I have been keeping up with my DuoLingo lessons. The streaks and friend streaks and leaderboards do enough to make sure I never skip a day. That an the incessant notifications from the app. But ... I do have one distraction from my language lessons.

DuoLingo has chess lessons. I've always wanted to learn to play chess, but beyond learning how the pieces move and then getting destroyed repeatedly in online games, I never pursued it. But now I'm getting little tiny play by play lessons of different scenarios and how to respond and why. I am BY NO MEANS good at it. God damn, is it ever hard. When I do go on Chess.com and play strangers, I do NOT do well. I get so nervous and make so many bonehead mistakes.

I will say this though. I know very little about openings. And I'm completely lost in the midgame. But the endgame. Man do I seem to be good at the end game. After my opponent has decimated my ranks, I can dance around, gobble up their pieces, avoid checkmate, and usually in even the most dire circumstances end things in a stalemate draw. I'm sure a lot of that is due to me being matched with people with similar ranks who don't know how to close out a game and against anyone competent I would be dead in seconds. But it's still fun. I wish I could play someone I know regularly but I can't find anyone willing to play me. So if you have a Chess.com username and want to play with me leave a comment. I love saying leave a comment like anyone is reading.

Also, side note. I now know what a Queen's Gambit is and honestly it's not that cool. It's just an opening move/moves. It sounds like it's some kind of dramatic endgame sacrifice of your queen to win the game or something. But nope. Just the first move or two with your pawns.

Any time anyone asks what superpower I would most like to have, I always answer that I would like to speak every language with native fluency. And yet, I've rarely if ever done anything to approach that goal. Daniel and I did take a semester of French at SMU one time. That was fun but without continued effort didn't really stick.

Then my best seven foot tall woman friend suggested I download DuoLingo. It's free and you can learn any number of languages. So I did, and I started taking French lessons. Then I decided to throw in German since I already know it pretty well and it would be fun and easy to refresh. Then we planned a trip to Portugal so I focused on learning was Portuguese I could in the months leading up to our departure.

THEN I got so sick of the advertisements that I paid for a subscription. They got me. I admit it. But now that I'm paying for it, I'm going all in. I am currently switching daily between: French, Germany, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and Danish. What's weird is that while switching between them certainly slows my progress, learning seven sets of vocabulary at once hasn't really proven to be any more difficult than one.

I know that these little exercises and AI driven conversation and voice recognition are unlikely to make me fluent. They're unlikely to allow me to converse easily in a foreign country. But I don't really care. Because (A) it's fun, (B) it's better than doom scrolling, and (C) it really does teach you a LOT if not all you need to know. When we were in Portugal, I busted out a few phrases with our guides (which of course ended with hilarious failure as I spoke Brazilian Portuguese), but also just consumed words around me. I knew what the little Brazilian kid was talking about when he screamed, "Abacaxi! Aacaxi!" at the top of his lungs (he saw a pineapple laying on the ground).

And that was enough for me. I cannot explain how utterly maddening it is for me in a foreign country to see words all around me and not know what they mean. I don't CARE what they mean. It just bothers me not to know. This really helped with that mental fatigue. To see a sign in a store window and know that it says "Closed on Mondays." It allows me to move on and not fixate on wanting to stop and translate.

So anyway, that's my plug for DuoLingo. It's free if you can withstand the most obnoxious assault of ads for phone games deliberately designed to wear you down into signing up for a subscription. But if you've ever been even a little curious, this is a super low effort, low risk way to delve into it and feel like you're accomplishing something every day.

My apologies to anybody who has had a birthday party in the past that I've attended. Because you've all been trumped. Let me tell you a little bit about the best birthday party ever.

I guess I should start by wishing Adam a very happy 23rd. His birthday was this last Thursday and he threw a humdinger of a shindig on Saturday. We rode around Dallas on a g*d damned charter bus drinking, singing, dancing, and bar hopping. It was so much fun. We were on the bus from about 10 until a little after 2 and went to the Walrus Bar, Iron Cactus, and ended up at Sherlocks in Addison. His friends were all super and I drank more than I have in a really long time. Daniel and I both slept the next day until 5pm. I haven't done that in years. I can't imagine how much trouble Adam went through to put all of this together, but I encourage all of you to copy him. And invite me.

In other news, just a remind that the ol' tonsils come out on Friday. So I'll be out of commission for a while. They claim one day. I'm planning on one week minimum. Please don't visit since I'm removing a part of my immune system and won't be fully protected again until it fully heals, but feel free to send me get-well-soon money. Laaaaaaaaate.

I had planned on going to dinner with Marshall last night and then hanging out, but he ended up being 3 hours late, and Dustin and Trey were on their way to see The Matrix, so I decided to join them. I don't know what all the negative hype about this movie is all about. I thought it was fukken badass. Granted, I am easily impressed with fancy special effects, wire tricks, and kung fu, but gimme a break, that was so awesome. The fight between Agent Smith and Neo was so out of control I can hardly think about it. Anyone who cries about the plot or the 'eastern philosophy' is a big whiny baby who should be banned from movies as cool as this anyway. They were fighting so fast that the rain couldn't even hit them. Yeah, you thought it was rain.

If I talk about it anymore, I'm going to reveal too much and I don't want to spoil a movie as good as this for anybody else. Chances are, I'll be going to see it again a few times.

On another note, plans for Thanksgiving have changed. It turns out everyone and their dog is going to be out of town for Thanksgiving. Mostly because no one is going to the game. This dude wrote into the Battalion today yelling at the 12th Man (AGAIN, what is up with this resurgence of uber Aggies this year?) about how so many people were selling their sports passes. I had to laugh ... all the way to the bank, that is. I sold mine for $60. Like I give a shit. I'd much rather have the cash. Anyway, so no one is going to be in town for my Thanksgiving, and I do it right, so I don't want anyone to miss out. Also, AllieD invited me to join her family for dinner so they could get it catered by Luby's. It should be delicious and stress free. Throw in a little booze and you've got a right proper Turkey Day.

I've been watching Thanksgiving Week on Food Network and it is so awesome. I think this year I'm going to make my own stuffing. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I'm still having my own Thanksgiving, just not on that day. As you all well know, I am so cool that I can have Thanskgiving whenever the fuck I want. So maybe a week or two after the real deal, we'll have my shindig. I'll keep you all posted. Now, go get drunk.