Thanks, Kristin, erika, and especially deb. It's funny that you used the word "instinctive" - I more often than not find myself being criticized for filtering things too much, thus mostly preventing myself from doing things instinctively.

Oh, and I think that the biggest advantage for me, when reading in not-my-first-language-English, in which I need to actually read, as opposed to Hebrew, in which it's a completely automatic process and if anything I have to stop myself from reading, is that I have to pay more attention in order to follow the words and their meaning, and this way I can discover things that would escape me in Hebrew. Either that, or I'm just reaching to find something good about reading slower, and therefore less.

Holli, I really liked your piece. Something I don't think anybody has mentioned before - I loved the contrast in the images that were build in my mind, of the two "backgrounds", in the lack of a better word, for each story. You being alone in a cool basement for the first one, you being with your friends and the description of your costumes, in the other. I especially liked this:

shook my head and set my antennae wobbling, and wished that I had known Peter so I could know which story to believe.

because of that contrast, the sweet costume and the death, being together in one sentence. I don't know why, but it made the point of the finality of death even stronger, for me.

I have found the writing book i've been looking for. "I'd Rather Be Writing", by Marcia Golub, from Writer's Digest Books. It talks about self-defeating behaviors, coping with a family who think they have a right to your time, and stuff like that.

This woman is me! She's saving her manual typewriter for when the comet hits, and when her parents died she found herself taking mental notes for use later. Now I just need to stop squriming when she says something that I don't want to do.

Yeah...this is true. Only kidding. I know you don't have a perfect partner, Mitch.

Holli, wow. Your last sentence brought the tears to my eyes. It seems to me that this sums it up perfectly.

...I have a manual typewriter tucked away, too.

Ah, Return of the Underwoods....

I don't...my fingers are not strong enough and I'm Typo Queen...I do miss the productive-sounding click though.

I've got an idea for a drabble theme--the first time you really appreciated music, be it rock/pop/classical/the blues, whatever.

(Yes, I'm listening to some music, and it's made me thoughtful)

I have fond memories of learning how to type on Grandpa Stanley's old gray steel Royal typewriter. I had to hold my hands at shoulder level and build up some speed or I couldn't hit the keys hard enough. Good times, good times. Then I had to learn how not to pound the crap out of today's more sensitive keyboards.

I never mastered a manual, but I tore up jack on an IBM Selectric. Come the apocalypse, it's a rock and a...harder rock for me, I guess, when the paper runs out.

Well, I know how to make quill pens, and I have beaucoodles of dip pen and extra nibs, and I know how to make ink. I'll betcha I could learn to make paper, too. Faced with the rock option, smelly papermaking seems the better way. Less toe-injury, too, from dropping documents.

I learned to type on a Royal Standard, and spent four years on my student newspaper and my first year as a reporter pounding out hundreds of stories on Royal Standards. I saw one in a thrift store a while back, and I could barely push the keys. I still have two manual typewriters around here somewhere, just in case of the end of civilization as we know it. I need to put by a supply of ribbons.