Sam Carr's Dog Speaks

I think I just had a bit too much on my plate, so I decided to do something about it. I set the plate on the ground for the dog and decided to learn a foreign language. The main countries I want to visit some day are Belize, Australia and Japan. Belize is an English speaking country and I think I could fake my way through Australia… hehe. That leaves Japanese to learn.

Well, I’m a few days into my studies now, and I think I’m coming along nicely. I’ve got 30 of the basic 46 hiragana down pat. I’m using computer flash cards I built with html and writing the kana as far as I know it by hand constantly. Of course, I’m learning words like neko (cat), aka (red), and such as I learn the kana. I’ve also got a pretty good grasp of sentence structure, though I’m still a bit lost with particles. Give me a few more days and I’ll have hiragana and katakana down. I’ll keep studying vocabulary while learning the kana and be ready for 1st grade kanji within a week. Of course, in order to be considered literate, I’ll need to learn about 2000 kanji. That is the degree of literacy required of an elementary school graduate in Japan. I suppose I’m on my way, as I already know about 10… hehe.

Along side my lessons, I’m remodeling my kitchen. I’ve redone the cabinets in a glossy white and gave the doors a distressed white eggshell finish. I’ll be putting glossy black hardware on these soon. I put a white tile back-splash behind the stove, and I’m now putting white tile between the upper cabinets and countertops. I’ll continue the white tile around the room between upper chair rail and lower chair rail. I’m putting white wainscoting below the lower chair rail. The walls are now yellow (above the upper chair rail). I’ve installed new lighting in the ceiling, two sconces and a few under-cabinet lights. Soon, I will be installing the copper pot rack I’ve had for over a year. I’m installing a light natural stone tile on the floor. It should lead nicely to the hardwood floors I uncovered and refinished in the rest of the house.

Now, tell me. You think I’m not loosing my frig’nipplin’ mind?!? LOL! Actually, I did finish most of my projects before jumping into this past weekend with a change of pace. I’m down to just one studio project that isn’t wrapped up, though another will be starting in about a week. I’ve got most of my web design projects pretty much wrapped up except a little bit of pro bono work (I’m on it, Shannon!) and some of my personal sites. I don’t foresee anything keeping me from finishing my kitchen within a week or so and learning Japanese enough to speak with a bit of fluency within a month or so. OK, so maybe I’ll still sound like a struggling gaijin, but I should be able to at least carry on a conversation about the weather, music and web design by then.

Until next time… this is Marvin Zindler with EEEeeeeeyewitness News. I don’t think we’re in Houston anymore, Tico.