Weekly Round Up: Dog Days of Summer

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, reads, and a little early retirement life chit-chat and June travel plans.  Summer is in full swing over here, and someone is making the most of her dog days.

Eats

Between travel and some at home social events, I haven't had to put much thought into dinner yet.  I've been happily eating off my freezer stores without much planning.

Occasionally I get inspired to try new things.  One night I made Chef' Brian's BBQ Shrimp (YouTube video here).

One night I was craving something indulgent and I was also craving vegetables, so I cooked up some Costco pot stickers and his frozen stir fry veggies (YouTube video here).

Workouts

I'm still not doing anything exciting on the fitness front.  Bodyweight strength plus dog walks, and now that it's getting warmer, the trend is leaning toward shorter dogs walks and human solo walks.

One day last week I took an island day with Bikie (my folding bike that is small enough to fit in the car and go places with me).  For those who were around three years ago for my Island Bender, you may remember that there are islands in Lake Erie.  One of my favorite things is to hop on a ferry with Bikie and cruise around.

We (Bikie and I) went to Put in Bay and I crossed off another "things I want to do on Put in Bay that I have not done yet" item, which was a tour of Perry's Cave.

According to the tour guide, back during the War of 1812, Perry's fleet was having a problem because the only place to dump their sewage was in the lake, which was also where they were getting their drinking water.  They hopped over to Put in Bay in search of water, and someone found the cave with a large lake (and a rock that looks like an alligator, hence the sign).  The ship now had a supply of non-contaminated water, which set them up for success in winning the war.

The lake is so clear that it's hard to see it, but yes this is a picture of a lake in a cave.  The water has a slight greenish tint that is attributed to late 1800s/early 1900s tourists who would throw coins in the lake for luck.  The employees would fish out the change, but there were enough nickels, dimes, and quarters that no one could be bothered to get the pennies, hence the green tint.  Now that I've taken the time to write that out, it seems odd to me that cave staff of the era were so flush that they couldn't be bothered to pick up pennies, but that's the story that they told us.

I got to Perry's Cave about 40 minutes before the next tour, so I passed the time in the nearby Butterfly House.

The only negative thing to report is that Perry's Tower is closed until 2028 for renovations, but there are still plenty of other things to do on the island, so I don't think that you will regret it if you spend a day there.  Especially if it is a weekday so that you won't have the extreme summer crowds.

Watches

What started as an ear worm became a worm hole.  I was going through my music collection and came across an old recording of the Showboat soundtrack.  The picture quality on this trailer is pretty bad, but it's the shortest example I could find so that you can hear music that has been running in my head non stop ever since.

The best way to shake an ear worm is to indulge it.  I decided to rewatch the 1951 version of the movie which got me thinking on the differences between it and the 1936 movie compared to the book, and reminded me that there is a is a late 1920's version of the movie that I had not seen

You know where this is going, don't you?  Since we last talked I have watched all three movie versions, and then I started reading the book.  I need to finish the book to get my thoughts in order, but all of this is very likely going to result in The Showboat Deep Dive That No One Asked For.  In particular, I'm very struck with the changes that were made to the story for the different versions.

On the positive side, I broke the ear worm and now I no longer have Make Believe and Ol' Man River in my ears 24/7.

Reading

Lots to tell you here.

I finished Lake Effect, and really liked it.

Then I faced a book drought, so I fell back on my trusty Alphabet Series and picked up R is for Ricochet.  It did what I needed it to do, but I had a moment of sads that I am getting toward the end of a the alphabet.  Sigh.

Next up: I have never been able to get into any of Ann Patchett's books, and although sometimes I wondered if it was a me problem, I also know that not all books are for all people and that there are plenty of books in this world so there is no need to force anything.

Then I started hearing the hype on Whistler.  I knew that it wasn't going to work out and that it would take one million years to get it on Libby, but after a particularly passionate push on an episode of the Sarah's Bookshelves Live podcast, I decided to take a sip of the Kool Aid.

Shocker #1: it was available for checkout on Libby with no wait.

Shocker #2: I became deeply invested in Whistler from page one, and set aside a good portion of the weekend to read it.  It is a lovely, lovely book.

Next up: I'll be taking a look at more Ann Patchett to see if this was a one off.

Currently: as mentioned, I'm reading Show Boat.  I got it while I was finishing R/waiting to start Whistler, so I've only been reading one chapter a day, and I think I'm going to keep that pace and take my time with it.  It's been a long time since I read Edna Ferber, and the writing style feels like coming home to an old friend.

Also currently: I'm listening to Big Time, the latest from Laura Vanderkam and my early impression is that it is well worth the listen.

Early Retirement Update: Language Learning

It's been a while since I've talked about this, but one of my early retirement projects is language learning.  Why?  Because I like words.

• French is my "high school" language.
• Spanish is the "practical" language, the second most common one in the US.
• German is my "love" language, the one that I studied for the sheer love of the words.  I used to sing in a symphony chorus, and we did a lot of German music, and eventually I wanted to know what I was singing about.  I got further in German than in any other language, and the apex of my German studies was coming across an old German silent movie and pausing and translating the title cards one by one, back in the days before Google translate.

My idea was to take a bit of time to brush up on all of these languages, starting with Spanish since it is the one that I am least familiar with.

