The only thing positive that could be gained by my exposing and/or outting the man for who and what he is, is that maybe then he would stop infecting other unsuspecting individuals. But, that's a very big maybe folks. Just because someone is taken to task on any given issue does not mean they are automatically gonna curb any questionable and/or threatening behaviors on their part.
I think when it comes to any type of STD's that you've personally been infected with, the two best things you can do is take as excellent care of your health as you possibly can and definitely do your best to make certain that you do not infect others with it. Beyond that, I dont think it should ever be an issue of whether this-or-that-person infected you, with the only exception being those individuals who knowingly infect others for whatever irrational reasons. Those are the people I think we all need to keep a close eye on.
I'd like to request something different from my readers as I close this piece. Please tell me - what would you yourselves do if you were in the position I was in? I'm serious, I'd really like to know you guys' & gals' take on this entire issue. I realize that I'm a grown adult and can make my own decisions just like the next person, but I'd like to hear peoples' feedback on all of this - did I indeed do the right thing or should I have tried harder to figure outta way to turn him in without destroying his life in the process? Looking forward to hearing back from folks on this and as always, thank you for reading.
do not like to be away from Boston for any certain amount of time and although where they want me to go in CT is only about an hour and 45 minutes away from where I live now, I'm just not totally thrilled about it all. When they first told me about their plan on Monday morning I just stood there and listened and smiled and went "Uh huh....I see....uh huh....hmmmm..." when in reality I wanted to scream out loud "Are you fucken whacked in the head!?!?! If you think life is so grand in bum-fuck-egypt, then why dont you go there!?!" Now I can finally understand how Joan Crawford musta really felt when Mr. Mayer asked her to leave MGM - notta good feeling by any means! Okay, maybe it's not all as melodramatic as that but with the way my situation is these days, I'd rather not leave Boston at all, even though it is only temporary.
Another con to all of this is that I'm gonna have to strictly do my apartment-hunting strictly via online the entire time I am away in Connecticut but I dont think that will be too too problematic. After all, I've been looking for a more affordable apartment for quite some time now so that I dont have to keep working 2 jobs and am hoping to make this a reality by fall-time so that I can finally return to working just 1 job and having more of a life. 
As I've stated previously, I love Mother Nature just as much as the next person and yes, Connecticut is very pretty, scenic state; HOWEVER, after growing up in all those years enclosed by Mother Nature in every direction, I can truthfully live the rest of my life without it. I'm not kidding. I dont need the endless clumps of trees constantly springing up all over the place; the countless meandering streams that wind themselves through section after section of low-lying rocky hills, while people who wear Rolexes and dont believe in using deodarant hike their bony rich asses from there to kingdom-come; mega-sized equestrian estates, with their descendants of My-Friend-Flicka running rampantly and smelling profusely all over the place; and, more than anything, I certainly do not need the lack of civilization that is so prevalent because quite frankly, I literally cannot take it! 
No, no, I've lived the quiet natural life way too much in my early years of growing up and I refuse to go back to that. For those who love that kinda lifestyle, go buy a farm somewhere and knock yourselves out. If I could go back in time and change anything about my life, that right there would be at the top of the list - to never ever have been exposed to living in such isolated wilderness. Talk about stifling suffocation the good ole' fashioned way - no thanks.
I've been wanting to write about the Candian Pacific liner EMPRESS of BRITAIN (1931-40) for quite some time and now that I finally know how to properly load photos into my blog entries (still keeping my fingers crossed as I claim this) the time has finally arrived. Whenever any of us maritime historians or "ship nerds" write about any given ocean liner, we always try to provide the general background of each individual ship, such as her statistics, when she made her debut on the Seven Seas, what happened to her towards the end of her career and other specific tidbits. Even though such information is instantly available on any given internet search engine, I will include some of the statistics regarding the EMPRESS of BRITAIN; however, there are a couple more specific reasons why I am writing this piece on her now.
Before I go any further, a special note to both my readers and any maritime historians out there. Please do not confuse the EMPRESS of BRITAIN (1931-40) in this piece with the other famous Canadian Pacific liner EMPRESS of BRITAIN (1906-30), a proud reliable liner unto herself, as well as the virtually identical sistership to the ill-fated EMPRESS of IRELAND (1906-1914). Incidentally, the British shipping lines werent the only ones who listed and numbered their vessels in specific chronological order. The EMPRESS of BRITAIN of 1906 was considered # "I", the ship in this piece considered #"II" and a later EMPRESS of BRITAIN of 1956, and one of the last Canadian Pacific liners built, was considered # "III." In addition, in this piece as well as any piece regarding ocean liners, you will notice that I refer to every ship as "she" only because that has always been a revered maritime tradition. The only exception to this rule in all of maritime history would had to have been the Compagnie Generale Tranatlantique's (the French Line's) superliner NORMANDIE (1935-42), whose board of directors always referred to as "He."
