DuoLingo

One of my friends clued me into this website/app called DuoLingo. 

Supposedly, you can learn a second language using this site.  I decided to start doing it to refresh my Italian, but so far, I'm not that impressed with it.

First of all, it's not conversational Italian.  Most language courses start with phrases like

Hello
What is your name?
My name is...
How are you? 

and so on.  You know, stuff you can use. 

This one starts with "I am a girl", and  "That is a boy". 

"Enter the Italian word that describes these pictures (Hint:  it is the word for woman)", but if you don't already know the word for woman in Italian, how are you going to know what to enter? 

Then, there are the lessons where you have to listen to someone say a sentence in Italian and translate it into English.  But the Italian is so badly pronounced that sometimes it's impossible to tell what they are saying.  It's nearly impossible to tell the difference between words like E , ho, and ha. 

Their response when you point this out is "Well, you're just not used to hearing Italian."  Well, duh.  For someone trying to learn a language for the first time, no you aren't.  That's why words need to be enunciated clearly rather than mushed together in faster than normal speed. 

Besides that, I lived in Italy for three years, so I'm well used to hearing spoken Italian.  I never heard a native speaker pronounce it so badly. 

All this to say, I'm not sure I'm going to stick with it.  And I sure wouldn't recommend it to beginners.  There has got to be better language apps out there. 

Santa Tracker

NORAD

P.S. While you are there, go to the Things To Do page and listen to Cody's current favorite song:

Santa Wants A Tuba For Christmas

P.P.S. Another good site for the kids is Santa's Secret Village
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Feeling Better

I woke up today feeling much better. It's amazing what a good night's sleep can do for you. But I did have a mild headache and a bit of nausea on into the day, so I may have had a mild bug. In fact, I'm still a touch nauseated, but not enough to knock me down. Thanks to everyone who wished me well.

I finished the
Here it is in its entirety:

Those who guessed rocking horse were absolutely right. The fun thing about this is that we don't even know what we are knitting until the pattern emerges. I was as surprised as the rest of you. I know, I know...I was a bit excited about this one. Next time, I promise I won't make you look at the button every single post.

Speaking of looking at...has anyone seen the new Nissan/Heisman Trophy commercials? There are two of them in which various college mascots are chasing a Nissan truck that has a Heisman trophy in the back. I've watched them several times and recognize a few familiar mascots--the Texas Longhorns, the Florida Gators, the LSU Tigers, the Tennessee Volunteers, the Oklahoma Sooners.... They even have a giant Ohio State Buckeye rolling after the truck a la Indiana Jones. But no matter how hard I look, I haven't yet spotted a Delta State Okra.

And lastly, as if you didn't spend enough time on the internet: Jackson Pollock

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Skies and Snowflakes

Happy Birthday, Katie! She is 11 years old.

We usually spend the weekend after Thanksgiving putting up our Christmas decorations. It's a little different this year. I bought one of those pre-lit trees last year, and when I got it out yesterday to put it up, I noticed that about half of the lights weren't working. I checked all the bulbs to make sure they weren't loose, checked the fuses, and the wires at the base of each bulb to make sure it was making the connection. When none of that worked, I called the customer service line to see if they had any additional suggestions. They couldn't suggest anything I hadn't already tried, so now they are sending me a new tree.

Our tree is not up, but we did put out some of our other decorations. It was fun doing that in the new house. In our old house, we had put everything in the same place for so long, and this year, we had to figure out where we wanted to put things. Cody actually did most of the decorating, including coming up with this arrangement:

Yesterday I didn't post anything but a picture because I was really tired. I had an appointment for an upper GI yesterday morning, and I couldn't eat or drink anything after midnight. Now, I don't normally spend the wee hours of the morning eating and drinking, but somehow knowing that I couldn't drink anything made me so thirsty. I kept waking up during the night thirsty, even coughing because my throat was so dry. Consequentially, I didn't sleep well and spent the rest of the day in a brain fog. However, you will be pleased to know that my tests showed no abnormalities in my upper digestive system.

While I was waiting for my appointment, I saw one of my co-workers up there. He told me he'd been there all week. His wife has cancer, and apparently she's not doing well at all. Dennis told me he thought she was dying, and that she'd be better off if she did. That must be so hard, to watch someone you love suffer so much that you come to that conclusion. I've never met the wife, but Dennis is such a nice guy. I can't help but feel for him.

And now for some good news. I washed and dried the scarf I made yesterday out of the Red Heart Strata, and it is much softer now. It is not quite long enough for my taste in scarves, but I think my sister in law will like it. Next time, I'll use about a skein and a half and maybe make a hat out of the remainder.

Today I started the Irish Hiking Scarf from Hello Yarns. I'm using some old Sayelle acrylic yarn in Bluebell. I'm pretty sure this yarn has been discontinued, since it came from the bunches of yarn my mother sent me when she cleaned out her stash. This may have been my grandma's yarn, since my mother had gotten all of her yarn when she passed on.


I absolutely adore this pattern, but then I like anything with cables in it. I was disappointed, though, that I couldn't find a good game on to watch while I knitted it. I wanted to watch the Egg Bowl, which is what they call the annual Ole Miss-Miss State game, but it wasn't on. Well, it wasn't on a channel I get anyway. Ole Miss won that one 20-17. I was kind of surprised, because Ole Miss hasn't really had a football team since Eli Manning graduated. For the last couple of years, State has had the better team. Nevertheless, Ole Miss pulled this one out by the skin of their teeth. I ended up watching Tennessee play Kentucky. That was a pretty good game, but it just isn't as exciting when you don't have a dog in the fight.

Now for today's Saturday Sky:

It was a beautiful, cloudless blue, and got so warm that at one point, I turned my air conditioning back on. I think this is the last little bit of fall color we are going to get this year.

Moving on to winter...

Remember making paper snowflakes? Since it seldom snowed in Southeast Texas where I grew up, I used to make bunches of paper snowflakes and tape them up all over the house. Now you can to it online here. I could spend way too much time on this site. Plus, until the end of the year, they are having their flake-a-thon. That means for each increment of snowflakes made, the owners of the site will donate to the Salvation Army. There is a scale on there. Just mouse over the Flake-A-Thon banner and it will pop up. Now, I'm off to make more flakes. It's fun. You should try it.

I'll warn you, though. It's definitely addictive...

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