Weight remained the same, which while disappointing isn’t surprising. I did exercise more, but I also ate more over the weekend. Hopefully the scale will start going down next week.

I averaged 9.4K “steps” last week. I was not walking that much. I was using the pedal machine. Which gets my heart rate up and burns calories and moves my knee without adding stress to my joints. I figure this is a good thing.

I started and finished two short stories last week, and had about 10K words. I need to write more if I’m going to make my 50K goal for the month. I am writing every day, even days when I have no brain, and I figure that’s a good thing. Always making forward progress.

I missed one day of email. I figure that’s okay – that was the day we woke up without power. I hadn’t slept in two nights because of the massive winds storms. Wind was sustained at 25 m.p.h., with gusts up to 75 m.p.h., according to the local weather station. We lost one garbage can lid – it’s buried somewhere under the snow.

Because yes, we had a shit ton of snow out here. I don’t know what the final amount was. I would estimate that we had 5-6″ the first day, which packed down, then we had another 4-5″. It is currently raining, the temperature hovering at 31 degrees. I hope it stays warm and all this snow melts.

The truck is parked at the bottom of the hill, so I can get out. I’m not completely snowed in. Given this icy rain, I really don’t want to try driving anywhere.

Fortunately, we saw the forecast and we planned on being stuck inside for a week or more. We’ve had a lot of practice at that recently… (^_^)

I continue to speak Hungarian every day. I’m up to 580 consecutive days. However, I’m looking for a different way to learn the language.

Duolingo has switched to a computer generated voice for Hungarian. It makes it impossible to learn the language. I keep running into words that it’s mispronouncing. It has no phrasing, no pauses at commas, no lift at the end of a question. There’s a “speak very slowly” option on Duolingo. I used to use it maybe once a week. Now, I use it once or twice a day.

I’ve gone from always looking forward to my Hungarian to resenting it. I have been writing email to the developers every single day I do my Hungarian to complain about it. I’ve given the app a one star review. I’m now flagging every sentence with “there’s a problem with the audio.”

I suspect they don’t care, though I also suspect that there aren’t as many people learning Hungarian as there once were, based on the numbers I see.

I’d always planned on finishing out the complete Duolingo Hungarian section then finding a teacher or something.

Instead, my goal is to make it for 600 days on Duolingo, but quitting at that point. So I need a solution in twenty days. Wish me luck!

What problems are you overcoming in the next few weeks?