Fogbow

I tend to have a bunch of oddball questions, random comments and occasional vents, so I thought I'd set up a thread where I could consolidate them and make it easier for you to ignore (or engage) as you wish Sadly, despite being told all my life how creative I am, I don't have anything nifty like art or whathaveyou to share

Anyway, my first offering , courtesy of DuoLingo (where I'm studying Norwegian.if you're using it, too, please share what language you are studying!)

Sounds interesting to me to follow. I'm curious to see where it goes.

I'm following! Whippets, Snippets, and Dangling Participles and whatnot is right down my interest alley. I should do Duo, and soon. I've lost the practical Spanish I had for 20 years. Now I only have dreams in Spanish, and enjoy using my kitchen Espanol while watching kitchen shows. Weird.

Ever onward my dear. Looking forward to your adventures.

Duo Français

Kriselda Gray wrote: ↑Sun Jul 17, 2022 11:26 pm Anyway, my first offering , courtesy of DuoLingo (where I'm studying Norwegian.if you're using it, too, please share what language you are studying!)

That's exactly what my sister has been doing. She and her husband were signed up to go on a tour of Norway last year, but it was canceled. They will be going this August instead.

When I went to Norway in 1994 I knew exactly one phrase in Norway: Jeg snakker ikke norsk. I had to use it once when we were in a cemetery and a Norwegian gentleman spoke to me. Fortunately two of the eight people in our group spoke passable Norwegian so, the few times it was necessary, they could help translate. Fortunately many stores and restaurants in the larger cities had some employees who could communicate in English so we managed just fine.

Phoenix520 wrote: ↑Mon Jul 18, 2022 12:07 am Duo Français

Oh, nice! How are you doing with it?

If you'd like to be friends there, I'm "KriseldaGray" there. If not, that's fine, too.

MN-Skeptic wrote: ↑Mon Jul 18, 2022 1:40 am
That's exactly what my sister has been doing. She and her husband were signed up to go on a tour of Norway last year, but it was canceled. They will be going this August instead.

Oh, how fun!! I'm glad they're getting to go this year I'd love to be able to do that someday!

When I went to Norway in 1994 I knew exactly one phrase in Norway: Jeg snakker ikke norsk. I had to use it once when we were in a cemetery and a Norwegian gentleman spoke to me. Fortunately two of the eight people in our group spoke passable Norwegian so, the few times it was necessary, they could help translate. Fortunately many stores and restaurants in the larger cities had some employees who could communicate in English so we managed just fine.

That's a handy phrase to know That's good to hear that there are a number of English speakers. Even though I'm learning the language, I don't have a lot of confidence in being able to pick out the words when spoken at the normal speed. I've been trying to watch Norwegian TV shows and movies so I can get better at it, but its still pretty tricky. Even the speakers on DuoLingo are a bit fast for me still.

So, what was Norway like? Was it as charming as it looks? Were you able to visit any interesting historical sites? That's some of what I most want to be able to see Was the food good?

I mentioned in the thread "Another Shooting" about a friend of mine who ended up killing his next door neighbor and two people at a mall. It was a really tragic situation.

I had met Dave when while I was first exploring Heathenry. He and another guy (Rod) were trying to put together a KC area Kindred (which is essentially a church, though they're usually much smaller and more closely knit.) After joining, I worked with the two of them quite a bit on getting things up and running and got to be good friends with them. Dave was strongly drawn to the whole "warrior ethic", though during the time I knew him, he was never over-the-top about it, it was more of an interest than the obsession it can be for some people.

As I became more restricted to my home, I had to withdrawal from the Kindred because I didn't feel I could take on any responsibilities. I didn't know if I'd be able to honor any commitments I might make because I never knew when I'd have the energy (or enough relief from pain) to do things, and keeping your word is a big deal among Heathens. I also wasn't able to attend most meetings because i just didn't have the strength to get out. Eventually, I lost touch with everyone from that group.

The group eventually kind of fell apart as such things do. Rod was working with a couple of the national Heathen organizations and no one else was really able to carry the leadership of the Kindred. After that, it seems that Dave started really going downhill, though I don't know if there was any significant connection between that and the Kindred falling apart. He became quite mentally ill, and after he was killed, it was discovered that his house was in utter shambles. There was no electricity, the water had been turned off, as had the phone, and there was garbage everywhere.

On the day of the shooting, he went to his elderly next door neighbor's house, they think to borrow her car. No one knows if he asked her or just killed her so he could take it, but he was next spotted at a gas station. The neighbor was quickly found dead and an APB had been put out for her car. A cop at the gas station saw the car and tried to arrest Dave, but he got in the car and drove off, shooting at the officer as he left. He hit the cop, though fortunately the cop wasn't hurt too badly. He then went to the nearby mall where he killed two people in the parking lot before going into the mall. He was about to begin shooting inside the mall when an off-duty cop killed him.

