livingdeb | Entries tagged with learning

It turns out that for me, juggling is not like riding a bike.

An old roommate and I spent hours and hours through many, many weeks and learned to juggle. But then my juggling balls were ruined and I didn't get more until recently and now I can't juggle anymore. So I'm going to learn again. In case you want to learn to juggle, let me teach you like some experts taught me.

Preparation

You're going to need something to juggle. Balls are easier than clubs, torches, knives, etc. You can start with lemons or whatever, but the ideal juggling balls do not roll and especially do not bounce. They just go thud, and then you don't chase them all over the room, you just pick them up. Some kind of bean-bag or hacky sack type of ball is good. Game stores (and the internet) also have official juggling balls. I made my first ones and really liked raw rice as a filler--except that rice is edible and thus attracts, uh, some kind of beings who can eat through fabric. If you make your own juggling balls, use dark-colored fabric so they look good longer. You also want a little heft to them--rolled up socks are a bit light.

It is also recommended that you stand facing a couch or bed so you don't have to bend over so far to pick up the balls. My friend and I also practiced sitting cross-legged, but your knees might get in the way a little bit.

Yes, you will drop the balls millions of times. That's okay, of course! (Well, maybe you're fantastically talented and can learn physical skills almost instantly. Still, you probably don't want a super bouncy ball.) Probably you will screw up in so many different hilarious ways that you will be adding laughter to your day. Extreme lack of coordination is pretty funny, if there aren't any bullies around.

One ball

Start with one ball. Juggling is about good throwing much more than it is about good catching. Your goal is to start with your arms L-shaped with your hands face-up in front of you and your elbows at your sides. Toss the ball using a small upward motion so that the ball goes in an arc past your eyes and then down into your other hand. Practice tossing from one had to the other and back until your throws are consistent and you no longer have to move your catching hand (or feet) to get to the ball to catch it.

This step may take a disturbingly long time. But keep practicing!

Two balls

Start with one ball in each hand. Toss one as usual, and when the ball reaches its apex on front of your eyes, toss the other ball. Now that hand is available to catch the first ball, so catch it. Then catch the second ball.

Alternate throwing with the right hand first and throwing with the left hand first. You need to be good at both!

If this starts getting too hilarious, go back to one ball for a while.

Three balls

Start with two balls in one hand and one ball in the other. Toss one of the balls from the hand with two balls and continue as with two balls. Every time you catch a ball, immediately throw it again.

For me, the key was to learn to panic by throwing. Yikes! A ball is coming! don't just drop the other ball or hang on to it--throw it! And then you work to improve these panic throws.

Technically, once you have caught three balls in a row, you have juggled!

At first, your throws tend to get worse and worse with each throw, but eventually, you can learn to just juggle indefinitely.

More Advice

My friend and I learned from people who really liked to juggle. They, in turn, learned from someone who loved to juggle so much that he started a juggling club when he went away to college. They were all members of the Texas Juggling Society, which is full of people who like to practice, learn, and teach juggling (and other related skills), and that's where they learned. (Me, I have a problem with asking for help, especially from strangers, so I never joined.)

I really liked learning from experts. And I really liked learning with my roommate. We both stank for so long, but I stank worse than her. Unfortunately, I practiced just a little bit more often and eventually caught up to her, after which apparently she was no longer motivated. :-(

My friend and I also had fun making more and more ridiculous juggling balls. We even made one of pentagons! A normal cube shape is fine, though.

Related Music Video

Back when I could juggle, I was always looking for good songs to juggle to. I only found two, and of those, I only remember one: Art of Noise's "Dragnet", a rather silly song.

Do any of y'all juggle? Have you tried learning? Do you have a favorite juggling song you would recommend?

Short answer: No. I am not a fluent Spanish speaker.

My friend Amy from undergrad said they did work, so maybe my undergrad was better than the local community college, where I took my Spanish classes. And that could be, if the classes were smaller and they did a lot of talking and the students kept up with the work. I took two other languages there, however, (though not for as many semesters), and I'm going to say that their classes were not better.

My Spanish IV classmate who has learned many languages said that he found taking classes to be the worst way he has tried to learn a language. (And yes, he was one of the better students.) He prefers to jump in and interact with people who know the language. He is a cool and amazing dude and very, very different from me!

So, on to the long answer.

Reading

I still can't read the ¡Ahora Sí! newspaper without looking up a bunch of words. In fact, I don't feel any better at this than I did before I took these classes (after having taken three years of Spanish in high school and doing additional self-study after that).

One exception: My grammar knowledge is much better, and I do understand verbs better than before. I pretty much always know what tense they are, which is very, very nice. And in books that are mostly English but have some Spanish in them, I almost always understand the Spanish now.

Listening

I still cannot understand Spanish spoken in the wild except for the occasional word or phrase. And sometimes entire sentences (generally spoken by or to three-year-olds). That includes the Spanish spoken in mostly English movies. But I am much better at understanding the simple and clearly spoken Spanish on DuoLingo because I now know most of the words well enough to understand where most of the word separations are.

Speaking

Talking is much easier than listening because I can use only vocabulary that I actually know. And I now have enough vocabulary that I can often figure out ways to say things I want to say to people. For example, I wanted to ask "Is there a post office nearby?" I don't know how to say "nearby" but I do know how to say "near here" and "around here." I wanted to ask, "Do you know a good place around here to buy stamps?" But instead I settled for, "Can I buy stamps around here?"

But sometimes talking takes a while. Example: Here's what happens when I want to say "The children were six years old."
Head: The children = Los niños
Mouth: "Los niños"
Head: are = ser or estar? No, wait, we say "had six years" instead of "were six years old" in Spanish. Which past tense, though? Having six years is still happening, so tenía. No, it's plural, so that's tenían.
Mouth: "tenian"
Head: six years = seis años
Mouth: seis años.

Nevertheless, I now have to guts to try to speak Spanish to Spanish-speaking restaurant workers. This is big! There is one lady in particular who is often at our favorite restaurant. She will talk for ages with other people in my class who we have dragged to the restaurant, but I can also have a short conversation with her involving a few halting sentences.

Writing

I am very good at spelling and writing things in Spanish, once I figure out how to say them. Spelling is so much easier than in English. It really is almost perfectly phonetic, though there can be more than one way to spell a certain sound.

What's next?

I need a lot more vocabulary. And I really only do well with flashcards and by finding patterns (for the latter, see, for example, my blog posts on agent nouns, reflexive verbs, and compound words).

After that, I will also need to learn a lot more about how to make phrases, for example, how to choose the right preposition. I think this will be most easily learned from broad reading and watching movies. But meanwhile, I think I could also benefit from more crutches such as Zen Language, a system compared to DuoLingo.

