Story comments, in case anyone wondered, are for commentary on the story and the writing thereof. They are not for speculation on whether the author had the right to post the story, or for guesses about the writer's political opinions, mental states or educational status. Nor are they for inflammatory comments about current social climates or current affairs. Note the qualifier there, inflammatory.

I always hate doing this but Hatbox funds have not met November goals and it's already December and bills are coming due. I easily paid out more than $1000 dollars in November to keep the sites associated with BC up and running so I'm a bit short for all of my other bills this month.

If you can, please chip in using the Hatbox link in the right column, or email me if you want to send me money by PayPal or Post Office.

Thanks,
Erin

I make a version of this for almost every potluck, once I had made it, organizers demand that I repeat.

White Elephants Savory Sidedish

Sephrena will probably not be on tonight as she has just got out of the hospital after flu with a high fever and an emergency trip. She's home now but is probably going to be in bed for a few days, recovering.

Please think of her, she does a lot of behind the scenes work here.

Hugs,
Erin

PW which provides and manages most of our ad space is down, probably due to connectivity problems or power since they are in Toronto but I don't know where their servers are.

Two cowboys ride into town after weeks out on the range. One cowboy says to the other, "Slim, first thing I'm gonna do is get myself a drink."

Not to make too much of a big deal about it but in paying a large bill related to keeping the site online, I unintentionally used a debit card instead of a credit card. Because of other checks and debits outstanding on the account (it's the one hooked to Hatbox and the one I use to pay costs associated with keeping all the sites online), I'm going to overdraft by about $60 bucks on Monday.

So any payments into the Hatbox before that will be very much appreciated and will save me about $35 in overdraft fees.

I never like to do this but bills keep coming due. If you can please contribute. Either click on the Hatbox link i the right column to donate via Amazon or communicate with me through PM and I can give a Paypal or postal address. Thanks.

Hugs,
Erin

That was $1560 which I put on a credit card that I had paid down with the money received last month. We're not doing to badly this month with raising enough so I can make more payments, considering that Piper is also asking for help with her planned move. We've got $861 in the Hatbox and most of that came in in the last week.

Four or five of us have editing priveleges for comments. Usually this is used to prevent comments from destroying the look of the site by editing any bad HTML. If you think about it, you will realize that we have to have this capability. Usually, we leave a note when we edit something like this: [Redacted bad HTML - Editor]

When someone is half awake, as Piper was last night, it is possible to hit the edit button instead of the reply button and then hit the save without realizing that one is not on the screen one thought one was on.

This kind of fell between the cracks and didn't get announced but there were five winners in the April Fools and Other Wise Contest. Check here to see if you were one of the top four winners and then PM or email me to tell me what you want done with your $35 prize. Since there was only ONE vote between fourth and fifth place, we decided to go ahead and give five prizes.

Sometime in the last three days, BCTS passed a milestone; there are now more than 20,000 stories, chapters and episodes of TG fiction in our archive!

Congratulations to everyone!

Hugs to all,
Erin

Just ran across this through a link on Dan Shive's blog: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=129976793795300&set=a...

Cassandra is a model and performer who was also in the documentary Trantasia.

I guess anything is possible.

Hugs,
Erin

When I was a kid, the first Saturday in August was always a holiday. Just a family holiday but it usually involved a big party with cakes and presents. Why? Because six of us cousins had birthdays within a couple of weeks of each other and two other cousins (including my brother) had real birthdays near Christmas and so celebrated their birthdays with the rest of of us in early August. My birthday is Sunday this year, August 5th, but tomorrow is Summer Saturday, the only holiday in August!

Happy Summer Everyone!

Hugs to all,
Erin

Was sitting here and just remembered the very odd dream I was having this morning before I woke up.

It was about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, two of Fritz Leiber's fantasy characters from a series of books back in the 40s, 50s and 60s.