Just a quick post, as I am (as usual!) surfing when I ought to be getting ready for work...

I've been totally frozen up on the whole writing front for the past few days, since I hit a good stopping-point on Congress of Shadows and hadn't yet gotten the critique I was waiting for on Masks & Shadows. The up-side to all that is that I've been having lots of fun at lunchtimes (normally my writing times), meeting Patrick for post-Christmas sales clothes-shopping on Monday and Tuesday and, yesterday, going over to the Leeds City Art Gallery and Crafts Gallery, both of which are great. The Art Gallery has lots of wonderful pre-Raphaelite art (John Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott, one of my favorite paintings, is there) and cool atmospheric 19th-century paintings of Leeds and its surroundings...and best of all, they've now set up two comfy couches in the main gallery so you can just hang out there now (especially since entrance to the gallery is free). I think I may well bring along my laptop and write there, now and again...and since the M&S suggestions have now arrived (hurray! thank you Delia!), I have no excuse not to get back to writing.

I saw this Guilty Pleasures meme on bay_bus_rider's blog and loved it, so I'm plunging in with honesty (and shame temporarily forgotten):

1) Culinary: Kraft's Macaroni-and-cheese from the box. I basically lived on this for a semester in grad school, when I was living alone with Nika in a rickety old townhouse in Pittsburgh and hadn't learned to cook yet. I still have a guilty love for it, even though I haven't eaten it in years.

2) Literary: Urk. I'm tempted to wimp out and say "Georgette Heyer", but that's cheating, because I admit to Georgette Heyer freely, all the time. OK, my guiltiest pleasure reading would be Julie Garwood's historical bodice-rippers. Ohhhhhh, the shame...

3) Audiovisual: Phantom of the Opera

4) Musical: Jewel. Sigh.

5) Celebrity: Mmm...this one's harder. I guess Sean Bean in Sharp, though. What an awesome show...even though it actually uses the lines: "It's quiet." "Too quiet..."

Anybody else? :)