There are a few bloggers who I used to read regularly who kind of disappeared or changed their format until relatively recently. They are Michele and Tanya.

Michele gave me my first taste of blogging for an audience beyond the small circle of people who knew me on a site I maintained on the University computer system while I was still in grad school. She put out an open invitation to be a part of the “Ho ho holy shit” Christmas blog in 2003. She requested that it be established bloggers only, but for some reason she made an exception for me. I came up with the character of “cranky, the backup reindeer,” a bitter, drunken, and as it turned out, manic-depressive beast who filled in for the other reindeer if they were either sick, injured, or in Blitzen’s case, hung over. Cranky was extremely angry that he never got the recognition and product endorsements that the “known” reindeer got. I had a good time with it, and carried the character over to Laurence Simon’s replacement Christmas site for the next few years. He finally gave up on the experiment when he and I ended up being the only steady participants.

The fact that cranky’s name is similar to my handle is purely coincidental. Unless it isn’t.

Michele moved on to Faster than the World, a group blog that I never got into much. I guess I preferred her solo work. I didn’t know she was back until I clicked on Tanya’s link to see if she had returned. I’m not sure why I never took Tanya off my blogroll. Probably laziness on my part, but since she maintained ownership of her domain, I figured she might come back one day. Yesterday I did a random check and I saw that she was writing again, and perusing the comments I saw one from Michele who said she had returned to solo blogging.

Anyway, I thought I’d use the spot that Jeff G. has graciously provided me to say welcome back to both of them. I think they’ll get just a tad more attention from a post here rather than one on my own blog.