After I stopped working on the recipe, I took a walk, thought a bit, and came up with a design for a character that had it coming!

I had known the name of Triage's girlfriend (except her last name…need that still), and I knew her personality. Also, knew that Triage is the first of the three youngest bros in the fam (somehow I separate Fugue, Tree and Quent from the rest of them) to achieve his life partner. He and Betty are dating before Triage is even introduced in the stories.
But yeah, quickly sketched this up: (ought to have done a full-body one for Betty, but I will)


The Amarettis' girls : ).
Betty has red hair. See, nice little mix... red, blonde and brunette. I didn't do that on purpose. I swear.

K, Betty:
Works under Monte in the shipping branch of N.O.P.P. , along with Quent's bros and Cherri and such. Cherri and her are actually pretty good buds. As close as Cherri has pals.
Betty's the kind of girl that leans up against the wall in the back popping gum and doesn't appear to give full attention unless she has to. She also has enough of a track record that she only has to look at those who know her to make them knock it off or shut up, else she'll pound them. And it will hurt.
Cherri has throw but Cherri is more of an "outlaw", whereas Betty stays in the lines. Cherri will use her panache to create her persona, Betty only uses it if somebody's *really* bugging her. Betty's got a good sense of humor and likes practical jokes (as does Triage), and sometimes she and her boyfriend take part in some of this.
Betty is another person who will only talk if she has to, or if she has some funny comment to make. She works rather interestingly with Randi (but, okay, I think everybody works interestingly with Randi. BECAUSE RANDI IS AWESOME *cough*favoritism*cough*) because Randi is often excessively passionate and Betty rarely is (in this she also deviates from Cherri, who is a closet passionista).

Aria's up there too. I'm concerned for her. I can see what she can become, and it's totally possible, but I'm afraid I can't just let her become that like *that*. The development she's going to have to go through is so immense, I'd need to write a separate story just for her. Which I'm not going to do.
But I'm happy for her, because I'm getting rather sick of the two beautiful girl stereotypes: 1) self-centered ditzy jerk and 2) wonder woman who has the ability to be emotionally in-tune but can still kick butt. Aria, with some revelation of her character, is turning out to be neither of those. Hoorah : ).

On the note of love stories,
There was an interesting article in Times magazine about romance movies and how nobody's doing them (or doing them right) anymore. They mentioned today's youth enjoying Audrey Hepburn's movies for romance, and there was an amusing quote to follow it up:

“When teenagers, the sweetest fruit on capitalism's vine, have to use a half-century-old product because they can't find a more recent model that works for them, there is obviously something wrong with the industry.”

YES.

 ...sushi didn't originate in Japan!

It's actually Tawainese, and it began because they were trying to *preserve* fish, rather than eat it raw. The Japanese adopted it because there was this huge fire and so they condemned hot noodle stands, so they needed something to serve that wasn't going to require cooking.

(The radio show KICKS.)