Do you hear that? Shhhhhh... It's the sound of thousands of keyboards at rest.

Do you remember the MTV show The State? It was a sketch variety show and on one episode, they had a scene of two teenagers making out with their hormones dancing around in the background. The guy finishes, his hormones finish, and the girl's hormones are left dancing around by themselves like, "hey, I thought we were partying."

That's sort of what this time is like for non-Christians. And I wish there was a way to add an emoticon smiley face to that last sentence so you know that I meant it tongue-in-cheek without having a blog post look like an email.

I'm up; I'm partying; this week is simply the final week in December for me (just as whichever day Rosh HaShanah falls on the calendar is simply another day of the week for you). But it is a huge one for you. So I understand that your hormones...um...typing fingers...have eggnog glasses to grip and you don't have time to write blog entries while Uncle Richard is peering over your shoulder at the computer saying, "what does BFN mean? Brisket for noshing? Birds find nettles? Best forgotten, no? Burnt fingers notwithstanding?"

Um...feel free to add your own favourite reworking for BFN as spoken by generic Uncle Richard...

To ensure that this post is as long and rambling as all other roundup posts, I'd like to write for a moment about why I love the roundup. I started doing this almost a year and a half ago and I think I've only missed a week or two since its conception. Have you ever been to the movies alone and when you walk out, you want to talk about it with everyone, but you can't because they haven't seen it yet and they'll never get how cool the plotline was or how surprising you found the ending. And it's a huge buzz kill.

I feel that way sometimes when I'm reading a blog entry. I read it and I immediately want to talk about it with everyone, but then you see that only one other person has commented. It's not a reflection on the quality of the post--it's just the reality of the system. A finite amount of readers are divided into an infinite amount of blogs. New blogs pop up daily and it's hard to keep up with the sheer amount of writing going on in the blogosphere. So there are thousands of these writers, putting out brilliant thoughts online and you stumble onto them, read them, and then you want to talk about it. With everyone.

Hence the roundup.

So thank you, everyone, for writing incredibly cool posts that make me think or remind me of something I went through myself or put into words what I have been unable to put into words.

And now, a small sample of the brilliance I read this week:

I was laughing so hard that I literally couldn't breathe when I read this post at Flotsam. I had to keep walking away from the computer and then walking back and finally, I had to call Josh over to read it aloud to me. We spent the whole week repeating to each other that Shmutzli is covered in lard and soot. Easily identifiable if he comes here with his sack...

Io at Who Shot My Stork has a post about her sister coming into town for the week and why she hasn't told her yet about her struggles with infertility. She writes: "I don't think I'm ready to share my heartbreak with her. I've always looked up to my sister and wanted to by just like her when I was a kid. I stole her clothes and her books and drove her crazy. I don't want her pity or her advice on not having kids though. After all these years of trying to be like her, I know her all too well and she would say all the wrong things." I don't know why, but I loved this thought--perhaps because I too am someone who worships my sister. And the twist of knowing the person you worship so well through careful observation that you also know their foibles--and still love them.

Beyond the fact that she has a really pretty picture of her tree (and I'm a sucker for Christmas trees), Meghan at A Little Sweetness has a post that made me laugh where in obsessive googling, she ends up back on her own site. This has never happened to me, though others have sometimes ended up at Operation Heads Up during googling and told me so (which is the point, I guess, of OHU). Go over and read the post and then leave your own googling story of whether you've ever reached the end of the Internet.

Lastly, I loved this post at Murphy is a Bastard chronicling all the things she will teach her child when she is a mother. Not only the useful: "Always check your knickers are not tucked into your skirt before leaving the bathroom" but also the profound: "Have your own sense of style." I hope she gets to pass along these lessons soon.

I mentioned it in the Lost and Found, but it bears repeating again. Jenna at Epiblog is urging all of us to take out our activism fingers and do something that will only take a few minutes from your day but will make a big difference in a lot of lives. (1) Watch this video. Each time you watch it, a donation is made to Autism Speaks. (2) Tell others about the video either by posting it on message boards or writing about it on your own blog. (3) Leave the filmmakers a comment on their film post (it's easy, just scroll down the page under the film and you'll see a box where you can leave a comment). Three things--10 minutes from your day tops--and you'll do a world of good for another family. See, don't you feel better already?

Have a wonderful weekend. I will be Creming--a new verb I designed for reading through all of the Creme de la Creme posts. Or blurbing. I'm writing blurbs. I'm blurbing. Mad, crazy blurbing skills. You will be thinking up thousands of new permutations for BFN...