This weekend my little town hosted their Oktoberfest.  It gets listed in some places as one of the better ones in the US, so we got that going for us (in addition to being the biggest 4th of July parade in PA).  While they don't have Alex Meixner (see, they have room to improve), they do have some decent music and good food.  That said we headed down there (twice) this weekend.

The weather has been rather hot for the second half of September.  Fortunately, it's been pretty cool in the mornings, so I've been able to get some walks in with Saffy lately to get some exercise in before I start work.  I'm not wishing the nice weather away, but I am eager to see the autumn leaves and put on the Halloween gear (and most of it is long sleeve or long pants).

I've not made great strides on the weight loss.  But I have been away from the elliptical for a week.  My left foot has been hurting me.  I've had a stress fracture before, and I don't want to go there, so I'm giving her a break.  Unfortunately, simply walking (neighborhood or treadmill) just isn't enough - and there have been days where I've walked the neighborhood 3x a day (each trip is approx a 30 min walk at around 3mph - that should be close to a 100 calorie burn).  But I'm not gaining, so that's something, right?  *sigh*  The estimates on the food tracker now say I'd reach my goal by Dec 26.  We're almost 2 months behind because it just isn't happening.  As I've stated before, the lack of progress sure makes it hard to keep at it with gusto.  I need more hours in my day.

Speaking of, I also started using duolingo again to try and make some progress on my knowledge of Italian.  Being as competitive as I am, the fact that the app now shows you leaderboards I've been doing quite well and getting my time in each day.  It also leaves me thinking about it throughout the day, I guess that's a good way to reinforce. I need to sit down and write some stuff down to solidify a few things.  I think that really helped me back in high school with Spanish class:  to see how a verb conjugates (io mangio, lui mangia, noi mangiamo?, voi mangiano?) ugh, it's a struggle. I need to get them set in my head.

Aside:  how do the languages like Italian or Spanish, that use masculine/feminine deal with some of the issues now a days? Also, why in Italian can cats be masculine (i gatti) or feminine (le gatte)?