FurryMUCK has been in operation for over thirty years. While it initially bounced around from site to site, as many were in colleges which eventually did not want a game being hosted on their resources, eventually it came to more private resources. The last of these was with Tor "Tugrik" Amundson.

Tugrik is an old-guard furry, hailing from the days of FidoNet and dial-up BBSes, and while his profession was with computer networking, he was a true Renaissance-style intellectual, trying everything from wood, metal and plastic to electronics, 3-D printing, digital audio, and so much more. His character, Tugrik D'Itchi, was a big blue monoceros, a self-created race that grew into a family. The big shaggy one-horn was fond of leaning on folks, nudging people about with his nose, and getting groomed with a rake like the elephant-sized puppydog he was.

Tugrik kept FurryMUCK running for literally decades. Sadly, due to a variety of issues, Tugrik's health began to decline years ago. A bout with Covid was something he never truly recovered from, only making things worse, and in the end complications from Long Covid ended his life. I'm going to miss Tugrik, even if we weren't the closest of friends, and a world of furry folk who used FurryMUCK to meet, explore, and be a community have lost one of the original big furry critters.

Keep galumphing in the beyond, Big Blue.

Indeed, we found a new house, and closed the deal on Nov. 1st.
Now comes the mad dash to move everything in before Nov. 30th, when our tenancy expires.
When I'm not at work, I'm packing. This Saturday is when the professional movers come in and haul all the large items to the house, and we effectively flip from living in our current house and preparing the new house to living in our new house and cleaning up what's left in the old house.

Not, no on FurAffinity... in real life.
After a decade of happy living at our current place, the landlord and his wife are retiring and moving closer to their children and grandchildren, and in doing so they're selling the house. We were given 60 days notice, which is generous if you plan to rent another house.

Instead, my fox and I are looking at purchasing our own home to make the move. 60 days is a bit tight, but possible, and with some negotiation with the landlord, I think we can make it work. As such, Chez Gepard et Renard is moving locations. We do already have a few prospects, so stay tuned!

If you like art with an attention to detail and a beautifully wide variety of species topics, I have to recommend LoupGarou.

I've been watching Lim Guo Liang for over a decade now, and watching him proceed in his art career. He continues to come up with neat character designs (Binturongs! I just gotta say... Binturongs!) and he puts a lot of love and effort into insuring they are well-done. And the concepts themselves have a wonderful blend of beauty, innovation, and face-palm-slapping punnery. (Go see his piece on Queen Boudica. I'm not going to ruin the punchline, but while you're laughing, take a good look at her armor, and enjoy. It's just beautiful.)

Now here's the interesting twist: Loup lives in Malasysia. He's trying to become a self-supporting artist, and has a Patreon account. He asks for you to keep your donations modest; he honestly feels weird if you give him more than, say, $5/month. $1 USD goes really far in Malaysia, so even very small monthly donations have a big impact for him. He's humble about it, and just wants people to see his work.

He deserves it, in my opinion. Go sponsor LoupGarou, and enjoy.

Texas Furry Fiesta was definitely an exciting event.
It was fun to see my crew of Texan friends including  wolfkidd,  mrhappy1987,  michelelight,  elinwinkler, Shadow (you know which one!) and my dear  tabyathe (though I do miss seeing  melwhite 's lab--we have to do that another time!). I may need to try and schedule a trip outside of the con to pay some of you folks a visit.

It was delightfully strange, as well. A friend of a friend was meeting her beau for the first time face-to-face, and as we picked her up from the airport, she found out I'm the founder of the place that brought them together (FurryMUCK). The resulting squee-fest and getting to know the two of them a bit as they kept reminding me that without FurryMUCK, they would have never gotten together, and seeing them so happy together...
Yeah the past twenty-five years was worth it.

As you may have also heard, the end of the con was a bit more interesting due to an ice storm which blew into Dallas.
I do feel for you,  rukis--with only one flight change and five hours of delays, I got off light in terms of the airline hassles!
( Go see her userpage--handsome canines doing dirty things. Woo! Now if she only did a few more cheetahs...)

Now it's back to a more regular life.

It's hard not to think of Blotch and her pictures while watching this tiger about the house.
(I'm especially referring to the tiger lounging.)

Okay, I'd like to find out how this came about.

For some oddball reason, someone got in into their head that the avatar of the artist FarelleMoon is something other than a wolf.

I don't know how they came to this conclusion. Ever since I've seen any reference to Farelle, she's always identified herself as this cute little plump purple wolf. It's been both an indentifying and defining characteristic of her character as long as I've seen her about.

More importantly, she's never really expressed herself as anything
but a wolf. Even when she's not feeling very Farelle, her angry persona (Kelpie) is also a wolf.

So.. how someone comes up with something other than 'wolf', I don't know. I'd like to help her out and spread the word by her own request.

Farelle Moon is a wolf:
http://us-p.vclart.net/vcl/Artists/.....-am-a-wolf.jpg