BuJo Initiate

It’s the Ex week again, and like for the past few years now, I’ve taken it as holiday time. It has also been the habit to use the time to do practical economical household craft projects each year during this time, as sort of an advanced preparation for making winter a bit cozier. This time around is no exception. Last year, it was some carpentry to reclaim storage space; other years, it has been canning preserves. This year, I’ve minimized and simplified things even more for a multi-day project.

Over the past couple years or so, one positive habit I have been cultivating for myself is carrying

One template format I'm exploring . . .

around a pocketbook and pen. Sure, a note taking app on the phone is quite handy, but when in a pressured dash or impulse to record, capture, and recover something more instantly and accurately while it is on the tip of my brain, the pen and notebook beats the cellphone. I have been finding my old-fashioned pocketbook to be as indispensable to me as carrying my keys, wallet, and my cellphone. It has helped save me a lot of time, money, and energy, especially in spots when the phone had little to no battery power left.

I like technical innovation a lot, but honestly, only up to a certain point. We think we are doing well for ourselves by organizing our lives with apps on our phones and computers, but this is illusory on some levels. It is ultimately making us comply to a complex system that suits tech companies in finding new ways to control us with ones and zeros, and for them to glean more of our money and personal data from us. In this sense, apps can tend to cheapen the quality of your life, or they at least make the data of it more valuable to everyone except yourself. There is a point where we lose sight of being able to create a very personalized, customized, and more organic system that allows us to stage things better for our own organizational needs, our unique learning modalities, our own personal goals; one that accommodates for recording through our more private and practical eccentricities. Those ones are not for sharing, the non-bloggables: thoughts and ideas best left on a page of paper, with the privacy assured.

One of the things I regret about my formal education, from childhood on through to my early university years, in the days before academic computer use, and before the internet was available, is that I never had any teacher at any time of my life who put any effort at all on teaching me how to do the very essential and elemental thing for excelling in true higher learning. That is, really teaching me on how to organize myself with the practical skill of efficient written planning/journaling, and effective note taking. It seems absurd, but it’s true. Sure, I of course learned literacy, but only mastering merely the taking in and absorbing of information part of it. I always had substandard teachers and mentors for helping me exploit my strongest learning modalities to transpose, and express, what was going on in my head in the way I sensed it, and frame it in the best organized and condensed manner on to a page that was most memorable and comprehensive to me. My willingness to write, or “show my work”, as was always demanded of me, just wasn’t there, and from that I think I suffered greatly in such a way that I was always reticent, reluctant, reserved, made to feel embarrassed, about expressing any form of creativity at all through the written word or graphics for the longest time. I was no dullard, there was lots of thinking going on; but I was always embarrassed with my poor organizational ability of trying to sort it out on paper. Capturing thoughts through note taking was like trying to catch wriggling live fish with soapy hands. I improved a lot over the years, but my journey to get better at it has been a very independent and solitary one, and I missed the most critical of years of when what I know now would have served me better at an earlier time. I’m trying to actively compensate for that even today.

This all brings me now to making a concerted effort at learning something that encompasses serving me as a means of approaching efficient minimalism, enhancing my productivity, and being a creative pastime. Currently, I’m immersing myself in the craft of bullet journaling (or BuJo* for short)¹. Like most of my hobbies and pastimes, it is nerdy thing that is a nice blend of aesthetics that pleases the senses, and orderly precision that gets mathematical, scientific, and data oriented. What I gain from doing it is a clearer snapshot of how my mind works while figuring out goal-oriented objectives. One thing I’m noticing is that there is a great and drastic schism in the quality in my handwriting between the floodlight mind (cursive, observing and fervent collecting a vast array of thoughts instantaneously) and my spotlight mind (block printed, mindfully focusing and methodically organizing them on paper, without the pressure of time and other stressful distractions). Comparing the two is seeing my brain operating and functioning in two different levels, or existing on two entirely different worlds, for each process. I wonder if there is name for the weird psychological anomaly to describe this huge difference between each modality. Examples provided.

My manic, brain-on-fire,
"conspitated looking" as one
of my friends once called it,

cursive writing vs.

My relaxed and focused self

block printing

My goal with this pastime is to get a journal formatted and formulated with templates for the

One template I designed that I may 

use for seasonal tasks. I couldn't

 find anything like this in a stationary 

store. Custom made is the way to go!

remainder of this year and the entire coming new year. What will I do with it all? Well, to automate some plans without the actual need for technical automation; to make cybernetic changes and adjustments without the cyberspace. I’m not trying to think like a machine, but I am trying to enhance my own recording and processing of stuff in much the same way that computers do: more effort to taking a small codified, point/mark, or bit of info to record and ramming it through a formatted program or function to filter out a result. Pixilating points (or customized bullets) to track data is a simple and effective way to record progress. The gist of this being investing in time to structure a perfect (for me) format now so that I can waste very little time and material for recording stuff later. Minimal effort through simple coding that can lead to big results. There is stuff to enter that is not as simple as purely numerical, or a yes/no, true/false, 0/1,

kinds of data. Some stuff, of course, is trackable and traceable only on a spectrum, or layers of spectra, or else needs a full out verbal explanation. The modular nature of this system allows for this too. I’m most interested see what kind of artistic infographics I’ll be able to create and incorporate as well. I want to see if I can progress from being crude to making the great leap ahead of being . . . slightly less crude with my graphical talents. Most of the detailed subjects that I will be recording, and tracking, are too personal to post here. However, I will disclose the broader general reasons for this new objective:

• Shifting from Day to Night Mode – Someday, I hope not too soon yet, I will be transitioning to doing night shifts. It will be a major upheaval for my body and mind to adapt to, with phases of insomnia assured to come; my working memory being the worse off casualty due to that. Hence, I’ll have to get into the habit of writing things down more often to not lose track of things. Also, having lists of things to work through eliminates the burdensome and torturous task of having to make decisions in such a state (or suffering consequences of making bad decisions in that way, read further below).
  
• Total Schedule Reorganization - There then must be a major reorganization of my schedule for my daily activity, have a productive rhythm to my day; to conserve my energy, and my social life and relationships outside of work. 
  
• Monitoring Health – Another offshoot of switching to nights is needing to actively check myself over for signs of physical deterioration due to the odd hours and unnatural rhythm of wakefulness. Knowing and marking the ideal time to exercise, and what and when to eat during this (mal)adjustment period is critical also, since “breakfast” kind of doesn’t work (doesn’t feel right) as a meal option in mid-afternoon. Alcohol consumption periods are things to be mindfully reckoning with too. What gets measured gets mastered.
  
