An eventful June

Gosh, looking back at what all I did in June, I’m not sure when I had time to sleep!  Not only did Apollo and I get back on the road for the last week and a half of the month, but I also managed to keep up with my weekly “hands on learning” goals for the year.  If you’ve missed this series, click on the keyword 52 Weeks of Learning on the right-hand sidebar to see what all I’ve been trying this year.

June brought warm weather and summer activity options, so I got outside to play...

Mermaiding

My breathing exercises from last month continued several more weeks, and by the end of my scheduled routine I had improved my breath-hold time by 150%! This came in very handy when I got in the water to learn how to be a mermaid.  Mermaiding is a relatively new swimming activity, where you put both feet in one monofin, and then slip a colorful mermaid tail over that.  Using a modified dolphin kick, the newly transformed mermaid swims around comfortably, at least after a few hours of practice.  I will admit that I was more of a flounder than a mermaid at first.   After a solid week of practice, I was ready to swim out of the pool and in the Yuba River.  Now that I’m back in the saddle, I miss my mermaiding time... definitely something I’ll keep doing when I go home again in the winter!

Pickleball 

Another good activity for sunny summer days, pickleball is called the fastest growing racquet sport in the world (or something like that.  Don’t quote me.). There’s a club in my hometown, and they had a free clinic to teach newbies how to play.  It’s not hard to learn, but as I found out the next day when I went back to actually play, it can be very difficult to play.  The day after learning, I was teamed up with three experienced players (the game is played as pairs), and got to experience first-hand the speed and tactics involved once you know what you’re doing.  It was lots of fun, and great exercise.  Maybe I can find some pickleball games to join in on during my ride!

Tai Chi

I found a (free!) tai chi group near my house, and decided to give it a try.  I’ve done Qi Gong and also various types of Yoga before, and while I could see the benefits of doing them, neither were a good fit for me.  Yoga was too awkward, and Qi Gong just kind of boring.  So I was happy to find that I really enjoyed Tai Chi.   I felt so peaceful and grounded while I was doing it, even in the first class where I didn’t really know what I was doing.  Plus it really helped address the various aches and pains I had been feeling before each class. I especially liked doing this just before mermaiding to loosen me up and focus my attention.

Decoupage

Not all my June activities were done out of doors.  I also spent quite a few hours teaching myself how to do the craft called decoupage, which more or less translates from French as cut-and-paste.  Basically, you cut up colorful paper and glue it onto whatever surface you’re decorating, then cover it with a sealant.  More skilled decoupage artists than myself can turn a simple object like a jar or a flower pot into a work of art, using various papers to make the object look like they’ve intricately painted it.  My own project was a full set of alphabet blocks for my friends baby.  I think they turned out great!

Swedish

The language of the month is Swedish.  I was really surprised to find that this is a very easy language for me! A lot of it feels like English with an accent, and the rest just seems very logical.  Both the words themselves and the grammar made sense to me.  I was a little disappointed when the end of the month arrived, because I wanted to keep learning this wonderful language.  Maybe I’ll come back to it later; in the meanwhile I will give another Scandanavian language a try. 

Retirement Practice

As you've probably heard by now, the plan was for me to be in the Dakotas or maybe even Minnesota by now.  Instead, I had to give Apollo a few more months to fatten up before we start riding for the year.  So instead of busy days of riding, I spent the month of May at home.

Not that having a long and unplanned vacation is a terrible thing! I’m calling it “retirement practice.”  Yeah, I may only be 35, but if practice makes perfect then I’ll be really good at it in a few decades.

I've been keeping myself as busy as ever with my "52 weeks of hands-on learning" personal goal/new year's resolution.  For previous months, click on this subject  in the sidebar on the right side of the screen.

So what did I do in May, I'm sure you've been wondering?  Quite a lot.  In fact, I've already started some of my June activities because with all this free time, I could devote myself to becoming more proficient before discussing them here (so you'll have to wait another month to hear about these longer activities).

Flintknapping

The art of flintknapping is the old-fashioned method of handcrafting stone tools.  In my case, I took a class on making obsidian arrowheads and other obsidian tools.  Basically, it involves breaking tiny flakes of rock off of a bigger rock by brute force, until it is the size and shape you want.

For the beginners class, I received a "blank" that was preformed to the approximate shape (albeit a lot bigger than the final product), a piece of leather to protect my hand from the sharp rock edges that I would be forming, and the two tools necessary for breaking the rock.