Although this may sound somewhat cliche due to the fact that it's been used to describe almost every single ocean liner ever created, the EMPRESS of BRITAIN was indeed one of the most unique liners ever built. The rationale behind her design was just as unique as the liner herself. The board of directors of the Canadian Pacific Line came up with the following concept - instead of having travelers, especially those more inland in Canada and the American Midwest, take a 3 to 4 day boat-train to board liners in the port of New York City, why not offer them the advantageous choice of taking a 2-day boat-train to Montreal, have them board the EMPRESS of BRITAIN and thus take the quicker St. Lawrence River route out to the open seas? In other words, give ocean travelers the same safe, fast, luxurious service to Europe they had grown accustomed to, only for a quicker trip and atta better price. Yet by the same token dont provide the public with the average, well-constructed sturdy vessel, rather make sucha ship one-of-a-kind, unlike any other out there. And that's exactly what they did.
Some of the statistics regarding the size and strength of the EMPRESS of BRITAIN are as follows: she was 760 feet long, 97 feet wide , towered 12 stories above the sea, weighed in at 42,348 tons and could travel atta overall speed of 25.5 knots, or roughly 47 mph(!) and carried 1,195 passengers and 714 crew members. She was dressed in the traditional color scheme of all of Canadian Pacific's "White Empress" liners - all-white lower and upper hull, green waterline cap-off, blue/green stripe around her entire upper hull and the traditional yellowish-buff colored funnels, 3 of the largest funnels ever installed on a ship, until the advent of the French liner NORMANDIE four years later. She was designed and built at the John Brown shipyards of Glasgow, Scotland, who would also be the future builders of Cunard's QUEEN MARY and QUEEN ELIZABETH. The EMPRESS of BRITAIN was not only the Canadian Pacific's new flagship and largest liner ever built, but she was also the largest Canadian liner ever built when she made her maiden voyage on May 27, 1931.
Her construction was nothing short of amazing for she was not only larger, heavier and faster than any battleship afloat during her era, but there were some details that went into her design that the majority of her contemporaries never had. Due to the fact that she would most likely encounter alot of the thick ice and smaller icechunk flows that were so prevalent on the St. Lawrence River during the winter months, she was designed with an extra-durable double hull in her bow section as a safety precaution. That's not to say she was unsinkable but unlike her North Atlantic counterparts, her hull needed extra reinforcing in order to ensure her longevity on the route she was designed for. She was also the first major liner to be utilized as a cruise-ship during a good portion of those off-season winter months when passaging up-n-down the vastly frozen St. Lawrence River basin sometime proved impossible. In addition, her yacht-like stern afforded her engines less pull when the ship was at full-speed status, thus allowing her to reach the heightened speed levels her owners hoped she would achieve. Although Canadian Pacific Line's original intent for her never came into full fruition - she wasnt the most profitable liner of her era, but well-traveled and well-loved nonetheless, the practicality of systematically shutting down a third or more of her boilers during cruising season, when she didnt need to travel as fast and thus not require as much fuel consumption, did indeed serve her owners wisely, especially in the depression-plagued world of the 1930's. 
But like so very many of the other great ocean liners of her era, when war clouds loomed everywhere in Europe in September,1939, the EMPRESS of BRITAIN would find herself painted battleship grey and serving her country in one of the worst world wars known to mankind. Sad to say, like many of her fellow liners, she too would become a tragic victim of man-made warfare. On October 26, 1940, while laden down with troops, the EMPRESS of BRITAIN was spotted by German bombers off the northwestern coast of Ireland and successfully divebombed twice, which in turn set the ship on fire. The next day, with the ship still burning, British naval destroyers and other aiding craft successfully set up tow-lines to her to attempt to bring her to safety. But to no avail. On October 28, the German submarine U-32 spotted the burning EMPRESS of BRITAIN and torpedoed her twice, with only one of the two detonating. So, the captain fired yet a third torpedo into the EMPRESS'S hull, which set off explosions within her hull, and thus caused her to list over on her starboard side and sink. The EMPRESS of BRITAIN wasnt the only ocean liner victim of World War II but she was the largest passenger liner ever sunk during wartime circumstances and when you encounter the story of her final days, you'll usually find the moniker "largest British passenger liner ever sunk during wartime." And that's where I have a HUGE problem with her story. 