• Impulse Grounding – One of the things I have noticed after long bouts of insomnia is the poor ability to make sound decisions. The likelihood of acting on impulse rather than think things through rises significantly. For example, this is especially bad when I want to commit to a minimalist lifestyle, but then act on a reckless spending spree for impractical things after too little sleep. BuJo is a way to do a brain dump and check your thoughts outside yourself, with some frame of order, to analyze and weigh pros and cons. At the very least, the very act of doing this is a much cheaper alternative of using one’s time rather than falling into an impulsive habit of mindless consumption of whatever it is that one could possibly become addicted to.
  
• Cheap Hobby – It only needs: a writing instrument of your preference, and a good quality dot

  

  My entire Bullet Journaling kit.

  (or grid) paged journal for the basics. For refined line forming for edging and bordering and such, a cheap geometry set from a dollar store works. Additional lettering stencils and templates can be found cheap in an arts and craft shop, or even in a dollar store. Just engage the imagination, and that’s it. A minimalist’s dream come true! Very portable, and it doesn’t need a battery for power (except maybe just a good source of caffeine). It’s a big step upward from an adult colouring book anyway, and far more practical to use as well.
  
• Veering Away from Toxic Social/News Media – Simply substituting a bad use of time for a better, more constructive, one. I will have a genuinely more enriching time working on a means to sort my own life’s issues, and creating my own viable solutions for approaching problems and goals than thinking and believing, that during these turbulent politically charged times of the election season, that any government or other social institution, is going to be genuinely interested in doing that for me. It’s my time to opt out of indiscriminately spending too much time and attention on negative news and social media during these times of waiting for our nation’s federal election coming this October, and the bloody ridiculous circus of the still 454 remaining days of campaigning until the American election. Working on my own betterment through my journals will be a nice retreat away from all this.

The most satisfying and enriching thing about using BuJo as an analogue system of note taking and calligraphy²: purposely taking a plain word and page space and embellishing it such as to make it so strikingly elegant and distinctly vivid enough that it becomes impossible to ignore. Imagine then how much more powerful it would look when it is applied to a whole written thought or idea. Goals are made to appear to have an esteemed meaning, as truly worthy goals should. It somehow makes your own ideas and listed tasks and duties appear more alive/animated. Even the duller things on a to do list can then look like they could be integral parts of some overall grand adventure.

A potential syllabus list

with flipped open pages

to record book titles

journaling is the chance and choice to be liberally creative and expressive with stylish lettering and artwork in one’s journal, thus further stimulating and empowering one to use the entire brain; not just the analytical and logical left hemisphere. I really believe there is some weight to this as a benefit, adding artful flourishes through doodles, and calligraphy.

I’m coming closer to understanding why monks in the medieval era were charged with the tasks of illuminating pages, making copies of calligraphic manuscripts, and other such scrivenery. Apart from being just merely literate, to do such a job well very much requires and demands a deeply focused, disciplined, and meditative mind. It can be very relaxing. However, I’m certainly not a monk. The best advice I could give as a novice for starting a page template is just to dive right into it. It is 100% guaranteed that it will be imperfect at the start, making lots of mistakes in your initial formatting, lettering, and page section alignment. So, once that is all done, set it aside for a long while, have a drink or two, then come back and review it, and then be totally relentless, ruthless, and absolutely merciless with editing it, and redo it until you get the right design and style that really satisfies you. You are allowed be your own harshest critic since you are going to be the only one interacting with this material; you have no one to please but yourself by taking such a measure.

The first mess . . .

. . . then the final product. Custom made and adapted for a coding 

matrix system unique and personal to me, and again, 

it can't be found in any regular stationers shop.

I have nothing more to include with this entry, except for this last thought from a quote by the author of my guidebook:

“Each Bullet Journal becomes another volume in the story of your life. Does it represent the life you want to live? If not, then leverage the lessons you've learned to change the narrative in the next volume.”
― Ryder Carroll, The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future

*- I like Bujo because sounds more to me like some unique, Zen-based, Japanese term for some sort of work ethic discipline, like kaizen.

1. The initial resource I used was The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll. I solidified the reason why I decided to undertake this; after that though, I’ve been finding a multitude of ideas for personalization on Pinterest.

2. I’m not ashamed to say, as a guy, that I love the artform of calligraphy. Before you scoff and think by default that it’s a sissy craft to do, consider this: the most instrumental class that Steve Jobs said he ever took (before he dropped out of college) which he said had been the most influential one for the inception of the Mac computer wasn’t a software programming class, wasn’t a computer science or engineering class; it was a calligraphy class. In a roundabout way, the practice of it forced him to see things differently through the elegance of design, and natural forms and ease of interface that made one want to engage with using a computer. Proper design is powerful stuff!

Abstention Project 3: March – The Carb Omissions

“The cardiologist's diet: If it tastes good, spit it out.” - Author unknown

Prelude: March was so named to honour and commemorate Mars, the Roman god of war. This month is my time to get ready for a battle ahead … and there’s nothing sweet about preparing for it … quite literally in the context of this next mission – or “omission” rather.

The main objective, the ultimate one really, is fighting to get back the runner’s form that I used to have. It was my reflection of my Bond-self: the pinnacle of the best physical shape that I feel I’ve ever been in. Not only that, it was part in parcel of becoming my best mentally as well (focus, clarity, calmness, taming anxiety, ability to sleep/being restful). I started skiing more intensively last month to strengthen my legs, loosen my joints, but most importantly, to recondition my lungs and increase their efficiency. Now I’m looking forward to start running again, and to regain that capacity for it. The problem with the month of March for this region is of course the weather being so erratically inclement and schizophrenic outside a lot of the time, and it wavers wildly into many extremes: from giant dumps of snow, harsh regressions to cold snaps some days, followed by thawing that makes icy patches; all are most unfavourable for presenting risks for wiping out and falls, and getting joint damage or worse. I can’t set myself up for any risk of internal bleeding anymore either. Before I could start running a few odd years ago, I did a lot of passive weight loss through other solutions before I even hit the trails and track, as to avoid putting extra stress on my hips and knees and risking injury before I actually started running. I thought I should pull the same trick this time around, hoping that a few extra years of age since last time won’t be a hindrance. There is the Ketogenic Diet which I could have enacted, which is super strict and forbidding for sugar and carb consumption, but that is more ideal for bodybuilders who are bulking up with muscle as well as shredding fat. It is not a great help to anyone trying to build up activity endurance. Some carbohydrates are a definite must for that unfortunately. So, the method I used for this was the Slow-Carb Diet¹. 

