Helpful tip!

I learned this from watching a handful of romantic comedies in the mists of the past and now from Heroes, and I thought I would pass the useful advice on to you:

If you see the person you are dating embracing another, before you pitch a hissy fit and storm off to destroy the relationship/yourself/the world/whatever, determine whether the embracee is: a) a sibling, parent, or other close family member; b) a friend who has just received bad news; c) a friend who has not just received bad news but would for reasons of their own like a hug; d) someone in need of the Heimlich maneuver; e) ...anything else reasonable. Which covers a lot of ground.

Better yet: do not date people you don't trust to hug other people.

"She's going off to have dinner with someone else! Oh noes! Not--dinner!"

There, just think how much trouble I saved you.

(People who thought Season One of Heroes was good: really? Really? Trite RomCom Maneuver Number Three? This is the good stuff? What's Sylar going to do next, hire a band to sing off-key under Claire's window?)

poor pup

Ista was helping markgritter deliver cookies to the neighbors this afternoon, when the neighbors' daughter (who is grown and doesn't live there and therefore is not used to corralling large dogs) accidentally let her parents' two large dogs slip out. One of them chomped down on Ista.

There's only a small puncture wound and some bruising, and she'll be on antibiotics. We'll check to make sure the neighbor dog is up to date on her vaccines. These are good neighbors (as you can tell by the fact that they get cookies!), so I'm sure they will be just beside themselves over this when they get home; their daughter was. We'll keep an eye on Ista's wound to make sure it isn't doing anything nasty and she isn't doing anything unpleasant to it. Should be fine, and we'll try to set up a playdate with Morgan as soon as we can all manage it, to remind Ista that other dogs in general are Friendly And Nice.

Still and all. Not the sort of thing to make a person sing fa-la-la. Uff da. Considering the much larger things that have befallen our people and their people in the last few days, I think it's safe to say that we will not be inviting 2008 back again.