Hello Once Again

So, I checked my last entry.  It was two years ago!  I thought it might be time to start up my blog again, since I'm starting everything over.

So what have I been up to in the last two years?

The truth is, not much.  I'm still pretty much where I was two years ago, except I'm two years older.   Last year was probably the most active though.

I finally got to go on my trip to Europe.  When I say Europe I mean the U.K. and parts of France.  I have to say it did NOT disappoint!  I did learn some lessons though.  For instance, I have to take a couple of days to recoup from the traveling part of the trip as apparently certain parts of my body tend to rebel when I have to travel.

I have to train like I'm planning to walk a marathon.  Seriously.  I knew that I would be walking a lot but I didn't anticipate the steep hills and the incredibly narrow, steep steps.  On the plus side though, I did drop a jean size and I think I've been healthier than I've ever been.

I don't do well in large cities as they are seriously polluted.  I have lung issues so it makes things doubly hard.  I am saving separately for cab fare alone.

I did a lot better in the countryside and enjoyed myself immensely, though I do regret that I couldn't see London due to afore mentioned stomach problems. I did get to see Shakespeare's birthplace as well as Anne Hathaway's cottage.

I really liked the south but I absolutely adored the North of England.  It's beautiful but most notably COLD.  Even in late April, which surprised me.  Meh, just bring my winter jacket next time.

Edinburgh was my favourite city.  I absolutely adored it!  It was probably because it was a smaller city, which I am used to, so maybe that's why.

Another place I really liked was in France.  Versailles!  Oh my God Versailles.  It was a paradise for someone like me.  All marble and fine wood paneling.  Romanesque and Greek statuary.  Oh God, I could have died and gone to heaven that day.  If I was an emotional person, I would have cried.  
I actually squealed when we pulled up into the parking lot.  It was so deliciously wonderful!

I can't wait to go back!

Another event was my boyfriend moved from Toronto and found a job here.  We got engaged at Christmas.

THIS year, I am planning to take some courses to finish up my story.  I just want to finish the darn thing, and have an idea as to what the hell I'm doing!

I think it's better I take the course because right now my mentor is to ill to help.  Maybe once I'm done the story I can move on to other research which brings me to something else I've started...

A new blog, on wordpress.com.  It will be about the witch hunts that occurred during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century.  I started it already and may even make a story out of some of what I learn, but not right now.

I am also reading a lot of Phillipa Greggory.  I'll tell ya all about it when I finish.

Cheers

M.

This sucks!

Well, that time of year is upon us again.  There is supposed to be merry and cheer about, but unfortunately it's not going to well for my dear friend Florence whose mother is ill and in the hospital.  I hope she gets better but when I talked to her last week she sounded quite upset and you know it's bad when tears are involved.  Until next time when I'm not so sleep deprived.

In Toronto

I have a headache and I don't wanna do anything,  It's kind of been like this the entire visit.  What I would love is to have four days...a good four days of just work!  Where I finished all of my assignments and I don't have to think about it for a week.  I mean it...this is such a piss off!  I would say I was feeling like shit but that's not quite right.  Gaagghh!!!

The Big Day

Well, the big day is actually tomorrow.  I travel to Toronto to see my beloved and stay there for a full month and four days.  The night before is always a bit of a nervous tic.  I don't really want to go but once there I'm happy I'm there and then I don't want to go home when I leave.  It fucking sucks.  I hate the actual travel part of travelling.  The plane part and having to pack and then slog out to the airport and have to wait to get on the plane.  Wait to get off the plane, slog through the airport, wait for your luggage, lug it off a stupid carosel, get in a taxi and then have to travel all the way to the house.  It just annoys me!  The other way is even worse.  I wish I could just stay in Toronto.  *Sigh*

Slow and Steady

Finished Chapter 2 (possibly three) last night.  Florence said there might be some tightening up but we are going forward with a Percy chapter.  I'm not going to lie, I'm rather excited about it.  We've focused so long on it!  A year and a half of hard work.  I say three because Florence says we'll probably split chapter two in two parts.  Since I leave for Toronto the week after next Florence is going to give me some assignments for back ground work, such as a map of Paris during the Revolution to show the where of everything and possibly a time line.  At least that's what I think what she might give me.  I'm not 100% sure but I'm hoping the assignments can be done in a short period of time.  In the mean time, I'm also working on my first bio for my yet to be started blog about Queens.  I think it may take some time to finish that since I only do it when I have no other writing to do.  So far I've almost done the childhood with one source and still have two more sources.  It'll be fun!

Cheers

Excited

It's now only a matter of weeks until I go back to Toronto.  I'm excited but at the same time I'm not one hundred percent keen.  Though I love visiting Brad and hanging out with the people I know, I miss my dog.  I really do.  I love having my little rolly polly, dopey little dog.  She loves to cuddle and play and she's always happy to be with you.  She craves to be with you.  I do love my dear sweet little booger.
I'm scribbling a  new story.  Bits and pieces and being idly scribbled together, it won't see the light of the day because it sounds too much like the work Caitlin Kitteridge does.  I hope one day I will be as successful as she is, to have a couple of series written.
I dream that the story I'm working on will become something like the work of the lady who wrote the historian or some other best seller.  Of course, this is highly improbably.  Writing a best seller that shoots up to the top in about a year.   Basically. writing a commercial best seller is winning the lottery.  Writing a commercial and critical best seller is even more rare.  And since stuff like that never happens to me, unless I reeeallly need it (i.e. I got my lung transplant in six months instead of two years).  Another example might be when I got accepted into university.  Of course I couldn't finish it which was very disappointing.  I truly wanted to finish.  I know I can finish this if my parents don't move!
You might ask why me finishing my current story depends on if my parents move or not.
 My mentor lives here.  She can't travel because she has an illness that prevents her from doing so.  She's been a real help these past few years.  If I move down east then my story will never get done.  Though we could still communicate through email and the phone but I have always preferred being schooled in person, with a teacher I can talk to face to face, to explain any questions I have etc.  Besides, I really do love hanging out with her.  She is a very wise woman and she tries to make feel better about what I am doing.
Coming from a middle class, working family, I was raised that doing an honest day`s work and getting a ``real job`` where you get a salary then settled down, buy a house and be normal.   Don`t get me wrong.  I do like my individuality or what I perceive to be my individuality but I also wanted to have a normal life.  I wanted to have a ``real`` career and use it to travel around Europe, maybe marry a man from Europe in a European country for the rest of my life.  Of course, after I got sick none of this was possible.  I couldn`t work or go to school because I`ve developed such a case of high in anxiety in my normal life, that any kind of test or pressure stresses me out to the point where I made myself sick.  It was horrible and still is.  I have to take medication for it.  I take a very small amount but still...have to take it.
I guess I just have to pray to the Goddess until I finish this and hope against hope the right agent will pick up my manuscript and consider it to be enough to publish and sell it.  I don`t care how little money it might be worth,  I just want to get it on a bookshelf in a bookstore and have lots of people buy it.

Eh, anyway, gotta go!

Cheers!

A Slow Build

It's all slowly coming together.  Very slowly but surely, though I don't think I'll be able to write those one hundred enteries.  It's almost the end of September.   I should have thirteen entries in here at least but really there hasn't been anything to write about.  Even pointless crap. 
I am, however, looking forward to my trip to Toronto.  To see my boyfriend, my friend, maybe even my cousin.  On the other hand, I'm nervous about my trip to Paris as I don't have a valid passport and I have to have it for six months before I can use it abroad.  Crap!!!!  *Sigh* Well, I want to get it done before I leave for Toronto.  And I WILL!  I will push if I have to!  Arrrggghhh!!!