Of all reduction diets I tried, the Slow-Carb method worked most splendidly for me to shed off weight. I can’t remember the exact amount of mass I lost, but I did go down two pants sizes within four weeks. It was undeniable that cutting out excess sugar and carbs did the trick, with a strategically placed cheat day* to boast my metabolism to keep the momentum of it going. Cheat days also coincide with my most intense days for cardio exercise and working out with other exercise, so there is some balance struck there. To be crudely accurate, it made excess fat drop away from me like shit from a tall cow. However, the fact that I didn’t/couldn’t continue the Slow-Carb Plan just indicates that it wasn’t so easy for me to stick to and maintain. I found that giving up sugar and starch is an extremely tough action to commit to, especially when trying to be mindful of maintaining a modest food budget. While cleaning out closets back in January, I found my old notes and spreadsheet charts for the introductory fitness plan that set me on the right course before I could take off running that eventually led to me on a course to my personal physical best several years ago. Hence, along with the carb omission challenge, I’m also actively reverting to the Craig Plan to strengthen both muscle and joints. No, not the stupid Jenny Craig diet plan; I’m talking about the Daniel Craig fitness plan. All for the same reasons for when it was first executed several years ago: same height/same age motivators, minimal need for a gym or special equipment for some exercises, and minimal effective dosage advantage (see link: My Celebrity Fitness Role Model). It’s a body form that’s not too bulky, and yet not too lean, plus it just looks like good utilitarian piece of equipment that can endure, take a beating, and spring back and recover well afterward considering its particular count of years, which is really the most practical thing I should be aiming for given my recent history of health/injury issues**.

For myself, excess sugar and carbs is the most consumed, potentially addictive substance, of all my vices, even though I’m not want you’d typically call a “sweets person” compared to others. Sugar (and refined carbohydrates) is far worse than alcohol in some respects in that people of all ages have freer access to sugar and refined carbohydrates than to alcohol, and it is so pervasive and hidden in so much of our processed food that we eat it unwittingly all the time. It is why I needed more time to research and plan (with a greatly revised grocery list) for this challenge than I did with giving up alcohol last month (Abstention Project 2: February – Temperance). In terms of the count of diagnoses, excess sugar is actually the bigger culprit for so many more metabolic diseases than those caused by excess alcohol. 

Mission: A month of eliminating all refined carbohydrates from my dietary regimen. This includes sugars, (white) starches, and high glycemic index carbohydrates, which means not eating food or products containing the following ingredients:

·         All-purpose and other highly refined flours

·         Sugar (white, brown, and all forms of it in between)

·         Honey

·         Maple Syrup

·         Molasses

·         Fructose (which includes most fruits and berries)

·         Dextrose

·         Maltose

·         Sucrose 

·         Malto-dextrose

·         Lactose (Milk)

·         Pasta and noodles

·         Rice and rice flour products

·         Potatoes

·         Beets

·         Corn Products (including popcorn, cornstarch, and corn syrup)

·         Sweetened alcoholic beverages

·         Bacon, ham, and other sugar (dextrose)-cured deli meats

·         Meat Jerky

·         Gravad Lax, Imitation Crab and Lobster, and other sugar-cured fish products (also full of Sorbitol)

·         Processed snack foods, candy, and other confectionary items

·         Pop, kvass, and any other sweetened carbonated drinks (all forms, including diet sodas)

·         Anything else canned and preserved in syrups

·         Artificial sweeteners of all kinds (Aspartame, Sorbitol, etc.) 

Exceptions:

·         The Slow-Carb diet allows for some strategically placed cheat days within the program: 1 out of every seven to be exact, where you can go wild and eat anything you want, including some sugary starchy food. It actually does something to rev up the metabolism, so you burn up even more weight as a bonus. I opt to make my cheat days for Saturday, and March this year is great because it has five Saturdays in it. However, I think I’ll only exploit the privilege for only four Saturdays. I reserve March 10^th (a care-free night to spend with someone special, to celebrate her return home), March 17^th (St. Patrick’s Day, when I’d love to indulge in a pint or two of Guinness), and March 24^th (a dinner theatre night, with the chance to enjoy some birthday cake with my Mom), and of course Easter weekend is just paved with to many sugar-laden landmines to avoid.

·         The only drinkable calories I will be using for this foray is one small glass (150 mL) of unsweetened grapefruit juice, daily in the morning. Its purpose is for stimulating some helpful liver enzymes***.  

Reasons, Facts, and Figures:

·         Fact 1: Data from the dietary history (according to US statistics) has shown that humans have on average eaten 4 lbs of sugar per person per year starting in the 1700s, rising steadily in annual consumption right up until this decade, which averages about 180 lbs per person per year. That’s a 4400% increase between the amounts of 1700 and of today.

·         Fact 2: Drinking one can of pop each day for a year puts an additional 22.68 Kg (50 lbs) of consumed sugar into one’s body annually.

·         Fact 3: If the current trend in sugar/carb consumption continues, the cost for treating diabetes alone could possibly defund all our healthcare dollars by the year 2026 (only eight years from now!). 

·         Fact 4: Once a cancer cell develops, the best way to make that thing grow and spread is to feed it with a diet high in sugar.

Substitution Materials, Activities, and Alternate Behaviours:

·         Swapping out potatoes, rice, pasta, and bread with pulses and legumes (lentils and beans). Yes, there are carbs in them (complex ones though), and the protein and fibre content in them makes using them worthwhile.

·         More vegetables of all kinds, except starch-rich root vegetables.

·         Going nuts - as in real nuts (almonds, pecans, cashews, et al. – all unsalted) for snack food

·         Automate meal plans, and keep meal options limited to a just few simple selections 

·         Cache away all sugar, flour, bread, pastry to the bottom of my deep freeze; knowing that if I ever crave them, there is a lot of extra bother ahead to access them.

·         No drinking my calories (water, tea, black coffee). Drinking alcohol is permissible, but limited to weekends, more wine/less beer)

·         Most awesome tool for this project: I found a greatly discounted vegetable spiralizer to make zoodles (zucchini noodles) to substitute for my grain pasta.

Feedback Mechanisms:

·         The bathroom scale and a measuring tape

·         Looser clothing

·         Jarv Elite™ Bluetooth Smart Band Fitness Tracker

·         The My Fitness Pal App, to gain a fuller idea of carb and sugar content when I’m composing recipes at home. 