It was really hard on me when I first realized he was the shooter - Hel, it's still hard on me at times. I felt like I'd let him down by not being able to be a better friend, to stay in touch and hopefully be able to see how bad he was getting and try to get him help. Thankfully, I was able to get back in touch with Rod for a while. Being able to talk to someone who'd known him when I did helped a lot. Sadly, Rod died a few years ago from a heart attack, while he was in his late-30's or so.

Sorry this is so long, but I just felt a need to talk about him a bit. I don't really expect any responses to this, but even though it's some older baggage, I still sometimes just need to set it down and get it out of my system for a bit.

Kris ...

Thanks! [[gentle smile]]

Kris

When sprout was little we had a mom’s group. As you might imagine, the mom’s group was a little microcosm of society. One mom (Keith Moon’s daughter ) was having trouble getting hold of her pediatrician. He was in jail. Turns out he had been having an affair with a another doctor in his Peds practice who tried to break it off with him. He asked her to meet him up in the mountains above LA for a last conversation, shoved her off a cliff then pushed her car after her. He would have gotten away with it, too if someone hadn’t been driving by at a crucial moment and called the cops. Another mom’s husband snapped one night, chased her around the house with a kitchen knife and stabbed her to death…in front of the kids. We all knew him. We didn’t know he was mentally ill. There was nothing any of us could have done.

This led to lots of agonized discussions about how you can’t tell about people and not only that, we aren’t responsible for the behavior or actions of any of the people we know, except our kids up to a certain age. And ourselves.

Friends for a reason,
Friends for a season,
Friends for life.

Whoa!

Thank you for sharing that, Kate - I needed to hear it.

all around.

When the Russian war on Ukraine started, I noticed all the news anchors were making a point of pronouncing the name of the capitol city as 'Keev", not "Key-ev" as I'd heard it all my life. It makes sense, though, since that's how Ukrainians pronounce it. Why, then, does no one pronounce "Ukraine" the way they do, which is "you-kry-ina". For that matter, why don't we call "Moscow" "Moskva" or "Germany" "Deutschland"?

Kriselda Gray wrote: ↑Tue Jul 19, 2022 11:55 am When the Russian war on Ukraine started, I noticed all the news anchors were making a point of pronouncing the name of the capitol city as 'Keev", not "Key-ev" as I'd heard it all my life. It makes sense, though, since that's how Ukrainians pronounce it. Why, then, does no one pronounce "Ukraine" the way they do, which is "you-kry-ina". For that matter, why don't we call "Moscow" "Moskva" or "Germany" "Deutschland"?

Good subject. Now I'll be running names of places in my head and pronouncing countries names in thought bubbles all day! I think this happens with Spanish-language names too. Jesús is just one. Maybe some news outlets have a style sheet for names, as newspapers have (or should have).

Maybe it's when we know better, we do better (Keev) or out of respect?

The first time I went to Copenhagen, I learned the proper way to pronounce it as they do, and it's spelled and pronounced very differently. I can't remember for certain, but it sounds something like Ker-houn.

We have small house - not even 1000 sq ft IIRC. Our A/C bills have been really bad this summer, though. I tend to have a lot more problems with the heat (especially sweating, which can cause painful rashes, and bad itching that can sometimes last multiple days) than my husband and caretaker do, so I kind of need to keep the room I'm in fairly cool when possible, but hubby's upset about how much it costs. We've got a whole-house A/C and a removable window A/C that we can use. Not that either of these options are particularly energy efficient, but which is worse: Running the whole house A/C all the time so the whole house stays cool, or set the whole-house A/C to a higher temperature where it cycles on and off, and use the window A/C just in my room, where it would run all the time. Either way, something is going to be running constantly, but hubby thinks it'd be cheaper to let the window A/C run all the time and let the big one cycle off and on as needed. I don't think it'd make much difference either way.

Any advice appreciated!

If you're in a drier climate check out evaporative coolers aka swamp coolers.

I appreciate the suggestion, and if we could afford it, it's something I'd want to look into, but right now we're stuck with what we've got

Kriselda Gray wrote: ↑Tue Jul 19, 2022 11:55 am When the Russian war on Ukraine started, I noticed all the news anchors were making a point of pronouncing the name of the capitol city as 'Keev", not "Key-ev" as I'd heard it all my life. It makes sense, though, since that's how Ukrainians pronounce it. Why, then, does no one pronounce "Ukraine" the way they do, which is "you-kry-ina". For that matter, why don't we call "Moscow" "Moskva" or "Germany" "Deutschland"?

The one that always annoyed me was "Gutter." You know, the Middle East country where the men's World Cup is going to be held. During the Afghanistan war, news media said like that. I always thought it was pronounced like "guitar" starting a K, and emphasis on the last syllable. News media seems to have returned to the latter pronunciation.

TheNewSaint wrote: ↑Wed Jul 20, 2022 9:33 am The one that always annoyed me was "Gutter." You know, the Middle East country where the men's World Cup is going to be held. During the Afghanistan war, news media said like that. I always thought it was pronounced like "guitar" starting a K, and emphasis on the last syllable. News media seems to have returned to the latter pronunciation.

Oh yeah, I remember that - it's interesting that they're reverting back.