So apparently Bragg Apple Cider Vinegar has a honey/cayenne version, something I did not notice when purchasing the other day. This came as quite a surprise to me as I did my morning shot of cider vinegar. Not that it was too sweet or spicy, but just because it was not what I expected at all. It reminded me of a time many many moons ago when we had been doing shots of tequila all night and someone slid me a shot of rumpleminz and I projectile vomited out of my nose.
At any rate, just thought I should check in. Something you should know about me is that not only do I have ADHD, but also I am an excessive person. I overdo everything. I will drink to excess, eat to excess, do drugs to excess, if I am on a fitness kick I will work out or diet to excess, I will garden to excess, sleep to excess, EVERYTHING. I do nothing in moderation and I hate myself for that.
But then, I get hyperfixated on something else and then do that to excess until I don’t. All of which is a longwinded way of telling you that I still intend to have a spanish learning group and that I have not forgotten and have been doing duolingo myself, but still need a little more time to get something together.
No One You Know
Good Lord, John, are we related?!
Can confirm that a minor update to a bathroom became a remodel. This outcome was not listed on the cautionary panel of the can of paint I bought.
SiubhanDuinne
It is always a pleasure to see a post from you, John.
If you’re going to hate yourself for doing everything to excess, at least please don’t hate yourself to excess. ‘Mkay?
J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)
It is going to be pretty hot here in San Diego the next few days. I broke out a small power washer for the first time in probably 4 or 5 years and hosed down the front and back walls of the house. Lots of dark dirt came out. After about 20 minutes the front is dry (this is where the Sun is presently). The back will need a few more hours to dry. After that, I have to sweep up all of the small bits of paint and stucco that came off.
Omnes Omnibus
Thanks for that?
J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)
@No One You Know:
As I recall, the only warnings on the last can of paint I bought had to do with not sniffing it or otherwise ingesting it.
Speaking of bathroom remodeling, I need a new toilet for the front bathroom. The bolts are so rusted that I cannot get them off, which in turn makes it hard to make room for the new toilet. I probably will just call a plumber for this one.
Doc Sardonic
@J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian): if you have one, a Dremel tool with a grinding wheel, or an oscillating saw with a metal cutting blade will take care of that. More extreme method is going to the home improvement store or order off of Evilzon a package of toilet jello and when that sets up introduce the toilet base to a hammer.
Starfish
I have been doing Duolingo for a while, and there are a lot of YouTube videos on why Duolingo does not work. I think my Spanish literacy has improved, but stringing words into a sentence to talk to people? Forget it.
Some people I know recommend https://preply.com/en/online/spanish-tutors
El Cruzado
Happy to help with Spanish if the opportunity arises. All these years of lurking around here deserve some effort back.
laura
I’ve been struggling with a season obsession the last handful of weeks. It’s been a great peach season and peeled frozen peaches, vanilla ice cream and buttermilk makes the most tangy sweet and delicious peach milkshake one can have. The buttermilk cuts the sweetness of the ice cream and elevates the sweetness of the peaches. Freezing the peaches keeps the milkshake from being too runny. It’s all I can do to keep it at 2 per week.
frosty
@Starfish: Ms F and I are taking weekly Zoom lessons with a Spanish teacher. I agree – stringing words into a sentence is extraordinarily difficult. Like when he asks me what my Saturday plans are.
J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)
@Doc Sardonic: Thanks for the suggestion. I do have a small dremmel-like tool (bought from Harbor Freight for under $10). Maybe some gentle grinding can help. I have not heard of the jello—I am always looking for ways to use the Universal Tool.
Anonymous At Work
So, just guessing, how are you enjoying BG3?
wmd
Are you planning on having group chats in Spanish over Zoom – preferably with some mechanism for a native speaker to help improve pronunciation?
There are apps pairing learners using DuoLingo or Babbel with native speakers for practice. Tandem? I’m confident the jackaltariat has opinions on this and you’ll get some advice.
marklar
John, as a fellow traveller with ADD, I’d like to share how I define the acronym…”Attention Distribution Difference”. We don’t have a deficit in attention– we focus it in different ways (often in the way you describe, i.e., hyperfocus). Contextualizing it as a difference instead of a deficit helps reframe it from something “bad” to simply a different way of thinking. Like many differences, the “deficit” arises from an interaction between cognitive style and environment. For instance, the gene most linked to AD(H)D– DRD47R allele– has been found to predict a host of poor behavioral outcomes in urban social structures, but may actually confer advantages for people in rural areas (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18544160/). In other words, the deficit isn’t in the gene/brain wiring, but in the person/environment interaction.
Matt Smith
Yay. I’m an ADHDer too. So if it’s slipped your mind, as things often slip my mind, I offered to help with a Spanish group, maybe with an intro-to-Spanish spiel or an intro to Spanish pronunciation. Or open to other ideas.