·         Improved endurance with my other exercise, and other physical activity

Progress:

·         Mar 1^st – Mar 7^th – So far, the process has been committed to. Getting up to eat breakfast in a timely manner (and one absolutely needs 30 gm of protein for the first meal of the day) was the hardest habit to change. I’ve been so sleep deprived for most of the winter, that forcing myself to commit to the task of preparing breakfast seemed to be a great strain. However, after feeling the punishment that a body goes through without doing it through a drastic drop in blood sugar, I’ve been more diligent to see it through. Headaches occurred; thankfully not to the point of migraine level. The biggest hurdle to overcome is finding food at work that isn’t contra to the plan. The super dump of snow that happened on Mar 5^th thwarted a plan to try a little outdoor running, and ironically, there was too much snow to go skiing. The trails were perfect, but the parking lot to the course I use couldn’t be accessed without a 4x4 vehicle with winter tires. The seething anger I had for that day alone probably amped up my metabolism a great deal. I compensated with my exercise through shoveling and moving the ridiculous amount of accumulated snow.

·         Mar 8^th- Mar 14^th – I kept to the plan in an orthodox manner, eating and drinking nothing with added sugar, or other carbs. My cheat day wasn’t even that much of a stray from the plan. Breakfast had just bacon and some sugar in the coffee, Lunch was Dim Sum in which I avoided the breaded and filled buns, and supper was homemade pizza(s) and some wine. As much as I could have devoured an entire one of the two I made, my appetite was shifted to other non-edible things. I did an amplified body core workout Saturday and then amped up skiing a bit for the day after, reaching a new personal record for skiing since the embolisms (emboli) occurred.

·         Mar 15^th – Mar 21^st – Measurements and fittings on the 15^th showed that I’m down by one pants’ size since the beginning of the month. There was too much thawing happening to allow for skiing. So, the plan switched over to try to run now that I shed some poundage. However, dealing with icy patches is still a treacherous affair, even without slipping and falling. After such a long lapse, my first two trials of 4km (Thursday) and then 6 km (Friday) have been harsh to say the least. My legs have been seizing up rather quickly given that there is no simple flow or continuity (like skiing has) throughout the course when given instances of being forced to react instantly to gear down the pace and breaking momentum while trying to establish better footing when switching surface to surface contact, (ice to concrete to pavement to ice, etc.). It might have been to do easier years ago, but this switching up is especially (and evidently) taxing to stubborn old muscle memory. I was very sore and cramped on St. Patrick’s Day (Mar 17^th). Thankfully it was a cheat day, and thence comes the amazing healing properties of beer. Of all the remedies (aside from proper rehydration) that ever helped me avoid brutal cramping after workouts, beer is the chief among them. It seems to go deep into my muscles and helps to nourish and loosen them up better. The sweet coaxing from my “sleep” coach helped to make me recover better too. Another thing to note about this cheat day was that I really had no strong craving for sugar itself. I thought I might really go wild, but my only carb fixes for that day was an English muffin (refined flour, probably sacrilegious to eat on an Irish holiday), Gruyere cheese shavings in an omelet (mild lactose) with bangers (mild, with dextrose), and a peach with skyr for breakfast (fructose, low lactose), rice noodles for lunch, a couple pieces of leftover pizza from last week, and two beers). I relished more in the fact that there was just an easement of not having to actively review the carb/sugar content of whatever it was that I was eating than being tuned into being really obsessed to consume anything sweet or starchy. Sunday was too beautiful to avoid a run outside; conditions were perfect. My legs were still a bit crampy, but a 5 km commitment was made. I stuck to an automated plan for the rest of the week. My pants are beginning to sag badly and are practically falling off me. I’ll have to either dye my hair and pretend to be a teenager, or tighten up the belts and drawstrings

·         Mar 22^nd – Mar 31^st – Well, the last 10-day stretch is here, sort off. The runs outside have been postponed due to another wallop from a spring snow storm. I’m relegated to use a treadmill now (I hate bloody treadmills, I need to feel myself moving through space), or compensate with more weight training. The one in my building is on the fritz again, and I’ll have to pay admission to use some other one elsewhere. I may just return to skiing if the trails aren’t slushy. I am noticing that I really don’t have a big craving for anything thought of as sugary per se as I had expected. Or it seems at least that this progressive move of being weaned from it has indeed put a waning to such cravings. But I do get hankerings for things like bread and deli meat most strongly out of all the things on the taboo list. My cheat day breakfast was an exquisite plating of English muffins layered with homemade gravad lax****, crowned with poached eggs. Sugar somehow has an inflated potency in taste for me now. When I use sugar in my coffee***** on my cheat days, the regular dosage that I used to do now seems far too intense for sweetness, and I’ve cut back my addition of sugar to my weekend coffee by two thirds. I’m also discovering things that are delights to have as snacks that are fulfilling, even decadent, which don’t necessitate carb intake. Fresh oysters (sea oysters, not prairie oysters!), for example, now that they are in season and cheap(er) and now that I’ve learned how to shuck them properly, kissed with a squeeze of lemon. I’ll have something like that over a bag of chips any day. The temperature has plummeted drastically since the last Wednesday of the month; and is expected to not get above freezing until the first week of April has passed. Running far in the cold has been brutal for the lungs for these final days of the month (-20 wind chill on Thursday afternoon’s trial), especially when they were just starting to become acclimated to warmer temperatures. Friday`s run almost resulted in a serious wipe out on ice that put a cramp in my leg. The last day of the month was a cheat day, and a great day to reunite with faces from my past that have I’ve lapsed too long with seeing. I’m thankful that my old friends are doing well and are looking healthy. Celebrating Easter was a welcome reprieve too.

Violations (Penalties): The penalty is simply just a straight up addition of mileage or exercise I needed to perform to practically rid myself of those extra consumed calories from the accidental, or incidental, intake of refined starch/sugar.