Yes, the EMPRESS of BRITAIN truly was the largest ocean liner ever sunk during wartime circumstances; but, it's the "British" part that I not only feel is inaccurate but is also largely responsible for the fact that most of Canada's younger generations have never even heard of this beautiful liner because their connection to her, as well their country's ownership of the vessel, has been taken away from them by many misinformed historians out there. By allowing sucha travesty to remain in force, contemporary historians are not only both defaming and staining the memory of the EMPRESS of BRITAIN, but they are also allowing her history to fade away and die and that is wrong. As a matter of fact, it's more than wrong and I for one choose to stand up against it today and every day from here on out until this horrible wrong has been righted.
I've always been passionate about my stance to both preserve and promote the true stories of the Canadian Pacific liner EMPRESS of BRITAIN but in the last several weeks, especially since the 70th anniversary of her maiden voyage took place this year, it's been bothering me something fierce. I even went to one of the creators of one of the ocean liner webpages on Facebook and asked about why the Canadians dont justifiably claim ownership of the great liner's memory and he told me what alotta maritime historians claim - that the Canadian Pacific Line was mainly run by the Brits and that her port of registry was London, which therefore made the EMPRESS a British ship. To him and every other maritime historian all I can say is this - I totally disagree.
Just because an ocean liner is built in any given country, that does NOT mean that that vessel is soley owned by that country. My gawd, over the last 100 years or so, there have been so many ocean liners built in this-or-that country for shipping lines in this-or-that country, as well as had ports-of-registry totally different from their national origins, that it's nothing new in the maritime world. During the 1930's, the EMPRESS of BRITAIN was not the only ship built, as well as port-registered, in a country foreign to her own - the STOCKHOLM of 1938 is a classic example of this. She was built in Italy yet she was never even launched, but destroyed on the very same stockyards where her keel was laid down. This was not true just of these two liners, there were a whole slew of liners which were constructed in the same exact manner. In other words, does that mean the STOCKHOLM was an Italian liner because she was built there? Absolutely not. The Swedish American Line ordered her to be built there and when she was destroyed during the war, it was Sweden's loss, not Italy's. I think y'all get the point of what I'm saying. It is historical blasphemy that every book, every periodical and every website that has information pertaining to the EMPRESS of BRITAIN insists that all claims regarding her belong to the British beause they dont, they belong to Canada. She was a Canadian ocean liner built for and managed by a shipping line in her home country, so it only makes sense that the history of this vessel be both preserved and revered in her native land, Canada.
I'm sure there are folks over in Canada who could give a rat's ass either way about any and everything pertaining to the EMPRESS of BRITAIN but for those Canadian citizens who do care about their maritime history, I would very much like to say to them "Look, it's your national right, as well as your country's historical right, to lay permanent claim to this ship and it's history." For those of you over in Canada who are just as passionate about ocean liners as I am, you dont have to sit back in your chairs and say "Damn, we never even hadda national flagship in our country's history" because you most certainly did. And you still do. Dont get me wrong, I'm not encouraging or fostering anymore anti-British sentiment than what already exists over there in Canada but what I am stating is that as Canadian citizens, you do have the right to justifiably reclaim your country's maritime history - or any other part of its history for that matter.
It's been said that one person cannot change the world, that they can definitely make a profound difference, but that it takes more than just the actions of one to make a major impact. Maybe that is true and maybe no matter how much I try to defend as well as promote what I know is the truth regarding the EMPRESS of BRITAIN, maybe things wont change but I hope that in time they will. One thing is for certain, at least by writing about her and sharing her story with others, I have managed to keep her memory alive, here in the year 2011 and hopefully even beyond that. Thank you for reading.
Whenever a blogger has technical difficulties with their blog, I have no idea if it's politcally correct or not to let their readers know; but, being the fairly outspoken individual that I am, I believe in having the cards totally up on the table at all times. With that being said, since the 1st week of May, I have been having major technical problems with Luctor Et Emergo but didnt realize just how bad these problems were until a dear friend brought them to my attention earlier this morning. Point blank, I currently have no way of knowing who's reading my blog and who's not because my readership numbers are no longer being recorded accurately. Is this concern vanity on my part? Hell no, when you're a writer and you have a certain audience you are trying to reach, you actually need to make 100% certain that you are doing your best to reach that particular audience at all times. Without that, it's sorta like flying solo without a co-pilot and dont let any writer out there fool you - the relationship we share with our reading audience is not only essential to us writers, but it's damn near crucial.