Reasons to study a foreign language

And on a slightly different note, there are a lot of lists out there on reasons to study a foreign language. They mostly go on about how it will help you in your career in international business. Here are the benefits I would list (besides being able to interact with more people and media).

* learn a cool accent
* increase sympathy for non-native speakers of your own language
* learn specific strategies on how to help non-native speakers; ones I've learned include:
--- speak more slowly
--- pause between words; word breaks are not obvious
--- try different ways of saying things instead of saying the same thing over and over
--- use more hand gestures
* learn better grammar
* increase your vocabulary in your native language (for English, this especially true for Germanic and Latin languages)

We'll be taking Spanish III in the fall which means we have the entire summer to forget everything. I've already forgotten most of chapter five, for example. That's not good. And that's even though my classmates and teacher think I'm a straight-A student (ha!) and my last teacher even gave me the highest possible grade (102). (She is very big into rounding up.)

It's quite disheartening.

I have lots of ideas for things to do that will help me remember (and re-learn) this Spanish so that I can jump into Spanish III ready to absorb more. So many ideas that I probably don't have time for them all and should probably prioritize them. So here goes.

Flash Cards

Reviewing my flash cards is the single most important thing I can do. I also hate doing them. Every time I pull out a deck for a new chapter, I immediately see that I have no clue what some of the words are. Admittedly, I keep the hardest ones in front so that if I don't have time to go through the whole deck, at least I've looked at the hardest words (and concepts).

My 1.12-mile walks each take enough time to go through even the worst of decks (which I hope is chapter five) once, and most decks twice. So these walks will help me kill two birds with one stone. I plan to review one chapter per day.

DuoLingo

I'm still not the biggest fan of DuoLingo, but I like how I get a little exposure every day and actually am learning a few new words. And it's set up to reward you for doing at least something every day. And it doesn't have to take much time.

Puntos de Partida

I found this other text in the library that is bizarrely similar to the text we're using. It's as if someone gave two companies the same instructions, and out came Vistas and Puntos de Partida.

So even though I feel like it would be super boring to go through my own text again, it's actually kind of fun to go through this other one instead. And the library also had the accompanying workbook with most answers in the back. So I'm doing that, too.

And there are online tutorials which, unlike those for our book, are available to anyone. These are for a later edition than for the book I have, so they don't match up perfectly, but since it's just review, that's okay. The tutor is not as fun as the online tutor for my book, but she's basically good and, again, it's nice to hear things a slightly different way.

So long as I'm enjoying this, it will stay near the top of the list.

That's almost all I'm making time for now, but some additional things also seem like good ideas.

Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish

I've started going through this book many times on my own. It does many things fabulously but does them very differently than normal textbooks. For example, it starts with past tense. Now that we've studied past tense in class, I'd like to start this again and see how I fare compared to the other times I've gone through it. It does have some weird things, too, though, like it doesn't teach you second person verb forms until the very end of the book!

So long as I'm enjoying Puntos de Partida, I'll stick with that first because it seems more relevant for my current goal of remembering Spanish I and II content.

Children's books

The last two children's books I checked out were picture books with both the English and Spanish. It is quite disheartening how much of children's book Spanish I just don't get. Probably because the most common parts of language are the parts that get most mangled and make the least sense. (Most of the most common verbs are irregular, for example.) Still, it's a good idea to expose myself to real (baby) Spanish so that it can seem more familiar.

Spanish language movies

My last Spanish teacher highly recommended watching Spanish movies in Spanish while reading English subtitles. I don't think she quite understands my powerful ability to completely ignore what I'm hearing (except for the expression) when there are English subtitles. But she thinks it's good for helping us get used to what Spanish sounds like. And hey, I like movies.

Other learning websites

I've listened to a lot of Sr. Jordan's videos, but there are quite a few more I could listen to. I'm not wild about his songs I've heard so far, though Robin has found his indirect objects song and especially his preterite irregulars song to be helpful. Sr. Jordan teaches American high school students and so is very aware of which things are confusing and he explains well.

Barbara Kuczun Nelson has some lessons with really good practice attached, and we learned about this resource fairly recently, so there are many things left to check out. I've already gotten a lot out of the preterite versus-imperfect exercises I've done and plan to re-do those and do the others as well.

And there are plenty of others I've heard of but not tried out, plus googling for specific topics can lead to more.

Other books

Yea, libraries! I'll keep poking around libraries, seeing if anything looks interesting. For example, I recently checked out Charles E. Kany's Spoken Spanish for Flying Cadets and Our Armed Forces (1942). It has the most thorough description of how to pronounce Spanish (all in three pages) I've ever seen. I think I'm gong to make some flash cards! And part one is general (not just for folks in the Air Force) and only 13 pages--probably I can make it through that as well.

I also found Dwight Bolinger's Essays on Spanish: Words and Grammar (1991). I love that author:

"How could I persuade [my beginning Spanish students] not to be put off by the seeming strangeness of a language that was new to them? One way was to exploit what they already knew--often without knowing that they knew--about their own language. The trick was to find the parallels. I had the flicker of a hypothesis--that any phenomenon in any language will have, somewhere in its meaning or structure, a matching phenomenon in any other. We would see this as a rash form of 'universalism' nowadays, but my vision was not quite so grand; I merely believed that I ought to be able, when a student resisted something because of its oddity, to say, 'Look: you do this yourself every day; you just haven't recognized it,' and proceed to peel off the disguise.

"Any teacher faced with a 'why?' is compelled to test this hypothesis or fall back on the rapturous Whorfian copout that reads, 'Every language is a world to itself; accept it for what it is.' The sink-or-swim method. Of course we all must sink or swim eventually, and not every attempt to help someone across will succeed. But I think one is entitled to say, "I offer you a bridge; just don't expect me to carry you over it.' So there were some modest successes, and they are the main sources for this book, and putting them in one place is the main excuse for it."

Why, yes, he is a linguist. (Note to self: must resist urge to ask future teachers, "Must you fall back on that rapturous Whorfian copout?")

Sadly, I fear much of the book is over my head. However, I did understand the first essay, "En efecto Does not Mean In Fact." In spite of what virtually all textbooks say (including mine, in the evil chapter five). It means something more like as expected or indeed.

I at least want to look at the essays on topics we've covered. And I'm on the lookout for other works by him.

Yesterday we had our oral presentations in Spanish II, which was the last project, and thus we are now done. Whew!

Before class, one of our classmates said, "I only have to get a 2 on this to get an A." I replied "A 2? I have to get a 10." R added, "I have to get a 50." So, stakes were low for many of us.

