Updates to My Exciting Life

 Here's the exciting details of my so-called life:

Physical Therapy;

My physical condition continues to improve with Focus Sports Therapy in Hollister, California.  I can walk better and longer than when I first started back in March. I have discovered through experience that even a thoroughly decrepit body can react to exercise and improve greatly in many cases.  

Learning Spanish:  

My strategy for learning Spanish is immersion, sort of.  I watch lessons, stories and examples of Spanish on YouTube, and do not write anything down.  Once I have covered the same vocabulary, words and phrases as before, it begins to stick.  I use Google Spanish to English translation for new words and phrases, which are translated instantly into English at no cost.  This is a great tool when reading stories only, to learn new words and expressions.

I used to try and listen to Spanish broadcasts, songs, news, advertisements to see how many spoken words I could recognize.  It wasn't very many at all.  Then one day recently the fog began to clear and I could understand various words and phrases, a lot more than before.

Personal Update

I started regular gym attendance a couple of weeks ago, and am getting plenty of exercise.  I do feel better, and the exercise lessens my chronic depression considerably.  I sleep a lot better, too.  I want more energy and to strengthen my core, my arms, shoulders and back.  I need the strength for playing bass, for loading and unloading heavy amplifiers and playing stand-up bass, which is physically draining.  I have a personal trainer, and that really helps:  he knows what exercises I should be doing, and it takes the guesswork out of it.

Tonight is the last meeting of the semester for the Cats Jazz Band of Los Gatos.  I may not go back for the new semester later in August.  Been there, done that.  I will look at alternatives for continuing my progress on bass.  I am thinking of getting a few lessons from a professional stand-up bass player, to perfect my technique in fingering and handling the bass.  If you don't do it right, you will get fatigued in the middle of a gig and barely able to play.  It's happened to me.

The political and social situation in this country is now insane.  Not as bad as in Europe or Canada, yet, but the Democrats are working on that.  California is moving to secede from the Union.  I doubt it ever will, but as a Californian, I will vote for it, should it make it to the ballot.  It would be better for the rest of the country to rid ourselves of this bastion of Marxism, and remove the automatic 50 electoral college votes for the left wing Democrats.

Stogie Stuff: California Rain and Pumpkin Plants

Last week we had the first good rain in three years, here in Northern California.  Now the weather has turned quite cold.  I put an additional blanket on my bed last night.

My pumpkin plant experiment was a failure.  The plants are still alive, and still producing yellow flowers every day, but I suspect the cold will kill them soon.  The big plant produced three small pumpkins, all of which died soon after flowering.  Not sure why.  I'll try a bigger planting in May.