@milkshake: my pleasure, I would love to see a forum revival!
@lizzylovesongaku: such a cool story, I loved reading it. I definitely see some parallels with my own stages of fandom although of course some things are also very different: I did not actively follow Ayu at all between pretty much the release of Colours and post-Trouble, so the whole Trouble debacle is something I've only heard speak of (in fact, I've not heard the thing - I currently have it queued to play later!).
The effect of life phases is very recognizable. I imagine many of us are now in our 30s (whenever I see the birthdays at the bottom of the page they pretty much range from low 30s to mid 45s) and things are just eternally different. It's fun though to sometimes recapture that surprising 'ooh!' of initial fandom. The other day I received a decent haul of Ayu CDs and the excitement was like I was 18 again, haha.