Good morning, Readers!

My! My!  Weebly has switched things up this morning.  There are a bunch of cool new features for their blogging function, including the ability to schedule posts (finally. The lack of ability to do so was the only complaint I had about the system).  Neat!

That's not what today's post is about.  Today's post is about being too busy to breathe.  I do this to myself, of course.  And, if I'm going to be completely honest, I rather like being busy.  It keeps me from boredom, and I always feel more productive and thus more satisfied when I'm so busy I can't think.

There are a bunch of things that I need to get done.  Today, for example, I must do my Welsh lessons, write the eNewsletter that is going out tomorrow morning (which includes writing a section of story), try and get my 3 000 words down (I've been failing that, by the way, averaging just under 1 000 a day), start reading Calculating God by Robert Sawyer (as we'll be recording that book for the special filming of Nights at the Round Table at Can-Con this year) and make notes, and I have to arrange set up and tear down for Can-Con this weekend.

All this in between work, kung fu, kickboxing, weights and dance lessons (yes, dance lessons) while finding time to eat and sleep.

Normally I have the weekends to calm down and unwind a bit, but Can-Con is this weekend, and I'm incredibly busy during that too.

I'm going a little insane.

This is not a complaint, though I do have to caution you that if I speak words and they make absolutely no sense whatever, or if you ask me a question and I stare at you with a glazed expression, it's because I am flustered and exhausted.  Please be patient with me this week... and next.  I'll need next week to recover!

Right, onto Welsh lessons now!

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Last night I was terribly naughty and skipped training.  It was for work reasons, in my defence.  And by work, I totally mean play.  I was out at the Chiseries reading last night night, filming the event for Silver Stag Entertainment.

The readings were fabulous!  I managed to capture all of the first.

And then my camera frizzed.  And my back up frizzed and now I have patchy footage of both the wonderfully entertaining hat story duel, and the final story... which was spectacular, by the way!

I'm furious and sad and in need of coffee this morning to make things better.  Only I can't have coffee this morning, because construction at the office means that the kitchen is out of bounds right now.  I can't make a pot.

I hate everything.

In happier news, I will be reviewing Welsh lesson three.  With luck it'll be easier than the first time, which nearly exploded my brain.  We are introduced to mutations during this lesson... and then told not to worry about it.  Of course I'm worried about it!  I'm a barely contained perfectionist that must get 100% on every exam ever.  At least I was in High School.  University rescued me from perfectionist hell.

Except about the things I really care about.  You should have seen me work on Celtic Studies everything.  I adored it and it didn't feel like work.  It was just really intensely interesting stuff that I was doing for credit.

I digress.  The point is, my perfectionist tendencies are back, and I must get this lesson perfectly before I move on. So... yeah.  This morning will be spent speaking Welsh.

More on the Welsh thing... sorry if it bores you.... it excites me.  I've been listening to BBC Radio Cymru (BBC's Welsh language radio) online, and while I understood very little, the words I had learnt to date popped up like crazy and I didn't need to think on their translation to know what they meant.  This pleased me.

Ahem.  Sorry.

After Welsh it back to writing, because my brain doesn't get a break today.  I didn't write at all yesterday because I was editing together a trailer for Nights at the Round Table (Silver Stag's video podcast) which will be shown at this weekend's Serenity Charity Screening event held by the Ottawa Browncoats.  The event details are HERE, and you should go.  It's a fun event.

If I'm very lucky, I'll get to my 3 000 word goal.  Monday I managed only 2 000, so I'm not overly hopeful.  Still writing even three words is better than writing none, so I can feel relatively pleased to get that many words down.  I won't be too upset with myself if I don't hit my goal, is what I'm saying.

Right, I have to go.  Have a great day all.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!  Or should I say, Bore dda!

For those of you who follow me on Facebook (if you don't, click HERE and like my page.  For reasons), you will probably already know that last week I started learning Welsh in earnest.

Don't tell my father.  I'm supposed to be learning French.

The point is, Welsh has been on my list of languages to learn since I started university and heard it spoken during one of my Celtic Studies classes.  My Celtic Studies professor, Paul, was a Welshman.  He still is a Welshman, but is no longer my professor.  He's a good friend now.  In any case, he read an untranslated section of Y Gododdin during class once.  Strictly, Y Gododdin is Old and Middle Welsh, being from the Middle Ages and all; and it's about a Cumbric tribe, but I digress.  This post is not about the history of Britain (however intensely fascinating I find it).

The point is, I have loved the language since.

Quite recently, Paul has started a small group of Welsh learners in Ottawa.  As a group, we are currently working through the first course on the website Say Something In Welsh.  It's a great collection of Welsh language lessons served to your brain via a podcast.  The format is fantastic.  It makes learning the language relatively easy and pressure free.  And fun.  The focus of the course is speech, reading and writing are for later.  For whatever reason, it really works.  I find I'm picking up the language relatively quickly, and it's fun and exciting.  I am hoping that the people behind Say Something In will do a course for Occitan (because I also really want to learn that).  And French... of course.

Ahem.

I am learning the Northern Welsh dialect, which, I have discovered, suits me a good deal more than the Southern one.  I find it easier, for some reason, though it is technically a little more complicated than the Southern version (at least thus far).  I have also discovered that I am a massive snob about how the word Cymraeg is pronounced... as in, I much prefer the Northern pronunciation to the Southern.  Not being a native speaker at all, I am fully aware I have absolutely no right to my snobbery.

Dysgwyr Cymraeg Ottawa (Welsh Learners Ottawa) is coordinated via Facebook.  If you're interested, you should totally sign up.  Just join the group by clicking HERE.  We will meet roughly every month or so, with the first meeting happening  9 Hydref (9 October) and are currently working through Course One, Lesson Three so you're not far behind at all.

Join us and learn a fantastic language!

For the record, I cannot tell you why I am so interested in the language and culture of Wales, or the pre-Roman culture of Britain for that matter.  It's not like my interest in Occitan.  My father's family can be traced to Languedoc in France, which is (or used to be?) Occitan speaking.  I have an ancestral connection to the language.

I have no such familial connection to Wales.  At all.  My grandmother's family were from Norfolk and of Cornish extraction, with some Norwegian thrown in for fun and games.  It's a very romantic story of ship jumping for to wed a pretty Norwegian girl... or something.  I'm actually not clear on that.

Anyway, I haven't any connection to Wales which may fuel my interest.  My connection to Britain is very distant and I don't consider myself British, not even when claiming descent (though I do claim Celtic descent; both Britain and France were Celtic, and since those are my dominant lineages, I call myself a Celt.  Usually in tongue-in-cheek fashion.  For obvious reasons).  In fact, I can safely say I'm French and feel less weird about it than claiming I'm British.

Don't ask me why.  I don't know.

Still, despite being in no way Welsh, the language and history of the culture have pretty much always been intensely interesting to me.  For no reason whatsoever.

Since that is the case, I'm claiming a past life association.  I was totally a Briton in the Iron Age in a past life.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Right, here is a techno version of a song sung in Welsh.  Paul posted it to the group yesterday and it's catchy as hell.  You're welcome.

It's about boiling saucepans and a cat that likes to scratch some poor kid named Johnny... or so I've gathered.

Oh, and to translate the title of today's post, it reads:

I am going to speak Welsh.

Ciao!