I have been keeping up with my DuoLingo lessons. The streaks and friend streaks and leaderboards do enough to make sure I never skip a day. That and the incessant notifications from the app. But ... I do have one distraction from my language lessons.

DuoLingo has chess lessons. I've always wanted to learn to play chess, but beyond learning how the pieces move and then getting destroyed repeatedly in online games, I never pursued it. But now I'm getting little tiny play by play lessons of different scenarios and how to respond and why. I am BY NO MEANS good at it. God damn, is it ever hard. When I do go on Chess.com and play strangers, I do NOT do well. I get so nervous and make so many bonehead mistakes.

I will say this though. I know very little about openings. And I'm completely lost in the midgame. But the endgame. Man do I seem to be good at the end game. After my opponent has decimated my ranks, I can dance around, gobble up their pieces, avoid checkmate, and usually in even the most dire circumstances end things in a stalemate draw. I'm sure a lot of that is due to me being matched with people with similar ranks who don't know how to close out a game and against anyone competent I would be dead in seconds. But it's still fun. I wish I could play someone I know regularly but I can't find anyone willing to play me. So if you have a Chess.com username and want to play with me leave a comment. I love saying leave a comment like anyone is reading.

Also, side note. I now know what a Queen's Gambit is and honestly it's not that cool. It's just an opening move/moves. It sounds like it's some kind of dramatic endgame sacrifice of your queen to win the game or something. But nope. Just the first move or two with your pawns.

Any time anyone asks what superpower I would most like to have, I always answer that I would like to speak every language with native fluency. And yet, I've rarely if ever done anything to approach that goal. Daniel and I did take a semester of French at SMU one time. That was fun but without continued effort didn't really stick.

Then my best seven foot tall woman friend suggested I download DuoLingo. It's free and you can learn any number of languages. So I did, and I started taking French lessons. Then I decided to throw in German since I already know it pretty well and it would be fun and easy to refresh. Then we planned a trip to Portugal so I focused on learning was Portuguese I could in the months leading up to our departure.

THEN I got so sick of the advertisements that I paid for a subscription. They got me. I admit it. But now that I'm paying for it, I'm going all in. I am currently switching daily between: French, Germany, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and Danish. What's weird is that while switching between them certainly slows my progress, learning seven sets of vocabulary at once hasn't really proven to be any more difficult than one.

I know that these little exercises and AI driven conversation and voice recognition are unlikely to make me fluent. They're unlikely to allow me to converse easily in a foreign country. But I don't really care. Because (A) it's fun, (B) it's better than doom scrolling, and (C) it really does teach you a LOT if not all you need to know. When we were in Portugal, I busted out a few phrases with our guides (which of course ended with hilarious failure as I spoke Brazilian Portuguese), but also just consumed words around me. I knew what the little Brazilian kid was talking about when he screamed, "Abacaxi! Aacaxi!" at the top of his lungs (he saw a pineapple laying on the ground).

And that was enough for me. I cannot explain how utterly maddening it is for me in a foreign country to see words all around me and not know what they mean. I don't CARE what they mean. It just bothers me not to know. This really helped with that mental fatigue. To see a sign in a store window and know that it says "Closed on Mondays." It allows me to move on and not fixate on wanting to stop and translate.

So anyway, that's my plug for DuoLingo. It's free if you can withstand the most obnoxious assault of ads for phone games deliberately designed to wear you down into signing up for a subscription. But if you've ever been even a little curious, this is a super low effort, low risk way to delve into it and feel like you're accomplishing something every day.

I just got my Addison! newsletter in the mail. I really have not been utilizing all that this city! has to offer. Honestly, I just keep eating at the same restaurants! over and over again when there are literally hundreds I have not tried. There's the Water Tower Theater! a stones throw from my apartment and I have yet to see a show. Speaking of theater! they are playing The Santaland Diaries! by David Sedaris! December 7th through the 23rd. Tickets! are $17-30, anybody want to go?

I also hear a lot about this Addison! Gym. Apparently, if you can prove that you live in Addison! (which shouldn't be hard to do since ... I do), there is a one time fee of $10 for a lifetime membership. I was confused as to how this could possibly be profitable for them. But I found out that I already pay for the gym. It's like part of my taxes. I suppose since we don't have schools or anything lame like that, we can afford to allot money to the Recreation Department. So I need to go check that out and see if it's as nice as Lifetime. I pay for my gym, but my company reimburses me the majority of it as part of the employee wellness program, so I guess I could always have two gym memberships. It's just a matter of getting off my lazy ass and signing up.

