come let me make up for the things you lack

I killed a possum today! I was driving home from Des Moines, switching CDs because I wanted to listen to 'SexyBack', and I hit a possum while going sixty miles per hour in my rav4. It made a thud against my left front tire, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw it lying in the road, and then the vision was obscured by darkness. Not nearly as glamorous as shooting it, trying to decapitate it with an ice scraper, dropping a rock on it, stabbing it with a pitchfork, or any of the other variety of methods I've heard of for disposing of possums, but I guess I'm doing my part to keep the Iowan marsupial population under control. Unless, of course, it was playing dead - tricky bastard!

The big excitement of the day was that I went to Des Moines. Due to my overwhelming urge to stay in bed, I didn't leave until one p.m., thus arriving in West Des Moines a little before three o'clock (after a quick stop at Quiznos, where I had a turkey bacon guacamole sandwich, and steadfastly refused to take the small blisters that formed inside my mouth as a sign that I'm allergic to avocados). I went to Half Price Books, where I picked up a dozen books - mostly romance novels, but a couple of 'research' books, including one on the tartans of the Scottish clans. Then I went to Borders, where I wrote almost five pages in the cafe while drinking a delicious mocha. I also did some book shopping at Borders, coming away with another five books, before driving home in time for dinner (tuna noodle casserole! yay midwest!)

I spent a couple of hours tonight reading one of my new purchases - 'The Art of Seduction' by Robert Greene. It's ostensibly research for my romance novel, since it discusses the archetypal seducers - I thought it would be interesting to pinpoint whether my characters have any of these seductive traits, and make sure they aren't displaying anti-seductive traits (unless they want to). However, the book is quite fascinating in its own right - he's making the basic argument that seduction arose as a woman's weapon to regain some power in a world dominated by the aggressive, force-backed power struggles of men, but that as society has morphed, aggression is no longer rewarded to the extent that it was. So, over the past couple of centuries, seduction has increasingly become a tool for both sexes, and is a vital skill in *all* relationships, not just sexual ones. I would recommend it to you, but I want to keep its secrets to myself!