Sunshine Is Quite Glad Her Sidekick Is Not A Dinosaur

Who’s this?:

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It’s Sunshine’s new BFF!  No, we didn’t get a second dog (I’m still working on the Long Slow Process of Convincing Adam); Barney’s just a sometimes visitor.  But isn’t he SUPER-CUTE?

Sunshine has adjusted surprisingly well to having a sidekick.  They are so going to save the world together.  🙂

I think a lot about sidekicks (this is an inevitable result of thinking too much about superheroes) and lately I’ve been thinking about what a great idea sidekick romance is.  Especially on a TV show, where you have to keep your main characters apart as long as possible (this is a rule I’m not 100% sure I agree with, but let’s accept it for now for the sake of argument).  So while Hero A and Hero B meander for hundreds of episodes around the idea of maybe one day sort of admitting they like each other, what can you do to keep a romantic spark going for the rest of the series?

Sidekick romance!  Who cares about Booth and Bones as long as Angela and Hodgkins are so adorable?  (Disclaimer: I’m about a season behind on that show, but I’m catching up slowly!)  Ross and Rachel were like so whatever and then Monica and Chandler made Friends exciting again.  And I’m sorry, but Serena and Dan are nowhere near as thrilling as Chuck and Blair on Gossip Girl (bad, bad Chuck! but he does love her…doesn’t he? why are boys so baffling?!).

Plus I could care less who Ted dates on How I Met Your Mother as long as Barney and Robin get together!  Woo hoo!

Not to mention, of course, the wonderfulness of Willow and Xander and everyone they dated over the course of Buffy (say, for instance, Oz…dreamy sigh…).  Or Wesley and Fred on Angel!  OK, I’ll stop now.  But see what I mean?  Maybe this is something that you could think about for your own writing, too…is there a neglected background character that needs some love?  If your forefront romance has to be drawn-out and tragic and convoluted, can there be another tiny side one that keeps hope alive?

There’s no reason for me to be thinking about this now, when I’m all wrapped up in polar bears and poodle puppies, who don’t get any romance.  But it popped into my head while I was watching Bones, so I thought I’d share that.  🙂

Speaking of manuscripts eating my brain, I hope you’re all OK with a photo-happy blog this week.  I have
to write something like 30 pages a day for the next two weeks to meet all my deadlines (BAH! ACK!), which means I need to save the typing for that instead of ye olde blog!

But photos I can still manage.  :-)  When I let Sunshine out right after I get up (which is generally around noon), she has this habit of running into the yard and flopping down in a patch of sunshine (I know!  so apropos!), where she basks for a while before coming back in.

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Basking…la la la…peace and quiet…

So last week Barney decided this seemed like a fine idea, and he wanted to do the same.

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Barney: Hey, this looks like fun!
Sunshine: Er…what’s happening?

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Barney: All right!  Here I go!  I’m basking!
Sunshine:  Um…OK.   

And let’s see, what else have I been taking pictures of this week…

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Oh, right… 

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DINOSAURS!

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Yeah, I totally dragged  Adam to the Walking with Dinosaurs event in Boston last week.  And yes, there were an inordinate number of eight-year-old boys there. BUT!  It was STILL AWESOME!

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These aren’t the most amaaaaazing pictures because, unlike everyone else in the arena, I actually followed the rules about not using my flash.

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But if it’s coming anywhere near you, I think it’s worth seeing — it’s not very long, and the way the dinosaurs move is really pretty remarkable.  🙂

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Woo!  Dinosaurs!  I’d love to write a novel about dinosaurs one day, but I think I’ll wait until they know everything there is to know about them, since apparently we’re still discovering things, such as that they maybe had feathers.  FEATHERS!  AWESOME!  Your average four-year-old nowadays will be like, "yeah, duh, everyone knows they had feathers."  But they sure didn’t in the books I read as a kid.  So maybe I’ll wait a bit longer and see if it turns out they also wore hats or glowed in the dark.

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Oh, yeah…they totally did that, too.

All right, the manuscripts are calling!  Go see the dinosaurs if you can!  And if you missed any of Dr. Horrible, it’s available on iTunes now!  Woo hoo!

Quote of the Day: 
"And Penny will see the evil me
Not a joke, not a dork, not a failure
And she may cry, but her tears will dry
When I hand her the keys to a shiny new Australia."
— Dr. Horrible, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog