Nothing to See Here; Move Along

Hiya!

I'm not even going to mention in detail about how, once again, I've failed to keep up a consistent blog.  I think we all get it at this point.  Let's just think of this blog as a piece of candy; usually missing from a (relatively) healthy person's diet on a regular basis, but it's always a nice surprise to get it from an unmarked van near a children's playground every few months or so.

As I type, I'm "taking a break," so to say, from some grad work--namely, research on the Critical Period Hypothesis for my Second Language Acquisition final paper.  I'm coming to an end to a four-week holiday from classes, which means that I've saved the majority of my research 'til the last week before classes resume.  But that's okay; I'm only slightly panicky about my self-inflicted workload.

As far as current occurrences go, I've been up to a fair few things: studying at cafes, taking naps on our ridiculous comfy sofa, hopping off to Rome for a couple of days...  So, nothing too fancy.

Nothing fancy at all.

As a sidenote, Rome is one of the few cities I want to return to at a later date.  Two days in an ancient city only makes me craving more, much like the abundance of pizza and pasta I consumed.

A trip to Ireland may be in order soon; Adam used to live in Galway and is interested in returning later this month.  Be assured that we'll be playing Steve Earle's "Galway Girl" throughout the entire trip, much like we sang "Rock the Kasbah" while in Marrakech back in January.

Thought you could catch a break from my cat posts, didn't you?

But on to more normal stuff: to counteract the grad school stress and accumulated flab that tends to happen whenever I live overseas (damn you, English cuisine!), I've taken to doing yoga.  And no, it's not about that third eye business; stuff like power yoga is painful.  But now I can annoy Adam by insisting that he look at my very minuscule bicep bump, and that makes everything worth it.  Above, you can see my old man cat friend (and contraband visitor) Sonny giving cat-cow a try.

And speaking of grad school stress...I think I've finally decided on a dissertation topic: the acquisition process of adult second language learners of German (with English as their first language)--particularly German V2 word order and case markings--and how looking at SLA from primarily psycholinguistic and generative viewpoints can influence how instructors can teach these phenomena more effectively.  That's the very, very general gist of it, anyway.  If that makes no sense to you, don't worry--I have no idea, either.  Well, I do, but let's just go with the flow of my disjointed thought process and feeble attempts at humor.

Anywhom, let's all rejoice that my stubborn refusal to do anything productive resulted in that stranger-danger candy post you just read!  No sound promises on when the next one will be, or when stranger-danger jokes will stop being funny for me (I'll admit, it's kind of creepy), but I'm sure you'll see me on here again with more bad jokes.  See ya later, alligator.

EDIT: I occasionally post pictures on Instagram.  I don't claim to be good at this newfangled contraption, but if you're interested, you can find my disconcertingly cat-laden page here.  Subscribe at your own risk.