Final Words: The result for the month was a loss of 7.26 kg (16.1 lbs). I don’t believe that it was as much as that last time I did this seven years ago, but I’ll blame some aging for that. I still have a way to go to get into optimal form: by a loss of that mass, plus even a little more. April will begin just as cold and miserable as March is ending. I`ll be extending this challenge into the next month as well, barring a few vacation days early in the month where I`ll be a little more indulgent with feasting to celebrate another reunion of sorts. The worse thing to deal with was the loss of bread and noodles/pasta in my diet. I’m quite dependent on sandwiches it seems. The bonus is though that I realize that I didn’t have a lot of taboo foods around the house to begin with, and whatever I needed to sustain this challenge was minimal. On a scale of 1 to 10 though, I rank it on a high in terms of difficulty it terms of performance and commitment (8.5). I only faltered once, and it was on Good Friday, near the end of the month (I sampled some cinnamon buns). One thing that I experienced through the middle two weeks of the month was an accentuated lack of energy. I consulted with a co-worker who is also an expert on planning these types of reduction diets, and his feedback from what I shared with him was that I`ve been eating too little. Hopefully, I`ll be able to amp up the mileage and strength building throughout next month; the goal being to make a personal best for either the 5 or 10 km race for the Saskatchewan Marathon in May, sticking to the programs to make the River Run Marathon later in the summer. The greater ambition though, not linked with a formal race, is to collect bridge crossings again. This time, Saskatoon has more bridges than ever, and I have yet to map out what exactly that distance is for crossing all seven (eight later this year) pedestrian accessible bridge decks in this city.

Bibliography and Resources:

1.       Ferriss, Timothy. (2010). The 4-Hour Body. New York: Crown Archetype

*- The added advantage of this system with this one cheat day per week is that it helps banish a sense of deprivation. If I have a craving for something, all I have to do to note it on my cheat day list and save it as a possible menu idea for Saturday.

**- Daniel Craig’s own list and history of injuries he sustained just for preparing and filming for the role of James Bond is very extensive, and the timelines he had to recover from them were impressively shorter than one would expect.

***- Grapefruit juice is a notoriously powerful and tricky substance of the world of pharmaceuticals: there is a myriad of medications that contraindicate with it, even with modest consumption. One needs to be careful with it while on prescription medication.

****- Last week, I learned and discovered from my DNA test that a larger component of my genome that I thought was stemmed from heritage in the Britain Isles is actually Scandinavian (25%). The flippant joking remark I made in my last Christmas blog entry in 2017, is actually true! I learned how to make gravid lax long before I knew this about my genome, and perhaps it explains why I have a craving for such stuff once in a while.  

*****- I separate my coffee drinking activity to drinking it just black while I’m at work; using sugar and cream on days when I’m not. A personal crotchet I use to be mindful of separating business from pleasure; not related to any diet plan.

Multiphasic (Blessings)

The second week of this new year is approaching its end. It is the weekend of Malanka: the Orthodox(Ukrainian) New Year according to the Julian calendar. For me, it marks the official end of all mid-winter holiday feasting, at least those days that I’m familiar with, and not too soon either. There is no crueler and more brutally honest critique about how swinishly gluttonous one has been throughout the end of December/beginning of January than the discovery of how red the skin along the waistline turns, and how crushed one’s gonads feel, after trying to slip on and sport a pair of the tighter jeans that one owns in one’s wardrobe for the first time after the holiday season. It triggered a new motivator (see further below), but I digress. It’s so early, and I’m still trying to fix my bearing. This entry writing exercise has no fixed topic, and is as erratic and multiphasic as my periods of sleep have been. Throughout this second week of the year I was handed a mixed bag of blessings and curses; more of the former than the latter, thankfully.

I won’t get too specific about the curses except that they involved trying to muddle through toxic environments, which included: being almost overcome by fumes, and bracing for what I was suspecting to be a vermin infestation. Thankfully, the latter issue didn’t actually end up manifesting itself, and I could put my paranoia to rest.

My blessings were realizing that the stuff I put effort into learning a whole year ago didn’t just simply evaporate and disappear into the ether. I’ve been daring myself to use the Swedish and German I learned to read correspondence and interact with other new contacts by text. No one has reported to me yet that I’ve been too flawed or incomprehensible (or they’ve been too kind to say so). The fact that I’ve been cogent enough to remember these languages despite the lapse of their usage (and a fume-fogged mind) amazes me. The jeans issue as mentioned above, was my personal Harajuku moment (see The 4-Hour Body, by Tim Ferriss, page 38). It forced me to recollect what I did when I first primed myself to begin my journey back in the years when I became the fittest I’ve ever been. I realize that I’m actually in a better state of organization now, than when I started way back then, as I’ve been trying to reconfigure and reclaim some space in my office to set up a sensibly useful home gym. My last medical results shown that my lung tissues are now just about completely regenerated, and so I have no excuse to not get back into a regular exercise regimen. First, I must build up my core strength and joint flexibility, especially in the arm I injured back in 2016. Reclaiming and reconfiguring my space is a source of giving me some clarity of vision and purpose, nothing wrong with that, an extra motivator to reorganize other things beyond just this room.

Another bit of a blessing I guess, albeit a bewildering one for me, is for the fact that the New York Times recently listed the top 52 places in the world to visit in 2018, and strangely enough, my city, Saskatoon, was on that list. It made something like number 18 on it, and weirder still is the fact that it was the only Canadian city to appear on that list. If Saskatoon is considered to be such a gem, how bad off are the other places in Canada really? I won’t complain that it appeared in this card deck full of places on this globe that merit a visit. I guess it’s even more of an impressive accolade considering that the dominant buzzword circulating in the news for this week, to describe other places, even though it isn’t even being said outright, is “shithole” (no thanks to the grand poohbah of all idiot US presidents, Trump). Thankfully with this review, Saskatoon has managed to rise above all that. I’m just befuddled though as to the how and why it became selected. I would reckon that their research team obviously didn’t account for the winter months. They cite the Remai art gallery as an attraction; I have yet to see it myself, because I’m saving that visit for company who would genuinely appreciate it with me, so I can’t yet judge based upon that. But if I were asked now what makes Saskatoon an attractive city, I would suggest that wandering the Meewasin valley trails in the summer is the best thing you can do to figure that out for yourself, or visiting the Farmers Market, or else grabbing a coffee and enjoying it outside around the park by the Bess or by the river, or a pint in one of the pubs downtown or on Broadway. It’s quite festive during summer (to offset our all too brutal winters). It’s a bigger city that still feels like a small town, with enough people around who’ve been raised rurally, or remain connected to each other in a down-to-earth, close-knit folksy manner, who help diffuse away the pretentiousness and snobbery of something more urban and edging towards elitism, sided along with a huge multicultural blending that gets along a lot better with this sort of mix than most other places on Earth. For the most part, the people are generally approachable and friendly. The food scene is very diverse for a smaller urban centre. People from out East who come here for the first time generally express surprise at how seemingly cosmopolitan Saskatoon is, with their beliefs dashed by not finding more of a redneck culture being prominent for this place, as what is typically expected by them about Saskatchewan. One point of infamy about Saskatoon though, is its perceived high rate of crime. The city has been rated in the top ten worst Canadian cities for criminal activity for many consecutive years. I argue that Saskatoon actually isn’t that much more harsh or severe for criminal activity over most other cities in Canada. Sure, it’s higher, but not so much as to make it among the worst per capita. It’s just that with the close-knittedness of the community here, citizens here are far less likely to be complacent or dismissive when dealing with, or witnessing, suspicious activity in their neighbourhoods, and so are far more likely to report it, while people in most other larger centres tend to under report actual criminal activity. This naturally skews the crime stats on a higher rate for Saskatoon, I’d even say drastically. The shithole parts of this city (or of any city) is where people under report crime because of the sectors of the population that are intermingled in gang activity, and thus won’t squeal on each other. The police here are awesome too, both in terms of response times and availability, and dealing with most civic problems very tactfully, responsibly, and professionally no matter how trivial or severe on the spectrum. The city isn’t huge, so they can respond faster than bigger centres, and they give attention to calls that cops in larger centres wouldn’t trouble themselves to expend manpower for (and thus not recorded and accounted for in their  statistics). Naturally then, this extra availability and responsiveness of the peace officers here thus generates and facilitates more stats processed for criminal activity. In reality, I feel quite safe here in this city, as opposed to someplace like East Hastings in Vancouver. The Pareto principle also applies to crime stats where it’s figured 80% of criminal activity is done by 20% of a sector of criminals, except here in Saskatoon I’d say that it’s more like 90% of such crime is committed by 10% of the criminal population.

