New Year's Eve

It's New Year's Eve, which means it's time to talk about 2015 resolutions.  I had two of them:

• Do the equivalent of one year of high school French
• Get to a healthy weight

As far as the French goal, I blew that clean out of the water.  Not only did I finish French 1, but I also completed French 2 and started French 3!  Plus I did Michel Thomas' Total French program.

The weight thing, though?  That was a big fail.  I did get started a couple different times, and I even made some good progress, but I didn't get down to my healthy range by any means.  Blah.

That said, here are my 2016 resolutions:

• Get to my goal weight
• Complete the entire Learnables French program (That means finish level 3 and then do the last level, which is called Advanced French.)
• Start biking again 

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Speaking of French, I found the most fun thing on YouTube.  Seriously, I love it so much that I dreamed about it last night.  It's a PBS series with 50-something episodes, and it's a cross between a college-level French class and a French soap opera.  That is, about 3/4 of it is spent listening to a professor teach a class how to speak French (and he does it entirely in French), and about 1/4 of it is a soap opera type thing they watch to help them learn.  I absolutely love it!  And the best part for me is that I can understand about 90% of it, even though they're all talking at normal speed!  Here's one of the episodes.  Of course, you don't have to watch the whole thing, but just watch a bit to get an idea.

I'm going to add this to what I already do, just for fun.  It's excellent practice in listening.

Wednesday

You know that embarrassing little incident I had with the car the other day?  Well, I told Mike about it, and his only response was to say that I'm now officially assimilated.  I'm a Seattle driver.

Today we went over to the peninsula and had a nice Christmas dinner with Danny and Reyna.  Man, Reyna can cook like nobody's business, and she made a delicous ham and potato casserole thing.  She's one of those people, though, that can't ever give you a recipe, because she made it up herself on the fly.

blurry pic of Mike and Danny

 

Tuesday

I'm learning to count to 100 in French, and you would not believe how crazy it is!  Okay, get this.  It's all fine through 69, but then...

• The word for 70 actually means "sixty plus ten."
• The word for 71 means "sixty plus eleven."
• 72 is "sixty plus twelve."  And so on.
• Then the word for 80 is "four times twenty."
• 81 is "four times twenty plus one."
• 82 is "four times twenty plus two."
• It goes on from there until you get to 90, which is "four times twenty plus ten."
• 91 is "four times twenty plus eleven."
• 92 is "four times twenty plus twelve."  And so on.

I mean!  Was the person who came up with this drunk?

Yesterday Baylee and I were both wearing flannel shirts, so we took a picture of ourselves.

Also, yesterday Baylee spent almost all her Christmas money on a TV, which she then set up under her bed.  She's very happy.

It's Hard to be Me

I did something REALLY stupid today.  In fact, it crossed my mind to keep it to myself, but Baylee was there and she's probably going to blab, so at least if I tell people myself I can somewhat control the way it's portrayed.  See, what happened was that Baylee and I were leaving Target...

(By the way, the Target we go to is huge and it's got an attached parking garage.  That's important to the story.)

...and we were chatting as I was driving through the garage, making my way towards the exit, which is a long ramp leading down to the street, when...well...I found a ramp alright, but it turns out it wasn't the exit.  It was the entrance.  And I guess I wasn't paying attention to all the signs saying, "Do Not Go This Way," because I went down it.  All was well at first, but then about three quarters of the way through I met another car coming up.  We just sat there for a second, facing each other.  Baylee got so embarrassed that she ducked down below the dash, and I was horrified, too, but didn't really have the option to hide.  I just mouthed "Sorry!" a million times. Finally the other car started to back out, which was the lesser of two evils, and I finally got out of there and drove off, dying inside.

So, basically, what I'm saying is that I have to move to Mexico and change my identity forever.

Back to Usual

Couple last pictures from our little holiday...

Patty took this one of Baylee and Cooper.

And I took this one last night.

Now today is back to business.  It's only noon, but with Baylee and Patty's help I've already got all the decorations down.  It's always fun to enjoy the beautiful tree and stuff, but it's also sort of a relief when it's all put away for the year, too.  (Or is that just me?)

2015 in Pictures

January

February

  

March

April

May

June

July

 

August

September

October

November

December