Good evening, Denise, and a hearty welcome to our site! It's great to have you with us -- and we think you'll find it productive as well as interesting and enjoyable.

To get the most out of us, you may want to take a few minutes to join several other of our many groups which you might find of particular interest, such as Media Only, Eating/Drinking the World, Germany, and plenty of others covering many topics and most destinations throughout the world.

FYI, on your profile you'll see a blue bar marked "Text Box," which you can turn into a box containing not just text but also photos and even videos about yourself, your interests, your travels, and your writing and outlets.

Finally, if you would, please be so kind as to spread the word among your travel-interested friends, family, associates, and readers. It's fast and easy to use our "INVITE" function above left on the navigation bar to enter e-mails (even your whole list at once!). If you have any way of covering us in any of your outlets, that would of course be greatly appreciated, and we also invite you to also consider link exchanges and even occasionally blogging for us (guidelines/rates available upon request).

Many thanks for joining us, Denise; we wish you an outstanding rest of 2009 and look forward to hearing more from you...!

Ah yes, the winter carnival-winter highlights festival. And we had that gawd-awful singer from France! And the midnight swim in -25 degree weather. You swam by saying, "I'm going inside before my hair breaks."

Hope you and your hair are well.