We got to go first, like we wanted. Unlike usual, our skit just flew by for me. (Accidental pun, woo!) Our skit was about a flight on Air Rumba. I remember almost nothing. We did get big laughs during the part where the captain explains that Air Rumba is not great with emergencies, so if one happens (flight attendant pulls something out of the ceiling), just close your eyes (that something turns out to be a blindfold and the flight attendant puts it on), cover your ears, etc. Also, many, many people did not want any food or anything at all, though some people were thrilled to get water, popcorn AND cookies.

So I'm hoping that means I magically whipped through my lines quite well on some kind of high. R. says he missed a minor one. Our skit was well-received, so that was good.

I was worried that we'd gone a bit overboard, but the other skits had just as many lines or more than ours did, so we only went overboard on the props.

Unfortunately, I did have some trouble understanding the other skits. But I got enough from each one to find some funny bits, even in my least favorite one (though I'm not totally sure those funny bits were all intentional).

There was a nice variety of themes. The second skit was three friends getting together to plan a surprise party for a fourth person (also in the class!). One guy said, "I want steak. I'll bring the meat."

Then there was a game show where the MC would describe something in Spanish and the contestants would buzz in and guess what those things were in Spanish. I understood this one the best, so I loved it. The last question in the final round seemed to be a description of a heart attack, but I think the MC was just describing his symptoms in an unanswered call for help since he finished by slowly crumpling to the ground.

The next one was my favorite with two gals going from their baseball game to the emergency room, one with an arm in a sling and one with a bandage over her eye. They were totally hilarious, yet the nurse stole the show with her bored bureaucratic responses.

Next was two people ordering things from a waiter. Once they carefully established that a wine recommended for one of their dishes was also a great match for the other, they both ordered their own personal bottle of wine anyway.

Next two friends talked about their daily routine--one guy was complaining that he ran out of water in the shower, but then it came out that he spends a lot of time in the shower, not only showering, but also shaving and brushing his teeth. Then they each quizzed each other on something from their majors. I was a little surprised at first that the guy who thought it was weird to brush your teeth in the shower was also an ancient Egyptian king come back to life, but then I realized that really it was a who-am-I sort of game.

Finally there were two guys in an open-air market: one in charge and one asking questions. Suddenly, the customer starts complaining about various symptoms and doing hilarious acting across a table when a third person (who'd just been rolling an invisible shopping cart everywhere all this time while wearing a stethescope) figures out the problem--it's just indigestion.

Can you tell we recently had a unit on health and medicine?

After class I still felt drained. We had a relaxing evening and went to bed at a reasonable time. Three hours later, I woke up and never fell asleep again. I kept re-living scenes of our play and otherwise having racing thoughts.

Today I joined some old co-workers for a "poker walk" in which the employer encourages walking and now I'm still glad we're done with Spanish class for a while. I will still be doing Spanish all summer to try to get all of Spanish I and Spanish II material more solid in my head for Spanish III in the fall. It feels like I'm an expert in class, but when I look back at old chapters, it's shocking how many of those things I once learned are gone again. Still, I'll just be doing stuff that's fun and that's mostly review at whatever speed is fun rather than whatever some teacher assigns.

I need three steps to learn Spanish.

1. Understand it - Read the book; go to class; ask questions; do the lessons; look up meanings of words, parts of words, parts of phrases; find additional explanations for grammar points. I am great at this.

2. Get it in my head - Make flashcards and go over them repeatedly. Just because I understand it doesn't mean I remember it. I can understand it perfectly, explain it perfectly, practice it, and still have it completely disappear out of my life. It's a gift. (Why no, I'm not good at trivia!)

Basically, if it's not on a flashcard, it's not in my head. But if it is on a flashcard, then even if it doesn't really make sense and I have to just memorize it, usually I can.

I have been keeping up with this step but it is not as fun as step 1.

3. Make it a part of me - No telling. Just because I can get it in my head doesn't mean it's going to stay in there. I tried my flashcards from chapter one today and it seems like for half of them I had forgotten the answer, I had forgotten part of the answer, or it took me way too long to remember the answer. This is stuff I knew perfectly two weeks ago.

After a while, reading and watching TV and movies in Spanish should help things stick, but right now I can't really do those things. Although Robin was watching a bunch of videos on how to make Spanish tortillas, most of them in Spanish, and I could actually understand several phrases here and there.

Meanwhile, I'll settle for practicing daily. And going over flashcards from old chapters weekly.

My first Spanish class was today. At first I was a little afraid that our professor was going to be easily distracted into discussing unrelated issues. But she's okay. She does use some Spanish that she has not yet told us, but she mostly explains everything in English. And she likes to explain the actual meaning of things as opposed to just making us memorize phrases.

She has a good sense of humor. She probably has a good mix of toughness (no late things are accepted--we have to do what she says when she says it, etc.) and niceness - explaining things, correcting us, giving us second chances, answering questions (more than once if necessary). She wants us to actually learn Spanish and to enjoy the process. And she really likes some things about the language and the culture.

And she has some of the traits of my favorite dance teacher. She shows examples and counterexamples of how to pronounce things. And she tells us way more things than she expects us to remember and will tell us again--more things will stick each time.

Facebook Quotes of the Day

DK - feeling pained at Lewisville Family & Urgent Care - Getting checked out cuz of my migraine.

Bad news. .. doctor said he can't do a brain transplant. Gave me some ibuprofen 800 and some antihistamine? ?? We'll see.

Oh and now I get to start a diary of when I get headaches. Joy.

SB - You may find the diary useful in discovering your triggers. And once you know those, you can work towards avoiding them. I think one of mine can be poor diet combined with fatigue. And protein seems to help them.

DM - Also, it does not have to be a boring journal. Let's say, for example, that your migraine is named Gigantor. "I really wanted to get home to a nice relaxing dinner when all of a sudden, Gigantor's shadow fell across my head. 'This kitchen ain't big enough for the both of us' I heard him say as I crawled into the dark bedroom and curled myself into a tiny doodle bug shape. Gigantor appears to be a tiny bit afraid of the dark. ..."

An old roommate of mine who knew several languages and also taught language courses said that flashcards are key for building your vocabulary. So I decided to do some googling and see what I'd find.

I've been reading that it's a good idea to put different kinds of things in different colors and locations to help you remember. The example given is usually gender. Spanish has two genders. If you put nouns of one gender in one color and on, say, the left side of the card and the other in another color on the other side of the card, then it's easier to remember the gender. (I've also heard to always put "the" in front: "el" in front of masculine words and "la" in front of feminine words to help you remember.)

There are also three kinds of verbs that could be recorded in three colors.

And some adjectives have masculine and feminine versions while some are the same for both.

So, now I have an excellent excuse to get colored writing implements! It's important! For my brain!

