I just finished a 75-minute open-level French test as part of a QA study that Duolingo invited me to participate in. What an eye-opener. And quelle épuisement!
The test started well enough but got a lot harder as it went on, for two principal reasons. First, the order of sections went precisely in the order of my abilities: reading, writing, listening, speaking. Turns out I read French a lot better than I write it, write it better than I understand it, and speak it like a reject from a Pink Panther film. Some poor evaluator will have to listen to me going on for nearly three minutes about how hard the job of cat-herder is. What's worse, I only just now learned the word berger. "Herder des chats" is, apparently, not a thing, but berger de chats potentially is. I hope whoever scores that response at least has a sense of humor.
The second reason it got harder is that "open level" bit I mentioned. Each section got progressively more difficult, such that by the end of the listening part I could barely pick out the topic let alone individual words. Senegalese fishermen, you may be surprised to learn, are harder to understand than recorded announcements at train stations.
Still, I'm glad I did it. I don't know if they'll share the results with me, because they only want the data to calibrate their language-learning product. I hope they do, particularly before I pop out of the Chunnel just over two weeks from now.
I'm dog-sitting again, so a nervous beagle wandered up to my office during the test to see why I hadn't fed her yet. I suppose they both could use an around-the-block and some kibble. I will try to speak French to them, if only for my own practice.
Oh, and if you haven't been able to get to Weather Now this afternoon, that's because I shut it down for a bit while I root out a connection-exhaustion problem. I believe there are too many bots hitting it the last few days, but it still shouldn't crash when they do. Until I can fix the problem, or get rid of the bots, I'm only going to have it up a little bit at a time. (Its data collection continues unaffected, however.)
So far this autumn, we've had ridiculous amounts of sunshine in Chicago, with 99% of our rapidly-declining minutes of daylight delightfully cloud-free. We haven't had such a sunny first week of September since 1955, it turns out.
For that reason I ate lunch outside today, and unless something truly bizarre happens in the next few hours, I'll have dinner outside as well. Not a bad Thursday.
As for the title of this post, when you multiply six by nine, you get 42 base 13, in fact: the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Any other meaning would be purely coincidental.
Before I bugger off to get at least a couple of daylight hours in this sunny, 22°C afternoon, here are the most interesting stories that popped up today:
Finally, the Chicago White Sox have surpassed their team record for losses, going 31-108 through yesterday. If they lose 13 of the remaining 22 games—which would actually represent an improvement over their performance so far—they will surpass the 1962 New York Mets' record 120 losses in a season. For reasons passing understanding, they're still charging for tickets, with box seats going for $69 and some tickets as high as $309. They have lots of seats left, though, so maybe I'll just take the El down there this weekend to see the Athletics beat them?
The weather today requires that I leave work as early as permissible and take Cassie home the long way. Of course, in order to do that, I have to eat at my desk. (I suppose I could have taken a long lunch, but then I wouldn't have as much time with my dog. Choices.)
Last night I fired up the ol' grill. I am proud to report I have gotten steak grilling just right; this guy was a perfect slightly-rare-of-medium and every bite was juicy and tender:
Dinner tonight (and probably tomorrow) will be leftovers, of course. Breakfast and lunch today were oats and poke, respectively, as I realized that I should probably have as little fat and cholesterol as possible the rest of the day.
This morning, the CTA completed re-routing the #9 Ashland bus to the Ravenswood train station, which ended over 100 years of the bus line terminating by the Graceland Cemetery:
For more than a century, public transit commuters headed north on Ashland Avenue had their ride stop at Irving Park Road before the bus headed east to terminate at Clark and Belle Plaine, near Graceland Cemetery, CTA director of service planning and traffic engineering Jon Czerwinski said.
“This is a routing we’ve followed for a long time. It’s been in place since the Chicago surface lines operated streetcar service here all the way back to 1912,” Czerwinski said.
The route created a gap in service for anyone wanting to take public transit further north. But starting Aug. 25, the #9 Ashland bus will continue past Irving Park Road and now terminate at the newly renovated Ravenswood Metra station, 4800 N. Ravenswood Ave., Czerwinski said.
I caught two of the buses exploring their new neighborhood on my way to the train:
I'll have a link roundup later this afternoon.
As promised, I took a 25-kilometer walk up the North Branch Trail yesterday, which did not disappoint:
The weather cooperated brilliantly (though it did get a little warm towards the end), and my multiple applications of SPF-50 sunscreen seems to have kept me from crisping. The trail, of course, is lovely:
In total, I got 40,707 steps, which would have been a personal record back in the day but I'm pleased to say didn't even get into my top-10 step days since 2014.
Cassie spent the day at her usual day camp, but still got an hour and a quarter of walks. Of course she didn't accompany me on the 4-hour trail hike, but she nevertheless plotzed before I did:
Also, a shout out to my Hoka Stability shoes. My feet feel just fine today, and in fact given the forecast (23°C and sunny) I will probably get another 10 km today. Or, at least, spend lots of time outside.