It took me about three hours to turn the bigger rock blank into the tiny arrowhead you see here.

Dreamcatcher Weaving

When I was a kid, I loved dreamcatchers.  The mystical idea of dreams floating through the air at night and being able to catch them in a web, which allows the good dreams to drip down the feathers onto the sleeper’s head while preventing the bad dreams from reaching them.  Not to mention the beauty of the weaving and the soft feathers hanging from them.   When my mom would take me to a craft store, I'd sometimes see dreamcatcher kits and want to learn how to make them.

And now I know.

Breathing  “Tables”  

Static tables is the term for the technique used by divers, especially free divers, to increase the length of time that they can hold their breath.  Basically, without getting into the physiology involved, it trains the body to tolerate more CO2 and less O2 in the blood stream, which is what happens when you don’t breath the carbon dioxide out and replenish it with Oxygen.  For safety, I’m doing this “dry” (sitting on a couch, not with my face in the water) and not pushing myself to the point dizziness.

I’m only half way through basic training, but I wanted to mention it with this month’s list because I’m really proud of my progress! When I started two weeks ago, I could only hold my breath for 60 seconds.  Now I can hold it for 74 - that’s a 23% improvement!

And why would I choose this learning activity, I’m sure you’re wondering? Because soon I’m going to learn how to swim like a mermaid! I got my tail, and my lesson is  scheduled for later this week.  But more on that next month, after I actually learn how to be a mermaid...

Russian

My language of the month was Russian.  This was the hardest one yet, even harder than Greek.  It has a crazy alphabet, although a lot of the letters are similar to the Greek so my March lessons on that language were a big help.  However, very few of the words had similar roots to the romance languages I've studied, so I didn't have any word-association tools that I could use.

Plus, the Russian accent is really, really hard for me.  Even trying to pronounce "Allo" (Hello, with the Romanized spelling) proved too much for me (and believe me, I spent a very long time working on that one word's pronciation).  I suppose I could read signs now as I can mostly sound out written words, but that's about it.

Here's the phonetic alphabet chart I used to get through this month's lessons:

And just for fun

Naturally, I’m still working on projects that use skills I’ve learned earlier in the year, of those things I liked doing best.  In particular, I’ve been knitting.  A lot.  Here’s my latest finished project, isn’t it cute?

An April Review

April was basically a terrible month, and I’m glad it’s over.  But it wasn’t all bad.  With all the problems and changes I had to deal with, I still managed to make time for my new year’s resolution, my “52 weeks of hands-on learning.”  So for those of you who are enjoying this blog series, here’s what I learned and tried in April:

Ice Skating

I guess it’s not quite accurate to say that I “learned” to ice skate this month.  I used to ice skate on occasion as a child. But the last time I put on ice skates was probably 20 years ago, so anything I knew how to do then or any muscle memory is long gone.

While visiting Portland with friends, I spent nearly 4 straight hours on the ice, during I went from wobbling and clutching the rail to zooming around the rink and doing some basic spins.  Actually, I figured out the spin thing while trying to figure out how to stop mid-rink. Never did figure out a true stop, but I could turn really fast to avoid a collision, which I think counts as almost as good!

Plus, I’m super proud of myself for not once falling down.

Tae Kwon Do

I’ve taken a few martial arts classes before (mostly MuyThai and Escrima), and always enjoyed them.  So while I was hanging out in Lawrence Kansas, I decided to try out another form of martial art. I have to say that TaeKwonDo is not likely to every become my favorite.  Not because it was really hard to even stand in the basic poses (and it was), but it just wasn’t my cup of tea.  But I’m still glad I tried it!

Line Dancing

Like ice skating, line dancing isn’t entirely new for me.  But since I haven’t done this (apart from the occasional Electric Slide at weddings)  for over 20 years, I thought I’d give it another try.  I think my regular attendance at Zumba classes helped a lot, but I’m not used to needing to memorize a choreography so when we would turn away from the mirror and instructor I had a difficult time keeping up.  I think in an actual dance, with a crowd to follow along with, I would do alright though. In any case, I had a fun time refreshing my line dance muscle memory!

