Charlie

I had to concentrate really hard on examining the whole photo to find the landline.

Although I was happy to retire from a fulltime job at 59, I had spent years developing certain professional skills that I enjoyed practicing, so I turned them into a consulting job rather than let them go to waste, and kept on working till I was 75, when I finally felt tired enough not to want to work at staying mentally acute any longer.

Are people still submitting reviews? Are they being left in a kind of "dead letter office'?

Yes, TJ was the only grocery store I patronized in the early days of the epidemic that actually did count the number of customers and wouldn't let anyone in over the limit. There was always a line waiting outside, socially distanced, until someone left the store and the next person on line could enter. They also didn't even let anyone bring their own TJ bags into the store. Now, except for the mask requirement, they are just like every other store here in Palm Springs.

I can never see too much of Borna.

I always find myself conjuring up a mental picture of the disembodied poster, depending on what facts I know about him. For instance, I always thought of marylander1940 as a guy in his 50s, with a full head of greying hair, until he mentioned that the 1940 in his handle was his birth year; now whenever I read one of his posts, I see someone much older, with thinning disheveled hair, in my mind's eye. Sometimes I also hear voices , but usually only if I know something about the writer's background that suggests a regional or ethnic accent in my mind. If I actually meet one of the posters in person, I almost always discover that my mental image is way off. I thought of Lookin as a kind of goofy-looking nerd, but when I met him for the first time recently, I was surprised at how handsome he was.

Too skinny for me.

When you need advice or have to vent, send me a PM. My elderly mother lived with us for five years.

Me three.

Noah Rubin has always set off a slight vibration in my gaydar when I watch him play.

Our marriage survived, but I am so tired of making dinner for the two of us every night, and sitting there with nothing to say to one another, because neither of us has been anywhere or done anything apart during the day. I have always told people that the secret to our relationship lasting for a half century was that we spent so much time apart, at our different jobs, hobbies, travels--at times we even lived apart in different cities or countries for long periods. Now it's a relief just to have a reason to spend a couple of hours in separate rooms.

You are right! By the way, what has happened to him?

I know the face but I can't place the name. I think he is a doubles player.

I remember watching Tipsarevic, shirtless, practicing all sorts of elaborate drills by himself on a practice court. What he was doing caught my attention more than his body.

Does the council meet on Zoom?

Did I just become a Regent?!! Was that something that is automated after a certain number of posts? Traditionally, the "Regent" rules in the absence of the King. Do all the "Regents" on the site now become a junta?

Is that Joanne bent over the stove?

I agree with what you say about Bill/Daddy/Guy. I don't know whether the final sentence represents what you think is how it should be, or what you assume is inevitable.

I don't know anything that others don't. But I have been around a long time, and have seen other situations in which participants get very excited about planning something, only to discover that they don't really have enough information about the context. I think that making plans for something as complicated as running this site, without the involvement of the person or persons who will be legally responsible for the site, is premature. If a group wants to brainstorm options for new purposes or structures for the site, that's fine, but I fear they may make emotional commitments to a particular plan which they will try to sell to the members, before there is any assurance that there is an owner who is interested in going along with it.

I am concerned that if we get too far ahead of ourselves, enthusiastic members will become too invested in a particular plan; then a new owner may say that he or she is not interested in doing things that way.

To be clear, although Bill implied that the "donations" were to support the sites, people weren't writing checks to The Message Forum or Daddy's Reviews and deducting them on their income tax. Those little icons under our handles were described as indications of financial support for the site during a year, but often that meant putting some cash in an envelope and sending it to BIll when he posted that his funds were running low. Sometimes he wasn't even sure who had sent them. I got an icon one year because I paid one of his uncovered medical bills. If there is no owner who is willing and able to cover the cost of running the the M-B, then some mechanism would have to be established to maintain a guaranteed steady income for the site.

In mixed doubles tennis, a man and woman team compete against another man and woman team. The four men and women all compete against one another with the same equipment, rules, etc.

I agree with @sam.fitzpatrick. The sites are currently a business with an owner, who is now deceased. Until there is a legal resolution of the ownership, and the new owner decides how he or she wishes the sites to be run, we are simply spinning our own ideas of how things should be run. Those ideas may be helpful to the new owner, or he or she may completely disregard them.

Rather than set an arbitrary age for retirement long in advance, I retired when I felt it was time to do so and the circumstances were appropriate. I never planned to retire at 59, but a lot of things that I could not have predicted happened at about the same time--changes in my job, changes in my private life, unexpected opportunities--and I realized that the time was right, so I did it almost on the spur of the moment, and I have never regretted the decision.

He looks remarkably like the gay Mormon missionary who took me to my first leather bar in 1964.