Laurie: Hi! Yes, I share your dislike for the emoticons. They tend to make me a bit lazy in that I can become dependent on them to express whatever emotion it is I want to express. So, I'm trying to get them out of my posts. For the most part, anyway. I admit to having a rather dry 'tongue in cheek attitude' which is hard to put across without some kind of 'visual aid'. If that fails, I'll just carry with me pictures of 'marital aids', I expect that would distract people from whatever I'm saying or not saying.
Some time ago John K said that emails, posts, etc. are difficult to express oneself in as the abscence of facial expressions and vocal inflection make the more subtle expressions quite difficult. I'm paraphrasing (If I got it wrong, John, you have my permission to come over here and put me in my place

) - therefore I'm going to test-drive different approaches, when I find the right car. See? Now, what the hell did
that mean? Anyway, I'm not going to worry about it. I'm OK, you're OK. OK?
Next stop on my topic notification list: le jardin. I expect to see you there!
See you then,
Linda.