I was easily led astray today. The weather was cold and gloomy, and I was most definitely under it. It was all I could do to make it outside to grill a piece of dead cow for a mid-afternoon meal. I've been running at full tilt lately, and I don't feel guilty at all having sat under a blanket all day, whining to the dogs about how icky I feel. I know it's temporary.
My daughter called me this evening, with potentially good news that I don't yet have permission to share. Not that I would. I don't want to jinx it. While we were talking, she suggested I try a website I'd sort of heard about, but not absorbed the information well enough to think to try it out. There's a language learning site that provides free lessons, and once you have gained sufficient proficiency to translate longer passages well, it gives you articles to translate of real people's work. The understanding is that you are translating the internet, once you are fluent. I loved studying languages, and this seems like a timewaster specifically designed for me. As soon as my daughter talked me into signing up for it, I knew the rest of my night was lost. I gave up any hope of focusing on anything other than basketball and language drills. In order, over my lifetime I have studied German, French, Russian, Italian, and then Russian and German again concurrently. I didn't stay proficient in any one of them, and only random phrases occur to me at odd times. I had the least practice in Italian, only taking one semester as a seventeen-year-old, and it was just enough to know how much fun it was, but not enough to have any use for it. Tonight, I decided that was where I would start. Considering how many years ago that semester was, I am starting with the bare basics. All night I've been drilling little phrases, like "Io sono una donna," and "Tu mangi il pane." I never got into Words With Friends. Maybe I can talk my friends into a little Duolingo with me instead.
Alright. Time for this dyspeptic polyglot to get back to watching basketball, and hoping that tomorrow is a better day.
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