On the lighter side of things.....

I've always been fascinated with Rio and as a kid saw pictures of Guanabara Bay and the beach at Ipanema. My dream trip has always been to see Sugar Loaf from the beach. Many people have said I'd be disappointed because of the crime, but it still is my wish to see it before I leave this earth.

Because of this I became fascinated with the early 60s Bossa Nova craze and still love hearing songs sung in Portuguese. In fact, XM Radio on AOL has a Bossa Nova station that I listen to most of the time. Yes, it's playing now.

I also played around with trying to speak Portuguese but it is a very difficult language. I thought Russian was tough. HA! This one is worse. How do I know? I sent away for a well known language learning course and have been spending my idle hours this past week studying Portuguese. It's going to be a long haul. I know the words I want to say in my brain, but somewhere between there and my mouth, they come out sounding not like my brain wanted them to sound. It is spoken from the back of the throat and the tip of the tongue. Now for a Polish kid from the South Side of Milwaukee this is quite a feat.

I've been playing with the voice recognition portion all afternoon and just can't get it. I must say however, the Total Immersion technique is quite effective. When I am doing my lessons I have started to look at the pictures and think in Portuguese. I mean as far as "a car and a cat" or "a boy is lying under a table", but at least those images are Portuguese thoughts.

This may take awhile. But I'll not give up yet. It's only been 5 days.

This past week went well. My new boss has taken the bull by the horns and is making changes. My thoughts are that she and our VP had these plans in mind before she was appointed. I remember hearing some of these thoughts from him, before I was assigned to help in the section that lost help.

There is some reorganizing to be done and till I see the changes in operation I can't give an opinion. I just know that I enjoy working the job I was promoted to do. Since Charlie left, I've been torn between the VP and another who thought he was in charge. Now he has taken a back seat and is doing his job which has many new wrinkles to it and I am doing my job which is assisting our Program Manager. I may begin to like my job again.

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. I think of my kids in Russia and wish they knew how much I wish I was their Mom. I'm waiting for the letters that BJ brought back with her to be translated.

Other than that, I am well and fairly happy.

God bless you all.