Okay... I am still moving and stuff. The semester has been pretty intense and class has been pretty intense. Thinking I was going to fail two classes can do that to you. I managed to pull off an A and a B in the two classes, so I clearly don't suck at the school thing. My GPA is really decent and that was a nice relief. Having a Grad school mentality with Undergrad classes can be problematic. ;)

I'm launching an effort to get the chat rooms active once more for the new year. If you're interested in chatting, just use the link at the top of the main page and come in to #MainRoom, #GabyZone, or both if you like, and say hello to my chat alter ego, Breanna. I'll be there for certain between 8PM and Midnight EST, now through the end of January, and probably at other times as well. Just be certain to say my name, Breanna, when you come in so I'll get an alert that you're talking to me, and I'll be happy to talk about anything you like.

I have a house full of booze, very little of which I've bought myself. The problem is that it takes up space, which I'd like just as space or so I can reuse for other things - like books. I have even more books than bottles, possibly more than a small library.

The wine and lager has been accumulated over the months and years from patients who've wanted to thank me for seeing them, or as a Christmas box and so on. But I drink very little alcohol, I drive most days so won't risk it, compared to masses of tea.

I know I've been a bit of a Negative Nelly lately, and as good as it might be to get those kinds of feelings out on paper (or on computer screen, as the case may be, its past time for me to start focusing on the positive. So, I'm going to list all the things for which I am grateful.

Afraid I don't have any gifts to give to the folks here, but I just took another big step, though I suppose in a way I'd already done it unofficially anyways by simply not logging on...

Many of you may recall that I've mentioned I used to be a massively addicted MMORPG player. I had what even other players called an "army" of alts.

I haven't played these since June.

I just gave them all away.

The majority of my army was given to the last guild I'd been active in, and the lone remaining bard went to the guild before it.

Well, I've just about survived Christmas dinner with my ex. I'm glad I had Sam, but we also ended up having Jason and Joel, the two boys who are the sons of my ex's best friend. Sam sees them as cousins, so they had to be included, I guess.

It wasn't horrible, but I hated having to hide the present Mom got Dorothy, and I dont feel very well, like I'm coming down with something.

I guess it could be worse. By next year I might be fighting my ex for the right to see my child at all.

Ah, well

Here in Germany Christmas Eve is the most important part of Christmas.
Most people go to church in the afternoon followed a big meal and the gift giving in the evening.

In my family we normaly celebrate Christmas Eve without other guests. When my siblings moved out to start their own families they continued that custom.

Christmas Eve is for each family on thier own and then on the two Christmas Days some of us get together at one of their places if it is possible.

Best wishes to Erin and all of the Elfettes of Big Closet.

Jill

I hope that you have a wonderful season of joy and Love. Merry Christmas, happy Hannukah and have an amazing new year!!!

So I've had time to give this some thought and no offense to you, Erin, as you are pretty great at supporting the authors here, but I'd like to move to another site. When the owner of the page and her friends started expressing their unhappiness with me in IM's over my stories, I decided to take a break from writing. Now after much thought, I think it is best to move to another site, instead. Thank you all that were kind to me for your help and sorry that in the end it just wasn't a good fit.

A bit of nonsense from the Guardian which I think is art imitating art, it was done here long since. See the link below to read it yourself including a passage of Shirley Holmes and Dr Jane Watson.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/23/classic-fiction-...

Angharad

PS. I seem to have over 50,000 of those kudo things, will I need a bigger house if I get any more?

And I just finished the first edit of Assassin part eight. What a drag. I sent it off to Holly to be edited, but it wiil be a bit of time before the last installment of this story is posted. Yeah, I know, why not right away? Well it's almost eighty one thousand words long and believe me reading and rewriting something like this takes time. Hopefully I didn't leave a mess for Holly to unravel. As much as I liked the first parts of the story, I think this last bit is the best.

After recently posting Part 3 of the Yankee Belle and Gettysburg - A TWILIGHT ZONE story, I decided to start my day and set out to make Christmas cookies using my Grandmothers recipe...big mistake, she had thirteen children! I should have had my first clue when it called for 3 cups of sugar, 4 eggs and 10 cups of flour! When I finished, I had approximately 20 dozen Christmas cookies! I could feed them to a small army...I guess most will become gifts to friends and relatives. I couldn't go any farther today and decided to hold off and ice them tomorrow...I'll be able to sit to do that.