**

I also learned (from reading reviews on Amazon) that modern index cards are not as thick as index cards from my youth. This is apparently true of both name brands and no-name brands.

It looks like buying card stock and making your own is not cheaper. I bet index cards are one of those things that are loss leaders sometimes at the end of summer. I'm thinking of cutting 3x5 index cards in half, though. Or fourths. We'll see.

And cutting up cards is way more fun with a paper cutter. I might be able to borrow one I know about in the next building at work; it's one of the scary guillotine-style ones from my youth. I've seen cute little ones with some kind of slider cutters in craft stores that look like they might cut only one card at a time with a much less satisfying cutting sound, but also with a risk of losing only part of your finger at most rather than, well, anything and also taking up a lot less space.

Of course the frugal method involves scissors (or, heh, folding and tearing), but it's harder to get them the same size that way.

I must get my own guillotine paper cutter! For my brain! (Wait, that sounds wrong.)

**

There are also flashcard apps, but they don't have colors. Anki is highly reviewed, but free only for big computers, not portable ones, and it also has a high learning curve. What's good is that it gives you the harder cards more often and vice versa.

I was going to start Spanish classes in summer, after doing as poorly as possible without lying on any Spanish placement test. Those plans have changed.

First of all, the local community college is much more worried about people starting at too high of a level than about people ruining the curve for true beginners, so they don't require a placement test.

But much more importantly, I found out at Chikuru's and Raaga123's end-of-summer party that Fraeuleinchen was going to take Spanish I this fall with P, someone we know from ballroom dancing, two weekday nights from 6:30 until 8:50 at a convenient location that actually has parking and isn't scary at night. Robin had the idea that we could join them (no, I don't know why I did not also have this idea until it was handed to me). Fraeuleinchen and P also liked this idea, and we have now all registered and gotten into the class. Woo hoo!

Automatic study group! Of course, we all know that study groups made out of your friends don't always work well and could possibly even ruin the friendships (or, at least, that's what I've heard about roommates), but I'm not too worried about this happening. I actually think everyone will be a good study group person unless they just don't have time in which case they will just be nonexistent.

I've decided it will be best if I take the bus directly there from work instead of hoping I get home before 6:00 like I often don't and then dealing with rush-hour traffic. Unfortunately, this will mean I need to bring lunch and dinner to work with me. That's easy enough in itself. The question is, how can I keep myself from gobbling down all my food before lunch starts, like I sometimes do? (Like I often do.) My best plan is to bring peanut butter and pumpkin butter sandwiches for dinner. I like them and they are semi healthy (protein, fiber, vitamin A), but I don't crave them. Especially at work, I generally want something hot and savory. So that might work. And if I bring two, and cut them in half, then even if I do eat some early, the serving size of 1/2 sandwich may slow me down enough so that I'm not hungry during class.

Another question is how to find enough time to study. It looks like 1 hour per day on other weekdays and 2 hours per day on the weekends would officially be enough--that seems possible. But nothing else will be happening on those class days but work and class.

I'm not sure what text we're using yet--if they go the same route as recent years, it will be one of those text + online-stuff-requiring-an-expiring-one-person-only-code things. That's fine for me; the money's coming out of my long-term fun fund (normally used for vacations and electronics).

I've looked up resources at the college. They have some sort of study lab with rooms you can reserve for study groups and with free tutoring (even in Spanish) as well as free online tutoring. Wow.

In the past, I've felt that anyone who "needs" tutoring is a failure, but being a tutor made me realize that (at least for statistics), tutoring can make the learning more efficient. I'm not sure how that works with language learning--I'm generally good at understanding concepts and terrible at memorizing vocabulary. We'll see.

I also thought it might be good to find a recommended text to have an extra source of info. Instead, online research led me to the Practice Makes Perfect series, so I've gotten Spanish Verbs and Spanish Nouns/Adjectives (used).

I've also tried to find the awesome flashcard ap I'd read about a while ago (I think it's Anki) which shows you the harder cards much more often than the easier cards, but still shows you the easier cards occasionally so you don't forget them. It uses science! My favorite! I haven't tried downloading it, seeing if it works for my iToy (portable) and computer (easy to type into) and sincs well between them and if I can get past the learning curve.

Finally, I do want to look for immersion opportunities--telenovelas, children's books, movies, etc. Then you can learn some things almost magically, where you know something's right because it sounds right even if you don't know why.

One of my plans for things to do when I retire is to finally learn Spanish. I would do all the things I used to do when taking classes:
* go to class
* do the readings
* do the homework
* study for the tests
* be well-rested for the tests
* ask the instructor questions/visit during office hours (didn't really learn that until the very end)

Plus I would do what my old roommate Cissy recommended:
* flashcards for vocabulary learning (and I once found a flashcard ap that looked really good)

And what my old friend Mattias did:
* try to do a lot of my self-talking in Spanish

And what my friend James did:
* try to get a study partner

And my old friend Jack:
* figure out who the smartest and best students are and sit near them and try to do any group projects with them

Plus I would do those things I've been hearing about from by academic advisor co-workers:
* start a study group
* talk to an advisor and see what is recommended
* check out any learning center resources

And what I've heard from other sources about language learning:
* study every day, even if it's just a few minutes--cramming doesn't work
* talk to Spanish speakers, even though you don't sound as good as a two-year-old (maybe--scary--or maybe just try conversation meet-ups and/or an informal class on conversational Spanish, plus at restaurants)

And my own additional ideas:
* pick up children's books from the library
* look at the same topics in multiple texts, not just our required textbook
* become a tutor
* watch familiar movies with the sound and/or subtitles in Spanish

I suck at languages. So even though I had three years of Spanish in high school and have tried to learn it a few times since then, I thought I'd take Austin Community College's placement test cold. And make sure not to answer any of the questions unless I was sure of the answer so I wouldn't look more advanced than I really am. I'm afraid I'll get into a class where there will be a lot of prerequisite knowledge I don't have, and I have enough trouble keeping up as it is. I'd rather start in a class where I already know some of the stuff and then I can learn every single other thing that is taught. And then by the end of the classes I will actually know Spanish--be able to talk to people, read my favorite local Spanish weekly newspaper, and maybe even read Spanish books in the original (though there's nothing in particular I'm looking forward to).

But then I saw a review of duolinguo, which teaches you things bit by bit and you keep score like in a video game that's actually fun. And because the lessons are short and repetitive, you actually learn things and don't get overwhelmed and don't forget last week's stuff while you're learning this week's stuff.

So now I'm thinking maybe I'll learn and re-learn as much stuff as I can on my own and then take the placement test, hoping I'll need at least one more class because group learning is better.

Opinions?

