Part of being home

Sunday after Mass I went to the nearest Flying Star and had a tortilla española. They don't call it that on their menu; they say Spanish omelette. It was just that, what the Spanish call a tortilla and is definitely not a thin bread of either cornmeal or wheat flour--eggs with thinly sliced potatoes, green onions, cheese forming a a lovely thin omelette. Very tasty.

Monday I had a breakfast burrito with eggs, ham, fried potatoes, cheese, and green chile. A true return to New Mexico!

Tuesday for lunch I had chicken enchiladas with green sauce. Nice and hot but not too hot.

Today I had a green chile cheeseburger with twisty fries. OK, cheeseburgers are not very healthy, nor are fries, especially after I - with high blood pressure - sprinkle them liberally with salt.

But, in case you see a pattern here, yes, it's true. A day without green chile is like a day without sunshine.

That, and enjoying the beauty of autumn here, says I am home. Part of me, part of the time, is very far away nonetheless. My mind is off in my mythic land, exploring a world that only exists in my mind, pursuing questions, working on the revision of my novel. Not so much today but I wrote an entire new page yesterday.

Tonight I will be doing Rosetta Stone Russian.

I was challenged when faced with photos of people swimming. On some it said "Они пливут" and on others it said "Они плавают." Both were obviously variants on "they are swimming," but what was the distinction? I was guessing wrong and very confused. At one point I wondered if it were general swimming versus racing, but that was not it. I did notice that the second variant included folks swimming in opposing directions. Was that it?

Well, it was. Of course, with immersion courses like Rosetta Stone you will never get a translation - you have to associate the words with the visual images. But my Barron's 501 Russian Verbs came to the rescue. I looked up the basic verb and, sure enough, one version is unidirectional and one is multi-directional. Both mean swim. Armed with this knowledge, and grateful that I acquire lots of language resources, I feel ready to continue in Lesson 2.

And that is what I will be doing tonight.

Doctor Stukova, I plan to be ready for you and Russian 2 come spring!

But first a break to have some lasagna. A bear cannot live on language lessons alone.
--the BB