spanish

I start a Spanish class tomorrow! I signed up for it because I decided I wanted to know what the caretakers are saying to each other. I hate it when they are helping me and they talk to each other in Spanish and then stand there and stare at me and giggle hysterically. I also wanted to be able to say to them things such as "I want my blue tee-shirt. It is in the second drawer of the shelves on the left as you walk in the closet." So I signed up and paid for a Spanish class and it starts tomorrow.

Only problem is that most of the Spanish speaking caretakers are now gone. There is a rapid turnover in the caregiver business! The new group seems mainly to be from Nepal. I don't even know what language is spoken in Nepal. Please wait and I'll look it up on the internet... Hmmmm... The official language is Nepali. I don't think it would be an enormously useful language to know, as it is spoken only also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar (Burma). I really don't envision myself traveling to any of those places in the near future.

Wow - I did find some phrases which might be useful:

malai thaha chhaina मलाई थाहा छैन- I don't know
malai tapaiko/timro sahayog chahinchha मलाई तपाईको सहयोग चाहिन्छ - I need your help.
ke tapain malai maddat garna saknuhuncha? के तपाईं मलाई मदत् गर्न सक्नुहुन्छ? - Can you help me?
pugyo पुग्यो — That is enough (mainly used while eating).
ke cha? के छ? - What's up? (informal), sañcai hunuhuncha? सञ्चै हुनुहुन्छ? - Doing well? (formal)
namaste. नमस्ते — "hello" or "goodbye."
shubhaprabhat शुभप्रभात - good morning
tapāī̃ko/timro nām ke ho? तपाईंको/तिम्रो नाम के हो? - What is your name?

I also found some I am not likely to use, inluding:

kāṭhmāḍaũ jāne bāṭo dherai lāmo cha. काठ्माडौँ जाने बाटो धेरै लामो छ — The road to Kathmandu is very long.
ma nepālī hũ म नेपाली हूँ — I am Nepali.
krishna ji ! hajur yuzana myanmar maa basnu hunchha ?कृष्ण जी !हजुर युजना म्यान्मा मा बस्नु हुन्छ ? dear krishna ! Do you live in yuzana myanmar ?

Church directory

Hmmmm---
My blog counter on Thursday was 1088. Today it reads 1086. I knew it was a pretty bad post, but I didn't know it was THAT bad.

It is the church's anniversary, and one of the ladies asked if I might have any of the many photos David had taken over the years of church functions. I asked Ron, and he pulled them off David's hard drive and put them on a CD for me. There are literally thousands of them dating from the mid 90's foreward. When I look at the variety of work he did and realize the amount of imagination and leadership and hard work involved, I recognize all over again that he was a professional genius.

Here are some pictures:






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These are just a couple of a jillion pictures Ron found. They're some of the few that feature David. Had he seen these, he wouldn't have liked them at all, because they all feature him. He would have said, "That's not the point!" He said that every time I took pictures of him and not the church members. (Not that I took most of the pictures - he did.)

Running just as fast as I can

I went home today for lunch because Aunt Ruth and Uncle Dick Koweleski dropped by. They are passing through, and live in Pennsylvania. I remember staying with them when my siblings and I were just little kids. Once, many years ago, Dad told my little brother that he could not tell any Pollack jokes because Uncle Dick is Polish. Pollack jokes were my brother's favorite thing in the world (he was about 8 years old), so he changed them to Irish jokes and told them anyway. One was:
Q- How can you tell that a plane is from a Polish airlines? A- By the hair under its wings.

Wow - I just managed to insult two ethnic groups with one joke. Please don't burn down my house!

Disabiliy Blog

I've been reading articles about "How to get blog hits" and "How to make money off a blog", and the secret seems to be to develop a specific audience and to gear ads toward that audience. They then click on the ads and I earn money. It is not allowed for me just to put a big section in my blog that says, "Click on my ads and I earn money." The content of the ads they send me depends on the content of the articles I write. (As is evidenced by the fact that I once said I was a fountain of knowledge and my blog carried ads for decorative fountains for weeks. Now I've said it again, so you can expect more fountain ads!