Throughout this week, the best blessing of all of them all was reuniting and reconnecting with someone from my past on a more soulful level. Thank you, you know who you are.

A Full 360

I’ve been up since 4:00 AM . . .  again, like five hours before sunrise. Doing upgrades and fixes to my laptop was is the only activity I could think of doing that seemed half-assed productive, and yet not loud enough to disturb any of my neighbours at this hour. While waiting for the scans and optimizations to finish, I’m filling the gap of the period used to all this with some writing to clear my head as well. My phases of insomnia have been getting progressively worse now for the past few weeks. There’s still another month yet to pass after the recent solstice until maybe things normalize themselves with the wonky sleep issues as the extra darkness recedes after then. Being exposed to fumes, dust, and debris containing noxious chemical compounds in both fresh and old deteriorating forms of adhesives (NOT WILLINGLY!) from the past three days probably hasn’t been doing me any good physically or mentally either. I’ve came home from work feeling a bit sickly and even more de-energized, and I have been falling into a cycle of collapsing on my chesterfield napping, and ruining the phases and timing of more appropriate sleep hygiene. The closest geographical place right now that suits my phases of wakefulness of normal diurnal activity where I won’t be disturbed by jet lag is probably Iceland. Also, for some reason as of late, unknown to even me, I’ve been gazing up skyward to note the positions of planets and constellations as well when I walk the dog in the early morning and mid-evening. Perhaps, it’s something that’s becoming instinctual:  to tune into and immerse myself deeper into nature’s flow of rhythms and cycles, in the middle of a winter season which never seems to budge from either coldness or lack of daylight around here. In any case, a more intensified consciousness of timelines indeed occupies my mind around this part of the year. I tend to think and process time in shapes along with numbers: another weird way my brain works.

The first five days of this year involve my usual messing about with planning and scheduling for the whole calendar year ahead, which inadvertently leads to me playing around with the trivialities of time equations*. January 6^th isn’t just where Christmas eve falls on the Julian/Orthodox Christian calendar, or Epiphany on the Gregorian calendar; it is also Day 1 of the remaining 360 days left of this year, signifying in a sense the first degree of a full circle. I’d like to suggest that making New Year’s resolutions just prior to, or after, New Year’s Day is really an exercise in futility. One should never use just a couple spontaneous (usually guilt-spurred) moments to make a full commitment that’s supposed to take you the rest of the year or beyond to achieve. I’d say avoid that impulsivity, and plan for something within the first five days (not just five minutes, or something blurted out in five seconds) of the New Year, doing such things as:

·         Setting a timeline for steps

·         Writing the goals down (I won’t be doing that here though, it’s too personal)***

·         Prioritizing the things that are important

·         Reviewing what resources and materials you have, and what you still need

·         Looking through an actual calendar to establish dates for milestones for setting reasonable goals

·         Setting a budget for this stuff

Today is the first degree of a small step on a journey of coming to full circle. Check your progress throughout. Be a real geek about it. Check the first 15 degrees of this special circle (on date January 20^th), check on Pi (π) day, a day devoted to circles (March 14, 2018), check on the first full quadrant (April 5^th), check on your birthday after this point**, check the midway point from here to year’s end (July 4^th), and three quarters of the way through (Oct 2^nd). Take time to cull out whatever isn’t working and replace it with something that does along the way.

But, what do I know . . . typing stuff like this on an insomnia-addled and chemical-fogged brain doesn’t necessarily qualify as sage advice for myself and others for movements toward betterment for the year ahead, but it’s better than no real plan of movement at all, which 95% of the time is wasted efforts by people who use impulsive and rash resolution making on New Year’s Eve or Day.

So, Happy Epiphany, and Merry Christmas to the orthodox celebrants. Do realize that three hundred and sixty days is a quicker cycle than one usually expects, try to do the best with it.

Addendum: My friend introduced me to an app that is very fitting for this endeavor: HabitBull. I'll give it an exploration and test through.

*-Like the statistical frequency or rate of goal scoring needed for how one team to tie or surpass another in some IIHF Word Junior hockey games, for example.

**- January 6^th is special to me because it is exactly a full 9 months from here until my birthday (an entire human gestation period). Thus, I would guess being conceived on Epiphany (derived from the Greek, meaning “manifestation”) is as significant as an extra holy day for me, as being born on Christmas day is for my Dad.

***- The one thing that I will note here that was a success from last year’s go around was learning some elements of other languages, with better fluency than I thought I’d have.

The Ukrainian Project/Український проект:Day/ День 60, Fluency/Швидкість 8%

Український дуже складна мова. Це найважчий мову, який я вивчаю. Я знаю тільки прості речення. Найголовніше про це в тому, що вона вчить мій розум читати інший алфавіт.

