2020, education, Technology, Uncategorized, Words

Duolingo

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You all know I love my lists.  Last year when I got furloughed it took me a month to realize that I needed some routine in my days.  It was more challenging than I had expected to fill up approximately 10 hours a day, five times a week, especially since we weren’t supposed to be leaving the house.

I decided to use a daily list and to work on some new habits while I was at it: more fruits/veggies, drink more water, kitchen floor (yes, it REALLY needed serious cleaning), front porch (we’re scrapping old paint off the stucco), creeping Charlie.  The kitchen floor eventually got spectacularly clean, I got better at fruits/veggies and water, creeping Charlie…. well you know how it goes with creeping Charlie.  It was a relaxing part of my day to cross off things that I had accomplished. 

After about a month of furlough, I decide to re-start my work on Italian.  I had started about a year before, using a free app on my phone (Duolingo) but had let it slide after several months.  When I got back online, I started at the beginning even though the app remembered where I had been.  And I decided that I would keep each day’s lesson short; if I set a goal of too many minutes, I knew it might de-rail me. 

Yesterday after the first part of my lesson (I do two lessons a day), I got a blip saying I had hit 365 straight days… an entire year of working on my Italian every day.  I even did my lessons when YA and I went to San Diego in August – the app is on my phone, so easy peasy.   Of all the things on my various lists over the last year, this is the only thing that I have consistently done every single day.  It’s an amazing feat, even to me.  Of course, at ten minutes a day, I’m not blazing any linguistic trails, but if you want to know about elephants drinking water, I’m your gal (Gli elefanti bevono l’acqua)!

Do you have a routine you’re consistent with?  That’s you’d LIKE to be consistent with?

28 thoughts on “Duolingo”

  1. I have lots of work routines. I have a Microsoft Teams meeting every weekday at 8:30 with coworkers on the Yourh and Family team at work. I have two psychological evaluations each week on Tuesday and Thursday. On Fridays I also have two virtual meetings with staff at other Human Service Centers to provide supervision and approve diagnoses. I have clients scheduled at regular times each day of the week. These are not self imposed, though. Husband has determined he will always get up before me and make the coffee. He also always turns on the grow lights in the basement while the coffee is brewing. He has a regular schedule of taking his medication, and he always folds the laundry.

    We are both relieved that our routine of singing in the church choir and playing in the bell choir will be over in two weeks until September. It has been a long year of performing, and since there are so few us us willing to do it during Covid, we couldn’t ever take a Sunday off.

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  2. I do have some routines that I’m finally happy with. Covid has us getting up for a Zoom workout Monday & Wed. mornings a week at (surprise!) 7 a.m. I learned early on that this gave me energy for the rest of the day. Then Tues. and Fri. are 9:30 t’ai chi sessions, finally in person again. I’m trying to leave one morning a week when I have nothing – this is the tricky part, but if I manage it, I get caught up on all kinds of minutia on Thursday mornings,

    What I haven’t been able to get in place is a walking routine – very sporadic, and it’s odd because I really like walking once I get out there…

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  4. Daily bird feeding at 8 AM. Release birds for free
    flight time at 9 AM. 11AM millet treat for birds.
    12 to 1PM nap time for myself and birds. 3 PM birds eat supper. 8 PM Star Trek and bird treats.

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  5. Pre Covid I had a set routine of choir rehearsals during the school year that took up a good portion of each weekday along with performances at regular intervals. All of that came to a grinding halt last March and will not resume. I will no longer be at the MPS middle school (new teacher). The other two choirs will resume rehearsals this Fall – but that takes up only 2 weekday evenings. One “new” routine I have (re)started after a long layoff is a daily workout along with walking. I have always enjoyed walking but would always back off during the winter months. No more of that – I made myself go out nearly every day throughout the winter and discovered that I like it. My travel routine was greatly disrupted this past year – hardly even left the Cities. That will slowly resume starting in late June with a trip to see family in northern Virginia. Now that I have lots of time, I am getting some long overdue home projects done – not that it is a routine, nor will it become routine. It’s just good to get them completed.
    Maybe I should be like VS and try to learn another language – could come in handy during international trips.

