Expected but sad

Blast.

'Leri was an old friend of ours, especially of Jane's. They were two of the key members of The Ladies Who Run The Kingdom (that's how Jane and I referred to it), the longtime informal backbone of the East who provided much of the institutional memory, connections and humor that helped keep the Kingdom together. When Jane and I started to get serious about running for Baron and Baroness, back about 15 years ago, Eleri and Emerson were the folks who we sought out for advice on how to do it well.

I'd long known something was up -- in 2010, the two of them would often step aside when at events together, to compare-and-contrast their situations, talk about meds, and things like that. But it was still startling at Coronation, to suddenly realize just how close she was to the end, and realizing that this was what Jane probably would have looked like (and likely when) if the tumor in her skull hadn't taken her so abruptly. It was a teary moment in an otherwise grand day, but I'm glad that Avelina was able to give her one last recognition.

She'll be much missed...

*God*, I love this project

I'm rapidly fleshing out the Querki Use Cases and Features. The Feature list is growing terrifyingly fast, but that's what the Use Cases are for: they are going to help drive which features get implemented when. (And more importantly, which features to *not* implement yet. I'm going to have to pick my battles carefully. Nothing gets implemented until we have a concrete use for it.) I'm starting to sincerely believe that this will be useful enough that people will buy memberships.

I think I'm going to start talking about Use Cases, something like one a day, over on the development blog (querki_project). Please come join in over there, kibitz and comment, point potentially interested friends at it, and keep the ideas coming! The "what we're going to try to accomplish" train is rapidly gaining steam, and the project is looking ever-cooler and more useful...