There really is no other more appropriate title for this piece than that because in the last month or so, I've been encountering a tremendous amount of people online who have either been recently diagnosed, or are currently battling this-or-that kinda cancer and in the majority of the discussions that I've been a part of, one of Top 10 questions is "Well, how will it affect my body, including my hair?" Like with every disease out there, each person's body is gonna react differently towards such treatments as chemo and/or radiation. Sure, you'll find similiarities in people's experiences but the way any given treatment option affects another person's body may be different for another person who is using the same identical treatment option, it all depends. 
I've already written about my own experiences with testicular cancer in this blog a few times prior to this piece and the last thing any writer wants to come across as is a broken record; so, for those of you whom are not battling cancer, or have no one in your lives who is currently battling it, you may wanna skip over this piece altogether, it's up to you.
My chemotherapy was extremely intense. Following my orchiectomy (the polite medical term for removing one of your balls), I went through 3 cycles of chemo, each cycle consisting of 5 consecutive days of chemo, followed by two weeks off, and then repeated for another 2 cycles. It was no joyride, that's for sure. Monday thru Friday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. I'd go to the cancer clinic where they would hook me up to an IV and that is exactly where I would sit each day for 9 hours straight. Oh sure, they made you comfortable and you could get up to walk around if you like, like if you had to use the lew, but whatta pain in the ass it was hauling that damn IV machine around. I guess this is a bit harder for me to talk about then I previously thought, even after all these years. Okay, onto the main subject.....
Here's what I was told about hair loss via my oncologist as well as the oncology nurses, that I....may or may not lose all my hair on my head and the rest of the body....that when my hair would grow back, it would be like one or more of the following - it''d either be it's own natural color, only a darker version of it; or, it would be gray or totally white...the tecture would be totally different, very very coarse and grainy, akin to almost a straw-like feel to it...aside from the areas of where I would lose hair on my body, the only other extremely rare possibilities is that it would NOT grow back in certain areas OR my hair might fall out more than once during the intermittent chemo cycles.
I'll never forget the day I went in there to attempt to have my hair evened out, and how nervous I was when I took my hat off and showed her all the patches on my head where clumps of hair had gently fallen away. I started crying instantly and she looked at me right in the face and grabbed one of my hands and said "Dontcha worry Sweethaht, it's gonna be okay, it's all gonna be okay..." I'll never forget her and her adorable Boston accent! After surmising the situation we decided together it was best to simply shave off the rest of the remaining hair that was left. She was sucha nice lady and reassured me that if I had any further problems with my hair or even my scalp to give her a call and she'd get me in right away, and that if she could lick cancer, anybody could. I'll never forget her.
I'm one of those folks who firmly believes that it's who you are in the inside that counts, not how you look on the outside; however, though some of my fellow blonde compatriots may or may not agree with the following, alotta us blondes take our hair color very seriously, we have a deep sense of pride regarding it. There's so many myths out there, like all blondes develop thinning hair and become bald by such-n-sucha age, so when my hair remained the same color it did when I was a teenager (I was 33 at the time of my cancer) up until my cancer period I thought to myself, in a very vain way "As it should be, ya sure wont get this color outta friggin bottle." And, since I've always viewed myself as a very average, simple-looking person, my hair was my trademark, probaly the only thing I was ever ever vain about in my entire life. So when I lost it, it wasnt just the process of losing my hair that upset me, it was like I was losing a part of myself, a part of how I identified with myself.
Regarding the rest of my body, I happened to lose body hair in very distinct places. Aside from my head, I lost all armpit hair and all...uhm...crotch-hair. I know, some of you are probaly thinking "Uh, TMI, Spice, TMI!!!" but hell, we're adults, I think y'all can handle this discussion, or so I assume...lol. 
As for my crotch-hair, well c'mon, let's face it, they had to remove most of it anyways to perform the orchiectomy so I didnt have a problem with that hair loss area either. It all grew back in too but of course, naturally, a darker color than before! Damn dishwater blonde color...I guess for the first time in my adult life I truly understood why some people do dye their private areas. I mean, to look down there and exclaim "Whooahhh! What the hell's up with THAT color!?!" Damn, when you cant even feel good about THAT area, then you know it's sad! lol...I'm just being silly, I'm totally over it, really....for the most part.