Originally posted by Timmaywin
(Sorry, too much text to read it all.)
TL;DR is pretty much the name of the game here. 
For my side of the blog, at least. Everyone loves Prim's gardening pictures.
Notifications
Clear all
My blooper was yesterday.
I was driving my daughter home, and about halfway to her place I realized I didn't have my wallet with me.
Ooops. There is a fine here for not having your driver's license on your person when operating a motor vehicle. This is only a problem if I get stopped by the police. Not likely.
I can pay for things with my phone, so that isn't a problem. Besides I know exactly where my wallet is — it's in my other jacket.
When I get home, I check the other jacket. No wallet.
I check every room in the house, the seat cushions of my chair, beside my bed — everywhere except where the wallet actually is.
So I give up, planning to just order replacement cards and a new driver's license in the morning.
Mrs Vorpal then goes into our bedroom, and in less than a minute finds it under a couple of letters.
Stupid cats must have put it there.
Some good news and some bad news
Don´t have a blooper, but got some good news and some bad news for you guys. Let´s start with the not so good news: My Aji Charapita from last year didn´t make it though winter. Has been eaten by some pests (don´t know exactly what). But hey, here´s the good news:
Had collected seeds last year and here comes the son/the daughter (chilis are intersex) of the old Charapita! 
The Aji Charapita has germinated. Let´s hope this little one will get big and strong! ♠_love:
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Stupid cats must have put it there.
In general, I really hate having to search for stuff. When I was starting out with Russian on Duolingo, I almost refused to learn the word for "searching" because I felt like I should never even have to use it - everything should be in its place! на месте - now that was an expression I liked, it also came up early in the course.
It's not even like I am a tidy person, but I tend to have an "organized mess" at home, with commonly used items often within easy reach. At work, on the other hand, it often seems like I am cleaning up behind some of my co-workers. I also noticed that I now have a habit of putting items in their proper place whenever I see them having been misplaced at the grocery store.
Oh, and I often don't have my wallet with me either when I am driving, unless I'm either wearing the jacket where it's supposed to be, or specifically intend to buy something on the way. So far, it has not become an issue.
I got through this week all right, despite a bit of a bumpy start on Monday. I was supposed to take a test for next week, to see how I am going to continue. 31 pushups were the minimum to continue with the lowest column, and sorry to say, but I collapsed on the 25th rep.
It's okay - the program is supposed to be like that, where you repeat weeks if you can't quite make the grade yet and keep going at your own pace. And I knew that this was likely to become an issue this time, after following the lowest column in the past two weeks.
For the following week, I will therefore re-do Week 4, with the middle column this time, intended for people who did 21-25 pushups during their test. That's even in line with the amount of reps I did today. The schedule will be:
Monday
18, 22, 16, 16 and 25+ reps
Wednesday
20, 25, 20, 20 and 28+ reps
Friday
23, 28, 23, 23 and 33+ reps
Quite a step up from last week, when I was following the lowest column, isn't it? Note that I am supposed to do 25+ reps at the end of my workout on Monday already. Also notice that I need to do more than my previous cutoff point of 31 reps by the end of Friday.
Well, let's see how it goes...
Now that's what I call winter! 
Perfect for a weekend, with no places to go. Even more perfect for the Christmas vacation, but we weren't so lucky last month.
With all those other kinds of exercises on the schedule, I haven't been jogging in a while, and the beautiful winter landscape almost made me do it - but I figured that swimming has priority, with less than a month until my next lifeguard course. Let's hit the pool.
Swimming is also nice with all that snow piled up outside. 25 meters of distance diving is no problem. I still noticed that smell of blood in my nose right after surfacing, despite not having turned this time. I guess I just need to get used to it.
Crawling went a lot better than those puny 100 meters from last week. I kept going for 10 lanes, amounting to 250 meters in total, which should be a personal best. Still a long way from Primrose's sexy 1K meters, of course, which is just a part of her normal swimming routine. Also well short of the 800 meters I need to do in the "Trollympics". But it's progress. 
I also did 250 meters of leg whip kick back swimming without the arms. 200 meters are needed as part of my exam, but I liked to go beyond it already, to practice it a little more.
Deep diving is hard to practice in that shallow pool, but I made some attempts, like trying to sit down in the deep end or touching the bottom of the pool with my chest. It went pretty well. I noticed that closing your eyes for a bit can sometimes help to overcome your natural instinct to stay above water.
All together, a very successful day at the pool, nicely offsetting the pushups failure. I should have a pretty good shot at the next badge, I hope.
Plenty of snow, very little poker - that's the situation over here as we enter a new week, with none of us having played any games over the weekend. The snow is likely to disappear in the next few days, and maybe our aversion to the poker tables will too.
We also forgot about our Surprise Menu spin last Friday again. Shame on us. I'm sure we will find a way once again.
I expect a slow week, but who knows what will come up, besides our standard cooking, sports and gardening routine. Maybe we will see fireworks at the tables after all, now wouldn't that be something?
Whatever the case may be, I hope you guys will have a great week.
Originally posted by Zakis19
В каком городе ты живешь ?
Мы живём в сельской местности Германии. I have no idea if that was close to being correct, I had to look up a few words, and I am struggling mightily with Russian grammar, but with both Primrose and me learning Russian at the moment, I felt like I had to try.
Yeah, we both live in rural Germany, that's what I was trying to say, with Prim living in the south of the country, and me living closer to the center. We do not actually live together, as some people may think, but we meet up in person whenever we can.
I prefer not to go into too much more detail about our exact locations, I hope you understand. Besides, it's not like our home towns would be known anywhere else in the world.
Спасибо, что заглянули.
