My apologies for not updating my blog in a week; I've been busy and tired for the past seven days.  Every now and then, us bloggers do need a break or so.

This evening after work, I went to a birthday dinner for my aunt with my cousin, grandmother, and mom.  All was well and fun was to be had until just before we left, I could hear the constant faint screaming of a child from across the area in the Mexican restaurant where we were eating.  We all agreed that something should've been done but, unfortunately, the restaurant hostesses couldn't do anything about it (we were just leaving the restaurant after our dinner anyway).  This reminds me of a similar incident at the Spaghetti Factory years ago.  Dad and I went out to dinner and we were just browsing our menus when we heard a constant screaming from a table near us; apparently, a woman was trying to do her best to calm down a child who was clearly upset.  My dad couldn't tolerate the noise level any longer and requested to our waitress that we be moved elsewhere so that we could eat in peace and quiet (we were granted that request and enjoyed dinner without any further interruptions). 

Now, young children get upset from time to time; whether it's fatigue, hunger, or just wanting to be held by someone, there's a reason for their discontent.  However, when in a public place such as a restaurant, a retail store, library (especially a library), et. al., the best thing to do would be to take the kid outside to let him/her blow off some steam.  At my church, there are seats outside in the lobby where mothers can sit and calm down their upset kids and the minute a youngster starts crying, the parent would IMMEDIATELY head to the lobby to calm down the child.  Thankfully, parents are really good at managing their kids during services.  I wish that some parents would do the same in a restaurant.

Now that I've finished ranting, I have finished reading not one but two books.  I have finished Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackeray.  It's a sad novel but it's a great piece of work about superficiality at its finest.  It broke my heart to read certain parts of the book.  The second book I read was Villette by Charlotte Bronte.  It's not as good as Jane Eyre but it has that Victorian-Gothic touch to it, especially near the end of the novel.  Again, it does have a sad part or two but it's a good read and one can easily read all 657 pages of it in a day.  After work, I went to the library to pick up The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas so I can read it before the film version comes out in the summer, but it wasn't there so I will have to go to another library branch to see if it's available there (ditto for Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls).  Still, I didn't leave the library empty-handed; I checked out George Eliot's Middlemarch.  So far, I'm sustaining myself on a steady diet of Regency/Victorian literature so I can get a good idea of how to write my novel.  I've pictured almost every scene that I want in my book so much that I think I'll just draft a condensed short story version so that I can have something to work with when I create an outline.  I considered doing it this evening but it's getting late so I think I will do it either tomorrow or Wednesday evening.  However, I'd like to break from Brit Lit by reading Hemingway, something I haven't done since I was a teenager (did a report on him for my AP junior English class).

That is all for now.  Fin.