thanks for the mini-crit,
@wakarimasen!
since i already voted, i felt just peachy rolling through and reading them. i actually do a similar thing when i read mine. but, yeah, the crit thread is probably the place to post them.
on the contraction thing -- i'm totally with you in non-fiction or third person omniscient or something. in close-person third, i like contractions because that's where you can give the character a lot of their voice. how they think, what they focus on, their motives. it *feels* like you're in their head. it totally depends on the pov character i'm writing at the time.