Lovely, chilling story, Fran.

Darlings, it's time for my now-annually(?)-Christmas-announcement/reminder to Buffistas with religious affiliates.

For those of you who don't know/forgot: I live in Jerusalem, Israel, and spend most of my time in it. And I know this board has religious people on it, or people with religious families and friends.

So if any of you of any faith would like something from here - the Old City, or anywhere else - for Christmas or any other occasion, it's really easy for me to get it and send it overseas. In fact, I'd LOVE to do this for you, given enough guidance and information (I am and was raised Jewish, and pretty much everything I know about Christianity came from popular culture TV). I'm also OK with rubbing objects against graves/approximated graves/holy locations, if that what it takes.

Profile addy is good, and again - it's not a hassle. It's the opposite of it.

Happy holidays!

And as Shir makes her post, it reminds me that is is SEEKRIT GIFT EXCHANGE TIME!!!

The world is a dumpster fire inside of another dumpster fire, but forget all about that for a couple of months. Be silly! Be generous! Be curious! Be thoughtful! Be PRESENT! (do you see what I did there?)

Join me and other Buffistas in our Annual Gift Exchange. email me at b.org.msbelle at gmail, or if you already have an elfster account you might be able to search for the gift exchange there (this is untested, I am speculating) I have sent you an invite, or I should have - ping me if you think you have an account and did not get one. This year we are called B.org! 2018 Most online Friends observe Gift Exchange or the MoFo Gift Exchange for short!

Deadline to join is next Saturday - 1 WEEK!!! And then I will have elfster make matches. COME ONE, COME ALL!

Last day to join the MoFo Gift Exchange. Now is also the time to share with me any match restrictions participants may want (no one will get matched with who they had last year, but other than that I have made no limits), also the time to ask any pressing questions and the time to let me know if you are interested in being part of the MoFo Mayhem Elves.

You can sign up here: [link]

Our email has been down (domain issues at fogelson.com, my DH IT Department tells me)the last few days, so if you've been trying to reach me or hoping to hear from me, sorry! Hope it's fixed shortly.

I should have posted sooner, but the MoFo gift exchange draw has been done and you should have received an email.

I think there is a late signer upper, I can still add people now, but email me so it's not obvious who the late people are. If we have some late comers, it means people who already got a draw could do a re-draw if there is some reason for it. Again, email me.

Is anyone interested in doing a slacker exchange? deadline for gifts arrival would be more like Valentine's Day. Email me or message me on FB.

Latest blog post: [link] Happy holidays!

I've been busy with other things, but the beta site of the new board is very much ready for testing. Things are at the point where it's just finding and squashing bugs as well as filling out the static content like FAQ and things.

Admins, you'll find that the Admin section allows the creation and editing of static content pages directly on the site.

As always you can find the beta site at beta.buffistas.me. It is open to everybody. If you use your login from this board, you'll be asked to reset your password (the security is greatly increased on the new site) but you can can reset it to the same password. This is necessary to generate a new and more secure password hash.

ack I hate promo.

If you are a middle grade teacher and you want a school visit or skype, please come to talk with me via the usual means.

If you are a librarian and you want more information about the book coming in April (MG) or the novella (adult) coming in June, same.