Hey, everybody!
Thought I would pop in just to say hi - it’s been a while. I was getting a bit nostalgic recently, thinking of the many incredible projects I’d made and how it’s been over two years since I had access to a laser full time. Not only my own projects, but the hundreds upon hundreds that I’d seen here and that had inspired me, but more importantly, I was happy to see some familiar faces still commenting here after all this time. I began lurking on the forum back in September of 2015 shortly after preordering my original machine, and I saw that I recently got my 7th anniversary badge, which kind of spurred me to go down memory lane.
What an incredible community this has always been, I wanted to thank you guys for being pillars of this community for so many years. It was always fun interacting with the staff of Glowforge, especially when @dan would chime in on a project, or when somebody in the community would start a new hot trend like tile engraving or jb’s puzzles. I’ll always be grateful for the support and inspiration that was shared here. When I ordered my first forge I had never even seen a laser in person before, outside of a plasma cutting table, and if weren’t for the original marketing stating that this was a “3D laser printer”, I may never have stumbled upon it in the first place. It was all due to me seeing a 3D printer in person and becoming interested in that.
This product and community changed the trajectory of my life, and I’ll always be fond of the memories. I only ever met @Aloha, and I legitimately thought you were a woman for a very long time (no reason for it, please don’t take it personally! I did figure it out long before us meeting though!), sorry for the sidetrack, anyway, I only ever met him physically, but interacted with many of you for years. While I may have never known any of you personally, I’ve known the beautiful creative, helpful, and fun sides of you, and you’ve made me a better person, and shown me a side that I’d hoped was in me.
Not much has changed in my life, still living in Thailand, with no access to a safe laser 
(emphasis on safe), but we did recently welcome our second kid into the world in July, and I can’t wait to get back my lasers some day to engrave his little baby face on some wood. Our current soft plan is to come back stateside summer of next year for a couple of years, and so long as long storage hasn’t affected my lasers, I’ll be posting new projects when we do come back. Plans change all of the time, though, so no guarantees as we tell our family and friends!
I figure throwing this in everything else is the only logical place for a post like this to go, and I know you die hards who have to have read every single post will see this, you’re the ones I’m hoping to catch with this anyway, but I do hope you engage and comment on this post to catch up a little! Would love to hear from you all, and if you don’t want to comment or be seen associating with me, shoot me a message, I won’t tell anybody 
Oh, and because I know some of you enjoyed my drone photography, I’ll throw in some pictures from here in thailand.
Do they have the Aloha spirit there? 
I’ve been busy with subbing, coaching basketball, helping raise a nearly 5 year old, and now a newborn, so the creativity bug has gone into hibernation. I took up journaling earlier this year, which is a different form of creativity, and also coloring, which is fairly therapeutic, probably because I don’t have much access to other creative outlets.
I have a Thai friend who told me not to worry about it, and that to feign ignorance if somebody ever does talk to me about it. As far as I know, unless it’s explicitly posted, it’s not so bad to fly the drone around. Now, am I completely aware that when I fly it inside of the city from my balcony that I’m probably not supposed to? Definitely, but I’ve almost been run down by buses, taxis, and motorbikes going the wrong way, so I’m confident that I’m flying safer than what the average person deals with. I also do the research for the tourist locations we go to, so that I know I won’t get in trouble. Tourists have a lot of bad manners, and I’d hate to ever add to that.