Learning From Martha Stewart

I could learn something from Martha Stewart. I’ve been taping her shows on our DVR and my time to watch them is on Sundays. In the show I watched this morning she and a staff member prepared some really interesting and yummy looking oven baked pork chops. I enjoyed seeing them use Panko breadcrumbs because I’ve been sort of clueless about that particular product and how they prepared them for use by tossing with a couple of teaspoons of oil and then toasting in the oven. I don’t remember the particulars about the recipe, but then, they posted it on their blog and it’s also in their latest edition of the Martha Stewart Everyday Cooking magazine.

The other thing that really interested me is that it was all really upbeat. If anybody has room to complain I’d think it would be Martha, but she’s got manners like my mother tried to teach me and that is to not let them see you cry. I mean, I’m not exactly a Martha watcher, so I can’t say that I’m glued to the media for any little mention of her, but she did spend time in prison. And, from all I’ve seen she has re-entered public life pretty well. So, I do admire her for that.

What brought this up are all the thrown away blog entries I’ve made over the last few weeks. I’ll write and write and it’s all crap. It’s mostly me complaining and whining and I suppose if you can’t give yourself room to bitch and moan you’re not being fair to yourself. But, I had real misgivings about posting it all online. Not that anybody closely involved would be reading any of it. They’re just not really interested and over the years I’ve come to feel pretty confident that my cover wouldn’t be blown because of that. It’s just that it didn’t feel right to do it. And, then I looked at my statistics yesterday. I'd like to see an increase in my return traffic at all my sites. So, my mind has been running along those lines and it occurred to me this morning that I may have been complaining too much of late.

Nobody likes to listen to somebody complain a lot. So, it’s the new me. Ta Da!

Here’s something else I picked up from watching the show. I was really impressed at the variety included on the show. It wasn’t all interviewing. It was helping. It was addressing issues that are common and constantly with us. Like how to shop for the best use of your money. And, another interesting thing was how to attend to everyday and sometimes emergency first aid for our animals. The bit about calming the cats by putting a clamp on the back of their neck that mimics a mother cat picking up a baby kitten. The kitten could be wiggling all over the place but the minute the mother cat picks her up by the scruff of her neck the kitten goes limp. It's sort of like the Vulcan death grip Spock used to use on the bad guys on Star Trek. I thought any binder clip we had in the house would be too tight, so I went and found a little plastic clothes pin and tested it out on Shelby. It didn’t bother her a bit. She just lay there quietly. So, I’ll remember that tip the next time we have to give a pill to one of the cats. Also, blowing on their snout the second you push the pill down their throat makes them lick their nose and Bob’s your uncle…they’ve swallowed the pill.

Anyway, I think with variety, with an upbeat approach and a desire to help other people I could make my own blogs and website better. And, although that wasn’t the content of her show it’s what I really learned today from Martha Stewart.

Where I Learn To Speak Spanish

I happened upon a really neat television show yesterday. It was Barry Farber talking about how easy it really is to learn a language on your own. Granted, you can’t absorb things straight up through your pillow at night if you leave the book you’re studying under your pillow (like I did in the 5th grade once). But, he did break it down into bite sized chunks to make me think that I might even be able to do something with the system.

• Buy a grammar in the language. There isn’t any getting around it, but you will have to study a grammar.
  
• Buy a good dictionary.
  
• Buy a newspaper in the language you are studying.
  
• Buy a phrase book.
  
• Get some business card sized index cards
  
• Buy plastic covers for the business cards (presumably you’re going to wear them out, so that would be the reason for this one).
  
• Have pastel colored highlighters at hand.
  
• Find a person who speaks the language you’re studying so you can occasionally ask them for help with things you can’t figure out. Never leave an encounter with this person without having first gotten a new phrase from them. If you can’t find somebody like this you can call the country’s embassy or consulate and ask whoever answers the phone for help. Barry said they’d be thrilled to help you.
  

Now, you go to town. Study the grammar for 5 lessons. Next, open the newspaper and with the top story, not the one on page 15 about a subject you would be more interested in, but the first story. Highlight every word you don’t know. Write each word on one of the cards. If you’ve got a dictionary already, look up each word. If you haven’t bought your dictionary yet, take the newspaper with you into the book store and look up each word. Buy the dictionary that has these words.

Barry said you’re not actually going to be able to find each word exactly as you’ve got it in your newspaper article. That’s because the dictionary will have the infinitive form of the word and what you’ve got in the article is the word broken down. Like, in Spanish you might find the word, ‘trabajo” in the article. That means, “I work” What the dictionary is going to have is “trabajar” which means, “to work”. So, you go for the word that looks most like the one you’ve underlined.

However, he said there are some words you’re never going to find in the dictionary but which show up all over the newspaper. Like in French the word “vais”. He said the infinitive form of that word is, “aller”. I think it means, “I go” and “to go”.

What he had to say, though, that was really encouraging was that armed with even a few words in another language you can launch yourself and have a half way decent conversation with somebody. At least, you can try. As opposed to brain surgery where knowing just a little bit will get you absolutely nowhere.

I remember with German that my “GastHaus Deutsch” wasn’t half bad. Of course, I always ordered a beer and the more I drank the easier it got to talk to folks.

Anyway, I went on Amazon yesterday and bought Barry Farber’s book, “How To Learn Any Language”. The whole thing ended up being $8.96 including shipping and handling. Not bad.

What’s going to be great for me is the guides will help me with it. I’m looking forward to that. By the way, the language I’m trying to learn is Spanish. I’ve made a blog for it: Learn Spanish With Me. It’s where I pick a word and create a sentence using that word. The whole thing gets translated into Spanish. But, it’s the stuff that interests me, the things that are in my life, the words I would use anyway to talk to somebody. Not the stuff in somebody else’s book.

Learning Spanish

One of my resolutions this year is to learn a foreign language. I'm not saying I'm going to be fluent in a year, but I'd like to be able to say a few things in Spanish. So, I made a new blog. It's: Learn Spanish With Me and I'll be adding a new word each day. Today's is a doozy. Furnace. Go see the entry.

Also, I am so totally open to getting help from those of you who know how to speak Spanish. What I'm doing right now is translating stuff in Alta-Vista's Babel Fish translation services and I do know that sometimes it just doesn't come out right. So, if you see me not saying it correctly please don't hesitate to jump in.