Hey, folks. I know I don't post all that often these days, but I wanted to take some time in deepest, darkest winter to thank you all for being some of the shiniest lights in my life.

I loves me some Buffistas, oh yes I do.

Love and ~ma to those in need; you are all in my thoughts and my profile address is good. I hope to have more time and enrgy to post in the new year.

Let's continue to be excellent to one another; we've gotten through a whole lot of crap together, and there is no doubt more on the way. But there will also be shared celebrations and fannish squee, romances and degrees and karate belts and all manner of silliness.

There is no other group of people I would rather share my joys and sorrows with than the Buffistas. Thank you for everything.

Shir, you have mail at your profile address.

Karl, all my day needed was seeing your presence. It was a kind of strange xmas, with some key people missing and some key traditions falling through. The kind of thing that could, in another mindset, leave me in a real funk. And yet at the end of the day I'm feeling pretty good about how everything went. And enjoying reading the tales of other people's more traditional celebrations. Anyway, you always cheer me up just by being here, so I wanted to say that.

I also am dying to see Jilli's mother's artichoke dip recipe, because I'm wondering if it's the same as my mother's, which is crazy addictive and I now feel a hankering to make.

Karl, you made my morning with this email.

My ~mas and hugs to those of you with emotional/crappy/"this doesn't feels like" holidays.

Tennant is only four years older than me!

And the creepy thing? I'm thinking "he's only 14 years older than me!", which is a big improvement on my Celebrity Crush front. So yes, *technically* old enough to be my father, but you know, it would probably end up in abortion at that age.

And I'd give up living with pets for living with the Tenth Doctor. Our love is pure, and disturbed daily by the fact that Tennant isn't really the Doctor. Seriously, wtf with that?

Karl, good to see your pixels!

So who else has to work tomorrow?

Me! It should be fairly quiet, though, and I should be able to plow through a couple of big projects.

My Christmas was busier than it should have been, what with three different back-to-back events. I also went into the day seriously sleep deprived, thanks to a late (for me) bedtime of eleven-thirty followed by the cat waking me up at three, and a further wakeup call because I neglected to turn off my alarm and was re-blasted out of sleep at 4:50.

BTW, has anyone seen Gadget Girl around lately?

I had to skip.

The nephew (and his parents and my other brother) is gone. Sad now. But we had a fantastic time. I hope everyone is having a fabulous holiday season.

Happy boxing day! Not that I plan on any role reversals or anything.

Why must my mother read over my shoulder and poke through my things on my desk? My desk is sacrosanct. I don't allow anyone to mess with the things on my desk. It makes me unbearably twitchy.

Well, Barb, that's a pain. I'd offer suggestions, but none of them really work on people who believe they are in the utter right to give you neither personal space nor privacy, and also that you don't want to insult enough they never come back.

Well, uh...Merry Day After Xmas, y'all!

The day was fairly awesome, I must say. We got Emeline a toy kitchen set...hey, she asked for one...and it talks and has recipes and seventeen gazillion little plastic food items and it tells you how to make faux-cake or whatever.

Now, this is how supremely great my little four-year-old daughter is...I must to set the scene:

Aimee and I have the "master bedroom" upstairs...it's the attic. It's converted and super as a bedroom, but it's the whole of the top floor. Emeline sleeps in her room one floor below. To get to the stairs to our room, Da Punk *must* pass by the living room.

Naturally, after "Santa" had assembled and placed the kitchen set, there were speculations that upon awakening at Six Nanoseconds Into Christmas O' Clock, Emeline would not bother to awaken Mommy and Daddy and, after a nice restful several hours of sleep Aims and I would descend to find that Emeline had opened *every* present, regardless of who it was for, and we would be left to unearth the dog from beneath mounds of torn wrapping paper. "C'est la vie," we decided, and crashed out at five nanoseconds into Christmas.

Naturally, we were awakened at Six Nanoseconds Into Christmas. We all went downstairs and we got to smile delightedly as Emeline *gasped* in amazement at what Santa had left for her...a shiny kitchen playset that talks and etc. "Oh. My. GOSH!" she whispered in awe and *sprinted* across the room to embrace it.

She hadn't paused to so much as glance into the living room on the way up to get us. She had touched nary a ribbon before fetching us for Christmas.

Even after Santa had rewarded her for a year of *fairly* good behavior, she kept the good up.

My daughter is awesome.

Musta been some magic in the air, MM.