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      1. For some obscure reason the only thing I can remember from my high school French class is the enormously useful phrase: la clef de buffet.
        I had a lot of trouble with French in high school, partly because the pronunciation was so out of comfort zone. I felt silly making those sounds, self-conscious teen that I was.

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  6. i finished my warehouse and got into steve’s car to begin my delivery life
    shipt is great as when i need to plug something in i can
    i take ari and denver on wednesdays
    go for a chiropractors once over monday afternoons
    but i have given up cbd sunday mornings and my saturday writing group my thursday schubert club noon concert even though they’ve gone virtual and am looking forward to tuesday movie night with my mom again
    i need to plug in morning excersise program, and add sailing to the agendas
    i got a buoy at lak bde mak whatever the heck it is i’m looking forward to

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  7. I would like my mornings to always be slow and allow me time for tea and breakfast and all the random computer stuff I do. Sometimes that doesn’t work. And pre-covid I didn’t realize I wanted that routine.
    I am employed at the college through May 24th, then off for the summer, so I should be able to do the morning routine without too many issues.

    Lately, and I think this is a sign of age, if I do have a morning meeting, I’ll wake up early so I can still have my slow morning and not have to rush though EVERYTHING. I think that’s a learned skill.

    I’m bad at routines of ‘therapy’ exercise. If I ever get a knee replacement I’m going to need a lot of harping and harassment to do the therapy. It’s no fun; who wants to do that. 🙂

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  8. It is afternoon already, Baboons,

    Today is an example of how my routine fell apart this morning. The routine I like is to awaken without alarm at 6:15am. Have my coffee (with cream), read the paper on line as well as several other sites, do my morning Trail entry, then get to the gym. When we arrived home in MN from AZ to a house in chaos due to re-modeling I have been slow to get back to this routine, in part because I have been in so much pain with my aggravated S-I joint. It is starting to settle down finally, so I no longer limp.

    This morning my routine was off because I made a trip to Iowa over the weekend to visit my mother who is failing rapidly. Her facility was sold, and the new owners are negligent. That part is upsetting. My sister has found a new place for her, but we must wait for an opening at a higher level of care because she is falling and wheelchair bound at this point. My sister wanted to get her out of there, to wait for the new placement at her house, but she cannot. Her house is also in chaos after a large addition to it. The electrician will not come finish the job so the entire thing can be completed, so they do not have a restroom my mom could get to. What timing.

    I was tired and upset by the trip and her condition, so my sleep is off. I was up in the night, then slept in, went to the gym, did some errands, and now checking in finally on the Trail. I will welcome my little gardening routines this Spring. Sometimes there are periods in life where everything seems hard. This is one of them.

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    3. My poor sister is the one who deserves the compassion. She has done most of the work on Mom’s behalf, although my brother and I help if we can do so. Between the delays on her house, and the problems with this facility, my sister’s life has been so distressing.

      During this addition process everything that could go wrong, did. They started the project and the duracho blew through and that created a flood (they were flooded twice) so some excavation work had to be re-done. They had delays on materials, especially windows. Last winter’s cold snap hit at exactly the wrong time, causing them to have to use kerosene heaters which created toxic fumes. And the electrician hired to do the job sold his business in the middle of it. The new guy is incompetent. He alone has delayed progress 6 months. It was supposed to be done last November! I think a lawsuit is in order.

      And then my mother had a stroke.

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  9. I’m not very good at sticking to routines. The one thing I try to always do is to set up my coffeemaker every evening, pouring in the water and measuring the coffee into the filter basket. Then the timer turns it on around six each morning. I like to have the coffee waiting for me.

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