The hot, humid weather of the past week has finally broken, and on the last day of summer yet!
In about an hour I'm starting the first long walk of several I've planned for the autumn, so the 19°C temperature—and, more importantly, 16°C dewpoint—is very welcome. Just 24 hours ago, they were 22°C and 21°C respectively, which one can only describe as "really sticky."
I might not post about the walk until tomorrow morning, but I'm looking forward to it. I haven't gone up the North Branch Trail since last October, and I haven't walked up the stretch from Devon to Dempster since 2018. (Fitbit no longer allows deep links to activities. Bastards.)
A few weeks ago I planned a PTO day to take a 25 km walk tomorrow along the North Branch Trail with pizza at the end. (I'll do my annual marathon walk in October.) Sadly, the weather forecast bodes against it, with scattered thunderstorms and dewpoints over 22°C. But, since I've already got tomorrow off, and I have a solid PTO bank right now, I'll still take the day away from the office. And autumn begins Sunday.
Good thing, too, because the articles piled up this morning, and I haven't had time to finish yesterday's:
Finally, Washington Post reporter Christine Mi spent 80 hours crossing the US on Amtrak this summer. I am envious. Also sad, because the equivalent trip in Europe would have taken less than half the time on newer rolling stock, and not burned a quarter of the Diesel.
Welcome to an extra stop on the Brews and Choos project.
Brewery: Big Time Brewery & Alehouse, 4133 University Way NE, Seattle
Train line: Sound Transit, U District
Time from Chicago: about 4 hours by air
Distance from station: 300 m
Let me start by saying Seattle had beautiful weather last week...until just before I arrived on Thursday. That didn't stop my friend and me from visiting Seattle's oldest brew-pub, just off the University of Washington campus. As you can see, though, we opted to sit inside, and we left Hazel at home.
Now, it's important to understand as you read what follows, my friend does not like beer. Wine, sure; cocktails, no problem; beer, never. So don't take her comments as indictments of what I thought were perfectly serviceable drinks.
I tried a flight along with an unpretentious Caesar salad, starting with the Big City Pilsner (4.8%), which I thought had good malt, wasn't overly sweet, had a long-ish finish. [She: "I'm trying to think of what kind of sock this tastes like..."] The Primetime Pale (5.2%, 35 IBU) had a very hop-forward beginning and a long finish; I liked it. [She: "This is water wrung from a sock someone wore for the entire Appalachian Trail. Maybe with a broken toenail clipping."] The Scarlet Fire Northwest IPA (6.8%, 70 IBU) had a great, full-hop balance; a good PNW beer. [She: "This is like an iced tea that someone left in the sun all day and it went cloudy."] I finished with the Coal Creek Porter (5.5%, 25 IBU), which had chocolate and coffee at the beginning but an odd tart note and just enough hops. [She, pulling a face: "This tastes like vinegar and chocolate, and not in a good way."]
Well, my friend, I know what I'm not getting you for Christmas this year.
Pity the rain didn't let up. I think Hazel would have liked watching the people go by on University Way. Maybe next time.
Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? A few, avoidable
Serves food? Full pub menu
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes
I mentioned that the weather today is amazing, but yesterday's was also pretty good (if a bit humid). Cassie and I walked about 18 km throughout the day and spent most of the rest of the day outside.
But Cassie's day started pretty well even before we set out:
Sadly, neither of us could get to the last little bit of peanut butter at the bottom of the jar. (I labeled it "dog" because no one wants to get her peanut butter confused with the jar for people.)
We trundled off to the Horner Park DFA early in the afternoon:
And met her friend Butters, who decided to dig a hole next to a bench and settle into it:
(Apparently Butters does this often.)
We also had a slice at Jimmy's Pizza and some QT at Spiteful Brewing, finally getting home to some real couch time around 8.
Finally, I want to show some puzzling user experience design. I changed my phone to French because I'm visiting Provence next month and I need the practice. I'm also using Duolingo to build my skills, and in fact just started CEFR level B1 today.
Most of my apps immediately started displaying French messages, and Garmin even started sending me emails in French. One app didn't seem to get the memo, though. See if you can guess which.
Bien fait, Duolingo!
Some of us chorus types went to two outdoor performances this weekend. The first, at Ravinia Park in Highland Park, was a Chicago Symphony Orchestra performance of Mark Knopfler's score for The Princess Bride:
Then last night, many of the same people went to the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park to hear the Grant Park Symphony and a lot of other musicians perform Mahler's 8th Symphony:
The only problem? Rain. At both performances, we got rained on. The rains ended early, fortunately, and at Ravinia we managed to get last-minute pavilion seats. The Pritzker Pavilion doesn't have a roof, though, so we just sat in the rain for a few minutes and covered our glasses.
But hey, how often does one get to hear Mahler's 8th live?