Swiffering to Greek

I got some good cleaning done today. When I am in the mood for it, I really enjoy it. Cleaning is cathartic.

Swiffer

As I cleaned, I played the CDs that accompany the book Teach Yourself Greek. I have used the book multiple times, but I have never listened to the CDs. There are two of them, and they are meant to be used in conjunction with the book, so doing the exercises on them without having the text in front of me was not as helpful as it would have been with the text. However, since I already know a lot of the content at this point (because of the six or so weeks of Greek studies I have behind me), I did okay.

The Teach Yourself series is quite inexpensive, which is good, but my experience today confirmed the feelings I have had with previous languages: I find the audio portion largely unusable. Throughout the CDs you are supposed to rewind Greek excerpts as necessary in order to find the answers to questions posed to you. And you are told to pause the recording as needed for your responses.

The product would be much, much better if dialogues were simply repeated (as they are in Pimsleur) and if requisite pauses were included as part of the recording (as they are in Pimsleur). I am guessing the Teach Yourself audio approach was part of a larger plan to keep costs low. But I would just like to note, McGraw-Hill, that I’d much rather pay a little more for the product and get something that won’t make me have to act as my own DJ.

Besides cleaning to the silky sounds of Greek, I took Pimsleur around town with me, including to Central Park and also to an appointment with a guy I hope will help me with my running injury. I’m not sure what to call him, but he deals with biomechanics and body position and things like that.

As soon as I got there, he started telling me all the things I was doing wrong. In fact, he was rather stern with me and repeatedly reacted to the way I stand, sit, and walk with despairing sighs and horrified groans. I found it a little doom-and-gloomish, but it was also pretty funny to have someone be singularly unimpressed by skills I thought I had more or less mastered decades ago. I mean, I know my Greek isn’t very good, but I did think I had walking covered.

For an hour, he pushed, prodded, pulled, and scolded, and in the end what he said made a lot of sense to me. After the appointment, I felt much better. We’ll see how it goes with the running.

You Can Find People Doing Just About Anything in Central Park

Signs of Civilization: People Are Still Willing To Stand in Long Lines to See Shakespeare

And with the walking. It has been hard to do the neighborhood-visiting part of this project (I need to go to Astoria!) with my messed-up feet. Soon, I hope!