I am now posting at https://livingdeb.dreamwidth.org/.

I decided a while ago to move away from LiveJournal. I was going to switch to Blogger, but the easy way I had found to import blog entries to Blogger no longer works, and my eyes were glazing over reading about other methods, and I've been putting off writing, blah, blah, blah ( Read more... )

This year my homeowner's insurance went up 9.5%. Unless you count the new installment fees ($2/month); then it's 12%. And last year it went up 18%, but at least that year they also raised my limits. So I called ( Read more... )

LiveJournal has been sold to the Russians and as such is now subject to Russian laws about privacy, etc. I tried to read, or at least skim through, the new regulations, but they basically said only two things: 1) read and agree to these and 2) we are switching to Russian regulations (which, in spite of all the pages we are making you read, there ( Read more... )

Short answer: No. I am not a fluent Spanish speaker ( Read more... )

It's resolution time!

Last year

I didn't have much in the way of a resolution last year. But I did, indeed, follow along in Spanish IV with my ex-classmates who took it in the spring. This was good because there was no way I could have learned as much as I did during my class in the summer. Unfortunately, I just did the grammar and vocabulary ( Read more... )

A special blind-leading-the-blind feature! (Actually, many of y'all are probably not that blind in this way ( Read more... )

For various reasons, I deliberately do not use any Microsoft products at home. This is no hardship for me (except for Excel ( Read more... )

Bad Idea

Everyone knows that mindless eating is a bad idea because you eat way too much without noticing, plus, since you're not paying attention, you don't even enjoy it as much.

Good IdeaHowever, I have found an excellent use for mindless eating: cantaloup that turned out not to be very good. In fact, I'd say it's a good idea for any food that ( Read more... )

We had a section in our text about Spanish names, but it's described very well and somewhat amusingly in a few paragraphs in James Michener's Iberia so I'll give you that quote below. (I'm adding more paragraph breaks to make it easier to read.)

A word about Spanish names. To explain the tradition fully would require many pages, for it is ( Read more... )

Today at a party I ended up asking someone if he had a plan for if his property taxes got too expensive. He had a very interesting idea on how to find a new place ( Read more... )