my journey as a civil war novel writer

Better to do it today, not sure how much time I will have to write after today. The last days of the year are always hectic socially. From now on almost every evening is filled with gettogethers with friends playing games. And in the daytime I have to do some research and work. It happens when you are your own boss. You are more inclined to work weekends, holidays en evenings then others are. My main resolution for next year is: to listen to my body better. Next year for the first time ever my body is going to be in the driving seat. No more taking painkillers to keep going. If my body is telling me it needs rest, I am going to do just that. It is not going to be easy, I know myself too well, but I plan to stick to it. And I would ask others to help me stick to this. If I am going to make a succes of my own business I have to. And I do want to be nice to my body. It has got me this far, it is about time I did something back. :) For everybody else reading this blog, I wish you a good ye...

Boy was this a year of ups and downs. I started the year cramming for an exam, for my first year degree in counseling & coaching. It involved going through 4 books full of facts and they asked tiny details. I make it! And passed the exam. The next two months I delved into preparations for my practice, I was well on track to start in July and full of confidence and got a lot of work done. In april some breaks were planned. With my then boyfriend and a group of english friends coming over for the elf fair. That is when things started to go to hell in a handbasket. I had some doubts about my relationship for a while now and that was making me unhappy. But it took me some time to voice them because he is such a nice guy and we shared a lot of the same hobbies. Round the same time my dad fell ill and was admitted to hospital. I set every thing aside to be able to take my mum to hospital everyday. For me with the RSI it is physically tough to do that and it meant that I could spend less ...

Graphics & Myspace layouts It is time to start this years reviews. I will start with the easier one, books, and leave the year's review of my life for another date. This year in Shelfari I kept a list of how many books I read this year. It are the books marked as owned. It comes down to 225 but those include study books. So it is not that bad. These I count amongst the highlights of the year. There were many more good books but I had to make some selection. Catherine Asaro - the ruby dice Not a new author for me. I love this series and am always looking forward eagerly for a new volume. It is a family saga in space. And it has got everything, romance, action, SF. The a uthor is also a scientist so she knows what she is talking about. And that combination of romance and hard SF make the series so very good in my opinion. patrici a Briggs - moon called An au thor that I only started reading this year. I tried some more new vampire/werewolf writers this year and most were oka...

Merry christmas to everyone all over the world. Everybody celebrates it differently. Parcels on chrismas eve or chrismas day, one day off or two. Here in the Netherlands we have the presents on christmas eve. This is what I got from my parents. I can use it when I go away for ebooks, music and films and to check the internet. But mainly I am going to use it for the practice. It has all legal software, linux based. It ways next to nothing and I can still type on it very well. I do have a laptop, [I want my mum to go and use that one more and not only for games!!!!!] but on bad days when my arms hurt it is too heavy for me. This one isn't. In between clients I can make some notes and do more with them when I get home. So it is ideal for my needs. I will blog about the weekend later. Monday evening I met with an accountant. It is all becoming so real now, the only thing missing is the clients. It is strange to think that I will be opening my own business. Exiting and more then a litt...

This time of year is always sooooo busy. Christmas is under a week away already, were has december gone!!!! Going to spend the weekend in Belgium playing boardgames so no blog for me for a few days. Wanted to let my readers know. :) Made another decision today, I have joined a paid dating site. They had a discount deal going on. And I feel I am ready for it again, so fingers crossed for me. The end of the year seemed like a good time to make a decision like that. New year's resolutions and all that. After the weekend I will tell you about the games I have played. Monday evening I have an accountant coming over. Yeah the practice is becoming very real. :) Have a good weekend everyone!

Yesterday was the tradiotional kaarsjesavond in Gouda. The main programme is the lighting of the christmas tree in the marketsquare for the first time. And all around the market square all electrical light is doused and the houses and the city hall are lighted by candles. It is a huge tree given by our sistertown in Norway every year. It is a very popular eve nt drawing a huge crowd each year. The last couple of years they have added a lot to i t wi th a whole day programme. This year I went along for the first time in ages, us gouwenaars tend to stay away on the evening itself because of the crowds. But this year I had friends coming over. Marjon and Susan came in the afternoon and Susan's husba nd Jaap joined us for the evening programme. We had a stroll over the market square, seeing everything in the daytime a nd taking some pictures of the old houses and of course cityhall and the old weigh building. They had some people out in period dress and dresses up as father christmas ...

Getting ready for another busy day, the last in a row now so I can use wednesday to friday to relax and get ready for the weekend in Belgium. Tonight is kaarsjesavond in Gouda. I will tell you more about it later in the week and share some pics hopefully. Finished reading the english heritage handbook, it was more setting a cross on almost eve ry page about things I would like to see. Hopefully I will get the chance to see some of them next year. Starting a new book tomorrow. Living in the past, a book about historic reenactment. It is about time that I read some more about that. Next year I am probably going to participate in my first. I have of course been a spectator at a few. I also need to read up on the english civil war, a time period that I don't know too much about. It is in April so I had better get a move on! I haven't said anything about my studyday on saturday yet. I was frustrated that I wasn't feeling any better but I did manage to go for most of the day. And...

