Practicando Español

In preparation for going to Costa Rica in less than three weeks, I've been trying to start practicing my Spanish more. Yes, I should have started a while ago, but I'll take what I can get at this point. I finished the fifth Harry Potter book in Spanish but reading is really about the easiest thing to do, so it's not the best way to practice. Looking for something more challenging, I got Cielos de la Tierra for my next audio book, and found myself way out of my depth. I'm catching a fair number of words and phrases, but I really have no clue about the overall story line. That's a pity, since it's kind of a waste of what looks like a very interesting book. But hopefully my Spanish will continue to improve and I'll be able to come back to it again some day and understand more of it.

At Project Read last week, Alice recommended the Destinos video series for learning Spanish, so I checked out some of those. They seem really well done, but the ones I got were far too basic to be useful to me. I'll try some later ones next week, to see how those are, though that would mean jumping into the middle of the detective story that spans all 30-something episodes. In the meantime, I think I'm probably better off just watching the Spanish channel on TV. This weekend I've watched some news programs and soap operas, from which I learned, respectively, such useful phrases as "George W. Bush" and "I'm pregnant with your brother's child." I'm sure that will come in handy sometime.

Of course, what I really need to work on most is speaking. I'm really slow when it comes to actually generating any Spanish, as opposed to just understanding it. It's harder to practice that, though.

Contra Polka

We had a very successful Gorilla [sic] contra during one of the polkas at Friday Night Waltz last night. Bob walked us through it earlier in the evening and then we agreed to meet in the middle of the floor at the next polka. Later on, I had finished a waltz and Rebecca had asked me for the next dance. I said yes and started to take her hand when the music started. Suddenly, in an apparent panic, I dashed off going "Ack! It's the polka!" leaving Rebecca behind, bewildered yet amused. She figured it out, though, and was kind enough to give me a different dance later.

I got in place in time to start the contra and it was quite successful. We had four couples and it went a lot smoother than our previous attempts at this kind of thing. I had two people afterwards tell me they wanted to come to the next contra dance, and one of them even specifically said how much fun it looked when we were dancing in the middle of the polka.

Overall, it was a very good evening. I had a good West Coast with Susanna, a fun Chim Chim Cheree waltz with Maya, and the triple-exclamation-point waltz with Annaka. The Hamster Dance polka at the end with Saryn almost killed me, but only because it was so enegetic and exciting (the really good ones always leave me completely wiped out for a few minutes). I also got several dances with Tina, which was fun since I hadn't gotten to dance with her for a long time. And I found out that Mike and Lily are engaged! (It would have been considerably more surprising to find out that they weren't engaged, but still -- yay!)

Continuing Choices

The Stanford Continuing Studies catalog arrived in the mail the other day. Always a sucker for course catalogs, I've been browsing happily through it, trying to decide what to take next quarter. Here are some of the ones that look fun so far:

• The History and Mystery of Design - About designing all sorts of stuff.
• The Question Is Art - "What is art?" sorts of topics, coordinated with an exhibit at the Cantor Arts Center
• Ancient Epic and the Hero - I'm probably more interested in taking the class than reading the books, though.
• Encounters With Others: Travel Narratives - I've been thinking and reading a lot about traveling lately (and soon I'll be doing it!).
• Voice and Speech - Maybe interesting to me because of my recent interest in audio books and/or singing.
• The Structure of English Words - Probably less useful than any of the others, but intriguing nonetheless.
• James Joyce's Ulysses - Would be more tempting if I hadn't already slogged my way through it last year.
• A Passion for Bach - I really miss taking music classes.
• Excellence Is No Accident - A "mental skills training program" of some sort.

Right now the Bach class is looking like the most likely one, though Travel Narratives is close, as is Voice and Speech. I wish I could take them all, but I can think about it for a few weeks before registration at least.

Unfortunately, scheduling enters into the equation, too. If I get a class on Monday nights, then I'll have to miss West Coast Swing for a quarter. Thursday nights are tricky because of Irish sessions and because I don't know if Richard's going to teach an evening dance class I'll want to take. Wednesdays and Tuesdays are better, because I can put my Project Read nights on either one, but that would mean that I couldn't go to other things like Irish dances or Swing Central on Tuesdays, or (more likely) take an evening off. So I'll have to think about how I want it to all work out.

A Blogful Googly Year

One year ago today, Kimmy and I showed up at Google for our first day of working for Blogger. Hard to believe it's been that long already. I think I need to start changing my conception of time. This is the first job that I've had for more than a summer or a few months of temping, and even in school classes would change every quarter, so it's very different to think that I've been doing the same thing for an entire year. It's been a good year for me, though, so I'm happy.

Rare Books and Egyptian Relics

Mom and Pa came down for a visit today and we all went on a field trip to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, where they currently have a rare books exhibit. We showed up right at 11:00 when the doors opened, to "beat the crowds," but luckily not everyone gets as excited about old books as we do, so we actually had the exhibit to ourselves. Lots of neat things there, like a first edition (1721) of Leonardo da Vinci's Treatise on Painting. I wish we could have actually flipped through the books and read them. We wandered around the rest of the museum too, of course, through an Egyptian tomb replica, past actual mummies and a rare original statue of Cleopatra VII, and eventually outside to a nice fountain where we had our picnic. A fun tri-generational outing all around.