(Former linguist, fluent in Spanish)
Kelly
@No One You Know: A small riverfront cabin in my neighborhood changed hands to the younger generation. The remodel became a tear down primarily due to carpenter ants. If they’d waited a year the Beachie Fire would have burnt it down for them.
wmd
@frosty (reply button did not populate this)
It comes with practice. One day you’re struggling, the next it comes fast, and then suddenly it just flows.
At that point you are still making some grammar mistakes – word order, conjugation mis-matches, and verb tense errors. But you can express pretty complex things.
BeautifulPlumage
Oh My God, my friend did that to me once. No nose action, but forever put off peppermint schnapps.
BeautifulPlumage
@marklar: that’s a much better way of looking at it. Neurodiversity is real, but our society is structured around one type and dismissive of any other.
Kelly
Peppermint schnapps is only suitable for adulterating hot cocoa as part of a xc ski lunch break
Almost Retired
As I write this, I am just about to go back on to Duolingo Spanish to make sure I don’t get demoted from my semi-lofty status in the Obsidian League today. Oh the humiliation. I have come to crave the approval of those cartoon people and animals.
Kelly
@J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian): Liquid Wrench Penetrating Oil is very helpful on rusted threads. Give it half an hour to soak in. Tapping the bolt whilst turning the nut occasionally helps.
oldster
Drink confusions:
I once found a half-gallon jug of apple cider in the fridge, poured out a cold glass and took a big swig, only to find out that it was homemade chicken-broth from a few carcasses. It even had the same cloudy particulate look of good apple cider. I don’t recall whether it went up my nose, but I do remember being unhappy about it.
My wife looked in the fridge for a mason jar of iced coffee and pulled out instead some black olives in their juice, decanted from can to jar. it did not hit the spot.
In both of these cases, the substance delivered was not intrinsically repellent. Chicken broth and olive brine both have their places in the world, and they are. not tastes that I hate. But when the gap between what you expect and what you get is that large, the shock is distinctly unpleasant.
oldster
@J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian):
If your Dremel-like tool is a rotary grinder, then the attachment you want is a cut-off wheel. It’s a very thin disc of abrasive, might remind you of an old time Necco Wafer. Fixed on a mandrel or arbor, i.e. a spinning center axis that fits into the Dremel chuck, the thin disc of abrasive does a very good job of cutting metal. Though, it also wears itself to a smaller and smaller disc, as part of its action. Don’t worry, it is supposed to be a kamikaze cutter, just figure you’ll need a few discs for each bolt.
Depending on the size of the nuts, their condition, and your access in tight spaces, you might also consider a nut-splitter as a way to crack the nuts off the ends of the bolts. Not a power-tool, just operated by a wrench and elbow-grease.
Doc Sardonic
@J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian): Did not get back in time to catch the edit window. The toilet jello is made by Oatey. You can usually find it it the plumbing area. On Amazon just search for Oatey 31417 Liquilock.
divF
@laura:
Now that you’ve told us this, I will need to figure out how to keep it at 2 per day.
I guess I can minimize the ice cream and note that peach season is going to run out soon.
beckya57
I am also doing Spanish Duolingo, and would love a group. 2 trips to Mexico scheduled in January!
laura
@divF: The Tang! The vanilla notes. The kind of peach that will haunt the rest of the summer/year.
laura
Toilet jello. I have questions that I shouldn’t want to know the answers to.
narya
I’ve also been doing Duolingo! (Autoincorrect tried to turn that to dueling, which is not the same thing at all.) Plus I dug out an old “Spanish for dummies” book I’d purchased a million years ago.
Dinner tonight is a variation on the shrimp in rose recipe in the FYNYT–gonna add pasta, plus some other veggies, plus garlic and onion. Blueberry crisp for dessert, w/ peach ice cream.
Greg Ferguson
Just hang on, Cole.
Carousels keep going around – there will be another horsie….
❤❤❤❤❤❤🤠💋
[Only carnival ride that didn’t scare the shit out of me when I was 4,
Still have clown-phobia…..
dnfree
I can’t eat cottage cheese, because once as a child I was served it at a family “banquet” (in a church basement) wrapped up as if it were ice cream, which cottage cheese IS NOT. That’s my story. Failure to taste like ice cream when that was what I expected put me off cottage cheese permanently, for going on 70 years now.
oldster
@dnfree:
Perfectly rational. It burned you once; why should you trust it ever again?
Bostondreams
Hey John how are you liking Baldur’s Gate III??? Loving it myself.
Another Scott
Some more good news out of Ohio.
Good, good.
Cheers,
Scott.
sab
Goodluck on this Spanish project.
I come from a long time Ohio family, but I went to elementary school in NE coastal ( Daytona) Florida shortly after the Cubans arrived in Miami. Since Florida wasn’t a nativist cesspool then the state hunkered down and tried to figure out what to do about the hispanic influx.
We had statewide tv in our schools (or at least in the white ones.) So they hired an excellent Cuban teacher who taught us all day, half an hour per grade level. She was excellent. I still remember the songs and a lot of the vocabulary. And I only ran into one hispanic family in Daytona then, a classmate had a mom from Chile. I had no need for Spanish in my life and yet I remembered a lot. Later it was useful.
