It's so romantic

I had an excellent night last night, had an old school sleepover (including Shirley Temples with vodka) with some of my dear undergrad roomies. We watched 'My Best Friend's Wedding', Lonely Island clips (tip - setting a drinking game that requires you to drink every time they say 'boat' during 'I'm on a boat' is not for the foolhardy) and got some good gossiping in. These are the people in my life that I need to make time for, because they make me laugh, they know me well enough to not take my b.s. and be sure of why I made decisions, and help me grow as a person. They're my girls and I'll love them always.

I think I have mentioned before that my former housemates all looooooove Harlequin Romances. We have over the years (going on 8 now that we have known each other) quite a collection (below are just a few that were bestowed on the first of us to get married, along with the cut out of C who couldn't make the bachelorette, so we carried around her picture all night until it got left in the bar - only somewhat typical).

When I was still in Mtl, my both (then) present and past roomie Liz and I had a plan to write a Harlequin with a protaganist in grad school. She would be brilliant, her true beauty obscured by the schlumpy clothes and lab coat. It would only when a dashing post doc from somewhere abroad (either Spain, Italy or the Middle East) arrived that she would bloom into a (true) woman. They would go off and have lots of very smart babies.

I was thinking today though - could you write a romance novel about public servants? I mean, grad school was a bit of a stretch but even that had the possibilities of late nights alone in the lab, in an exotic jungle for your field work and a fairly common culture of multiple nationalities being represented in a small area. I am the first to admit that public service is not exactly the most exciting of domains and I myself have a rule to not date my coworkers but I've come up with a few plot points that could work:

- a handsome deputy directer, named Henri, on secondment from Hull

- seduces the somewhat mousy but truly beautiful once she lets down her hair analyst (they usually have ridiculous names but at the moment we're going with Veronica) in her cubicle one night after they complete an MC (the cubicle being so small ideal for leverage)

- since they are both on compressed, they take a glamorous long weekend to Kingston, where she is shocked to mistake his Blackberry for hers and find out that he has instructed his former DM to shoot down their MC saving the rare endangered spotted beaver for reasons of economics: his departments wants to build a pipeline there instead

- she flees back to Ottawa but there is only one more train (thanks Via!) that day so they are both on it. They have an angry but steamy encounter in one of those teeny bathrooms.

- she finds out when they get back that actually the pipeline will be built to serve as an ideal habitat for the beavers and they both get promoted.

- they go on to have several adorable children, who play in the daycare in their office building, and who will one day become public servants themselves.

What do you think? Is this a best seller to read on the bus on your way to work or what?