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More painting, more podcast, more prep
Nov. 14th, 2024 07:48 pmI spent a lot of time working on getting ready to study Portuguese without a teacher. I tried Pimsleur, but I am too advanced for the part that is in European Portuguese. So, I'm not going to use it. Instead, I just have to keep plowing through podcasts, trying to get better at comprehension. It worked with French, eventually, so I'll keep at it. I'm going to see if speaking Portuguese to Claude.ai via the app on my phone works. I'm not comfortable with the idea of doing this, but I can go through the partner exercises in my textbook with it. It can't talk back to me, which is okay. Self-voicing with a computer voice that is using California English is so painful to listen to when it is trying to pronounce Portuguese.
The podcast deadline is looming, and I told a promoter that I would put two of their label's songs in the next episode, because they sound good together, and I've been meaning to get the first song they sent me into an episode for a while. However, the sound is quite right for anything I have. I did find a song by a Japanese band that I really like (and had permission for) that will fit. And finally, after a few hours of trying to find the right songs, I came up with two more from a couple of different labels that should work. I'm so glad that is finally moving forward.
I'm not going to get all my paintings done by this weekend, but I drew out a fairly good looking X-Wing for the Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader painting that I'm doing (the trench run from the first Star Wars movie). I would love to have gotten more done, but I don't want to push myself and end up even more stressed.
Oh!!!! We came up with a solution to the scooter/bike problem. Yesterday, I rode the scooter again, and it was a lot of fun. However, it definitely doesn't have enough power to get up the hills. So, I 100% will need a new one. And Joel's bike is _still_ not working (company sent a replacement part, which didn't fix the problem, so the bike will have to go back to Spain again). Joel is looking to buy another bike. If we buy another scooter for me, then we would have two scooters and two bikes, needing to sell one of each. However, the other thing I discovered with the scooter is that I will have to ride the breaks down any hill. One of the big reasons for the scooter was that it was supposed to have a speed limiter, which would mean that I didn't have to deal with that. If I am going to have to ride the breaks down all the hills, I might as well be on a bike. I can just ride it really slowly. If Joel buys a new bike and gets the old bike fixed (again), then I can ride the slightly smaller new bike for my one trip into town per week, and Joel can ride the old bike on that one day. The rest of the time, he can ride the new bike (which we think he will like more). Then, we would only need to get rid of the scooter, which we will need to get rid of anyway. Having two bikes in the yard is way less annoying than having a scooter in the living room. So, anyway, that is the plan.
The podcast deadline is looming, and I told a promoter that I would put two of their label's songs in the next episode, because they sound good together, and I've been meaning to get the first song they sent me into an episode for a while. However, the sound is quite right for anything I have. I did find a song by a Japanese band that I really like (and had permission for) that will fit. And finally, after a few hours of trying to find the right songs, I came up with two more from a couple of different labels that should work. I'm so glad that is finally moving forward.
I'm not going to get all my paintings done by this weekend, but I drew out a fairly good looking X-Wing for the Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader painting that I'm doing (the trench run from the first Star Wars movie). I would love to have gotten more done, but I don't want to push myself and end up even more stressed.
Oh!!!! We came up with a solution to the scooter/bike problem. Yesterday, I rode the scooter again, and it was a lot of fun. However, it definitely doesn't have enough power to get up the hills. So, I 100% will need a new one. And Joel's bike is _still_ not working (company sent a replacement part, which didn't fix the problem, so the bike will have to go back to Spain again). Joel is looking to buy another bike. If we buy another scooter for me, then we would have two scooters and two bikes, needing to sell one of each. However, the other thing I discovered with the scooter is that I will have to ride the breaks down any hill. One of the big reasons for the scooter was that it was supposed to have a speed limiter, which would mean that I didn't have to deal with that. If I am going to have to ride the breaks down all the hills, I might as well be on a bike. I can just ride it really slowly. If Joel buys a new bike and gets the old bike fixed (again), then I can ride the slightly smaller new bike for my one trip into town per week, and Joel can ride the old bike on that one day. The rest of the time, he can ride the new bike (which we think he will like more). Then, we would only need to get rid of the scooter, which we will need to get rid of anyway. Having two bikes in the yard is way less annoying than having a scooter in the living room. So, anyway, that is the plan.