Starfish
@frosty: There was a lady near my house trying to load a cat tree that someone had left by the side of the road on top of the shade cover for a baby stroller. I wanted to help her, and it took me forever to just say “Ayuda?” and help her with the silly thing. I was so proud that I had found one word.
Doc Sardonic
@laura: It is a product that is used to solidify water, like jello or gelatin, only works faster so you can remove a toilet without making a mess
Raven
We’re hunters in a farmers world.
Villago Delenda Est
I haven’t read all the comments, but surely by now someone has noted than when you visit an animal shelter you must physically restrain yourself from grabbing several puppies and kittens.
SiubhanDuinne
@oldster:
This is why the good Lord in his infinite wisdom invented the labelmaking machine.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kelly: It’s not bad on the slopes, either, but I like Glühwein as well. It was great when I skied Berchtesgaden.
Florida frog
@Almost Retired: me too! I know it’s silly but it does keep me working on it every day without fail. I made diamond league a few weeks ago. What seems to help is the daily practice supplemented with a conversation circle hosted by a native speaker and some halting attempts to read the Spanish edition of the Miami Herald
O. Felix Culpa
@Almost Retired: Heh. I managed to finish first in the Diamond League and promptly allowed myself to be “demoted ” to Obsidian, where I’ve stayed ever since. It’s too much like work to stay in that lofty sphere. But like you, I try to keep Duo happy.
laura
Hooo-Whee! This Little League world championship game is A Game.
The Lodger
@Doc Sardonic: Toilet jello?
Worst Midwestern dessert ever.
Feathers
A cold remedy I am fond of is half a shot of peppermint schnapps, followed by a chamomile tea chaser. Repeat until no longer needed. A coworker once gave me an airplane bottle of schnapps and a box of tea. I never tell my doctor about it, but sometimes it is exactly what’s needed.
On DuoLingo. I’ve been doing the French. I took French in high school and watch French films. I have no delusions that my ADHD and horrible working memory will ever let me be conversational, but I think it does help with keeping what I already knew fresh. I tried Russian, which is the other language I studied in high school and college. My brain just did a nope on that. I had lost the base of memories to build on. It seems to be much more useful for building on previous knowledge than starting from scratch. One thing I notice is that my 70s high school French was all “vous” based, while DuoLingo always leads with “tu.” I was reading one of Franklin Habit’s dispatches from Paris about how people are appalled if you use “tu” in too familiar a way. I’m going to assume DuoLingo is wrong about this.
JoyceH
I’ve been doing Duolingo Spanish for a couple years but don’t know that I’ve made much progress. I only do one lesson a day to keep my streak going and that’s not really enough. I’ve also got an Easy Spanish Step By Step and did some work in that, but I notice it’s working its way down the book pile.
In other news, hope this doesn’t jinx me but … I’m writing again. I’ve been writing almost every day for a couple weeks now, and the long bogged-down WIP seems to be moving forward again. Fingers crossed!
O. Felix Culpa
@Feathers: I don’t know about the French, but the informal “du” is much more common these days among younger people in Germany. I still use the formal address just in case when first meeting people. Better safe than perceived as rude. 😀
mrmoshpotato
@The Lodger:
LOL! Gross.
Another Scott
Someone here saw Oppenheimer recently.
I just came across this…
rofl.
Cheers,
Scott.
Aunt Kathy
I’ve been doing Duolingo for abt a year, and it’s not terrible. Someone in the original Spanish post recommended Mango, which can be accessed with your library card, if they offer it. I’m doing both now, and Mango is helpful in figuring out how to form sentences on your own, but it still has gaps. I found this guy the other day & he’s been very helpful in filling in the gaps.
https://youtu.be/hyLl_0d0EBw
AM in NC
@oldster: In grad school, at a party thrown by one of our professors, my future husband picked up a black olive thinking it was a piece of chocolate (common husband quote: “olives are the devil’s food”). The olive came out of his mouth a lot faster than it went in.
Denali5
I am the opposite – I tend to underestimate or do less than what might be expected. It is a gift to be thorough; it leads to a sense of satisfaction – a “job well done” feeling. So don’t sell yourself short.
oldster
@AM in NC:
My wife is just the opposite, and adores every kind of olive.
Nonetheless, when your taste-buds are primed for iced coffee, and you get black-olive brine in its place, it is a rude shock.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: Cole is not the only one who’s never going to be drinking Rumplemintz again…just sayin’.
Darkrose
Everything I know about Braggs’ is from the Maintenance Phase episode on the company, that concluded with them currently being owned by “Left Shark” Katy Perry and “Hot Elf” Orlando Bloom.
Mo MacArbie
I’ve always called that tastebud switcheroo “The Bugjuice Effect” from the drink served at Boy Scout camp. It was just as neon bright as Kool Aid but they never put the usual amount of sugar in it, so it wasn’t much more flavored than water. Maybe they felt that several troops of boy scouts didn’t need any more sugar or just weren’t worth the expense. But yeah, it wasn’t objectively bad, just very disappointing.