I only participate in ye olde Friday Five when the questions interest me. Today's questions were very interesting indeed:

The theatre is divided into two sides, and it was obvious which side was showing The Movie, for the line was meandering through most of the vestibule. The local crew has theorized for ages about what it would take to get all of the 20something Huntsvegas crowd into the same place. Bars, hockey, and clubbing never seem to make it happen. But last night, it seems, the entire even-slightly-geekish bit of the population was at the movie theatre.

* Amy is on vacation. She returns home on Friday, December 14; her almost-daily commentary will return shortly thereafter.

Q: How to know you've probably done too much baking in one day?

A: When you reach out for something with your left hand and are horrified to realize that you're using all four of your fingers together, as one, to oppose your thumb. Just like you would, if your left hand was in an oven mitt.Yes, indeed, the holiday baking is done at last. The final tally of destruction: two batches each of fudge, Boston cream candy, gingerbread, chocolate chip cookies, peanut brittle, and one batch of blondies.

Since I've been torturing you guys with long entries lately, I thought I'd throw in something a little more whimsical. Some of these answers won't surprise you at all; some will.

4 things you would eat on the last day of your life:

1. Nigiri sushi (guess I'd better die in Vancouver)
2. Real vanilla ice cream with dulce de leche on top
3. A few squares of super-dark, bittersweet chocolate (Valrhona rocks my world)
4. Linguine with asparagus and cream sauce

4 CDs from your collection that you will never get tired of:

1. Jonatha Brooke, Plumb
2. Steely Dan, The Royal Scam
3. Underworld, Beaucoup Fish
4. Anything by Tom Lehrer

4 movies that you watch over and over:

1. Say Anything
2. Anything by Steven Soderbergh
3. BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice
4. Casablanca

The drive to write can be as ephemeral as a smile—fleeting, brilliant, and then—gone. I've put off writing for the past 24 hours in the hope that the need to push words together into a coherent whole would come to me.

Perhaps it's because I've fired off a daunting number of emails in the past few days. Perhaps because I've been a bit tired, spending a bit more time reading, and putting my creative energies into a couple of websites. Or maybe it's just that trying to come up with moves for playing Photoshop Tennis against Noah zap my brain.