Anyway, the idea is to focus on a specific audience and to write articles of interest to that audience, thus attracting ads geared to that audience, which they then click on, thereby earning me money. Groovy. But it does not sound like anywhere near as much fun as writing about whatever happens to pass through my mind at any given moment.

So, I guess on the rare occasions when I'm feeling like I should be productive, I'll gear articles toward my natural audience. And I guess my natural audience is people who have disabilities.

Maybe I can even attract ads for things I want myself and don't know where to get. Some of them are:
1. a wheelchair that fully reclines. It would be great to take naps right in the chair.
2. a wheelchair that climbs stairs. I saw them on TV once, and they were outrageously expensive, but I've not seen them since. Do they exist? Do they really work?
3. a scooter that beeps when it backs up.
4. a scooter or wheelchair with a radio. Yes, one can wear an MP3 device, but that scares me. I find it is good to be able to hear approaching vehicles or pedestrians!

Do you suppose it might be possible to make a scooter or wheelchair with a built-in umbrella or roof?

Which reminds me of a joke. A brunette, a redhead, and a blond are going into the Sahara desert on a trip. A TV reporter interviews them as they leave. He says to the brunette "I see you are taking an umbrella. Why?" The brunette says. "If the sun gets hot, we can stand under the umbrella in the shade."

"OK" the reporter says. Turning to the redhead, he says, "I see you brought bottles of water. Why?"

The redhead answers, "If it gets hot, we can drink the water to refresh ourselves,"

"OK" the reporter says.

Then he turns to the blond. He sees that she has removed the door from a junked car and is holding it. "Goodness" he says. "What do you plan to do with that door?"

"Well," the blond replies. "if it gets real hot, I can roll down the windows!"

Buddhism

Leading the Sunday School discussion about Buddhism went OK, but mainly because nobody much came, and, of those that came, nobody much cared. Maybe that's not fair of me. Seeing that the actual point of the book is that one cannot worship God using any of the 8 major religions interchangeably because 7 of them are wrong, this is probably the kind of chapter on Buddhism, one should expect. It made a very serious religion seem laughable, though. He really didn't seem to try to understand, or to present the belief in a balanced manner. He also chose to use inflammatory language when talking about the religion, for instance, he uses the term "fairy tale" to talk about some of the "old testament" Buddhist stories. Would he call "Noah's ark" a. fairy tale?

I got to tell my favorite Buddhist teaching, though. It is that a monk goes to the Master and asks, "Master, what must I do to attain enlightenment?", and the Master pulls out a sword and cuts off the monk's arm!

Having taken 4 or 5 classes in Buddhism about 30 years ago, that story actually makes a vague sort of sense to me. The real reason I remember it, though, is because I used to hang around the "Green Room" in the Culbreth Theater between classes and study, and this was one of the stories I read out loud to the other drama majors who were hanging around, and they all just hooted.

art

I went to "The American Art museum"/"National Portrait Gallery" with Mom today on Metro Access because I told her ae had to go see the Norman Rockwell
exhibit that George Lucas/Stephen King loaned. The Museum is located at Eighth and F Streets, NW, Washington, D.C. above the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metrorail station (Red, Yellow and Green lines).

Mom and I both really wished Dad felt better and were able to come see it, because we agreed that he'd love it. At this point, though, just getting up and out is quite difficult for him. I wish he could get a whole lot more physical theerapy.

I wish I could get a whole lot more physical theerapy.

The problem in both our cases is that the insurance puts so many limits on what they will cover. I wonder how much it would cost me to to pay out of poket? That has just gone on my list of things to find out immediately. Then I could pay and write therapy off on my taxes.

Anyway, the exhibit was great fun. Mom loved it. So did I. More tomorrow.

Discussion

My friend Bill, a fellow resident here at the "home", is going quite deaf. Sometimes his hearing aide "sort of" works, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. After dinner yesterday, I told him I was going to go outside and read for a while. He said, "Why?!" I said, "I just need to read some." He said, "Why?" I shouted, "I WANT TO FINISH MY BOOK." He said, "Oh. I thought you said you were going outside to weed!"

So I told this story in Sunday School this morning, and the Pastor respoonded with the phrase "Weed it and reap."

Which just goes to show you to what depths serious discussion can devolve when I am the appointed discussion leader.