SA, you're posting from Teppyville and I probably missed you. Welcome home. Did the evil airplane air infect you?

Yes, I think it did. Sigh. But I'm pumped full of drugs now, which is always good.

I'm trying not to think of the mound of tasks that awaits me, like moving and taxes and FAFSA and fixing my computer, etc. Too much work.

Instead, we're going to go poke around Cincy a bit, maybe do a little thrift store hunting, head to the comics store, eat Mexican food. I'm big on the Mexican food part of this.

I would just like to point out that beathen is crazy and actually keeping up her Serenity countdown in her tag.

My latest article is so long it got a "Continued on Page 7."

Hi back. At work now. Traffic was awful.

I have French Toast flavored coffee.

I got this on accident a few weeks ago. I was in a hurry and I read "Golden French Roast" instead of "Golden French Toast" I drank it anyway even though I haaaaaaate flavored coffee (well except for chicory, but that's not really a flavor).

I would just like to point out that beathen is crazy and actually keeping up her Serenity countdown in her tag.

It's been, what, two weeks since I started it? Only 8 more months to go! :)

Anybody else ever find they gave somebody they're writing about a problem they are actually having? Without realizing it?

I do it all the time. I figure I am getting writing done AND wrestling with my demons at the same time, so why fight it? It's like mental multi-tasking.

Yup. See also the point where you realize that all your characters are a little bit you (and not in a MarySue wish fulfillment way), even the ones who are diametrically opposed to each other and caught in a constant, bitter conflict.

I haaaaaaate flavored coffee (well except for chicory, but that's not really a flavor).

Heather is me. But cuter.

Beathen's tag-

Anyway, [Kate] says, "Shhh." And Sawyer says, "What, you smell blood on the wind?" because yeah, when people say "shhh" it's usually because they're trying to SMELL something, Sawyer.

Y'know it's funny because the other day I'm driving with some girl friends and we're listining to music and laughing and basically having a good time. The driver turns down the music because she's looking for a street name. Apparently the sense of hearing is connected to all the other senses.

t blushes. Thanks Anne. Though I have to admit, there's less cute here today and more surly, overtired office worker.

Heh, coffee mis-reading x-post with Heather.

Was yours at the Exxon, Lilty?

Jane Austen's Guide to Dating.

Jane Austen's Guide to Dating, the work of the British-born writer Lauren Henderson, 36, leaves the world of rampant rabbits, serial cosmopolitans and toxic bachelors behind, to advise girls on how to snare a man the Regency way.

Undeterred by potential drawbacks - Austen's books tell us nothing about sex, are set in an age whose social mores bear scarcely more relation to downtown Manhattan's than they do to downtown Kabul's, and are novels rather than self-help manuals - Henderson has discovered, at the heart of the oeuvre, 10 principles of dating.

As she puts it: "I think the books are coded instruction manuals - but they can be novels, too. They are about the best way to find someone who's going to be a life partner for you.

"What Austen is about is the continual process of observing the behaviour of people around you. And whether you're country dancing or grinding your bum into someone at a hip-hop club, it comes down to the same fundamental things."

"Dating nowadays," she writes in the opening sentence of her book, "can be like walking through a minefield." And if you need a guide through the minefield, who better than a 19th-century author?