Day 10 - Simply Keeping Up

Work has started again, and so my life is crazy again. This week I'm a little short on hours, but it will give me three days off to enjoy. Tomorrow I'll go museum hopping with friends (#64), and who knows, maybe I'll get to try a new restaurant (#71). And the vitamin thing (#26) is still going strong.

I'm up to page 34 in this week's New Yorker (#10)--I love David Sedaris. Some of his essays are on the short side, but I'm savoring this four page reflection on quitting smoking. The rest of the magazine should go quickly, as I usually skip over the fiction. I want to work in radio and news, and any reading time spent on "fake" stuff kinda feels like wasted time. I aspire to fill my head with facts and true stories, instead.

I've been working on my Japanese 社会 textbook (#48) as well and have now reached page 43. To be fair it was a picture and graph heavy section. Having a Japanese boyfriend is absolutely wonderful when I reach weird parts of the text.

Me: Hey Ken, take a look at this sentence for me. I think it means this, but the way it's written confuses me.
Ken: That's not natural Japanese--it confuses me, too.

I love it when it's not just me.

I leave you with the most beautiful character I've scribbled down in a long time--a hiragana ki. It has the perfect proportions and swish factor. Starred for easy identification and my own amusement. ^_^

Day 6 - Unexpected Free Time

I thought I would be going to work today, but they have most everything set up for tomorrow's soft open so I just stayed at home. It didn't quite feel like a day off, but I can't quite figure out why. Action on a couple of new items today:

#4 - I now have yarn for the Irtfa'a shawl. It isn't exactly the shade I was hoping for, but getting 1,760 yards of laceweight for $10 isn't an everyday occurrence. It should be fine. My next "action step" (I think I picked that up from a 'steps to success' book somewhere... GTD?) is to buy the pattern from Anne's website. I won't be able to start working on it until I finish a lace scarf I have on the needles, though, so it might wait a couple of weeks.

#8 - Tomorrow ought to be the day I find out if I have this internship or not. The not knowing is not fun. Once I have the answer I'll be able to plan the next few months of my life, which I look forward to.

#10 - The next New Yorker just arrived today. I'm on page 24, which means I skipped over all the movie and show listings in the front and read half of a Talk of the Town article. -_^

#26 - Yes.

#48 - I'm up to page 38 in the 社会 textbook. This section is all about the jobs people do, from banker to construction worker. Not too much new vocab and lots of pictures make fast going (it'll be reversed in later chapters--I know, I already peeked). The best new word in this section is 勧誘する人, or roughly traveling salesman.

Tomorrow I think I'm going to have a "me" lunch, and there's a chance some friends and I will visit a museum or two on Tuesday. I like this feeling of making progress. ^_^

Day 3 - First Completed Item

I finally get to bold an item today! It's this:

#41 - Complete 2nd grade kanji (160 characters)

I may as well bold it here too--it just looks better. -_^ Some background info: Japanese was my second major in college and I studied abroad in Osaka for a year. I love Japanese and gets lots of opportunities to speak it at home with my boyfriend. So while my listening and speaking are pretty good my reading and writing need some work. In order to pass Level 2 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (#47, wouldn't you know it) you have to know 1,000 kanji, or written characters. That's about half of what Japanese people learn in school, or nearly every character from first to sixth grade.

I've studied a lot of kanji in the past, and at my peak I probably knew close to 600... but being two years out of practice really puts a damper on things. I'm closer to 400 now. My current study strategy is to read level appropriate material (3rd-4th grade at the moment) and go through the characters systematically by grade level, brushing up the ones I know and fully learning the ones I don't. So--second grade kanji, done. Third grade kanji, you're next.

To go along with this I've been going through a textbook I recently got called 小学３･４年社会自由自在 ...it's a social studies book for third and fourth graders. Not only am I learning new words ("Oooo, harbor! Breakwater!") but it's also great for getting Japanese culture and common sense into my head. There's a section on Japanese map symbols, which are totally different from ours. Another chapter gives a geography lesson about each prefecture and what goods it's famous for (Niigata = rice, if you ever wanted to know). It's the stuff that every good Japanese should know, and every bumbling American needs help with. It's been satisfying study, not to mention #48 on my list.

Okay, enough about Japanese, it's time to ask the question I know is on your mind--did I take my vitamins today? Yes. Yes I did. One more to #26. I also finished reading this week's New Yorker, but I'm not putting #10 in italics. I'd rather it feel unofficial. The moment it feels real, like an obligation, I'm going to drop the ball. Right now it's just an... experiment. ^_^

Related to #8, I called the people at a radio internship I applied to and they said decisions will be made this week. When I called the really nice guy on the other end was like, "If you don't get it, do reapply". That made me think two things. One, does he already know if I made it or not? And two, maybe this is more competitive than I thought. It was encouraging, though. New internships come up every few months, and this isn't something I'm going to give up on.

Okay, this long entry dearly needs a picture. Here's that first completed pair of socks I mentioned, for #1:



Comfort Socks in Trekking (color 62) on size 1 needles. Plain Jane.