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Up and at 'em..
Nov. 8th, 2014 08:25 pmBut not for work!
A night's sleep restored me, to the point where I felt up to leaving the house to do some food shopping, although in truth there really wasn't all that much that I needed.
I sometimes find, while driving, that ideas for this and that come quickly and furiously, which forces me to rely on various mnenomic tricks to file them away for later. Recently (as in, the past year), I've worked ups some new mnemonics that, in my opinion, make remembering things like lists of things that occur to you a lot easier than my old system.
Today's list of "things to think about," for example, begins with the question, "Is it insulting to say 'I don't know anything about motorcycles, but that machine of yours out front is an impressive piece of machinery' to a biker sitting in a restaurant?"
As it happened, nothing bad happened as a result of my asking. (I hadn't expected it to, I was just feeling outgoing.) The gent in the bbq place looked at me, nodded in my direction, said "Thanks," and kept turned back to his sandwich.
But afterward, I kind of got lost in the logic of what I had said. If I don't know anything about motorcycles, what significance can anything I say about them have? In the end, I concluded it would have been worse to start my remark with "I only know a little about motorcycles...," as anyone who knows anything about them would obviously have been impressed with the machine that stood out front.
Yeah, I know. I can get pretty good at overanalyzing stuff.
The next item on today's list had to do with French pronunciation, the train of thought for which began with the recollection of an incident that occurred in an elevator at the Johnson Space Center back before 2000. It was morning, and I found myself "going up" with astronauts Charlie Precourt and Jean-Loup Chrétien and proceeded to greet them in French (Charlie's first language, if memory serves, and Jean-Loup's native language), which prompted an exchange that ended awkwardly because my French skills at that time were rustier than fully oxidized iron, but that's another tale.
Where the train led was to my high school and university years, and the time that my mother (who taught French in the New York City public schools) spent—and I now realize, wasted—drilling me in pronunciation instead of expanding my vocabulary and speaking skills. I've noticed this mania among other teachers of French as well.
And while I'll grant that a Parisian accent may earn one brownie points when traveling in France, a deficient vocabulary and lack of aural skills will earn demerit points faster. The folks from Toulouse with whom I've worked in Kazakhstan over the years speak with, if such a thing is possible, a "counter-Parisian" accent, which was, BTW, something that I do not recall anyone ever mentioning in class.
Once home, I decided against sitting down immediately to work, and ventured into the kitchen. I cleaned up several days worth of dirty dishes, and then made some cornbread for myself and some treats for the dogs from the grain that I boiled last Sunday to make wort. Then I made another batch of kombucha.
However, like it or not, it's time to turn to and get back to work. I have 2700 words to finish by late tomorrow.
Cheers...
A night's sleep restored me, to the point where I felt up to leaving the house to do some food shopping, although in truth there really wasn't all that much that I needed.
I sometimes find, while driving, that ideas for this and that come quickly and furiously, which forces me to rely on various mnenomic tricks to file them away for later. Recently (as in, the past year), I've worked ups some new mnemonics that, in my opinion, make remembering things like lists of things that occur to you a lot easier than my old system.
Today's list of "things to think about," for example, begins with the question, "Is it insulting to say 'I don't know anything about motorcycles, but that machine of yours out front is an impressive piece of machinery' to a biker sitting in a restaurant?"
As it happened, nothing bad happened as a result of my asking. (I hadn't expected it to, I was just feeling outgoing.) The gent in the bbq place looked at me, nodded in my direction, said "Thanks," and kept turned back to his sandwich.
But afterward, I kind of got lost in the logic of what I had said. If I don't know anything about motorcycles, what significance can anything I say about them have? In the end, I concluded it would have been worse to start my remark with "I only know a little about motorcycles...," as anyone who knows anything about them would obviously have been impressed with the machine that stood out front.
Yeah, I know. I can get pretty good at overanalyzing stuff.
The next item on today's list had to do with French pronunciation, the train of thought for which began with the recollection of an incident that occurred in an elevator at the Johnson Space Center back before 2000. It was morning, and I found myself "going up" with astronauts Charlie Precourt and Jean-Loup Chrétien and proceeded to greet them in French (Charlie's first language, if memory serves, and Jean-Loup's native language), which prompted an exchange that ended awkwardly because my French skills at that time were rustier than fully oxidized iron, but that's another tale.
Where the train led was to my high school and university years, and the time that my mother (who taught French in the New York City public schools) spent—and I now realize, wasted—drilling me in pronunciation instead of expanding my vocabulary and speaking skills. I've noticed this mania among other teachers of French as well.
And while I'll grant that a Parisian accent may earn one brownie points when traveling in France, a deficient vocabulary and lack of aural skills will earn demerit points faster. The folks from Toulouse with whom I've worked in Kazakhstan over the years speak with, if such a thing is possible, a "counter-Parisian" accent, which was, BTW, something that I do not recall anyone ever mentioning in class.
Once home, I decided against sitting down immediately to work, and ventured into the kitchen. I cleaned up several days worth of dirty dishes, and then made some cornbread for myself and some treats for the dogs from the grain that I boiled last Sunday to make wort. Then I made another batch of kombucha.
However, like it or not, it's time to turn to and get back to work. I have 2700 words to finish by late tomorrow.
Cheers...
