Italian, Cheese and Other Quests, The Blacklist

It's been a while (over a year), but I have completed another Golden Owl on Duolingo, this time in Italian, which wasn't even on my list of priority languages. I basically just want enough to order food on Lygon Street, although the course did seem to emphasise food, death, love, and some cosa nostra implications. Many decades ago I did some at junior high school and didn't really grasp it at all. This time however, I found it a lot easier - Duolingo is apparently a better teacher than Mr. Rousseau was, and certainly language acquisition theory has improved a lot since then as well. All I really recall is the expectation that we would read and translate Le Avventure di Pinocchio. All said, whilst there is still a sense that I would like to get a good grasp of at least the major international languages, there are quirky experiential and aesthetic choices on my agenda as well. I confess I'm having trouble deciding whether the next Golden Owl will be Portuguese or Dutch. Probably the latter as I intend to visit in a few months.

Last Saturday Damien and Jacqui came over for our semi-regular CheeseQuest event; I made a mountain of hummus variations (spicy, sour etc) and then a mushroom gnocchi. We finally finished our Complete Lessons Collection of Moral Orel and then went on to play a session of D&D Charlemagne's Paladins which involved a visit to Irminsul, a meeting with King Widukind, and the discovery of Charlemagne's Massacre of Verden. They may have rescued their kidnapped bishop, but now they are far less certain of their loyalty to Charlemagne. They'll have plenty of opportunities to upset the history as it has been writ.

One of the side-effects of being a social gamer is that apart from cinema visits for classics and arthouse, I don't usually get much time to engage in television shows etc. Indeed, it has only been very recently that I found myself making use of NetFlix, and binged my way through Altered Carbon. I had, almost by accident, caught a few episodes in the past of The Blacklist which I enjoyed, especially with James Spader's utterly superb performance as a powerful cultured criminal informant. Now, over the past month or so, I've binge-watched four seasons and have caught up with the actual series in production. It's all a little out-of-character for me, but does explain, at least in part, a lack of my typical writing output.