For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer�

My dear friend ilonina is trying to lure me to the dark side. She has placed temptation in my path and dares me to pass it by. Verily, I say unto her, I have a perfectly good food-processor at my disposal. Why would I be interested in acquiring another which has some of the same features but would cost me extra to add the ones that already come free with my old one? My old one comes in several standard colours. The new one requires that I shell out my hard-earned cash to buy purely cosmetic modifications. I know how to operate my old one. This new one is too complicated. �But,� my friend assures me, �I use them both and I find that one is better for certain kinds of foods than the other.� This is what I get for actually putting a deposit on the second food-processor, trying it out and deciding that it is not what I need in my kitchen.

The rest of you have no idea what I�m going on about, do you? In explanation, the whole thing becomes a battle of the blogs, Diaryland v. Livejournal. In order to read my friend Ilonina�s other weblog, over at the other place, I opened an account there and she very kindly placed me on her friends-only list, for which I am very grateful. I posted one (count �em, one) entry over there, in a �Kilroy was here� fashion, and have not been back since. As a matter of fact, neither has she. I haven�t seen a new update for weeks now. Either that, or I can�t figure the bloody site out and how to actually get to her daily inputs. But I have discovered that darklily, whom I miss rather badly, has moved over there. Every so often I dip into a diary here and find a last entry stating that the owner has moved to the other place.

I�m sorry, Ilonina dear, I just don�t understand the appeal. What I did notice though, which may be part of the allure for you, is that you seem to have a larger, thriving community of readers there who comment more copiously on your entries than over here. You seem to have more personal friends using the service. There is a lot of intercourse going on (the social kind, dear readers, the social kind), probably more than here. But then you write differently over there, are less reticent about personal details, more �folksy� in your delivery. There is more of the mundane, less of the cerebral cogitation which I have come to expect, nay anticipate, from your political diatribes and academic pedantry. Look at it this way. I am a happily-married woman in a relationship with someone who suits me very well. But that doesn�t keep me from glancing every now and again at the forbidden fruit, or even flirting with it a little. As I have already stated, I am content to remain a voyeur.

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