Most of my thoughts on language learning were picked up from Tim Ferris back in the day.  I know that there is no single way to learn a language, so here is where I am after throwing things against the wall for the past six months of Spanish to see what sticks:

• DuoLingo
• Pros: everyone else uses it, and you can do it for free for as long as you can tolerate the limitations of the free version.  There are just enough written exercises to challenge without being too hard or tedious.  
• Cons: no spoken lessons in the desktop version, and very limited speaking in the app version.  In many cases, I'm just following along with the examples without knowing why things are right and why they're wrong.  The gamification is annoying.
• The bottom line: It's too convenient and too widely used to ignore.  I recently caved and got the paid version so that I don't get kicked out after making five mistakes, which is all you get in the free version.  My current routine is to do all of the daily "quests" that DuoLingo assigns me, which takes 15-20 minutes.
• Pimsleur
• Pros: audio lessons!  The lessons are conversations where you are prompted how to respond in Spanish.  In the version that I got, there is additional review material at the end of each lesson.
• Cons: the lessons get boring pretty quickly.  Sometimes phrases would hit my ear wrong and I wouldn't be able to repeat the words until I saw them written out in the end of lesson material.  I wasn't always able to follow the grammatical explanations.  There are five levels of 30 lessons each, so eventually I finished the course and there is no "next step" to go to.  You can get Pimsleur from the library, but for Spanish the hold times were so long that I ended up getting an annual subscription.
• The bottom line: I really feel that Pimsleur covered a lot of ground, and for all of the cons, I plan to use it again.  I just wish that there were more lessons and more vocabulary.  I continue to take a few minutes on most days to do some of the audio exercises for practice.
• Dreaming Spanish YouTube: short videos in Spanish.  When I started, I was at the Super Beginner level, and now I can understand the Beginner videos and sometimes the intermediate videos.  I watch DS videos most days, and in a perfect world I would watch at least one every day. 
• Michel Thomas.  Audio lessons that Tim Ferris talked up back in the day.  I did the German series back then and liked it, but when I tried to do the Spanish lessons after finishing Pimsleur, I gave up pretty quickly.
• Pros: when he gives you a new word, he spells it out, which is something that I desperately needed in Pimsleur.  Like I said, I found the German version to be helpful when I did it a long time ago.  This is an old series, so you can mostly likely get it for free at the library.
• Cons: 
• Mouth noise!!!!  I believe the gentleman had dentures, and you can hear things that you should not be hearing on the audio.
• The format is that there are two other "students" on the recording, so you get to hear and learn from their mistakes.  I remember this being a little annoying for German, and it was why I bailed on the Spanish series.  I am capable of making my own mistakes, I don't need to hear other people's mess-ups, thank you very much.
• The bottom line: I'm not saying that I would never do another Michel Thomas course, but it's low on my list.
• Spanish Group on Meetup.  I found a local group of other folks who love Spanish and meet up once a week to chat.  The only issue is that the meeting time isn't convenient, and it was a bit overwhelming.  I didn't die, though.  Between you and me, this group is most likely exactly what I should be doing, but I couldn't get motivated to go back the next week.  The group isn't going anywhere, so I can join back in any time that I want.
• After asking Google what the cool kids do nowadays, I found an audiobook called Learn Spanish with Paul Noble that was available on Hoopla.  It's in the Pimsleur/Michel Thomas vein, but instead of two "students" the recording has a Latin American speaker and a Spanish speaker repeating the exercises correctly so that you can pick up on the slight differences.  I'm a few hours into the 13 hour recording.  It doesn't have the conversational depth of Pimsleur, but it is giving me insights into some of the grammar that didn't make sense before, so I believe this is a keeper in the language tool box.
• I also picked up a book of short stories in Spanish with English translations, so I'm going to be adding more reading into the mix.  I originally found this book on Libby, but it was too cumbersome to go back between Spanish and English on the ebook, so I got the hard copy.  I was able to understand the first few paragraphs of the first story in Spanish, but I need the English to check myself.
• Eh I could do private lessons, either in person or online.  But that seems...like something that I don't want to do right now.

So at the end of six months my status is that I know more Spanish now that I did when I started, am enjoying the learning process, and am unsure what if anything I will ever do with it or if I will "lose" everything that I learned once I switch to a new language.   I like the approach of using more than one study method, since different methods take different approaches and I feel like I get a reinforcement when I see the same learning in a different place/method.  My current plan is to keep on keeping on with Spanish until the end of the year (TBD if that means the end of my first year of retirement on Oct 31 or the end of 2026) and then I think I'll switch over to French, but keep dabbling in Duolingo for Spanish.  The reason for doing French next is that I want to brush up before I go to Quebec next year (obviously you do not need to speak French to go to QC, but I think it will enhance the experience).

Stay tuned!

June Travel

I'll be going to Red River Gorge in Kentucky for a few days, and towards the end of the month I'll be heading out on a one week Missouri/Arkansas bender.

Planned Stops for Missouri/Arkansas (blog preview/looking for suggestions!)

• St Louis MO
• The Arch (I mean, duh of course I'm going there)
• FLW house
• Anheuser Bush tour
• Jefferson City MO
• Capitol Tour
• Mansfield MO
• Laura Ingalls Wilder Home
• Bentonville AR
• FLW house
• Walmart Museum (because when in Rome...)

That's all for now!  Is anyone out there a fan of Show Boat and up on the book/movie versions?   Any language learning experiences to share?  Any experiences I should add to the Missouri trip?