Watson Family News

I never wrote about our end-of-summer trip yurt camping at the beach.  We went with three other families that all had boys in Evan’s class last year.  All counted, there were 11 children and somewhere between 5-9 adults; as usual I was the token dad for much of the week.  Needless to say it was pretty wild at times.  It’s amazing how easy it is to get your kids to bed when they’ve spent the whole day running and playing outside.  Some nights the boys were literally begging us to take them to bed.

One highlight of the trip was our outdoor movie night.  One of the dads brought his home-theater projector and a mini-DVD player down one night.  We strung up a big white sheet between two trees and weighted the bottom corners to keep it still.  Then we lined up all of our camping chairs and after sunset watched “Happy Feet”.  It was a pretty magical experience.

After that we had a quite week or two before school started.  After a month we are all adjusted to the school schedule.  Davis goes to preschool three mornings a week and really enjoys it.  This year Evan started taking the bus to and from school.  He wasn’t so sure about the idea at first, but he seems to really like it now.

My friend Bryn is in town this week and last night we met up for dinner at Dan and Trish’s house. Sheryl left to bring the kids home and the night was winding down. Either Dan or Bryn  brought up the Simpsons Movie. We checked the movie times and saw a show was starting in four minutes. Ten minutes later we were sitting down in our sits just as the last previews were ending. It’s amazing how spontaneous we can be .. when our wives agree to watch the kids.
Thanks Sheryl and Trish!

Sheryl recently updated our online photo album with pictures from the last 6 months. Check them out here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/sgedwatson

Evan finished up school last Wednesday and had his first few days of summer vacation. After finishing up his Karate class, little league baseball and school all in the last couple of weeks I imagine he’s ready for a little more free time.

For Fathers Day I got a copy of the Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook. My parents came up and I made some actual green eggs and ham, which were surprisingly good. Here’s proof that I’m not making this up. More pictures are available here.

We were watching Ugly Betty last week when her dad had a line about “shimmying up the drainpipe”. As soon as he said it, Sheryl turned to me and asked, “is that the guy from

Grim Fandango?” A quick IMBD search showed that Tony Plana did do the voice acting for Manny Calavera. In case you aren’t familiar with Grim Fandango, it’s one of the best computer games ever made.

Anyway, I was very impressed with Sheryl for noticing that.

Amazingly it turns out someone other than my friend Jon from work reads my website.  My post about learning Irish Spanish actually got a response from Mark, the host of the podcast.  It turns out that among the things I was wrong about is that he’s Scottish and not Irish.  I have to admit that after I wrote that post I had a nagging feeling I had gotten that wrong.  I didn’t figure it would somehow get back to the people that do the show.  Ah well, a fairly gentle way to learn the lesson of how public speech on the Internet really is.

As penitence, Mark, I promise to listen to a few more episodes.  You can listen for yourself and decide if he speaks his Spanish with a Scottish accent or not at Coffee Break Spanish.

Here’s the full text of his comment:

Hi there to the Watson family. I’m Mark from Coffee Break Spanish and there are a couple of things I think I should point out. First of all, we’re Scottish, not Irish! Not that I’ve got anything against our Irish neighbours, but I’m equally proud of my Scottish heritage! We do indeed speak in Scottish accents when we speak English (as is normal for Scots, I guess), but, as the teacher, I certainly don’t have a Scottish (or Irish!) accent when I speak Spanish. I’ve spent a lot of time in Spain, and if you have a look at the comments on our blog and website, and reviews on iTunes you’ll see that quite a number of people have commented on my excellent Spanish accent.

I’m not trying to make a big deal of this, but you’ll understand that if people are claiming that learning Spanish from a Scot is pointless because the Scot doesn’t speak Spanish with a proper Spanish accent then this is quite likely to affect our podcast and therefore our business. My Spanish accent is peninsular Spanish, having spent time in Salamanca, Madrid and the Balearics. It is not, perhaps, the Latin American Spanish accent you may be more used to.

I’d encourage you to listen to more of the podcast, and in particular to listen to the early shows where we give lots more information about the podcast and why I’m the teacher and Kara is the learner. As a learner, obviously Kara will be trying her best to develop her accent and she has, in fact, made excellent progress in the past few months. Compare her Spanish accent in lesson 1 to her accent in lesson 17 for example!

I wish you well with your continued study of Spanish.

Sheryl uploaded a picture of herself and came up with these celebrity look-alikes. I’d like to point out that I never had a thing for Donny Osmond, although I always thought Marie was pretty cute.

Sheryl sent me a link to this site so I had to try out the celebrity face recognition tool they have. You can see some of the matches below. The funniest is that one of my top matches was Jimmy Stewart. Sheryl has always had a thing for Jimmy Stewart; she even had his poster on her wall when she was a kid. I never thought I looked like him, but it’s almost too much of coincidence not to believe there’s a connection.

[Update: Oops!  Boy did I get this wrong.  See the comment for this post.]

I tried out a podcast today that I’d never listened to before called Coffee Break Spanish. It seems like a good idea — quick Spanish lessons to help your learn (or brush up on) basic Spanish. I was surprised to when the hosts of the show started speaking with thick Irish accents. Even when speaking in Spanish, their voices were distinctly tinged with Irish. Like the rest of the world I find Irish accents incredibly charming, but I just couldn’t get past the Irish-Spanish mix. I guess I’ll have to go back to learning Spanish by watching Telenovelas on Univision.

If you can stand to hear any more about the subject, there’s a really good editorial about why we should leave Iraq.