Translation: Ukrainian is a very difficult language. It is the most difficult language that I am learning. I only know simple phrases. The most important thing about it is that it teaches my mind to read in a different alphabet.

It is near the end of the second two month period of learning another language. This time, I chose the hardest of my set of six to practice. It is strange to progress from the easiest (Swedish) to the hardest in the repertoire, but that's how the random selection worked for me; plus, all the other remaining ones in the set would look easier after doing this one. So, why is Ukrainian one of my target linguistic ambitions? Like for the last language project (The Swedish Project), I provide this summary of reasons:

1. It's one of the languages of my heritage - One weird fact about me is that I taught myself how to read Ukrainian alphabetical script before I ever really learned any of the language. My grandmother used to share our family's post office box with my parents, and after she died, her issues of the "Ukrainian Voice", a Ukrainian language Canadian newspaper, still came in our mail. I figured out the alphabet by myself when I was in a more precocious phase of my adolescence, merely out of the interest of being sneaky and trying to "break a code". And I did it, using only a copy of this newspaper and a bit of pattern recognition (I was a weird kid!). As for learning to actually communicate the language, it was sadly lost upon me. I never got to learn and understand anything from my paternal grandparents, and by the time I started getting a better aptitude for it, sadly, both of them had already passed away. Even if they were still alive when my interest in learning the language may have peaked, they weren't exactly scholars themselves, and I don't think they would have had the patience to teach me at that age. I do this to sort of honour them. It's a shame that out of all their grandchildren, I'm probably the only one who could find their tombstones in the cemetery they are interned at, since the engravings on them are all in Ukrainian. This leads me to the next point . . .
2. To not lose my knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet - I find it strange that my Dad, who was immersed in Ukrainian in his youth as his first language, can read cursive written Cyrillic script but not the alphabet printed form itself (or it at least doesn't come to him as instantly). He may have once, but somehow it didn't imprint itself well enough, and it became lost in the lapse somewhere between his ages of eight and his eighties. I suppose it's proof of the adage, "If you don't use it, you'll lose it." I hope not to have that same deficiency as I age. This is the practice I need to avoid such illiteracy. Personally, I really like the Cyrillic alphabet for the fact that all the consonant sounds in Ukrainian are presented with single letters; no strange couplings or illogical looking diphthongs, or tricky silent letters are there as in English (ch, sh, th, kn, ough). You'll realize how superior it is to the Latin alphabet when you compare it to a Slavic language that doesn't use it, like Polish. The consonant sounds made in Polish sometimes need up to four Latin letters strung together (like "szcz") to represent the same sound that is written with one letter (Щ) in Cyrillic. That, plus along with using the horrendous montage of accented characters Polish has would make typing it a nightmare. Polish and Ukrainian, given that they are neighbours geographically, have many similar cognates, except the same sounding word in Polish may be written with eight Latin letters whereas the one in Ukrainian could probably be spelt with four in Cyrillic. Ukrainian has a tough vocabulary and a bitching hard set of grammatical rules, but once one is acquainted with the alphabet, it becomes at least a relatively easy language to spell despite some of the tricky pronunciations. For me personally, knowing this alphabet has already been useful in garnering employment in the past, working at a museum and cultural centre, so it validates and verifies to me that it's not such a useless thing to learn.
3. It's a true survivor - It's impressive and simply amazing that this language still even exists at all given the tumultuous history of Ukraine itself. The etymology of the name of Ukraine itself derives from a something akin to meaning "borderland". The region has long been a route for traders and invaders, given its ease of access with much of it being flat steppe land, meaning that it has long been a disputed land and a target for conquest from the early Eurasian groups like the Huns, Mongols, Tatars, Turks, and other Eurasian steppe tribes , to the Vikings, Poles, Lithuanians, to this last century of Austro-Hungarian Imperial rule, and of course ending off  with Russian Communism, and hostile Russian expansionism up to today. So many of these empirical forces, coming at all sides of it from Europe and Asia, either by brute force, or slower forms of assimilation, could have washed away this language off the face of the Earth and making it extinct, like what has happened with so many aboriginal languages on this continent. But, the Ukrainian language remains alive, despite all the historical upheaval of conquest and subjugation of the darker political forces. The resistance and resilience of the people and the culture and language of that region pretty much sums up what Skinny Pete said in the movie, The Italian Job, that being: "If there's one thing I know, it's never to mess with mother nature, mother in-laws, and mother freaking Ukrainians".   
4. For simplifying and softening the introduction to Russian - Ukrainian is closely related to Russian, which is one of the other of the six language modules I'm learning this year. Russian is the more unfamiliar one. I'll explain more as to why I'm learning it in the entry I'll give about the future progress with that.
5. To have an avenue of some connection with potential ancestral ties - It's doubtful that I'd ever step foot into the "Old Country", given the political unrest occurring there, even for the sake of taking a genealogical tour to get to sense of what my roots of one half of my heritage are. I'm far too estranged from whoever there are left of the relatives that live there now. That's a real shame. The insular nature of Communist rule severed the contact we could have had with each other. However, I won't discount the chance to somehow reconnect with any relations there, just as there is some contact made with my Mom's relatives in Britain now.
6. Learning tough grammar cases helps to better learn (or at least question) those noted in my own language - The sobering revelation one [an Anglophone] gets through learning a language like Ukrainian is understanding how stupidly ineffective and imprecise English can be in comparison, and how dastardly difficult it is for others to learn it. There is lots of English grammar that is technically imprecise, and heavily reliant on context. I cite this following example: if you were Ukrainian  and just learning English for the first time, and heard the spoken words "mother's milk", what must go through your head if you had an especially analytical mind?* First of all, just hearing (not reading) the words "mother's milk" with the Ukrainian ear isn't enough for this listener to define which case is being used. It could be: 1. mother's milk: (singular genitive) - like the mammary secretions from a nursing mother, 2. mother's milk - like a glass of milk belonging to mom that is going to be used instrumentally for consumption, 3. mothers' milk (plural genitive), milk from more than one mother, (except in Ukrainian it may be corrected by perhaps pluralizing the word milk to "milks" because logically, more than one mother doesn't make the same milk in one collective breast), 4. mothers' milk - where more than of a set of mothers share the same container of milk to use, 5. same case as 4. except there is more than one glass of milk involved, and then 6. let's not forget that milk is also a verb in English, so another question that can brought to mind to the Ukrainian listening is, "What are the mothers milking?". All those noun cases can be indicated with the single oral utterance of "Mother(')s(') milk**" in English, but yet the words are not orally/aurally differentiated to represent each one of them accordingly. However, in Ukrainian, that isn't so: the declension of the nouns between singular and plural genitive, instrumental, accusative, dative, locative, and vocative cases make each one of those situations I mentioned a lot more defined and accurate grammatically, or at least pertinent enough to better distinguish whether it's some mother's glass of milk, or her actual breast milk on the table, along with a more exacting degree of plurality. Out of all the languages I'm learning, Ukrainian has the most (confusing) case declension forms to deal with. It's very daunting, I must say.

