WoolGatherer

Los hombres nadan

Yes, the men certainly do swim...

Three days into my Rosetta Stone Spanish lessons, I'm really enjoying myself. I've been doing about an hour or work each day. The time flies by, and I usually have to remind myself that an hour at a time is plenty.

I'm resisting the urge to stop and suss out grammatical rules as the lessons go, as that really isn't how things are supposed to work in this system. (Of course, I love figuring out grammatical rules, so I haven't been entirely successful in that regard.)

The lessons cover listening comprehension, vocabulary building, pronunciation (with the aid of a microphone that lets the system evaluate my accent), reading and writing. It's extremely thorough, but new bits of information are introduced gradually, so they never feel overwhelming.

I can see now that each language course is extremely comprehensive. After my three hours, I am approximately one third of the way through level one of five levels in the Spanish One package. Spanish Two and Three lie ahead.

I'm really excited at how much content the courses contain. I don't have any patience with with lame language teaching. I know there's a ton to learn with every language, but I find that really exciting, not daunting. (Well, usually it's not daunting.)

My biggest challenge right now is just finding time to carve out of each day do get some real learning done.

So, we're off to a good start!

Old perro, new tricks

The language-learning part of my brain got a lot of use for the first thirty or so years of my life. But in the last ten years, apart from brushing up my French enough to be a functional tourist, I haven't tried to squeeze many new words into my noggin.

While my German friends were visiting us last month, we struck up a plan to meet for a vacation in Spain next April. Even though the plane tickets have yet to be purchased, I finally have a concrete reason to pick up another foreign language.

I understand quite a bit of Spanish already. I have a solid foundation in Latin, a health smattering of French, and a one of my best friends in grad school, Irma, was Puerto Rican and tended to speak a 60/40 mix of Spanish and English. (I can curse like a Latina drag queen if the mood strikes me.) Still, I'd never really felt much drive to settle in with flash cards and get some serious learning done.

The planned Spanish vacation dovetails nicely with a very cool perk my employer recently began to offers--free Rosetta Stone language courses. I'd be toying with the idea of polishing my French, but since I can order food and shop with relative comfort in France, I probably don't need to. (I don't expect to be reading Proust en Français anytime soon. Or in English, come to think of it.)

Now that I have a goal and a reason to spend some serious time learning Spanish, I'm eager to get started. Rosetta Stone offers both Castilian and Latin American Spanish. Even though I'll be hearing Castilian on our trip, I chose Latin American Spanish, because it's much more practical for living in the US.

(I suppose if Antonio Banderas or Javier Bardem were to appear on my doorstep and plead with me to change my ways, I could be persuaded to start lisping--or do any number of things.)

As a former foreign language teacher, I'm quite interested to try language acquisition by induction instead of my memorization. My natural tendency as German/linguistics sort of chap is to want to memorize charts, and see elaborate schema of how the syntactical systems work. And who knows, I may decide that's still what works best for me.

I'll keep you posted on how things go.

I have a thing for hairy forearms, calves, and thighs. And a beautiful face. Call me gay if you want.

Why do you suppose his cheeks are so flushed? I can think of several appealing reasons...

So where do you live?

I'm going to post a question that I was asked at the Enterprise 2.0 conference:

Where do you live online?

WoolGatherer used to be my home, but now it's my publication point. Then, while still keeping this as my writing space, I moved into a Facebook-based online address. Now, I'd have to say that I'm 40% Facebook, 60% Twitter. I'm just curious where you cool cats are finding yourselves at home these days?

Perhaps you'd be so kind as to quickly respond by voting in this handy dandy poll...

My week along the waterfront

My apologies for the lack of posts last week during my stay in Boston. I was out east to attend the Enterprise 2.0 conference with hundreds of geeks from 40 countries. I heard some really interesting speakers, endured blather by pompous blowhards (I'm talking to you, Mr. SharePoint product manager), and saw every imaginable type of smartphone.

I'd only been to Boston once before, for spring break in 1989 (WOOOOO, spring break in Boston!!!), so I was eager to do some exploring while I was in the city.

