Latin challenges.

My home-schooled high schooler has some long-term bad translation habits stemming from an online course and a (lazy, I think) previous tutor, and she often begins to translate without pausing and thinking through the grammatical structure of a sentence.

The closer a sentence's grammar is to English and French word order (she's studied French forever), the better she does, but I'm not yet able to assign her translation homework for her to do at home, since she doesn't have the process down quite yet.

Because she was thinking that all that translation stuff wouldn't help when she retakes the SAT II, which is multiple choice, I ended up sitting down with her and her mom, and her mom helped me talk through her worries with me and why my lesson plans seemed like they would help in the longterm...

One big thing that I said was that attention to detail with a language and how to figure out unfamiliar forms would probably be the biggest takeaway from the class, even beyond knowing Latin.

The mom liked that.

She also liked how I reminded her daughter that stress from other areas in life (she's studying for a lot of standardized college admissions tests right now) can adhere to other things, and that some of her frustration might be with the challenge of Latin, but Latin might also be a magnet for other stress.

On my end, I made up a worksheet called a "Learning Log" that me and the homeschooler can work on together, containing tips on word identification / complicated grammar / translation tips for workable English, so she can gather a list of what seems to be a thousand small points that are tripping her up and move more quickly past them and see the progress that she's making... I put down a few points from the past couple lessons in each category, and I'll be asking her to update it with me at the end of every lesson.

Latin Fun.

Lately, in addition of texting the lawyer who's learning Latin to remind him to study (which he pays me to do), I've been texting sentences I make up using an unfamiliar grammatical construction that we encountered in our previous lesson, to help him become more familiar in it.

For example, I had sent him a sentence variation on a phrase from the Early Modern commentary on the part in Thomas Aquinas we're reading -

Papa est habens curam totius ecclesiae Christianae.

("The pope is the one who has care of the whole Christian Church.")

Then, after the texted back the translation, I sent him a similar phrase -

Discipulus est explicans sententias magistri.

("A student is one who explains the sentences of a teacher.")

Then, finally, later that same day, I also sent him -

Philosophus est proponens quaestiones vanas.
("A philosopher is one who puts forth vain questions.")

He really liked that last one.

Story of My Dad: Hatred.

My dad tends to like every one, but he says there's like 6 people in the world he's met who he simply does not like.

One was a guy who used to come into the bar sometimes with his father, and the guy was a real asshole, and one night when he was drunk he started making just horrible fun of his own father and getting real belligerent, so my dad threw him out of the bar and told him never to come back.

Shortly after that, he left town, and a few years ago my dad heard he was back and the guy was telling people how much he hated him, so then whenever my dad and my mom went to fish fries, my dad always made sure to sit facing the door, in case the guy came in and wanted to start a fight.

The one guy who my dad really really hates, though, is this incredibly fat owner of a Little Caesar's Pizza place in my one town.

"I simply do not like that man," my dad says.

The owner is really obese, and we've always made fun of him.

(In fact, I found out our neighbors used to make fun of him too; one used to say that they had to measure his ass every day before they opened up, to push the tables that much farther apart.)

"Fat Bob and his motorcycle!", my dad would be like (the guy owns a motorcycle and rides around in his XXL leather jacket).  "He gets up and the seat is there between his cheeks."

 (My mom also hates his wife; she's active in the local Catholic church, and she says she always is holier-than-thou and putting on classes about marriage and how wonderful it is and how to make a marriage work.  "Yeah, with Fat Bob," my dad is like.)

Anyhow, one time my dad was in the bank at the tellers, and then he hears someone calling his name across the bank, and it's Fat Bob, and the guy is like, "Whoa ho ho, [my dad's name], how you doing?  You're a little more bald than the last time I saw you, I think you lost a little more hair," and he made a few cracks like that about my dad's baldness.

"Whoa ho ho," my dad was like, imitating his laugh.  "And you're fat."

Then, Fat Bob had to pretend to laugh, and my dad says the teller women's eyes just got real big and their heads snapped back.

"I'm sorry," my dad is like, "But I simply cannot stand that man!  He thought he was so cool."

Sigh - behind on bars.

Because I was sick for 2 solid weeks, I got to be a shit-ton of bars in the whole.

By this past Sunday I had made it to 12 for the week, meaning I was only 18 down, but then Monday came around and I have another 10 to go to.

I think I'm going to be in this hole for a while.

THIS NEW BLOGGER INTERFACE SUCKS...

I had some posts ready to go for the past week (mostly old bar stories), and today I noticed that my blog hadn't been automatically publishing them since last Monday.

On top of that, when I went to reschedule 2 posts, they disappeared.

And, everything takes several more clicks than it needs to, and I'm getting weird formatting appearing on my blog.

WHY THE HECK DID THEY PREMIERE SUCH A CRAPPY INTERFACE WITH SO MANY PROBLEMS??????

I also think that at least 1-2 of my older posts are now buried one whole page back, and people might not ever read them.

Email from my mom (3 of 3): Further update.

Like a day later she wrote this:

[my name],

Red foxes may have color variations........."they may be black, silver, or a mixed pattern called a cross phase". "All color variations of red foxes have a whie-tipped tail. They are the only species to have this kind of tail marking."

Win one for the seniors!

XXXXOOOOOOOMom

As she told me later, she found that in a children's wildlife book she was shelving at the library.

Email from my mom (2 of 3): Some news.

She later emailed me that same day with other news:

Dear [my name],

Got a big book donation today............a dirty black sock fell out when we were taking the books out of the boxes. Love, Mom

. . .

Email from my mom (1 of 3): An Update.

When I was home over Easter, my mom and I took my brother's dog on a number of walks (my parents were taking care of her for 2 weeks while my brother starts a new job). On one long walk on a nice afternoon, ahead on a two-track was this bigger tawny-looking animal that looked like a coyote because of its size and color, but had a tip of white on its tail like a fox.

Overall, I said it was a coyote, but my mom said it was a fox.

Then, last week she emailed me:

You were right, it was a coyote. XXXXOOOOMom

. . .