Quote of the Day - "Of course I can't go interview people myself because I have a medical condition where I don't want to." - Stephen Colbert

How do you choose a foreign language to learn? (This post is inspired by Tam who is learning a new language.)

most useful - The obvious choice is to pick the most useful language. I think it's good to know at least one spoken language, one written language, and one sign language. And generally it's good to know the ones that are most spoken in your country. For me that would be Spanish and American Sign Language. It's handy to learn languages used in your business (Japanese for Robin, Italian for opera singers), and the principle language of any country trying to take over yours.

But usefulness not the only good reason to learn another language.

best sound - I think it's most fun to learn a language that's fun to speak. Based on hearing people's accents, I think my favorite is either Italian or Russian. I was surprised to find that I liked the sound of German when I was studying it. Mostly I hear people liking French, but that doesn't do it for me.

favorite culture - If you want to hang around in your favorite culture or subculture, it's handy to know the language. If I were using this criterion, I think I'd pick Dutch. Klingon would be another option.

cultural heritage - It's nice to know whatever your elders are speaking. In my family, that's English. A great grandmother on my dad's side did immigrate from "what is now Poland" (Germany?), but she always spoke English to us, and it never even occurred to me that it wasn't her native language until just now. I don't feel any ties to my Irish, Scottish, Welsh, or German heritage. Oh, I did try to learn Hebrew to understand my then-religion better.

favorite literature - Well, I have bought a British English dictionary to help me understand some of my favorite literature. I don't have a notion on what my favorite foreign language literature is, though.

favorite movies - Probably Japanese. Possibly Cantonese for movies from Hong Kong.

brain exercise - You could go for the most alien language. Maybe one of the African ones with the clicking sounds? Or one with a very different sort of grammar? Certainly not a Romance or Germanic language for native English speakers. What's the most fascinating language?

hot babe - Traditionally the most motivating way. My favorite speaks only English, so I'm covered there.

best language - Ideally everyone learns the best language and then we all use that. English is not the best language, yikes. So many things make no sense or are otherwise crazy. Esperanto was created just to be easy to learn. I like the ones that just add "used to" to the verb to make it past tense and "will" to make it future. I like ones with no genders (Latin manages to have three: masculine, feminine, and neuter). I like how it's easy to spell in Spanish (except for knowing when there's a silent "h"). I like compound words in German.

Well, that's seven languages I have italicized and I hardly know anything about any languages--think how many I'd be interested if I had more data. In real life I suck at languages, but I still plan to work on Spanish and ASL (later) and I do enjoy learning a little something about the principle language of a place I'm going to visit.

I really hate when a so-called expert doesn't get one of the big, important facts right in a presentation.

Last week, some guy told an audience that you end up with a lot more money in the end by contributing after-tax money rather than pre-tax money to a retirement account (i.e., you make more money with an IRA than a Roth IRA). I had done the calculations before and knew this was wrong (based on the assumptions he was making), but everything else he had said made sense and he had a graph and I started doubting myself. So I did the calculations again and no, it's the same either way (assuming you lose the same money from your paycheck doing it and tax rates are constant).

This week some guy told an audience that your insurance's out-of-pocket maximum does not include the deductible. This was not what I had thought, so I looked it up when I got home. In all sources I could find where the answer was clear except one, they said the deductible was included. That one source said that (like co-pays) sometimes the deductible is included and sometimes it is not. (FYI, the co-pays used to count but are less and less likely to, co-insurance counts, and premiums don't count.) I don't feel I can trust anything he said that I didn't already know now.

I suppose I should never trust a single source completely anyway, and these guys have actually done me a favor by reminding me of that. Still, I wish I could have learned all the stuff I heard the easy way.

Quote of the Day - 'I think Freud got it wrong. He saw women staring longingly at men's pants and didn't realize we were thinking, "Dang! I wish *I* had pockets!"' - Miser Mom

Research Article of the Day - ABC News's Tidy or Messy Environment Can Impact Decisions and Behavior, Study Says - A study implies that an orderly environment makes you more likely to do the right thing, more likely to be generous, and less likely to be creative than a messy environment. The cool thing about the experiment is they didn't just look at people's natural environments--they stuck people into random environments for the tests.

Since my superpower is rationalization, I have a guess on why this is true or rather how this could be true. My guess is that being in a neat environment feels like everything is going well and you have time to do things right. And being in a messy environment feels like doing things the normal way obviously isn't working, so you better try something else.

Disaster Article of the Day - the Orlando Sentinel's Disney-area resort collapses into 100-feet wide sinkhole - The obvious amazing thing in this story is that half a building collapsed into a pile of rubble in a matter of minutes. But to me, the most amazing thing is that someone was able to make a guess at what the weird cracking sounds might be in time to get everyone out of the building--there were no deaths and no injuries. How do you guess a thing like that? (Yes, I also was amazed at how many people got out of the twin towers.)

Video of the Day - Upworthy's The Most Honest And Heartbreaking Reason To Leave Your Front Door Unlocked I've Ever Heard - A poem that can teach you more about what it's like to have severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and even hints on dealing with this in your loved ones. Also good if you need to cry for some reason.

Here's a really good idea you should all steal. Take something you're good at or even still officially learning, and offer classes in it to your friends.

It turns out one of my acquaintance/friends is teaching tai chi on Sundays at the house of another friend and I got to try it out today.

Afterwards, in honor of pi day, someone brought rhubarb pie and someone brought nut bars baked in a circular pie pan. We did not eat these exactly at 3/14 15:92 (aka 4:32 pm today), but the pies weren't exactly circular, so it worked out. By the way, this was another really good idea you should all steal.

I've never tasted rhubarb pie and have been a little afraid, but it was really good. Of course it was "too sweet" for some and with not enough rhubarb for others, so I may not like all rhubarb pies, but I now feel more willing to try a recipe for strawberry rhubarb pie I have which came highly recommended by a blogger I read but who doesn't actually know me, so she never offers me a taste.

I finally took defensive driving today. During my research I learned that you don't have to pay $25 for the course if you are not using the course to dismiss a ticket. Of course, I'm not sure where you can find these insurance-only courses. Except that I found scfr's blog entry Take a Defensive Driving Course for a Discount on your Car Insurance. Since I actually have GEICO (though this can work for other insurance companies, too), I followed her link and went to the National Safety Council's class which costs only $19.95.

I do not recommend this class.

It doesn't make you get up fifty times to check various numbers on your vehicle to make sure it's really you. Instead you just get asked some yes/no questions at the beginning (like "Your favorite color is red") and then you periodically have to answer them the same way later, so that part is well done.

