am a tro, what a day

 Last night when I was actually getting ready to go to bed (at 7:30, because I was already overtired and hoping to sleep well) the mechanic called and said to bring the car down to get the window fixed.  So, we did... and then this morning we went to town to get lumber and groceries.  I did make myself a good egg omelet with seaweed and arugula and hot peppers, hot pepper cheese and spices.  I feel I haven't been eating very well the last two months but it could be worse... and I have been feeling more absentminded, which I hope is from being overtired and not having as much free time to do the things I was used to doing.   And I played with a few language lessons this afternoon and then some more Sims (which, I'm still on the fence if that is any good for me...it sucks up time and I still wonder if I could get more out of baking or making lunch for the next day or this or that...) and then the mechanic called again and said the window was fixed and to come get the car.  So, we did...  that cost a bit more than I expected, but at least it's done.  After that, made dinner and did laundry and am getting ready to go to bed early again tonight to get up early tomorrow.  Am a tro, what a day, and that is a day 'off'....  

 I studied some Latvian today as well as the Japanese.   I felt proud of myself when I did the 'phone numbers' Latvian lesson where you listen to the string of numbers being read off and either put them in as you hear them or correct a series of questions where the number is written down incorrectly.  Both were hard in their own way, especially since I didn't review the numbers from my last bout with the language months ago and just dove in.  'Nola' is zero, by the way - that was the only one I couldn't sort after hearing them again for the first time in months.  Some of the numbers are almost the same as in many other Indo-European languages, but the word for eight is unique.  The teen numbers remind me of Czech, not the same words, but a similar form - but then, the 'teen' in all of the English ones is a similar relatable pattern that I don't think of easily, because I'm just too used to it.

I played with the Bern Istaba, a Latvian children's website to see if I could remember a lot of the basic words I learned there.  It was a good review, as well.

Did some more of the yomu yomu Japanese story app that reads the story to you while you read the text on the screen (in Japanese hiragana/kanji) and the subtitles (in English) side by side.  Sort of like a dual-language reader, which I had a few of back when (high school / college), in German as paperback books.   I like that quite a bit... am wondering if the language is 'stilted' vs what a real Japanese story would be to make it simpler for beginners.  It was quite repetitive.. which seemed unnatural - but I understood 75% of it and learned some new words with every chapter.  That's the sweet spot.

I browsed around the internet a little to look at the costs of some of the other language sites.  I would like to take a course in Latvian, but there aren't a lot of good ones out there.  Duolingo has a lot of courses - 40 or more, but it doesn't have Latvian or Lithuanian.  We do have the Transparent language learning free with our library cards here in our area - it's just been a while since I logged onto it.  It had Latvian!