More Babbling About Basque

 

I do my Irish lessons in DuoLingo on my phone, and it's always driving me crazy. Right now it's telling me I lost my #2 position in the league. So? I never actually asked to join a league, and I just did my daily required lessons, so I'm not doing any more. Besides, DuoLingo is ignoring all our requests to please add Basque. I sure would love to do Basque lessons every day along with my Irish ones. I had Basque class last night, and I still love it, but I think maybe I secretly annoy everyone else in the class. They all have Basque last names, and last night we were talking about the different words for a Basque speaker and a person of Basque descent, and I had to admit that I am neither of those things. During one exercise, a woman demanded to know how I knew which form of the verb "to have" to use, since it has to agree in number with both the subject and the object, and I really didn't know what to say. Like, I'm a grammar nerd, okay? Plus I talk about Irish too much in there - I'm sure they really don't care about it. (Fun fact: in both Irish and Basque, if you say there is one of something, the number comes after the noun, but any other number comes before the noun. Except in Irish numbers above ten are weird - let's not get into that.) The weirdest part of the class may have been that "Nicole's Phone" was trying to log in, and the teacher said he didn't know of any Nicole who was taking the class, but "Nicole's Phone" was never able to connect. Really? Who Zoom bombs a Basque class? And was she going to do something nefarious once she got in, like you always hear about Zoom bombers doing, or was she just going to lurk and learn how to conjugate Basque verbs?

Here are some recent photos. Blogspot is being stupid and put these photos in exactly the reverse order that I requested, so bear with me because I'm too lazy to switch them all around. This first photo is a cool interlocking heart pattern that a neighbor somehow made with their tire tracks in the fresh snow today.

At work I posted on our chatty channel, "Water Cooler," a link to a TikTok video of a sea chantey with the words changed to be about the Packers, and that somehow led to a conversation about whether we were crowd followers in our teens. I said I was very 80's (I'm a bit older than some of my coworkers), and one said, "PICS or GTFO," which I assume means she wanted photographic evidence or I should get the [bleep] out, so I dug up this photo of me circa 1987.

This is a Giannis Antetokounmpo bobble-head that Travalon got recently. Notice that he's standing on the Parthenon because he's Greek. In fact, they call him the Greek Freak because he's so freakishly talented.

This is a little figurine of Mr. Toad that Travalon got recently. He's a character from the book The Wind in the Willows, and the star of Travalon's favorite ride at Disneyland.

Here is a poster advertising Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

Yesterday at the antiques mall in Pardeeville, Travalon found this awesome mug of Wyle E. Coyote.

That is where I got this stained glass Celtic cross.

And this little glass unicorn.

And also these two rosaries, shown here with the unicorn.

This is a rosary I got that was a fundraiser for veterans.

There was a beautiful winter sunset the other night.

Here is the vacuum at Travalon's job! I'll bet it keeps the place spotless! (Fact: it probably works better than our actual vacuum at home, which sucks at sucking.)

And this is a mural in one of the rooms at Travalon's job. It looks like an egret.

I don't know what to do for my big finale after a painting of an egret, since I'd planned to end with the cool heart tire tracks. Then again, it's late and I can't think of a really clever title for this blog post, so just enjoy the pictures. If you want the experience I had planned, look at them from the bottom up.

Famous Hat