AllieD's friend Jennifer IMed me today and informed me that Target has outlawed Xmas. In addition, they have started selling bargain-brand vibrators at all of their stores. This is unsubstantiated information from an unknown source, but I'm definitely going to have to research this. Anyone with any information, please let me know.

I've decided in 2006 to repeat my February experiment. I'm sure you'll all recall it from this year. In 2006, though, it will (of course) be called Febrehabruarii. Like you didn't see that coming. I'm thinking that this year will be even more intense than last year. No booze, no cigarettes, no caffeine, no staying up late, no skipping even one workout, no ground beef or fatty food, no spending money frivolously. Come March, I am going to be really, really, ridiculously good looking (and out of debt). Mark my words. Anyone want to take up the Febrehabruarii experiment with me?

I might be getting a new washer and dryer today. I'm buying Miles' old ones from him because mine squeak and it is annoying. Lil Jarrod randomly called me today and we went to lunch with Daniel at J's, yum, and he said he wanted a washer and dryer, so I'm giving mine to him. Does anyone have a truck that we could use? You'd have to drive from Addison! to Den-ton¿ but I'm sure we could find some way to make it worth your while. I don't know how fun it will be to have an extra bed and an extra W/D set all chillin in my living room. I mean I know I'm white trash, but srsly.

I'm going to OKC for Thanksgiving to eat my 140 dollar Heritage turkey with my parents, sister & fam, so I'll be out Wednesday through Saturday. I got another coupon from my company for a free Butterball turkey, though, so I think I'm gonna throw my own Thanksgiving party later. Probably mid-December when Owen is in town. Miles offered to let me throw it over at the Hamptons (his new house -- in the Hamptons of Addison!). So that should be fun. I'll be sure to keep you all posted on that.

This next week is going to suck, especially with this attitude, but it will be a short one so I'm sure I can survive. It's gonna be a big push to remain employed through the end of the year but I'm sure I can do it. And, I think that's all I had to say. Funny, when I sat down, I thought I had nothing to talk about. Carpe diem, friends! HA! HA!

Oy veh, I am so sick of school. But now is not really the time to be feeling that way. I've got a big circuit test tomorrow that I am 100% unprepared for. I would really like to set the curve again just to be annoying, but I'm sorry kids, thats not gonna happen this time. Granted, I don't know many people who feel confident in their ability to identify op-amps and work with h-parameters on small signal analysis of bipolar junction transistors ... but still, I'm so far behind its not even funny. I studied for 7 hours last night with a big group of people and then a few hours earlier today. Except I get so disgusted that I just can't go on. So I took a break, got some dinner with Keith at The Max, and now I'm getting ready to head back up to campus to meet a big group of people. Its disgusting how much I study these days.

I made a really cool website for my team in one class. I wish I could show it to you all, but its completely passworded so that random people from our class can't go in there and steal stuff from us. If you're really curious, and have nothing to do with Engineering Technologies, then you can IM me and I'll give you a user name and password to look at it. Otherwise, no way Jose. (Jose just being a general term for all of you Sidesho-Viewers, not an actual person.)

Anyway, on Friday, its my good bud Joseph's big 21st birthday. Because of this, I think I'll refrain from going out on Thursday so I'll be good and thirsty to celebrate with the birthday boy. When that day rolls around, I'll put up a link for you all to IM him.

I fell asleep in my Symphony Class today and the prof yelled at me. But he kept calling me Mr. Quea or something like that ... it totally wasn't my name. He kept going 'GOOD MORNING MR. QUEA' and I was like 'yes, okay, I was asleep I'm sorry move on' and he'd be like 'yes, sir, GOOD MORNING.' Sheeeesh. If you get offended when people sleep in your class don't teach a really boring subject that I don't give a fuck about ... that plays classical music to lull me to sleep. Whatever, I'm not worried about it. I don't go to that class often enough for him to remember who I am.

Anyway, its about that time to go back to campus and hit the books again when all I really wanna do is hit the sheets. Such is life. Laaaaaaaaaate.