A very good place to start...

Welcome, one and all, to the first post for my self-inflicted week-long February blog posting challenge.  To begin it all, I'm going to recap and explain a bit...

In this post I requested that anybody inclined to do so give me up to two topics they'd like to see me post about, and seven would be randomly chosen--one for each day of the week.
Now, some people ended up suggesting more than two things--in those cases, I chose the two I'd rather talk about (haha) and put them on the list for the Random Selection.  There were also a few that I thought could be condensed into one post--a little like Q&A things--so on the list for the Random Selection, I added a space for a post to answer those questions.  And, as it happens, that ended up getting the first spot for the week, which I considered quite appropriate.

So, I'll answer those now, after thanking everyone who suggested topics for their contribution. :)  I hope you'll enjoy the posts this week!

And here are the questions/topics for this post...

Joan asks what I would do if someone gave me a million dollars.



Thank them, of course. :)
Haha.  Okay, let's see... well, my very first thought was that I'd get a private helicopter, because then I could go visit My People who live far away almost whenever I wanted, or pick them up and bring them to come visit me.  However, I'm not at all sure about the practicality of that.  How much would that cost, anyways, and where on earth would it be kept, and who would fly it? o.O  But in any case, you can bet I'd do a lot of buying of airline tickets.  Heehee.

I think I'd definitely go to England--no, Europe.  Well, parts of Europe... I'd also be interested in France, Ireland, Scotland and Italy.  But England would be #1.  And I could do it without having to worry about pinching pennies, which would be niiice. Difficult for me to get used to, because I'm sort of a tightwad by nature--but nice. ;)  Also, I would take along a Certain Friend of mine who likes to scheme with me about going there together, and I'm sure none of you know whom I mean because I never mention her.  At all.  (Cough.)

This place right here is at the top of my to-see-in-England list. :D

And after doing something quite stunning and magnificent, I would save the rest.  And get interest... maybe I could set up an annuity?  Haha, I know little about these things. :P

Miss Melody Muffin says "I'd like to hear your opinions on foreign languages- which one or ones you might like to learn, what ones you definitely would not want to learn and why...."
Nice!  Okay, let's see.  The number one language I'd like to learn would be French, I think.  Just because it seems the most old-fashioned... it was, after all, an Accomplishment for the 19th-century lady.  It would also help when reading some classic literature--some of the authors sort of expect you to be acquainted with French, haha.  (Jane Eyre, anyone?)  Not that I particularly like French--actually I'm sometimes a bit annoyed by it. ;)  Spanish would be useful, so I suppose I'd like to know that... but it often irritates me too--maybe this stems a little from when my brother had a Spanish class in college and kept pestering me with words and phrases.  Ha.

As to languages I really would not want to learn--probably most Asian languages.  I mean, that's just way too different.  (So yeah, I'm not going to ask Mr. Knightley to teach me Chinese. :D  Speaking of which... was he supposed to know Chinese or did Emma just expect him to teach her anyway? ....rabbit trail)

In the end... I love English.  I really do.  Sure, it has a lot of oddities, but so do we all, so that gives it personality.  Haha.  I like its descriptiveness, how you don't just have one word for a general thing, you have a whole bunch with slightly different meanings so you can express yourself better and say precisely what you would like to.  (By the way, I find myself growing increasingly attached to thesauruses... aren't they cool?!)

Hamlette asks What is it about the Regency that fascinates you?
The world of Jane Austen. :D
Well... that's the plain and simple truth.  I doubt I would be half as fascinated by the Regency period otherwise.  But other than that... I guess it's interesting because it's sort of its own little blip in history: 19th century, but not yet Victorian.  It has fashions all its own, like the empire waist, that lasted only that long.  (As the only thing ladies wore, I mean--obviously later, fashions were inspired by all sorts of past ones.  I don't notice any sort of empire waist dresses being in fashion again until the 1910s.)  Hardly any of the fashions were very extreme, either-- especially not for super rich people, haha-- they were lovely and simple, not weirdly elaborate.  Every era has some oddness in fashion, but that one seems to have less, especially when I consider that it's in the midst of the 18th and 19th centuries.  The men's fashions aren't really my favorite... but then, when are they?  Ha.  (Okay, well there probably actually is an answer to that rhetorical question, but that would be a rabbit trail, wouldn't it?)

I guess I'm just that frivolous that when I'm asked why a particular era interests me I start talking about fashion. :P  Really, though, I'm not usually much interested in history from a political standpoint.  I mean, there's the War of 1812, but... well, it got us our national anthem.  That's cool. ;)  Other than that... *shrugs*

Anyway.  It's just fun to see how certain ways of life and habits were changing a little bit during this time, merging into the Victorian era but not quite there.

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