And of course each section has to take a certain amount of time and if you read too quickly it doesn't like that. But it tells you how many more additional minutes you must spend and only makes you press a "back to the lesson" type button. So you can just set a timer for that amount of time and go off and do some interruptible chore, like laundry. This was okay the first time, when I had 7 minutes to blow. The last two times, when I had 31 and 37 minutes to blow, it got old. Especially the last time when I wasn't there while a security question popped up and thus didn't answer it in time and was logged out. (Logging in works great and brings you back to where you were, but who knows how many minutes I lost.)

The worst part, though, was the extremely poor writing. Okay, it wasn't that bad, but when you have to spend hours reading, mediocrely bad writing gets old very quickly.

Some statistics were bogus (over 90% of all deaths from transportation?) and even contradictory ("Slightly more than 50% of all fatal crashes occurred on roads with posted speed limits of 55 miles per hour or more" yet "Many drivers believe that the most dangerous driving situations involve high speed driving environments such as those that are encountered while driving on freeways or interstate highways. This is contrary to actuality." I'm pretty good at figuring out how seemingly opposing statements could both be true, but death sounds sort of dangerous to me.

Stupidest picture award: a photo illustrating the section about how drugs other than alcohol can affect driving. Pictured are: a small mound of white powder, white powder in lines next to a razor blade, some joints, a syringe, a spoon with a bent handle next to a candle, a bag of green flakes, a spiral notebook, a hardcover book, and part of a brightly colored vinyl bookbag, lunch sack or knapsack. I guess you shouldn't read while driving.

Best picture award: A moose grazing by the side of the road.

Scariest review question award: "In Texas, children younger than 4 years of age must be properly restrained in an appropriate child restraint device." True or false? Turns out this is true, though without knowing they are talking about while the kid is in a moving vehicle, it sounds like torture. Certainly you are not allowed to keep all your children younger than 4 years of age locked in the closet. (Not even in Texas.)

Favorite typo sentence: "If a driver is following too closely to the vehicle in front and has positioned him or herself between two cars in side-by-side lanes, there is no much room for evasive action."

I found myself trying to figure out who wrote this thing. A dumb, but enthusiastic person? A dumb person in a hurry with a pile of facts and a large word goal? A person under the influence of mind-dissolving drugs? I mean the sentences are barely even organized sometimes.

I am not even one of those editor-type people who can't help noticing every typo within a two-mile radius of me (obviously, to those who have been reading my blog). And it still drove me nuts.

One good thing was the breakdown of what happens during the first 7/10 of a second of impact in a vehicle collision, 1/10 of a second at a time. Also, I never thought about how motorcyclists are at risk from driving down the center of the road, where everyone's oil leaks, at the beginning of a rain storm, so we should give them even more extra space then.

Favorite good idea I've never thought of: When driving down the center of a road not wide enough to easily stay on your own side, one should honk the horn as one approaches a blind curve.

Advantages of this course over other ones:
* low cost
* convenient if you have a convenient computer with fast internet connection
* can do other things if you read too quickly
* do not have to set aside large chunks of time
* you do not have to continually get up to look up your VIN etc.
* cure for insomnia

Disadvantages:
* poor writing - bad grammar, poor organization, junior high school anti-drug extremism
* poor proofreading and at least one wrong answer on the mini review tests
* can't trust what you're reading
* all text and mostly useless pictures; the one video isn't even a video; it's a transcript of a video
* could take much longer than six hours if your breaks are too long or you fall asleep

Thumbs down.

Remember a couple of weeks ago I decided I would spend more time doing stuff and I would spend more time learning Spanish?

I have spent zero time doing stuff (as I had described it before). However I have started learning Spanish again.

Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish

I'm bringing my Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish book with me and working on it to and from work. This book overpromises a bit: "This book will teach you to:
1. Speak Spanish
2. Read Spanish
3. Write in Spanish
4. Think in Spanish"

(I like to say each of those things louder and louder: speak Spanish, READ Spanish, WRITE! in Spanish!, THINK! IN! SPANISH!!!)

But it is the most Debbie-friendly book for learning grammar that I have found. It's all about learning rules, having lots of examples and lots of repetition, and minimizing memorization as much as possible. It's not so great with vocabulary other than cognates.

I have worked with this book so long that my first copy is falling apart. I have never finished it. Actually, I may have finally finished it last time, but the last lessons are rushed and hard to learn. Still, I keep forgetting things, so it's good to start over. I do get quicker each time.

I have already gotten to the first test on page 83. I still managed not to get a perfect score, but it's because in order to get a right answer, I need to:

* remember the right word
* remember the right form of the word (e.g., singular, first person, feminine, etc.)
* remember how to spell it properly
* remember how to do accents properly
* put accents in the right place

I am not a detail-oriented person. But once you learn it, then you start using it properly, and then it becomes habit, and you no longer need to be focused on details, you just communicate.

Destinos

I also have plenty of supplies for "Destinos" and have watched two episodes.

I have also watched many (most?) of the Destinos episodes before once, but this time I'm going to take more time to learn the vocabulary for each unit. I need a lot of work with vocabulary.

Spanish Proficiency Exercises

And lastly, I've decided that I don't just need to study Spanish every day, I need to listen to it every day. Listening is my weakest point of all, but this is how babies learn, right? You just get used to hearing things certain ways and then they sound right that way. Arg, and people talk so fast!

So I was very happy when someone e-mailed a foreign language learning page link to the academic counselor group at my employer and I checked it out and I found these Spanish proficiency exercises. My favorite part are these tiny videos showing people speaking, about one paragraph per video (at least in the beginner section). The first unit is on every-day objects. Each person is in their office or kitchen or something and telling you about various objects at hand, almost like you are a little kid, but somehow it makes them all seem cute rather than patronizing.

"And this is a wallet, which is used for money and credit cards ..." And they keep lifting things up and showing you. My favorite one where was someone was showing us a can opener, saying this is indispensable in the American kitchen. Other places, too, but mainly America where everything is in cans.

They also have the words inscribed so you can read along, but I don't at first because I would totally abuse that as a crutch. I just listen for at least two times, trying to figure out as much as I can. Then I listen again while reading, once or maybe twice. Then I usually read very slowly and then listen again with or without reading along for a few times.

They have folks from all around the world, speaking Spanish with different accents. And did I mention, they're all so cute!

I have several ideas on things to just do, but I don't seem to be doing them.

By "things" I mean creations that make learning fun. They range from the "ambitious" (a lovely word that polite people can use when they're thinking something negative) to the easy. Most are not on academic topics. They do not all sound good for any one job. But so what? I should just do some anyway.

Frankly, I am having trouble doing all kinds of things I want to do. And why? I have no good reason. My job takes only 40 hours, I have no dependents (except some plants), I'm both physically and mentally healthy and uninjured, I have a steady income and place to live, and I have good friends.

