i_hope_that
For many of us, the holidays can be kind of rough. If you're searching for a network of understanding friends, this ultra-nurturing community encourages you to express your heartfelt wishes and offer other members encouragement and acceptance. Not for the terminally snarky or emotionally-challenged, this is a good-spirited place to lend comfort and support.

diygifts
Feeling crafty? If you've got a few last folks on your holiday gift list, this is a great place to seed your creativity and generosity. You'll also discover wonderful DIY tips to decorate your home and entertain guests. Offering a no-frills-no-skills attitude that welcomes the cash-challenged and arts-phobic, you're sure to get ideas and make friends in the process.

cooking_club
A fun and friendly community dedicated to those who love to cook, whether you're a meat-and-potatoes type, an aspiring gourmand, and/or a vegan. In search of a brilliant dish to use up those weekly leftovers? Post your ingredients and you'll be whipping up a feast by dinner. You can also share favorite recipes. For Type A chefs, you can spice up your culinary repertoire with exciting cooking challenges.

Things have been quiet in town lately. Too quiet, by area merchants' standards, but better than they might have been if Wendy Goldman was still on the loose.

And there are still a few days left for last-minute shoppers to raise a clatter. Hopefully, that will be all that is the matter.

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The schedule for the Royale has been posted!

M, W, F, Su: House of Games 6:00, 10:00; The Medallion (2003) 8:00
T, Th, Sa: The Medallion 6:00, 10:00; House of Games, 8:00
F, Sa: Better Off Dead midnight
M — Su: Peter Pan (1953) 1:00, 2:30, 4:00

Annex: M — Su: [•REC] 2 8:10, 10:10; open microphone 2:00 — 5:00 Su.

stepstomarrow
When granddaughter, Jada, was born with leukemia, a donor-match was located and Jada made a miraculous recovery. In honor of her grandaughter's health, Jeanna has decided to walk across the country (in the dead of winter) to raise awareness and build support for the bone marrow registry (all that's required is a cheek swab). Follow Jeanna's remarkable journey as she travels the United States by foot.

I mean that, by the way.

Before bringing the game back, I want to know how people want to handle our unplanned hiatus. Ingrid and Angelica, at the very least, were potentially experiencing some pretty serious effects of the Wendy Goldman plot.

We could:

1. Pick it up now in December, and treat everything that's happened in the meantime as past business.

2. Do some mini-weeks to get caught up. For example (assuming I'm ready to go by Sunday), next week we could do Entry 26 (November 30 — December 6, 2009) for Sunday and Monday, Entry 27 on Tuesday and Wednesday, Entry 28 on Thursday and Friday, and Entry 29 on Saturday and Sunday. That, I think, would get us caught up. We could spread it out a little more, too, although we wouldn't get caught up quite so quickly (unless I can get something up by tomorrow night, which is possible).

3. Some other wonderful idea you have.

Let me know what you think. There aren't very many people in the game, so everyone's opinion really is important.

taste_buds
Holidays provide a built-in excuse for indulgent entertaining. This all-purpose foodie community covers everything from homemade hangover cures to dinner party menus. Need quick advice? Get five-minute snack suggestions, low-fat ingredient substitutes, and even measurement conversions. Delicious recipes garnished with humorous advice. Yum.

naturesbeauty
Always on the lookout for compelling images, we were delighted to discover this flourishing community of artists who share a love of nature. Honoring the subject with photographs, paintings, sketches, prose, poetry, and other creative works, you'll be simultaneously riveted to your monitor and inspired to run helter skelter towards the nearest wooded dale.

We got the CD we needed this morning. Finally. With no notice from Microsoft that it was on the way, regardless of the thing on the original invoice that said they would e-mail me when it was shipped.

Anyway, depending on how we do with getting everything loaded and updated, we could conceivably have the game going again in the next couple of days.