I originally read that as "lost a fight IN the back of a prius" and was a lot less concerned. This version sounds less fun.
Wombat, how was your trip? When you were gone everyone stopped posting.
My new thing is that instead of watching TV shows in between homework, I am trying to keep up with Duolingo a lot more. My new thing is Dutch. It is a cool language, mostly like an easier (and less useful) German. It is a lot more fun to start a new language than it is to keep grinding away at Spanish.
I think a lot about the weird availability of regionally specific knowledge in the internet age. Thanks to Duolingo there are random people in the US learning Dutch and Hungarian and Romanian, and thanks to sites like
Forvo I can hear a native speaker pronounce practically any word. Whenever I read about old polymath types who could "speak 7 languages" I wonder how many of them would have actually been intelligible. Lately when I reflect on those claims what comes to mind is 14 year old Inev claiming he was learning Quenya, the elven language from Lord of the Rings. But this aspect of the internet is my blessing as a person who wants to read 10 articles of instructions before he tries anything. Although maybe this is only reinforcing bad habits.
Midterms this week and I need to start research for final papers, so the language learning is going to fall by the wayside. Also about to register for classes next semester, and it looks like it might be a tough one. Methods II (demographics and computer modeling), GIS (mapping), Historic Preservation Methods, and maybe a zoning law class. Reports indicate the first two are going to mean lots of long nights in the lab compiling census data.