It’s been so long I sort of worry that I’ve forgotten how to take time off, but starting tomorrow, I’m going to try to relearn how to take a vacation, including this whole Staying Off the Internet thing. By which I mean I’m going to San Francisco to see a Giants game and to give a Game of Thrones-inspired toast at my best friend’s wedding, and then to Los Angeles for some meetings and set visits. I’ll be back middayish next Wednesday.

In the interim, you’re going to have some deeply awesome guest bloggers. Usual rules apply: be excellent to them and to each other, and think before you post, keeping in mind that these folks are honored visitors. And now, to introductions:

Alli Thresher (who has hung out with us before) is a jill of all trades from Boston, Massachusetts. By day she works on hit video games, by night she’s a performer and activist. She has been trying to curb her twitter addiction and channel that energy into more creative (productive) pursuits. Underneath it all she’s very much a contented geek with a penchant for collecting vintage clothing, retro video games, graphic novels and antique mortuary supplies.

s.e. smith is a writer, agitator, and commentator based in Northern California, with a journalistic focus on social issues, particularly gender, prison reform, disability rights, environmental justice, queerness, class, and the intersections thereof, with a special interest in rural subjects. International publication credits include work for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, and AlterNet, among many other news outlets and magazines. Assisted by cats Loki and Leila, smith lives in Fort Bragg, California.

Scott Meslow is an entertainment writer for TheAtlantic.com and a film and television critic based in Washington, D.C. Scott grew up in Minnesota and holds a B.A. in English literature from Loyola Marymount University. His work has also appeared in Campus Progress, The Good Men Project, and DC Theatre Scene, and been cited in publications including The Hollywood Reporter, The Daily Beast, and the BBC News Magazine.

If you’ll pardon me some personal reflections…

In the spring of 2003, a group of friends and I went down to City Hall in New Haven for a hearing on a bill that would have created a domestic partnership for the city. I was eighteen, and I was young, and I thought we would win, easily. Surely this tiny step forward was a non-issue in a Northeastern city. I was wrong. I felt tiny and alone in a sea of the bill’s opponents, who ranged from Latino church congregants to Orthodox Jewish students.

I went home, and we started organizing. Students and city residents got together to start an organization called Project Orange: in New Haven, Orange Street lies between Church and State Streets. We flooded City Hall’s steps with emergency vest-colored t-shirts. We made so many signs. When the vote came on the bill, we made our presence felt on the news. It turns out not to be enough. We lost again. There’s news footage of me crying and holding a homemade sign as the decision comes down, sitting next to my dear friend Josh Eidelson, who grew up to be an awesome Salon and In These Times labor reporter.

That summer, I went home to Boston to alternate between interning at Freedom to Marry Massachusetts and working at Barnes & Noble. Evan Wolfson, who will someday be enshrined in the pantheon of America’s great civil rights leaders, taught me why “marriage equality” was a better term than “gay marriage.” I was at my shift at Barnes & Noble when the decision in Lawrence v. Texas came down, and celebrated with customers there, and at City Hall Plaza in Boston later.

Nine years ago, the big victory was finally decriminalizing sex between people of the same gender. Nine years ago, a Board of Alderman in Connecticut couldn’t pass a domestic partnership bill. Gay couples have the right to marry in Connecticut now. The president of the United States has spoken aloud that he supports marriage equality. We could have a marriage equality plank in the Democratic platform this year. It’s not enough. This is so far from done. But this is so much more than I believed was possible in 2003. And it’s a lot of why I believe in the power of stories to change things. Whether it’s Joe Biden’s conversion via Will & Grace, or the courage of everyone who’s told their personal story to family, friends, or their boss, the President of the United States, the lives of gay Americans are undeniably real, and loving, and worth honoring.

When I started this blog two and a half years ago, it was an experiment, a chance for me to see if I wanted to write about culture full-time, and an attempt to see if political, mostly cheerful, sometimes deeply cranky culture blog could find a home in the awesome, experimental wilderness that is online criticism. It turns out that I did, and that it could. And I’m deeply grateful that ThinkProgress and the Center for American Progress decided to take me on, and to make a serious investment in the idea that culture plays a critical role in shaping our politics and our collective character.

Being here has meant a lot of things to me. It’s a chance to write about the things I love full-time, and thanks to the wisdom of my editors here and to the standards you all hold me to, I’ve learned a tremendous amount. It means I get to take a seat on stages and argue that superheroes are the key to the American idea, ask Chris Dodd if he thinks piracy is a customer service problem, and talk about what the 99 Percent movement can learn from 2 Broke Girls. It’s given me a chance to call out the shame of Joe Paterno and the cowardice of Lowe’s and Kayak. And it’s let me talk, at great length, about banking, governance, and A Song of Ice and Fire.

A lot of what makes it possible for me to do the kind of criticism I do is the fact that I’m at a non-profit. But it’s not easy, or cheap, to create something like ThinkProgress. If you’ve enjoyed my writing, or if you’ve benefited from anything ThinkProgress does throughout the year, please consider supporting our work by making a donation. We’re headed into an election year where many of my colleagues will be hitting the road to cover a critically important presidential campaign, and during which I’ll also be expanding my reporting outside of Washington, D.C. to bring you more news, interviews, and early looks at what’s next in movies, television, video games, books, museums and theater. $5 gets us almost two gallons of gas in Iowa, and goes far towards Hollywood economics textbooks.

And as a special incentive, if you donate $25 or more, I’ll send you a ThinkProgress bottle-opener keychain and a personalized thank-you note. As always, thank you so much for your brilliant comments and emails, and your readership — and friendship — throughout the year.