Working full-time hours while still managing to have 3 day weekends almost every weekend, on top of having benefits and really cheap and beneficial health insurance for someone in their late 20s. It's ALOT better than lots of other students either being unemployed out of college or taking on minimum wage part-time jobs with no benefits.


Anyways, in addition to work draining my energy on top of the winter months pretty much making me hibernate when it comes to maintaining an upbeat social life, I will admit there is one hobby that I ended up taking up regularly.....which could be one of the reasons why you haven't seen me commission artwork like I used to. So towards the middle of November after Furpocalypse, all I was doing was work, career searching, and spending quality time with the mate during the greater amount of free time I had since I finished grad school. I felt that to make me more happier and energetic I needed to take up another hobby during my downtime. As much as I love the furry fandom and have no intentions what so ever to entirely abandon it (same goes for my love for Anime and Video Games), I needed something that would actually force me to go out and participate in an activity with a friendly community. I then remembered my undergraduate school days where I used to play poker on a regular basis, whether with friends in dormitory living rooms or traveling to charity tourneys here and there. Though once I got accepted to my Master's degree program back in 2010, I essential had to abandon that in order to do well in my courses and such. But now that I've graduated I had much more free time to get back into playing regularly. After a quick search online for the best places to play poker in Massachusetts, I was surprised to find out that there are indeed poker leagues that holds tourneys almost every day of the week. Without going into details of how well you have to do in a month, the league also holds regional-wide monthly tourneys for top scorers and the ultimate season ending tourneys every 6 months. And participating each game is only $20 and it comes with free buffet food. Whether I win or lose, I just love going to have a good time and have fun. I actually won a poker tourney at my 3rd visit so I at least showed that I may be an amateur but I know what I'm doing!! Also to add to the fact, despite that the vast majority of players are older than 40 and I'm usually one of the youngest ones there, this poker community for the most part is very GLBT friendly and they are more than supportive of my sexuality and relationship, something that I never thought I'd find there. I thought that many would be bigoted rednecks and I'd have to hid my true self in order to have fun playing poker, I'm glad I was completely wrong. So yeah, you could see that a good portion of my funds has been going to these as opposed to commissioning artwork, me maintaining my activity in both fandoms.....though I do plan on getting more stuff once I find the right artists or deals.....or both! X3


One last thing, me, my love and one of his best friends . Finally have our plans for this coming Anthro New England, which is taking place at the Hyatt in Cambridge from 2/27-3/1. We already have our hotel booked and we hope to have 3-5 others join us to reduce the room funds for all of us. So if any of you are undecided because you aren't sure you'll find a room, or are planning to go but still looking for space, please feel free to contact us so we can let you know details and such. Just remember good hygiene is an absolute must. The reason I really excited for this con is not just because I have high hopes for ANE being a very successfully Northeastern furcon, but I hope my partial fursuit of my squirrely fursona would be ready by then, and I'll be able to debut it right there. That's right, you heard me, after being an active member of the furry community for 4 years, I'm finally obtaining a fursuit!!!! And what's better is that it's being made by  omgpineapples aka  gel , who is probably my favorite fursuit designer!!! So yeah, while I contributed some of the funds to help out, this is essentially my birthday and christmas present from Reimaru since he knew I've wanted one for quite sometime and knew I was watching for when designers would open for commissions. That and I got us a PS4 which he was so surprised and excited about! So yeah, in the next few weeks I'll update you on a more concrete status of when my partial would be ready. Other than that I hope you all haven't forgotten about this squirrely butt and I would love to reconnect with all of you!!!! ^W^



TL;DR Version: Finished grad school 4 months ago with my M.S. degree, still at the same full-time pharmacy job but hopefully not for long, found a fun poker community to participate in regularly, finally commissioned a partial fursuit, and looking for prospective roommates for ANE!!!