Basket Weaving

No, not underwater.  That’s collegiate level, after all, and I’m only a beginner.  I took a class at the local “native store” on how to make pine needle baskets.  Did you know that pine needle baskets are actually a Germanic tradition? The native peoples did not use pine needles, at least not until they say the settlers doing it.  However, in the class I took, we made what I would call fusion baskets: the Germanic material of  pine needles, but woven using a native technique.  And using artificial sinew, which is nobody’s tradition.  I really like how mine turned out!

Another Language

Finally, the learning-activity I know you’ve all been waiting to hear about.  What language did I choose to study this month? For those of you who are new to this blog, this is something I’ve been doing every month, with daily lessons on the Duolingo app.  And this month’s language was.... Italian!

It’s a beautiful language, and I could definitely see spending more time learning it in the future. Here’s my favorite, most useful sentence from the whole month:

The Last Month of Winter

The last month of my winter break turned out to be a busy one.  Not only were there many things to get ready for our 2018 ‘Ride that couldn’t be done until the last moment, but there was my New Year’s Resolution to keep up with! My “52 weeks of hands-on learning” continues…

Sewing

Though I sometimes felt last year like every day had another sewing repair project, I wouldn’t say that I did it well.  I could thread a needle and poke it through enough times to get whatever I was sewing to hold on, but it wasn’t pretty.  Buttons were even worse.  I am of the last generation to have taken mandatory home economics, but that was too long ago to count.

So I decided that to prepare for this year’s ‘Ride, I needed to learn to hand-sew properly. My knitting lesson of January has morphed into a minor obsession (I was warned!), and the cabled scarf that I finished this month looked like the perfect place to renew my sewing knowledge.  With the tutelage of masterful seamstress mom, I hand-sewed on a peacock patch.  A small project, to be sure, but it included all the things I needed to know to do repairs on the road better.

Knots

Another practical lesson for my ‘Ride, I practiced over 3 dozen knots of all kinds: knots for securing an item, knots for joining ropes together, knots for keeping a rope from fraying, etc.  My favorites – the ones that seemed the most useful for the remainder of my ‘Ride – I particularly tried to memorize.  And I’m happy to say that I used a clove hitch (without googling it!) yesterday to help keep my newest knitting project from slipping off the needles.

Reflexology

After last month’s reiki lesson, I was feeling inspired to learn about other “alternative health” methods.  This month I checked out some library books on reflexology, and my boyfriend agreed to be my test subject for both hand and foot reflexology practice. For those of you who are not familiar with it, the idea is that the hands and feet can be treated using gentle pressure to activate certain energy points, and that treating the hands or feet alone can be an effective way to treat an issue in any other part of the body.  For example, the heart, lungs, eyes, stomach, and so forth, all have associated points on both hands and feet. The methodology was interesting to read about and compare to the bits and pieces I’ve previously learned about for reiki, acupressure, etc.  But the results as reported by my volunteer were not, for the most part, encouraging.  It may have its uses, but it seems to me that there are more effective methods available.

Lock Sport

I almost didn’t list this one here, because I didn’t want to scare away any potential future hosts.  But I was so terrible at this one that I can assure anyone who may be concerned that not only have I no interest in picking your locks, but the chance that I could do it if I tried is next to none.

Lock sport is the preferred term to lock picking, when you are doing it with your own locks for speed.  Of course, I was going for “at all,” not a speed record.  Aforementioned boyfriend owns a clear lock just for learning how to pick it, as well as a basic set of picks, so I practiced on that until my hands hurt.  Which didn’t take long, because those picks are not ergonomic.

By the end of my practice time, I manipulate the pins to open the lock if I was looking at them.  But I could not do it when I had my eyes closed – in other words, if I couldn’t see the interior workings of the lock to know what to do next.  All in all, a fascinating look at the mechanics of locks, and a fun thing for a fan of detective novels, but not something I will ever need to use.

Greek

The language of the month was Greek. I traveled to Greece during college, but at the time I never was able to even learn how to say “hello,” although I could guess at reading bus destinations by recalling letters learned in math class.  Luckily for me enough people spoke some English that I managed okay enough.

Greek was the hardest language I’ve ever tried to learn (of the 5 I’ve studied at some point in my life so far – also French, Turkish, Spanish, and German).  Not just because of the different alphabet – although that was a big part of it – but the grammar was very different from anything I have studied, and the words did not bear as many similarities as I expected to the Romance languages.

