Oh dear,
This does seem to be taking the same lines as the marmite(vegimite) argument (strange, gooey, beef flavoured substance to which you add hot water for a 'cuppa soup' experience. It's sold in the UK and Australia and people either love or hate it).
Unlike Marmite, I really love the much maligned semi-colon. It's like a musical note of silence in my head. I use it when the pause of a coma is too short and the pause of a fullstop (oops! period to you guys) is too long and final.  And like really a good broth I prefer to pepper my stories delicately with it. 

I see you ave a first name M. Romero. Hi Maria
I agree Angela, some people gp overboard. I also encourage people to read the sentence out loud.

To Angela,
Thanks for quoting me back (Ha! fun experience) and the song was Men At Work, 'Down Under' from which the verse says: "She just smiled and gave me a Vegimite sandwich." Are you hearing it in your head now? Ha!

Thanks Carl for that lovely anecdote on my friend the Semi. Hermaphroditic Transvestites...oh, I'm still cackling about that. Result! Irving's on my side.  I suppose, in keeping with the similar growth sentiments by Charl  - hiya back - if writing styles are subject to fashion, perhaps some punctuation (or, as Angela's freelance editor would have us believe, most punctuation  is subject to the whim of current(dis)tastes. (note to Ange: Your comma-picking editor scares me)
....Blimey, Charl; marmite in S.A?  I'm gobsmacked about that one. (ooh, I just had to sneak in a semi! Maybe they'll come back into your good books one day)

Re: Alberto: "All great authors carefully avoid semi-colons . . ."

Heh-heh! Surely you jest, Alberto! You sound like John Irving's college writing professor, who once gravely told him the very same thing.

Now wait just a dog-gone minute!

To clarify something I dashed off earlier, the semi-colon exists:

1.)    to connect two independent clauses not linked by a coordinating conjunction.

2.)    to separate long or complicated items in a series that already includes commas.

3.)    to separate two long or complex independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction if confusion would result from using a comma.

The usage I was defending earlier (#1 above) seems to be the most problematic for fiction writers but I don't know why; I truly don't. There are times when a "full-stop!" period and shorter, punchier sentences are desired and other times when a more lapidary, compound-sentence rhythm is required or desired.

Throwing out the semi-colon entirely or obsessively scrubbing it from your prose seems to me as short-sighted and silly (not to mention brutish and philistinish) as deciding that a 5-gear sports car should really only be driven in the first four gears, or that one should eliminate butter knives from the table because a steak knife can double as a handy-dandy butter-cutter in a pinch, or—hey!—while we’re at it why not eliminate the four-dot ellipsis entirely in favor of the three-dot ellipsis?

I prefer more tools in the writer's arsenal, not less.

If a semi-colon is the anti-Christ, then I'm a Devil worshipper!
I love those little demons; the way they look and smell. I would eat them for breakfast if I could!
Just kidding... but I really do like them.
And, LeeAnna, shouldn't the four dot ellipsis be encased in brackets when used the way you did in your example? I'm not sure about that, and too lazy right now to google it.
Cheers!

Punctuation is only a problem when you fail to understand that nothing about it is problematic. Think of punctuation as traffic signs erected to safely control the flow of traffic. A stop sign and red lights are periods. A yellow light is a semi-colon; proceed at your own risk either a dash or a comma.   As has been often noted, reading your work out loud will teach you how to punctuate. It's all about pacing, rhythm and coherency. Before stories were written down they were spoken. Punctuation mimics the natural pauses and stops reflected in the spoken word. Notice I did not use a comma after "written down" because, though it was a phrase and therefore demanded a comma to be properly punctuated, there was no natural pause after "down". Creative writing is complemented, not controlled, by so-called proper punctuation. When you write, you are telling a story, not trying to get an A from your English teacher. Notice I inserted a comma after "write" to denote the natural pause. If you strive mightily to punctuate "properly" you'll tie your writing in knots. Notice I did not use a comma after the phrase ending with "properly" because no natural pause occurred; although under different circumstances a pause may have occurred and subsequently insisted on the employment of a comma. Speaking your story aloud will not only eliminate your punctuation conundrums but afford you the discipline to pare away excessive verbiage. (Yes, I know verbiage means "excessive" but the combination makes better sense. Another example of when meaning and creativity should rule the day.) As I read and review on Book Country, the most common affront to good writing is redundancy, this bad habit of using a medley when a single note will do nicely. My mantra, for other writers as well as myself, is "that which is removed is more important than that which is added." As for punctuation, it need not be feared or declared war upon. Semi-colons should be used judiciously. More importantly, exclamations points should be rarely used! My major concern, not only with punctuation or writing in general, is the bad habits picked up by incessant blogging and twitting constantly blurring the lines between meaningless chatter and meaningful literature. Examine any great work of literature, including Shakespeare, and you will discern that the characters, not the Zeitgeists, were the main characters.