Task Mistress Day 55; Task 16 out of 101/1001

16.  Find a work study job for the fall. (4/11/12; 4/23/12)

I am a glutton for punishment.  Seriously.  I had no problems lining up a work study gig for fall.  Care to guess why?

I mentioned I’d be looking for one to my Spanish teacher and she offered to take me on.  Which is great.  She’s really nice.  I’ll be her personal secretary and apparently her Teacher’s Assistant for her English composition class and, did you see this coming? Spanish.

Just when I thought I could put that behind me, I’m in for it again.  At least this time I won’t be graded, I’ll be helping with the grading.  But my teacher is a native Spanish speaker so she’s been emailing me with summer instructions in Spanish.

*sigh*

Please pass the Spanish-English dictionary….

Task Mistress Day 50; Task 9 out of 101/1001

9.  Figure out how to sit for two finals 75 miles apart at the same time on the same day. (4/11/12; 5/1/12)

This turned out to be easier than I thought, as the two finals in question were for Spanish and Anthropology, and being as my Spanish class consisted of just 4 students the teacher let us pick a different date that was preferable to everyone.  So one problem solved, but it turned out to be even less necessary because after we picked the new date for the Spanish final, the teacher announced that she would exempt anyone with an A in the class and perfect attendance from the final.  I didn’t think I was going to be able to make an A this semester, but between my fantastic chicken tacos with mole and an extra credit project I did on double negatives I managed to have a 93.79% which she rounded up to the cut off of 94% for an A.  I thought it was very nice of her to round up, don’t you?

Task Mistress Day 45: 101 tasks in 1001 days

So, I’m finally officially setting up my 101 tasks for 1001 days.  I began my process a little tongue-in-cheek here, but I think it really is a valiant effort, so I’ll keep these tasks and add to them.

I’ll keep my list on the 101/1001 page which I’ll be adding to my page bar.  If we count April 11 as my starting date when I accepted the challenge I’m up to day 45 already.  While I haven’t put a ton of thought into this since then, I’m very excited.  I’ve even got a few to cross off already!

1.  Prepare and give a 5 minute speech on mole for Spanish class, all in Spanish, of course.

Well, this is one I’ve done!  And it went well.  It was actually kind of fun.  I made a Powerpoint presentation and put in a few video clips of me cooking the mole.  Then the day of the presentation I brought in chicken tacos to put the sauce on for everyone to try.  My teacher was tickled pink.  My philosophy?  The way to a man’s heart, they say, is through his stomach.  It works for “A’s” in Spanish class too.

Well, more on this to come!

Happy Friday.

Tuesday Titters: Week 17, ¿Cuándo es un puerto no puerto? Cuando lo es un tarro.

When is a door not a door?  When it’s ajar.

Some how it’s just funnier in English.  Or maybe it’s just my horrendous Spanish.

I have my oral presentation today.  I have to talk for 5 minutes in Spanish and answer questions.  Wish me luck!

Spudisms #9: Please pass the tortuga noodles

Spud: What are we having for dinner?

Me: Chicken and tortellini noodles.

*Later*

Spud: Are these the turtle noodles?

Me: Turtle noodles? You mean tortellini noodles?

Spud: Yeah. Well, they kinda look like little turtles.

Me: You think so?

Spud: Yeah.

Me: Well, maybe they do sort of. A little.

Oh, and by the way, here’s some Spanish vocabulary trivia. Tortuga is how you say turtle in Spanish. It kinda rolls right of the tongue. Tortuga. Say it with me. Tortuga. Tortuga. Tortuga.

I think I’m loosing my mind.

Is it May 8th yet?

So, that’s the date we’re aiming for.  On or before May 8th I will be finished with Spanish.  While I don’t absolutely loathe the class, I am getting a bit tired of it already and we’re only 3 weeks into the semester.  We are studying indirect pronouns, preterite verb tenses and, because it’s so important to appreciate other cultures, Cuba.  I have to write an essay about what a santero would advise his client.  Now, all I have to go on is a video, all in Spanish of course, to figure out what’s going on.  I infer that a santero is like a fortune teller.  So, I imagine the conversation would go something like this (only in Spanish, of which mine still sucks despite my good grades, and most of you wouldn’t be able to understand anyway):

Client:  Oh, santero, can you tell me the winning lottery numbers for Saturday’s drawing?