I use the language app Duolingo, and for most languages they tell you how fluent you are as you go through the lessons.  Previously I’ve gotten to 40 or more percent by the end of the month.  But Greek blessedly had no such data.  Because I’m pretty sure I was still in the teens by the time the month came to an end.  I am happy to say, though, that I can now sound out most words even if I don’t know what they mean, and I can listen to a word being spoken and guess the spelling with fairly good accuracy.  Here’s a few of the more interesting things I now can say:

Now that April’s here, I’ve started a new language, have plans for things I can learn and practice while I ride, and hope to keep it up so I will have more fun lessons to report to you all next time!

Another month of fun and learning

Yep, I’m still doing it.  My new year’s resolution to learn 52 hands-on things this year is going strong.  Here’s how my February shaped up.

Week 5 - There was a hip hop dance class at Rhythms Fitness Studio.  Fun, interesting, and way harder than I expected.  Mostly because I stink at remembering choreography.  Life as a professional dancer is not in my future.

Week 6 - I bought a calligraphy pen (not the fancy kind that you dip. The easier felt-pen style), checked out a book from the library, and started playing with lettering.  Also a lot harder than I expected! But it turned out pretty good, don’t you think?

Week 7 - I took another class, this time for Reiki.  For those of you who haven’t heard of it or tried it, it’s an alternative healing technique based on energy work (similar to chakras, chi, etc).  The event I attended was an introduction, not a true class or course.  In it, I was able to experience reiki both as receiver and giver.  It was a wonderful, inspiring, and insightful experience, to say the least.

Week 8 - This one was actually all month: learning another language! This time, German (or as I should say, diesmal deutsche). I reached what the Duolingo app says is 45%.  I’m not sure I could actually carry a conversation beyond four word sentences, but that’s a heckuva lot better than only knowing how to say ja, nein and danke (the extent of my German fluency level before this month!).

52 Weeks of Learning... The Beginning

For my New Year’s resolution this year, I decided I want to develop new skills and try new things.  Last year I had resolved to read more non-fiction, which I did and which I enjoyed.  But reading to learn new facts is not really the same thing as learning by doing.  And that’s what I’m trying to do this year with my “52 Weeks of Hands-On Learning.”

So for the first four weeks of January, I had four new things to learn and try.  I successfully “completed” them all (that is to say, I completed them to some basic proficiency).  And I had fun doing it, too.

Here’s what I did for the first four weeks of my 52 Weeks of Learning:

#1 - I took Spanish lessons, or should I say... Estudio espanol.  I used Duolingo, a free language learning app.  After the first week, I decided that language skills should be spread out daily throughout a whole month to actually make any progress. So now I plan on doing a language a month, with a few short lessons every day.  For January, I was able to learn a bit nearly every day, and the app says I am now 40% fluent!  That seems like a bit of a stretch, but I am definitely quicker at picking up new words and can come up with basic sentences on a variety of topics.

 

#2 - I experienced the joy of tidying up.  Last year, I had read Marie Kondo’s excellent book on the subject, and I decided that as part of my “trying things” I would put what I read into practice.  This was by far the most time consuming of all four things this month, but ever so satisfying. I don’t own much to begin with, but it was amazing the number of trash bags I filled with old school projects and homework (I don’t know why that was saved in the first place, but it certainly doesn’t bring me any joy now).

 

  Before: storage jars and containers  

  

After: Only keeping the containers with matching parts makes a big difference! 

#3 - I solved the Rubik’s Cube.  I have owned one of these since my earliest childhood memories.  It may have been my dad’s even before that, for all I know.  Anyway, it spent decades on my shelf and then in a box (where I found it in Week 2), and though I would occasionally attempt it I never got further than solving one side.  Fortunately for me, there are plenty of tutorials online to teach you have to solve it.  And I did! It took nearly two hours and I had to start over once, but in the end I figured it all out.

#4 - I learned how to knit. For my first project, I made a dishcloth with instructions from my co-worker and knitter extraordinaire Debbie.  It came out pretty good, even with Hermes helping! Actually he was not very interested in my knitting, which surprised me. He checked out the ball of yarn for a moment, chewed the end of the knitting needles, and then went to take another nap. I feel like I’ve mastered the basics well enough to advance to project number two, a scarf that requires a more advanced cabling stitch (and obviously enjoyed knitting enough to do a second project).

I’m looking forward to February and another four weeks of fun new tasks.  First up on the list, my new language lessons... but you’ll have to wait until the end of the month to see what’s on the agenda.