Nevertheless, I feel stressed and like there are too many things I have to do and not enough time to do what I want to do. I end up relaxing with time sucks that are pleasant but are neither things I have to do nor things on my list of things I want to do.

And so I have decided that I am going to focus some of my free time on doing two things I want to do. One is learning Spanish. See, there's a weekly Spanish paper I like and that I want to be able to read. Not to mention Hispanics I might like to understand. Also Spanish is popping up in movies, crossword puzzles and other cultural settings. Also check out these reasons to visit Spain (mostly pictures).

And the other thing I want to consciously try to do is to create things. I need to create more things. And some will be these learning materials and some won't. In order to make more time, I am going to work fewer sudoku puzzles and stop checking books out of the library that aren't related to one of these goals (unless recommended by friends).

Robin was just told that if you want to get good at guitar, all you have to do is practice for at least an hour every single day. For ten years. And then voila, like magic, you can play guitar. He's also recently been told that some people whose ballroom dancing we admire practice it every single day. I've heard similar things about learning languages, improving your physical condition, and developing better habits. So, I'd like to work on Spanish every day and on a project every day.

I'm going to start right now. Just as soon as I start a load of laundry and figure out supper and drop off these overdue library books and pick up some laundry detergent while it's still on sale.

**

My work colleagues did, indeed see me do a cartwheel and wanted the whole story. It's sad that if you are a grown-up and do a cartwheel and are not a gymnast, this is interesting. Maybe I should do a cartwheel every day too.

I think I am going to start learning Spanish again. I suck at learning foreign languages, but one thing I've learned over the past couple of decades is that even slow learners can learn; it just takes longer.

The little session on why we should learn a second language I went to was unconvincing, but there have been a few times I've wished I could speak Spanish, both when Spanish-speakers have been working on my house and at some of the little restaurants and food carts around my neighborhood. I don't feel I need to; everyone has spoken English well enough that I could get across basic information. But it would just be more fun.

Plus now there are more resources than ever before for me.

Destinos: An Introduction to Spanish

This is a program involving video and workbooks, episodes of which I first saw on PBS. My sister bought almost all the stuff for a class and then gave it to me! Woo hoo! You can also watch the videos on demand at the above website.

This is a really great program for beginners because it has accomplished the difficult task of being possible for beginners to understand and also being interesting. For example, on the unit on clothing, the main character talks about the kinds of things she will need for her trip from the northern to the southern hemisphere, and she names each item as she packs it. It's not forced at all, but part of the plot. There is a whole soap opera detective show and you really don't know and want to find out what's going on. It's a good story, and the characters are likable.

Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish

I love this book. Of course all language learning requires a lot of memorization, but this book pretends it doesn't. The author does everything she can to teach you everything in ways that make sense. She finds every pattern she can so you just have to memorize a few patterns. This is exactly how I like to learn. She doesn't totally succeed, and it's still hard, but not crazy. I have never quite made it all the way through this book yet, but one day I will.

I can study from this on the way to and from work.

If you have ever expressed interest to me in learning Spanish, I have probably given you this book.

Graded Spanish Readers

I have three readers from the 'fifties when they actually used science to teach languages. The editors took classic stories written in Spanish and re-wrote them in simplified Spanish so that only constructions you already know are used. Every time they introduce a new word, they try to repeat it several times afterwards so that it sticks in your brain.

Pimsleur Comprehensive Language Program

This is a mostly listening course recommended to me by raaga123 which is really great. There's lots of repetition of all the new stuff for a long time, and you get to practice speaking, even if it's just pre-composed sentences. Lots of people go nutso with how much repetition there is at the beginning and how long it takes to start learning real quantities of stuff.

I got to try these out from my library for a while before the discs started getting lost and too scratched up to listen to. I was actually able to remember numbers very easily for a while afterwards. I think this might be totally worth the money, especially since you could sell it again afterwards and get most of your money back if your disks weren't missing or scratched.

Library

My library has a large section of children's books in Spanish. At my peak, I was able to slowly get through the Spanish language edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I did have to look up one out of every five words, but I enjoyed the writing so much that it seemed worth the time. Even the toddler books have plenty of difficult constructions.

DVDs

Many, many DVDs come with Spanish dubbing, subtitles, or both.

Ahora Si!

This is a free local Spanish language newspaper that is actually interesting to me. The other papers I have seen have focused on immigration issues and were full of ads by companies that seemed like the slimiest of the slimy catering to the poor. But this one has articles on all kinds of topics and is also my handiest source for sales brochures from Target and Home Depot. Also, I have several times found out about events such as the annual Settlement House Garage Sale from this paper which I hadn't noticed from any of my other sources.

Utility Bills

Our utility bills often have inserts in both English and Spanish. I often try to see how much I can figure out from the Spanish side before reading the English side. I fear these are not well-written: I found a typo today. And if I can find a typo, that's a very bad sign. Still, I learned how to say carbon monoxide.

http://www.meetup.com/

This website is the one resource I learned about from the conference session I attended. There is a new meetup group for Spanish in Austin which I may look into later.

Classes

Various classes are available in my town including informal classes, community college classes, and university classes. I don't think they'll let me audit any classes, though, because you just don't learn by auditing (since they're not supposed to let you talk or turn in homework) and because intro Spanish classes are very difficult to get into. Also, they're five hours, and we only have permission to blow off three hours of work to go to class. So I won't be using these, at least not for now.

Spanish-speaking Countries

I know the best way to learn a language is immersion, but that's not happening. Yes, I have a Spanish-speaking country right in driving distance! But I'm not wild about the aspects of Hispanic culture I have seen so far, with few exceptions. I do like Latin dancing. I do like beans, rice, and tortillas. And I like the idea of girls celebrating their fifteenth birthdays by wearing dresses that look like wedding dresses--I like to think this makes it less likely they'll marry someone just to get the fairy princess wedding and that it minimizes the Bridezilla phenomenon.

But basically Hispanic culture seems in many ways the exact opposite of my favorite culture: computer geeks. I'd generally rather hang with minimally religious egalitarian overthinkers than macho Catholics. It's a bias I have.

The important thing is to find some way to practice reading, writing, listening, and speaking. I think I have plenty of resources for the reading (which I find relatively easy) and the listening (which I find harder). Also, an old friend who learned Spanish faster-than-average said that he would always try to compose Spanish while he was walking from place to place.

**

But you know what? I probably shouldn't. If I'm going to be doing something this time-consuming, I should probably be working on getting ready for my next career, which I'm pretty sure won't require the amount of Spanish I could learn between now and the time I start it.

Today R. and I took a class in adult CPR at UT's mass CPR training. I was very impressed when I took this mass CPR training three years ago. This year it was less impressive.