Santero:  Honey, if I could do that kind of voo-doo I wouldn’t be playing this charlatan’s game.

Of course, I’ve probably just been extremely insensitive to the Cuban culture.  But seriously I’m getting really tired of this class.  I’d much rather be doing almost anything else.  I have a hard enough time with my English grammar, and now I’m supposed to be managing grammar in a foreign language.  *Shudder*  I have a test on Tuesday.  No fun at all.

Which leads me to realize that I have been so hung up in the SOPA crap that I haven’t regaled you all with tales of my educational adventure.

So, the important details you’ve long been pining for:

My writing teacher is hot, for what that’s worth.  So far the first two weeks have been dull, and I hope that it stays that way.  However, I’m pretty sure that she has never seen the movie 2001, which would make more sense to all ya’ll if you were in my class.  Also, I said that Nicolas Carr, the author of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” for which the whole movie reference is key, needed to get over himself and grow a pair.  Yes, I actually said that out loud in class.  Everyone laughed.  It sort of popped out before I realized what I was saying.  But, I think most of the kids in my class are young enough to be my children so they probably were just shocked to hear an “old person” say a pair in reference to testicles.

My astronomy professor, who called himself gibbous, is a horrible lecturer.  I cannot vouch for his personal attributes as it’s an online class and I’ve never seen the professor in the flesh, gibbous or no.  I spend a great deal of time saying much more colorful things than grow a pair at him, but as I just have to listen to recordings of his lectures it’s not likely to get me any attention.  It is unfortunate that he’s such a miserable lecturer because the subject itself is fascinating.

My Pre-historic Anthropology professor is pretty personable and interesting.  His class, despite being crammed cheek to jowl in one of the amphitheater rooms with tiny little seats smaller than movie theater seating and itty-bitty drop down table tops that aren’t even as big as a 8×11 notebook, is pretty engaging.  However, by the time class is over I’m stiff and sore, and wanting to holler to the students around me, “Get up a half hour earlier dammit and take a freakin bath before you come to class!”  Although yesterday a young co-ed apparently had sensed my vibe and, in effort to be well groomed, experimented with the other end of the stinky spectrum and came off smelling like she’d bathed in a vat of vanilla and magnolia fragrance then topped it off with a pound of baby powder.  It was both clean smelling and sickly-sweet vomit inducing stinky at the same time.

And, lastly there’s my biology class, which is online and so far rather low pressure.  However, things appear in the homework that weren’t in the lessons.  Curious and curiouser.  Like a lot of statistics and chemistry stuff.  Luckily I did well in chemistry so I was able to fill in those blanks.  Enough people complained about the statistics bit that we got three points of extra credit to make up for the 3 statistics questions.  Beyond that it’s been pretty unremarkable.

So far, besides being a bit ready to be done with Spanish, the work load and courses haven’t been too bad.  Well, except Wednesday when I had so many assignments due on Thursday that I worked about 10 hours straight on homework.  But I don’t think things will be bad like that all the time.  Which is good.  Which is way better than last semester.  Way.

Still, is it May 8th yet?  I’ll be really glad to be done with Spanish.

 

Oooh. Somebody quick, take my temperature. I must be sick.

So yesterday I drove into the big city to purchase my text books for this semester.  $500+ later I was having anxiety attacks at the check out counter.  However I may be horrified at the price tag, this semester’s lot, excepting the $150 on my writing 101 materials, looks totally cool!  I had to exert massive will power to do my Spanish homework first before wading into the astronomy text- dark matter!- or the anthropology text -discussing the evolution of prehistoric humans!-  EEEEE!

I’m even in a pretty good mood about Spanish.  This chapter is about shopping, clothing and colors.  Way more interesting in my opinion than most of the chapters from last semester about sports, -yuk- making travel plans, -eh- or talking about countries of origin or school related terms.

Well, I can contain myself no longer, I’m off to hit the books…  Whoo-hoo!