12:44 a.m. For some unknown reason, I can't make these Photoshop scans of my Christmas cards come out right for posting here, and I'm getting more and more tired and fussy trying to get the hues and saturations right, and we all know that it's the thought that counts, not the amount of dpi you've spent, right?

The actual image is nicely rendered on my tomorrow page, should you want to compare. But anyway. The cards are going to be postcards this year and yes, in an appalling breach of taste and basic social etiquette, I am advertising these very web pages on my Christmas cards.

And why, you might ask? Because I want readers, that's why. Even if a card doesn't reach its destination and instead ends up as a bookmark in the mailman's lunchtime copy of Playboy, maybe s/he'll turn it over and read my url and yes ... even come for an electronic visit or two or three.

It could happen. A card could fall into the wrong hands at the right time, and in the grand tradition of street mail, another reader might be inspired to follow the crumbs and stay for a spell.

It's an honorable tradition. Think of Johnnie Appleseed. Or closer to my point, legend has it that Isaac Bashevis Singer, who won the Nobel prize in 1978, used to carry copies of his books with him everywhere he went, including the beach, so that he could sell them on the spot -- even, and especially after -- he won the Prize, because he knew what was important.

So, I try to reach out. I'm having a little problem with my signature, however. I held out as long as I could with my "maiden" name, which is the name on my novel ... but it gets harder and harder as more and more official forms pass my way.

I am married, and I am not ashamed of that fact. But I also wish to honor my own family name. In this country, at the end of this century, your husband's name still obscures, and eventually obliterates, your birth identity, reducing all those generations and sweaty ancestors to "AKA."

I've become very conflicted, and the dissonance shows in my signature.

I once had a sexy, swirly way of writing my name. I developed this innovative swish when I used to sit behind card tables in book stores and sign copies of my books. I'm not the type of person who is comfortable wasting another person's time, and so when the line began to mutter "walla walla" the loops and curves of my normal letters gave way to a big "N" and a big "H" and a short nervous EEG mark between the two.

Fingers are thrumming and feet are tapping. The bookstore clerk opens the next book and replaces your water and you scribble and talk at the same time. You repeat yourself and you realize you can lie and no one will notice and you begin to feel lost and fraudulent and soon you try to hide behind an anonymous smile and an even more unreadable set of marks on the page.

And in my case, my signature never really came back. It's remained gnomically illegible until I was forced by various legalities to start writing "Birnes" clearly after the fact. As you can see in the example, opposite, I still don't have the hang of it.

But I'm working on it. These web pages have gone a long way toward giving me back my name. And in this holiday season, I'm really grateful for the chance to practice writing it, one dear friend at a time.