Unfortunately, the entire time I was there, a Nor'Easter spun aimlessly just off the coast, keeping things gray, cold, and very, very wet. When I checked into my room on the 13th floor (yes there was a 13th floor), sheets of rain were gusting vertically past my window. Not really the kind of weather that makes one want to trudge through the streets on foot.

Here a few shots from what was, apart from the weather, a really enjoyable trip.

The last sunny weather I would see between Sunday and Thursday was en route to Boston.

The view from the plane's window once we landed at Logan Airport. Inviting, wouldn't you say?

 

Strolling through the North End, Monday night after a nice dinner with my colleague, Roger. (Gotta love the iPhone's crystal clear camera lens...)

On my last afternoon, the rain subsided to a soaking drizzle, so I grabbed my camera and strolled down Summer Street from my hotel at the waterfront into the city.

I walked as far as Boston Common before deciding that it was just too damn nasty out. I hopped in a cab and headed back to my hotel for dinner.

My post-dinner companion, with whom I spent an hour people-watching in the hotel's very pleasant Birch Bar.

The most visually stunning sight of my trip, a very tall German chap who sat next to me during a session on software mash-ups.

Turns out he's a tech bigwig. Mostly I just liked him for being tall and gorgeous. He also smelled wonderful. (And yes, thank you, I'm completely aware how pervy it is to take surreptitious photos of people.)

Naturally, Boston was bathed in sun as I headed to the airport. I was bummed to leave once the weather was finally great, but that's just how it worked out.

I was far more bummed to spend five hours trapped in the plane on the tarmac in Detroit while we waited for thunderstorms to pass over. Nearly. Lost. My. Mind.

More travel pictures will be appearing here soon, as I'll be in NYC for a week in July.

Your travel reporter/geek journalist/stud-stalker,

With thanks to Kenneth for today's slice of beefcake...

"From Queer to Eternity"

Well that's sad

If you recall, when Michael Jackson announced his This it it tour a few months back, I was extremely dubious about the chances of even one performance actually happening.

Turns out I was right. But I didn't quite picture things ending up like this.

I feel sad today, but my grief is for the immensely talaented boy in this picture, who had such a bright future ahead of him, achieved phenomenal success, but died an untimely death as a freakish recluse (and let's face it, criminal) with an indelible cloud over his life and career.

Tragic.

News from the Nor'Easter

The conference in Boston is great, but the weather is horrid. Non-stop wind and rain. Still did some exploring last night, though--dinner and drinks near Quincy Market with my colleague, Roger. More soon. ~ WG

I like that he can read one-handed.

I think sort of carnal thoughts when I look at this picture. Sorry if that's wrong...

Mmminogue

I love Kylie for many reasons. Some of them surround her in this video...

Damn, I need a bevy of hot dancer boys. But who doesn't really?

Have a great weekend, y'all. BTW, posts here next week might be somewhat sparse, as I'll be in Boston much of the week for a conference. I'll do by best to post at least once from there, though!

And a star in the firmament goes dark...

Amidst the chaos of my life these past few weeks, I failed to take time to appropriately commemorate a truly wondrous blog that came to the end of its run, Going 40 in a 20 Zone.

My remarkable friend Scott, who started his blog two years ago to document his return to college and completion of his degree in music, graduated from Hamline University several weeks ago.

Like the best of Mexican soap operas (take Dos Mujeres, un Camino, for example) Scott is a class act who knew to leave the stage at his moment of climax.

Or something.

If you haven't had the good sense to click on the link to his blog right over there -->> in the past, I encourage you to do so now. Scott put together a mighty fine blog, and I already miss it something fierce.

In a week or two I'll take down the link to Going 40, wistfully and with an ache in my heart, like when I take down the Christmas tree.

Scooter, we hardly knew ye.

Speed demons

Weeks before we went on our trip to Chicago, I booked four tickets on what I had thought would be a stately afternoon cruise along the coast of Lake Michigan and up the Chicago River. When we arrived at Navy Pier on Friday, here is the vessel that awaited us.

 

Huh.

