Hey Nathan - some time after the OP the problem disappeared (weeks). Wondering if when "marking forum read" is selected that it marks them on the server that I was connected to at that particular time. If I then return to the same forum, likely on another server, the new server is unaware of the "read" attribute having been set for my account. It's been a while since I've danced with multiple servers having some sort of replication services that keep 'em in sync. I dealt with multiple database services on each of many servers, each replicating stuff back-n-forth. Yea, it was known to sllllooooooooowwwwwwwww dddddddddddooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnnnn nnnnnn resulting in "I coulda swore that I already updated that damn thing" only to have it show up later on.

I wasn't whining - just makin' you guys aware ...

Jim