The things I find challenging and difficult about Ukrainian is a very long list and would be too exhausting to explain. I will focus on the positive though. For now, at least I can: a.) readily identify if something written in a Cyrillic alphabet is Ukrainian or not (as opposed to Russian, Serbian,  Kazakh, Belorussian, etc.) b.) figure out the verb conjugations with a bit more intuition, and c.) at least know enough for a few manners, to explain that I don't understand well, and to politely ask a person to speak slower.

Now for the list of my favourite words, or at least the one's in Ukrainian that I find interesting. I'll transliterate them to the Latin alphabet for your ease of reading:

1. Туман - Tuman - It means "fog" or "mist", but more colloquially, I learned from my parents that it's also a word used to mean something like "fool" or "dummy" (they didn't use it on me as far as I know). I would guess that the relationship is derived from the same sense as we would say in English that we are trying to think with a "foggy mind".
2. Птах - P'takh - It simply means "a bird" or "the bird"***. It's funny to me because, if you are acquainted with the Star Trek universe as I am, you'll note that it's pronounced the same way as a frequently used Klingon insult. If you ever saw the comedy film, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, the same sounding word, presumably from Hebrew, was used to suggest some context or action involving the union of genitalia. Ukrainian takes a word that sounds profane or vulgar in other languages (fake or real), and makes it mean something a more neutral and natural.
3. Пю - P'yu - The first person present conjugation of the verb "to drink", as in "Я пю" (I drink, I am drinking). I like it because it's one of the more useful and shorter words in Ukrainian, like "go" and "do" are in English, despite the fact that with my English speaking brain, it sounds like you are doing more stinking than drinking. It's probably purposely made that way as a matter of convenience, and thus indicative of how drinking is a culturally popular thing for Ukrainians to do.
4. Дякую - Dyakuyu - It simply means "thank you" (it literally means "[I] thank").
5. Літак -Litak - A very unique word meaning "airplane". Unique, as in most European languages borrow and incorporate the common initial word (Like airplane/aeroplane/aviation, or things like telephone, or computer) to describe some invention or machine that is so relatively modern in relation to the language. The word for air is in Ukrainian is "povitrya" ([stuff/substance] of the wind), and the word for craft or vehicle is something else very long; they don't compound together to make some single word to mean aircraft. The only other unique language variants for airplane of my set of languages I'm learning that I know of so far that isn't derived from scientific Latin (air/aero/avian/aviation), is flygplan in Swedish, and German's Flugzeug (literally meaning "flight tool")
6. Розумний/Зрозуміти - English kind of denotes the verb "to understand" and the adjective "smart" as two different concepts. However, Ukrainian somewhat depicts them as sort of stemming from the same thing. Rozumniy (розумний) means "smart", and the verb Z'rozumity (зрозуміти) actually means "to be (become) smart with . . . " to reflect and equate to the infinitive of "to understand". "I want to be (become) smart with Ukrainian", does essentially mean the same thing as "I want to understand Ukrainian."
7. Сто - Sto - My favourite Ukrainian numerical word: a nice short word one meaning a hundred, having as many letters to spell it as the number has digits. I just wish the rest of the numbers in Ukrainian were so short with non-tongue-twisting syllables.
8. Хочу, можу, буду - 'I want', 'I can', and 'I will', respectively. Three modal verbs, when followed by a verbal infinitive, save me my lots of time and agony struggling to think of the correct conjugation, and allow me at least limited ability to express future tense.
9. У мене є - oo meneh yeh - It's a rather peculiar alternative way of saying "I have". Я маю машина, literally means "I have a car" whereas the other form (у мене є машина) roughly translates to "(in/at/of/for) me [there] is a car. Weird stuff there.
10. Голодомор - Holodomor - Like on my last language project list, I reserve spot number 10 for the most foul and depraved words, in my opinion, of that language. Even though it technically isn't a form of profanity per se, the word for "famine" draws up a perverse and horrible historical memory in this culture. When this word is said, it instantly is associated with the man-made famine, in the 1930s in Ukraine, imposed by the Stalin regime in that region that killed millions, some speculate even a number equal to that of the number of Jews killed in the Nazi death camps. The word doesn't just mean famine, it means something more akin to "murder by hunger". What could be more profane than a word expressing a political will to reduce millions to starvation by confiscating all their food? The fact that Ukraine at that time was part of the Soviet Union made awareness about the event virtually unknown to the West, either because of the insular and secretive nature of Stalin's brand of communism, or there was no interest or collective sympathy for any human beings living under communism, or because the Soviet Union was needed later on to take pressure off the western expansion of the Nazis, and needling Josef Stalin about this issue at the time wasn't a good measure of diplomacy to gain his involvement as an ally. So, attention about the matter of Holodomor in the Ukraine was purposely and conveniently kept out of the news to placate the tyrannical bastard, who throughout his life, was responsible for exiling and killing more people through his rule, mostly his own citizens, than his rival, Hitler. 

The adventure of learning and collecting new words continues from here onward. In summery, between learning Swedish and Ukrainian, I've been practicing one or more language modules each and everyday since the New Year began, roughly 120 days straight. I've just opened an envelope and revealed to myself the random pick of the next intensified language project to do. The next two month quest for improved linguistic proficiency . . . German! Thankfully, it's something a little more familiar, with the advantage of me knowing someone who could tutor me through some conversation.

*- Looking at language learning through this reverse perspective, I'm a lot more forgiving to my paternal grandparents for not learning very much English. They didn't have the advantage of something like an Open Door Society at the time when they immigrated. Knowing this, I am more empathetic to other newcomers here whose language is vastly different from English, and who are trying to rebuild their lives away from something oppressive.
**- I just noticed that putting the apostrophes in parentheses makes them look like a couple of upside down breasts with an "s" between them. This milk example is creating an obsession.
***- Like languages like Latin, Russian, and Chinese, Ukrainian doesn't use doesn't use definite or indefinite articles like "the" and "a/n". It's convenient in some ways, but not for others.