Ha you answered very well:f_thumbsup:
Of course, I don't ever tell to a stranger online where I live specific ♦
I was just testing your russian 
Originally posted by Zakis19
В каком городе ты живешь ?
= In which city do you live? Я это понимаю (I understand that)
But yes, we´re pretty much struggling with the Russian grammar. Super cool language but the grammar ..... 
Originally posted by Zakis19
Ha you answered very well:f_thumbsup:
Of course, I don't ever tell to a stranger online where I live specific ♦
I was just testing your russian
I have to admit that I had to look up what I wrote first, and then check via web searches whether those are commonly used expressions.It may seem cheap to look things up that way, but as I have learned in university, this can actually be considered a form of corpus linguistics, so I'd say it's legitimate.
I'm just glad that I was able to understand your original question.I kind of neglected Russian on Duolingo recently, even though it was supposed to be my main focus there. But I intend to invest in some Russian schoolbooks this week.
Here's the spin for this week - fashionably late once again:
Spoiler
Looks like we're sticking with the Russian theme... though any Eastern European regions west of Russia also qualify, including Primrose's native Hungary.
The wheel stopped just a hair short of Middle Eastern again, btw. We narrowly dodged a repeat.
I hope my cooking skills will suffice for this challenge.
Poker remains a riddle for now, but while we figure out a way to get back, I can announce a brand new sporting challenge already, because I have indeed heard back from the dojo the other day.
There is a new crash course for aspiring karatekas scheduled to begin on February 20th, lasting eight weeks with a lesson every Tuesday evening. The course is meant to teach a beginner everything there is to know to hang out with the big boys and girls and get started for real.
I have announced my willingness to participate yesterday evening, and... I'm in! It has just been confirmed.
Yep, the Trolls stay busy. Just a few days after the beginning of my Silver lifeguard course, which will start on February 17th and which also tries to cram in a lot of stuff within a short time, I will get my head into the ring... or the pit, or wherever the fighting happens, and see how well I can handle this classic Japanese martial art.
I have been interested in getting into martial arts in general for a while now, and while there are a few available options, I preferred to have something that takes place in my own hometown, so I won't spend as much time on the road as in previous years. Karate seems like a great option, I will see if I like it, and if I do, I will join in and try to rise through the ranks - which would then surely be documented here.
Looks like the two of us will have an active year ahead of us once again. Still a few weeks left, allowing me some time to work on my pushups, but I'm excited to get started - Sandy Cheeks has nothing on a determined troll squirrel like me. 
Who wants another fire kiss and some HOT stuff?
I do!
Finally! Another "Fire kiss" dwarf chili growing! 
..and a little egg plant. The last eggplant-seed, left over from last year
We´re making big progress: Separated some pepper plants yesterday (two sweet ones and two spicy ones)
but we also got REALLY HOT ones!! 
This year we´re successful with the Carolina Reaper (hottest chili in the world), we got three Reapers:
Due to a case of January-induced fatigue, I continue to avoid not just the poker tables for the time being, but also Hungarian lessons. In the meantime, here is Primrose's reminder not to urinate into the Balaton:
Well, okay then - I won't.
So, that song is about holidays at the "Balaton", so like "come on over have some fun..." (you know this Bacardi-Song thing, don´t you?). It´s about going to the Balaton, it´s summer, the sun is shining, enjoying the beach, coming together with friends, in the evening drinking cocktails, enjoying a nice barbecue, but just: DO NOT P!SS INTO THE BALATON! 
Hereby, I have to explain that the word "pisálni" is an indecent word for urinating. It´s like the English "p!ssing"
Where I live, "piss" can mean so much more than urinate. It isn't used in polite company to mean urinate — there are better choices, but it isn't entirely unacceptable. In the past tense, it can mean drunk, as in "Dude! you're totally pissed!". In the US, the same word means angry, but here you need to add "off" to make it mean angry — "OK, now I'm really pissed off!" "Taking the piss" is heard occasionally in Canada — it means to mock or tease, but not in a mean way.
As an imperative command to leave immediately, you use the present tense, but also add "off". "Piss off, can't you see I'm busy!".
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to use all forms in a single sentence.
But why stop at English? I'm learning Spanish on Duolingo, and ran across the following:
I haven't watched it yet, so assume it is NSFW
Oh my — it was a youtube on Spanish curse words, and it wasn't even suitable for here.
Originally posted by Primrose6789
So, that song is about holidays at the "Balaton", so like "come on over have some fun..." (you know this Bacardi-Song thing, don´t you?). It´s about going to the Balaton, it´s summer, the sun is shining, enjoying the beach, coming together with friends, in the evening drinking cocktails, enjoying a nice barbecue, but just: DO NOT P!SS INTO THE BALATON!I remember we have a holiday trip from the our complete class course of the university to the Balaton. This was 1986, times where Hungary was a friend of the Sowjet Union. Was a nice time there but we have some trouble when we where take a bath naked 2 hours after midnight. But the retriees which are on holdiday there like it to watch.
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Where I live, "piss" can mean so much more than urinate. It isn't used in polite company to mean urinate — there are better choices, but it isn't entirely unacceptable. In the past tense, it can mean drunk, as in "Dude! you're totally pissed!". In the US, the same word means angry, but here you need to add "off" to make it mean angry — "OK, now I'm really pissed off!" "Taking the piss" is heard occasionally in Canada — it means to mock or tease, but not in a mean way.
Seems to be identical to how it works in British English.
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to use all forms in a single sentence.
"Piss off, can't you see I'm pissed off because I'm the one stuck cleaning the piss from all those pissed teenagers who were pissing all over my wall, only to have you take the piss on me now?"