Pilsen

I took Little Girl to Pilsen in Chicago yesterday. She enjoyed the train rides (well, maybe the last few minutes were antsy minutes). She walked well, which worked out for us since we didn’t have a stroller. She ate fairly well at the taqueria we went to (where the entire transaction was done in Spanish, see my goal about that). She put up with the National Museum of Mexican Art, but the big payoff was playing on the playground goodies at Harrison Park. Fun fun fun. Oh, and the smurf blue cookie at the train station. She snuggled up against me and fell asleep for the train ride home.

See more progress on: Be the best father I can be

Time on the potty every day

That’s our goal. Little Girl spends time on the potty every day. When the magic happens, she gets to wear her new princess underwear. When she stays dry for ten minutes, we act like something amazing just happened. So far, so good. The other day I got about 1:30 of underwear time out of her.

Fewer diapers. Everyone wins.

See more progress on: toilet train Little Girl

Destruction of private property (rated 2 stars)

Fast Food Nation

by Richard Linklater

Certainly this movie had no lack of bad guys. And I did like that. No, I reveled in it.

But there was one group of bad guys that we the viewers, I presume, were supposed to identify with: the college kids who wrecked the fence.

That’s destruction of private property. Were there any consequences to their action? No. (Though of course in reality there may not have been consequences either, so perhaps my point is moot.) I didn’t care for the message that sent.

Destruction of private property, no matter how you feel about that property’s owner, is wrong.

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A page turner (rated 4 stars)

No Man's River --2007 publication.

by Farley Mowat

While I doubt Mowat is letting too many facts get in the way of the story, he tells a gripping tale of the Canadian North. One that was disappearing as he was experiencing it. I couldn’t put it down. It sucked me in.

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Inferno

Yes, that Inferno. I’ve got Pinsky’s English translation with the Italian on the facing page, because my Italian isn’t strong enough to make it on a go without English. That said, I’ve worked through the first canto, and I can see enough of what’s going on in the Italian to really see Dante’s poetic skill.

Once school is over, I’ll tackle this in earnest.

See more progress on: Read more books in their original language

How to teach Latin over the internet

"Dead language meets high tech. "

How I did it: Well, I kind of fell into this sooner rather than later. Once I got laid off, I had more time to do whatever it is that I'm going to do.

Once the parents of the students I teach caught wind of my newfound free time, they wanted more help. The internet comes to the rescue again.

Lessons & tips: This is probably easiest to do if you already have a substantial base of students to draw from. It also doesn't hurt to have a pretty healthy amount of bandwidth.

Resources: Vyew.com has been truly useful. Skype.com is also good.

It took me 3 months.

It made me Score!

See more progress on: Teach Latin over the internet

Old English

I picked up a copy of The Cambridge Old English Reader. It’s pretty cool and should keep me occupied for some time. It’s the sort of thing you can dip into here and there and avoid the commitment of say, the New Testament in Greek.

While I can’t pretend that it’s easy to read, there are spots where the foreignness of the language seems almost intuitive. It’s really weird to see words that have been in the language for a long time in a past life. Bid, as in “bade farewell” is a word that has been hanging around for over 1,000 years. Biddan is its previous guise.

Cynnig and hricg, king and ridge respectively, have also been hanging around too. If you’re looking to build your vocabulary, you could do worse than studying Old English.

See more progress on: Read more books in their original language