So, things started off with a bit of speeding along the chop of the lake as bad 80's rock blasted from tinny speakers. We froze our asses off.

A few clips from those exciting minutes:

Nils & Peter, who were good-natured about our decided unstately buffeting amidst the cold spray

A view from side of boat, taken with my fingers knotted in a death-grip on my camera. As you can see, we were bookin' along...

And finally, a view from the back of the boat...

One we got past the adrenaline-fueled portion of the tour, I really enjoyed seeing the sights along the river while listening to the often amusing patter of our cute college-boy tour guide.

 

Heading into the Chicago river...

Marina City

The less-garish-than-one-might-expect Trump building

 

Tribune Tower

 

And to round things out, a very nice German fellow. (We saw him all around Chicago, oddly enough.)

A big fan of touring cities by boat,

Okay, I like Chicago

I really like Chicago.

That may sound like a dorkily obvious thing to say, but I've only been there three times (not counting airport layovers), and before our trip last week, I wasn't really sure what I thought.

The first time I visited the city was in 1986. The 18-year-old WG was completely overwhelmed by being in a truly urban environment for the first time.I spent a total of ten hours downtown (the rest of the trip was spent in the 'burbs), and I literally feared for my life at all times while my college pals and I strolled through the frigid January gusts.

Cold wind and even colder flashes of terror. That's about all I recall.

My second trip to Chicago was a mere 22 years later, when Darren and I spent a grand total of 36 hours in the city to catch a night of Madonna's Sticky & Sweet tour.

On that visit I mostly saw Boystown and the United Center. The arena kind of sucked, but I liked the scenery in Boystown.

[Insert "suck" joke here.]

[Insert "insert" joke here.]

In true Goldilocks fashion, the third stay in Chicagowas just right.

Darren and I arrived Wednesday morning around 11:00 and took the train from Midway to our hotel in Boystown, The City Suites. (Highly recommended, especially if you can get a good Princeline deal like we did.) We checked into our room, dropped off our luggage, had a great lunch, and strolled around Boystown.

At 8:00 that evening (I'm mostly skipping over an annoying three hours of coding and emailing I had to do to get a web page to render on iPhone for a project at work) we met our German friends Nils and Peter, who had made a leisurely drive the Twin Cities starting Monday morning.

For the next three days, the four of us explored the city and generally had a great time. Below are more pictures from a great mini-vacation. (BTW, I also took the photo at the start of this post, high atop the Sears Tower.)

Nils, enviously thin and Teutonic, thinks deep thoughts about Art.

 

American Gothic, as photographed by a Minnesotan homo

 

Peter appreciates the flora of Illinois

I find my inner Escher with this shot taken in Millennium Park

 

"Love and Marriage..." was going through my head for ten minutes after this shot

 

Gay PDA on the observation deck of the Sears (now Willis) Tower

 

A few more photos and some exciting video clips tomorrow...

 

I really need to practice my casually sexy look. And lose 90 pounds. And 20 years.

Anyone else think the mussed hair is extremely sexy?

Cool Chicago pics...

Even on a crappy iPhone camera, these photos are pretty cool.

I meet the First Lady (who was lip-syncing Madonna tunes for some reason...)

"WG's Day Off"

Millennium Park

Having a great time in Chicago, but doing my liver no favors,

Boystown, here we come...

This morning Darren and I are hopping a plane to Chicago, where we'll spend the next three days with our German pals before they head back to Cologne.

Funny that I had only been to Chicago once, back in January 1986, but this will be my second trip there in seven months.

Our agenda is pretty open. We're meeting Nils and Peter tomorrow night at 8:00 at Sidetrack before heading out to dinner.

We will not be doffing our clothes and donning towels at Steamworks. I can imagine nothing so horrifying quite frankly, but the Germans can't wait to hit the sauna. You'll never catch me in such a body-exposing setting.

Never.

Ever.

Ever.

We're planning to to do an architectural cruise, and there may be a museum visit or two. The weather isn't supposed to be all the warm, but I would like to spend some time along the lake shore, too.

I'll try to post some pictures while we're there. I know how you enjoy that...

Back soon,