After working all week, Jesse’s decided to spend Friday night out, leaving us to deal with the barking. Tom says he was surprised that they didn’t go crazy today what with all the activity around here. Yeah, I knew I was due to be woken up anytime now since it had been a while. And why is it always 4 hours into my sleep? Did I kill someone in their fourth hour of sleep in a previous life or something? God, I hate that number!

Anyway, I awoke to a fierce vibration around 11:00 and at first we couldn’t figure out what it was. We only knew it was a helicopter of some kind, and every time it would fly over it would hover nearby for a while. My first thought was that someone escaped from jail or prison or had just done something and they were hunting for them. Then I got hit with paranoia and worried my ex-tormenters were up to a few of their old tricks and it was us they were scouting out.

Then it flew on and Tom went to Goodwill to see if they had anything worth selling on eBay (they didn’t). Then I heard the helicopter return and hover in back. I got up and looked out the bathroom window and that’s when I saw linemen climbing the power tower up on the summit. It turns out that the helicopter was airlifting supplies and parts in for them to do whatever they were doing. I was amazed they didn’t cut the power, but Tom later told me that that tower doesn’t supply electricity here but to other towns. It was really frustrating because they kept coming and going every few minutes. I wasn’t sure they’d let me get back to sleep, but I was too tired to be functional in any way so I jammed an earplug in my good ear and that helped. It didn’t block the vibrant rumbling, but it blocked the non-vibrant sounds.

Breaking up my sleep ended up pushing my schedule ahead 4 hours and causing me to wake up immensely hungry. So hungry that I knew that having a little something wouldn’t cut it. It ended up taking 1100 calories to curb my hunger that’s how famished I was!

I love the language site and it’s really cool how people review my lessons and praise what I get right and correct what I screw up. At first I wasn’t keen on the idea of having to play review for others, but it only takes a minute and I appreciate the help I get in return so I help when they request it.

It took me a while to get the hang of how it works, but now that I’m familiar with it, it’s really amazing software! I wish I learned Spanish this way. It has a good variety of teaching techniques. You hear words, you match pictures to words, you type, you speak. Only my microphone isn’t working right now so I have to submit a blank audio file. I wish I could skip the spoken part altogether, but it won’t let you advance to the next lesson if you do. With this program, there’s no jumping around, no cutting corners, no cheating. If you feel the need to do that then you shouldn’t be learning languages anyway.

I can also save flashcards.

So now I’m a few dozen Italian words smarter. Yippee! I’ve completed the first 4 lessons of Unit 1’s beginner level. You put in your levels for the languages you know. You choose from beginner, intermediate, advanced, fluent and native. I consider my Spanish to be advanced. I don’t consider myself as fluent as a native. I had to laugh when Tom said I speak what Italian I’ve learned so far with a Spanish accent. Yeah, it’s hard to break that habit, alright. During the written part when I’d sometimes forget new words, my mind would automatically want to fill in the blanks in Spanish or apply Spanish pronunciation. Either way, if someone had told me as a kid, even in my early 20s, that I’d one day learn Italian while living in California and receiving help from Italians in Italy, some of which are real certified teachers, I’d have laughed my ass off!

Italian plurals are definitely harder than Spanish plurals. With Spanish, you usually just add an s or es to the ends of words, but with Italian, you practically change the whole word! Or at least the last part of it.

I thought the only European languages were English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese, but then Tom pointed out others like German. That’s right, it would be a European language considering where Germany is located. I can’t bring myself to learn any language I find ugly, and personally, I find German to be pretty ugly.

For random thoughts, I’m sick of some people having large families! It only adds to the population crisis, and drains more resources that are getting more scarce and precious by the minute, and well, kids aren’t something you “collect,” you know? So what’s wrong with just one or two if you’ve got to have them?