A little about my writing.

I just thought it would be helpful to talk to some of the newcomers about my point of view in writing. Yes, I am Muslim, and was fairly heavily emersed in that culture until just recently. So, my understanding of the cultures is somewhat better than some. I have no Military experience in the Middle East. Mine was during the Vietnam war and I was a non combatant. Yes, I was Military Police for 3 years … It’s complicated.

My left eye, which is my primary one, is cloudy and I cannot read without great difficukty. Everything is as if seen through a film of vaseline. My right eye is clear, but cannot read unless the type is VERY large and VERY dark. I don't know what's causing this problem, and I hope it will go away within another day. It's been two days already and if it continues tomorrow, I will seek medical assistance.

Merry Christmas to all of you, and please accept my well wishes for any other holiday you prefer.

I was raised to honor Christmas, and I still do it, though I do know there are other holidays and beliefs that are important at this time of year.

May all of you, have the best holiday possible and maybe some will get a miracle. You don't know how much I wish everyone could have one. But please, be well, share the holiday with someone, and let all the other problems go for at least a day.

All my best to all of you.

My love.

Maggie

Well, I wanted to reassure everyone who has been worried about me that I am okay. I have had no repeat of "glitch" that made me feel like hurting myself. I do want to assure everyone that should i feel like that again, I will run, not walk to my nearest ER or call the support hot line A.S.A.P. As for my proscribing doctor, well, he is gone until the new year, but I will mention the episode to him when I see him.

One small step, but a step in the right direction anyway.

(I found the following joke while stumbling around the 'net and thought it appropriate for this forum, considering everybody in the world thinks Santa's reindeer are...)

New chapter for everybody to enjoy. This one was just over 4k words and thus one of the longer chapters in the story, but since it involved Thanksgiving it made sense to make it longer than normal.

This one goes to several interesting places. One of my more favorite was the information about Sarah Lawrence. The term is real. I had a student there tell me the term when I was presenting at a Conference there, talking about Transgender Autobiography. That has apparently been a thing at the school for quite a while, apparently before the late 60's when all the cool kids were doing it.

You know the saying "When it rains, it pours? That sums up my week . First, the battery died in my car on Tuesday, then today, my AC adapter goes shot on my computer and then if that wasn't enough, my dog went to the vet with a yeast infection in his ears. It seems like things always happen like this at this time of the year. My sister paid the vet bill, but the car battery and AC adapter are not in my budget at all for the moment. I wish I had a fairy Godmother with a used Toshiba adaptor and a car battery laying around somewhere.( Fat chance of that one!

If anyone would like to save the story and ancillary materials as they now exist, this would be a good time, or any time before New Year's day. I'm going to unpub it, not delete it, so any comments and such will continue to be available through special request.

Liorah, with bright blessings

My friend Danielle told me about a billboard she drove past in downtown LA. It was an advertisement for a Cosmetic Gynecologist. She was asking what that meant and I told her that it sounded like it could be a new creative term for a Sex Reassignment surgeon. LOL!

Please Help Me!

It seems like more and more often we are hearing in blogs from people who are very unhappy because they will never be the ideal feminine person their mind tells them they were born to be.

When I go to the mall — which is almost never — even though I live just miles from Mall of America — I look at the women and try to decide which ones I would want to be.

Well, as of yesterday, "Santa School" has become my most successful piece to date in terms of comments left, surpassing even "The Dead Kid". Fifteen people have taken the time and effort to say something publicly about it, and that is wonderful, and I wish to thank them, as well as everyone who left a kudo. Regardless of how it does in terms of the Christmas contest, it has been an uplifting experience for me. There is only one fly in the ointment so to speak, however. I showed it to my mom, and she said she found it sad.

We've only had SEVENTEEN stories posted today. What's the matter with you people? :)

For the past month, from November 16 to December 15, we've AVERAGED over 19.5 stories a day.

For the past week, we've averaged almost 17000 visitors a day! For the busiest five hours of the day, we're averaging about 1000 visitors an hour. Sometimes, there are as many as 390 people all visiting a page within the same five minute window!

No wonder the searches were bringing us down!

The Stories link on storysite appears to be broken just now, although the home page is there. It points to the mirror site.

Here's the story link: http://www.storysite.org/storyindex.html

I would like to issue a public apology to Angel. I sent a personal message to another person here that was inadvertently forwarded to her. It was a criticism that was based on nothing but innuendo and was mean spirited and erroneous to boot. That it was sent by accident doesn't change the fact that it was hypocritical of me. I have preached on numerous occasions to be kind and to build each other up. Because of my words, two people have been hurt. The third party deserves an apology as well, but I won't name her here.

I think that now makes me an old git. if not an old git, then a grumpy old bastard :)

I never thought I'd get this far and if I hadn't stopped riding bikes and driving cars like a complete maniac, I probably wouldn't have.

That means that by rights, I should now live forever...

God help you all.

Nick

The second Tuesday of every month is update day for those whose PCs have windows operating systems. My laptop is one, it has vista. It downloaded the updates yesterday and before I went to bed, I shut the computer off so to install them. Guess what, my laptop won't boot this morning.

Is Story Site missing or gone away. I know that it was reported that the site was undergoing a reformat, but long gave up hope that it would revive. Now it seems to have disappeared. Anybody know anything?

I remembered a few minutes ago that it had been a while since we had a new chapter for Goddess' Tears, so sauntered over to Persephone's author page to find out more...

...only to find that only the title pages for her stories (Frozen Balance, Goddess' Tears, Healing Dagger) remain, and all the story content appears to have been pulled. I don't recall reading any blog entries announcing her departure, so does anyone know what happened?