Keeping Busy - The Bike, The Yard, The Granddaughter, And The Spanish Lessons

When I'm not posting about COVID-19, I'm doing other things.

There's bike rides.  Here are a couple of mergansers at the lake at the Alaska Native Medical Center.  I thought they were building a nest, but it wasn't there when I went by a few days later.

Sweeping from the deck the catkins from (I think) the aspens and the leaf bud scales from the cottonwood trees two or three times a day.  

The leaf bud scales are particularly pesky because they stick to the bottom of your shoe.  

But after reading The Overstory I think about them very differently.  In one sense they are a form of tree communication.  I'm still struggling with that concept.  Whether it's intentional or not, the catkins and the leaf bud scales are a signal to other plants and creatures.  Who reads the message and how it affects their behavior I have no idea.  At the very least it's like a seasonal clock.  And these add to the pile of organic material that feed the trees that drop them as well as other trees.  When the cottonwood cotton falls, it's

another story for me.  I'm not interested in letting them spread their seeds all over the yard, so I'll try to collect them and get rid of them.  I still think there are potential uses for the cotton, but I'm not the person who is going to exploit them.

I am, on the other hand, exploiting the dandelion leaves to cook up in my frittatas.  They're full of vitamins and there are no other greens I can get as fresh. 

I've finally attacked the Cateye Micro Wireless my wife gave me last year.  And I know why it's taken me so long.  I've figured out how to get it on the bike, but it's not sending the signal from the spinning wheel to report speed and distance.  Did I put it on wrong?  I don't think so.  Maybe the battery in the sensor isn't working.  I can switch the one from the computer that reads it to see if it works on the computer.  And then there are these instructions.  The editing on my iPhoto doesn't 'stick' so even though I turned it right side up, it still came out sideways.  There are things that you fix and then the problem is solved.  And there are things you try to fix and they keep spawning new problems.  And during a pandemic I'm not willing to go to the bike shop to ask for help.  

The bleeding hearts are up and unfolding.  You can't really say they are budding, because they are out, but they aren't quite yet into their full display.  

And then there are the wonderful chat messages my granddaughter sends me when we zoom.

And I do a daily 20-30 minutes of Duolingo Spanish.  If I ever get out to a Spanish speaking country again, I won't be as tongue-tied as last time.  It's a reasonably good program, free, and it has lots of positive reinforcement sounds.

If you click on these images they get bigger and easier to read

You have some really simple questions where you pick the write word of three choices.  They even have pictures so it's hard to get them wrong.  Others you fill in the blank with one word.  Then there are those where you translate from Spanish to English.  The one above I had to translate from English to Spanish.  If you get it right, the message on the bottom is in green.  But if you get it wrong it's in read with the right answer.

The hardest ones are when you have to listen to someone saying the sentence and you have to write what you hear.

The big blue speaker says it the way someone would actually say it.  Often this is impossible for me to understand.  But I know in English we also don't pronounce things quite as they are written, or we mumble over syllables.  I'm getting better at hearing what they are saying.  If you can't understand it, the turtle button says it slowly, word for word.  

On the bottom you can report a problem - "I think I should have gotten credit for that one" for example.  Sometimes they seem overly picky about how you write something in English.  The Discuss option lets you see what other learners are saying.  There are native Spanish speakers which is helpful explaining why it's one way or another.  Or advanced learners who might link to a site that explains the difference between two words, or a grammar explanation.   

I've committed to do 20 points worth a day. That's roughly two lessons.  They keep track.  I'm up to about 70 days in a row.  I was up to 190 days in a row, but when we traveled back to Anchorage at the beginning of March I missed two days.  You can buy (with rewards you get as you go along) 'get out of jail free' cards - in this case, if you miss a day you can use your card to keep your streak.  That's the only way I could have had such a long streak.  But this time I missed two days and had to start over again.