Yesterday was the midwinter fair at the archeon. These festivals are getting realy popular in the Netherlands. It surprises me a great deal. From young to old a lot of folk will com e dressed up. Now I like doing that in the summer, but it was pretty darn cold yesterday and especially on saturday when I had to go to school. I love looking around and seeing all the people in their wonderfull crea tions. As I was not 100% well yet yesterday I had not brought my good camera and hardly took any pics. Normally there will be at least 100 pics on my camera at the end of the day, maybe more. The highlight here is as always professor doctor Roland Rotherham . If you ever have the chance to hear him lecture, go! He knows a great deal about medieval and older british history and he can talk about it for hours. But the special thing about him is that he is like the bards of old, he does so in a beautifull speaking voice, using facial expressions and wide gestures. And he does so with a huge dose o...

Just a note to let you all know I am still here. This week is not easy. Last week the first week of the withdrawal was a breeze, this one is hell. I got hit by flu, period and the severe headaches all at once. And after a while it plain starts to wear you down. No energy to even get out of bed, head hurts if you sit up, it makes you doubt life and everything. You see I also take the paracetamol to go out and do fun things, they give me that extra little bit of energy to keep going. What if I can't do that anymore now? What if i can never have fun again? Never go anywhere anymore. Yeah, that bad. Today I don't believe all of it anymore but yesterday i did. Today I kinda half believe it. still not good, but I will get over it, I suppose. Maybe giving up the painkillers will give me new energy. I just don't know. I just hope I will be able to go to school tomorrow and be able to have fun at the fair sunday and with kaarsjesavond with friends tuesday. I did manage to do osme re...

I am coming down with a cold, which is not making me happy at the moment. As you guessed it, I can't take anything for it. Well something for the coughing that does not have painkiller in it and stemaingfor my nose. But I like my paracetamol when I have a cold. I am a complete and utter ninny who does not like to lay in bed and do nothing. There are not enough hours in a healthy day so when you are sick the world around you doesn't stop and wait. I did manage to go out to friends last evening. There were five of us an d we were supposed to play a number of shorter games. Derk had bought a new game and it took a little while to explain. But around 8.30 we were ready to start playing. and around 24.00 we had still not finished!!!! I left about fifteen minutes later because by then I was starting to begin like crap. Pity because by then I was in a pretty good position to have a shot at winning. It was a fun game but a bit on the long side. And a bonus, I had Nina on my lap for mo...

Still hanging in there. I feel a cold coming on as well now, so a little bit scared for next week. Colds mean paracetamol for me to keep at least some energy and of course I can't. But today is day 5 and it is still not as bad as I thought it would be. If it stays like this I am a very happy puppy. Yesterday I saw the verdict in the O.J. Simpson case on tv. It made me think about justice again. Now I am no fan of the jury system at all. That man should have been convicted 13 years ago, no doubt about it. To 99,9% of the world population it was clear that he was guilty. The only ones that seemed to doubt it were t he members of the jury. But.... to this was a different crime and to gi ve someone 33 years for a robbery in which nobody was injured or killed. Well that is plain wrong as well. Yes he deserves punishment and he is finally getting it. Is this justice however? Somehow it doesn't sit right with me. I am doing some light reading. Not much as I find my mind jumping from o...

So far so good. Yesterday was a hard day but that was because of my dentist's appointment. They hurt me again and I could take no painkillers for that either. Tough, tough, tough, but I survived. so back to the game fair last weekend. It was great fun. Very different from the dutch one. Here there was only one sell ing stand but it was a big one and the y had huge discounts. On friday evening we started at the house to play a few games to get in the mood. Saturday morning we played Cuba. It is losely based on Puerto Rico but with lots of other options. In the afternoon we played Tribune, lot's of different elements in this one and we all enjoyed it. It was stuffy in the hall and by the end of the afternoon everybody was hav ing headaches. I did buy some discounted games today before going home. Aqua Romana and elfenko ning. Which I have both played before. And I took a gamble on a gam e called Origo. It was so cheap that I can't go far wrong with it. The thing with games,...

First an update. I am doing okaish. Had the last painkillers at 2.00 PM monday and today I had a headache for the first time. It is still bearable and I hope it stays this time. I think I have never gone through a headache without taking something. Am using gell packs and ice rollers etc. Natural remedies and it relieves some. Did my christmas shopping this morning, also got myself some treats. Doing anything more usefull right now is out of the q uestion. Back to last thursday and the christmas fair at castle de haar. we arrived around 4 in the afternoon, after getting lost, yup my fault. It was already getting dark a bit. The setting for this fair is very special, look at the picture. This is not a very old castle but very fairytale. And especially after dark it was beautifull to see. We did not buy much as the prices of most stuff were pretty steep. Did get some little things and enjoyed myself for a few hours. After that we drove on to Belgium were we would spend the weekend playin...

Back from my long weekend away, it was great fun! But more about that later in the week. I want to start with what went on today. I am now in for a little less fun. Went to the headache clinic this afternoon and honestly told them how much painkillers I use throughout the week. Before the RSI I kept it under control, but RSI causes more headaches as well through sore muscles and it slowly crept to be out of control. And with me on the brink of starting my own practice, it just won't do. I have to stop taking all painkillers at once. The first 2 or 3 weeks can be brutal, worse headaches then usual and I am not allowed to take anything. Then there will be 2,5 weeks of a transition period in which the headaches should get less again. After that they can diagnose what causes the headaches and begin an effective treatment. Needless to say I am not looking forward to the next couple of weeks. If I don't blog for a while you will know why. I debated waiting to start this untill after ...