Lesson 3 of my Learn Latin series is posted, introducing the verb sum (I am) and one use of the ablative case.  Enjoy, and as always, feel free to discuss or ask questions here.

In other news:

My wife Angel just started a blog of her own.  I don’t know what all she’ll be writing about, but she’s a good writer, so go check it out.  Her article on driving through the Alps in her tiny blue car (which you might have seen around Quincy) is both funny and interesting.

My RSS feed was getting hammered lately according to StatPress, going from 3-5 hits a day to 40+.  That didn’t jibe with the rest of my stats,  so I started looking at the raw logs.  Turns out it was all search engines that StatPress didn’t recognize as such.  Did some more research and found out StatPress has been superceded by StatPress Reloaded, so I installed that, and that corrected things, shifting lots of my supposed “visitor” traffic over to “seach engine” traffic.  It doesn’t look as impressive now, but at least it’s fairly accurate.

I tell clients not to watch their stats and rankings and all that, but it’s hard not to, especially when you’re just getting started and each viewer is a large percentage of the whole.  Too much stat-watching just makes a person crazy, though.  I probably should just check it weekly, or even monthly.

I had to change the starter in my truck today.  It’s been wanting to start less and less, and the last couple really cold mornings, I had to roll it downhill and pop the clutch to start it.  That’s okay in a pinch, but it’s not always convenient to park on a hill, so I figured I’d better get it done before I get stuck somewhere.  It was a fairly simple job except for breaking loose one stubborn bolt.  I finally put a pipe over the end of the ratchet and started pulling:  something had to give, either the bolt or my wrench.  Luckily the bolt gave first.

It sure is nice doing work like that in a garage on clean concrete.  It was a little chilly, but so much better than sliding around in dirt or gravel.  Lots easier to find a bolt when you drop one, too.

The darn County Market hasn’t put the nuts in the shell on sale yet.  It used to be: they put the nuts out when the Christmas shopping season started, then after Christmas, they chopped the price to get rid of them all before year-end inventory.  And I’d go stock up and eat them ’til spring, like a squirrel.  My theory is that, since the stores are so much bigger now, they really don’t need the space like they used to.  They can leave them at the regular price in a corner somewhere and let people pick at them until they’re gone.  I’ll keep watching and hoping, though.