First, instead of sending us to large mats in a large gymnasium with three other students, a teacher, and two manikins, we were sent to a regular classroom with 32 students, 3 teachers, and 16 manikins. There were no mats, and the floors had not been recently mopped.

Second, although we were taking the second session, several bugs had not yet been worked out with the supplies.

Also, I got a paper cut when someone tried to hand me the instruction sheet but realized they were handing me two and didn't want me to take two. I actually bled.

Then they didn't have R's card ready after we waited in a long line, nor after we came back and they had brought fresh cards from the printer.

It was still a good class. Several things have changed since I last took this class, and some of these changes happened in the last year.

The main change is that the procedure for CPR is now to do 30 compressions instead of 15 for every two breaths. This is because scientists have found that it takes several compressions to get the blood going, and it's best to interrupt compressions as infrequently as possible.

Bizarrely, if you can't detect any breathing in an unconscious adult, you are now supposed to immediately give two breaths and begin doing compressions without ever checking for a pulse. We were told this was because when adults aren't breathing, and you can get breaths into them (i.e., they are not choking), then it's pretty safe to assume the problem is cardiac arrest. That's scary to me because I have very few risk factors for heart attack (love of donuts, pretty much), and most of the risk factors for osteoporosis (including little tiny bones). I would appreciate people checking for a pulse before they start breaking all my ribs.

I wonder if this is a US thing because on the average we are all getting so huge, or if it really is true for adults in general. Well, if you find me unconscious, you have my permission to check for a pulse before doing compressions. But apparently, getting started with the compressions ASAP is one of the keys to survival, so you should probably skip the pulse checking for anyone else.

Another change from three years ago is that our manikins clicked when our compressions were deep enough, and clicked differently when they were too deep.

Another change is that not only did we each get those plastic mouth shields (or, as R. likes to call them, shower curtains), we also got our own personal molded face to put on the manikin. You have to attach the back of the face to the breathing tube, and that is easier to do if you first turn your face inside-out.

I'd still recommend this class, but now I'd also recommend you bring knee pads or a cushion. Also, it's good to keep your stomach muscles in shape; we had to do CPR for two minutes straight twice.

Today we fought feeling housebound by going out for brunch. We met R's best friend J and J's friend W who we'd never met before. The mysterious W who we hear all about but who J has been assuring us is not imaginary.

Too much gentlemanly crap. We couldn't just go through doors in random order; I always had to go first. But the conversation was good.

We discussed several important issues such as whether it's better to have your college courses be short (like 5 weeks long in the summer) so you can concentrate on them, be motived to keep up with the work (because you always have something due the next day) and still remember things from the beginning during the final or whether it's better to have them long (like 16 weeks) so you have time to let all that information sink in and so that when your brain just won't accept any more of one subject, you can switch to another subject. I was the only one in the latter camp.

Then we went to the thrift shop near my house that's open on Sundays and learned that they now having dressing rooms. Only two, and they're not that great, but now I can actually get clothes there. Today I tried on lots of stuff, but only one thing fit well enough, so I got some pants for $4.

**

It's freezing outside, but it's still 65 degrees (18C) inside. That's good because that sealant doesn't look any drier than it did the day after the installation.

**

I didn't do any exercise today. Or yesterday--except for 15 minutes of strength training yesterday.

**

But I did start knitting. Some co-workers are knitting seven-inch-square, um, squares, to put together into a blanket to give away.

This means I'm having to deal with that whole issue of gauge. I've been avoiding that issue all this time by knitting and crocheting only things where you can just eyeball the size. But to knit a seven-inch square, I have to know how many stitches make seven inches. The wrapper on my skein of yarn explains that using that yarn, with #8 needles, you need 4.5 stitches per inch. So I cast 30 stitches onto my #8 needles and did a few rows. Too short. By just over an inch.

So I pulled the needle out and remeasured and it wasn't quite as much too short.

So I unraveled it all. I hate unraveling stuff, but it's not like I can knit anything very fast even if I only have to do the whole thing once, so that attitude doesn't make much sense. Then I cast on 35 inches. I've now done about ten rows, knitting through the entire movie "Office Space" (except when I was distracted). Now it looks like I did two stitches too many. I'm just going to go with it this time.

**

I also finally looked at my recording of the Blue Lapis performance I got. I was afraid the filmmaker would ruin it by focusing on the faces or being way too far away or something. The shots were sometimes a little too close in to see everyone when focusing on one person didn't help. And they were sometimes too far away and you couldn't see well at all. And sometimes the shots switched between three camera angles when really a single one of them would have been the right one throughout an entire section. On the other hand, well over half the time the best view was shown, and several times double-exposure was used to good effect. Overall, it was not ruined, and someone can watch this and see just how cool it was. In fact, watching this might be as good as seeing it in person, although watching this several times would not be as good as seeing it several times in person because you keep missing the same things!

So now I'm going to subject various people to it. Heh heh.

Not only that, unlike normal commercial DVDs, there's no crap. There's some titles, a performance, and credits, and then it plays again. I decided it's a perfect thing to have going on the TV during parties. ("Koyaanisquatsi" is another such movie that is more readily available.)

Site of the day - Mother Jones: This Guy Can Get 59 MPG in a Plain Old Accord from The Simple Dollar. I learned there are people called hypermilers who are really into getting the best gas mileage possible from their cars. They don't change their cars so much (inflating tires, removing luggage racks and junk from the trunk) as they change their behavior. Some of the things I'm not going to do like driving too closely behind a big truck or driving at very different speeds than the cars around me because I think they're dangerous and/or rude. In fact, I'm probably not going to change my driving at all. Still, it's amazing to know what's possible.

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January 2026

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Page Summary

Learning to Juggle
College Spanish Classes: Did They Work?
Spanish Review
Spanish II Skits
Steps to Learning Spanish
Spanish Class Okay
On Flashcards
Spanish this fall
Spanish Learning Strategies
Choosing a Foreign Language
One Wrong Fact
Tai Chi on Pi Day
Defensive Driving
This is a Can Opener
On just doing stuff
Learning Spanish
Easier If You Turn Your Face Inside-Out
My Day

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Note of the Living Deb

Entries tagged with learning

Learning to Juggle

College Spanish Classes: Did They Work?

Spanish Review

Spanish II Skits

Steps to Learning Spanish

Spanish Class Okay

On Flashcards

Spanish this fall

Spanish Learning Strategies

Choosing a Foreign Language

One Wrong Fact

Tai Chi on Pi Day

Defensive Driving

This is a Can Opener

On just doing stuff

Learning Spanish

Easier If You Turn Your Face Inside-Out

My Day