Day: November 21, 2020

So I’ve Hit Four Years of Language Study

November 16, 2020

I missed my 30-day streak on NaNoWriMo. I was pooped when I came home last night, so I went to take a nap for a couple of hours and woke up right at midnight.

I passed the four year mark on my language study yesterday and I have $2,700 in principal saved up. Assuming that life will have me bopping back and forth between the lowest amount I’ve averaged ($0.48) and the highest ($2.04) for the next 20 years, Then I’ll have $13,500, which is good enough to be going on with.

Though, currently, as I go I’m getting more studying and work done every day. When I first started, my average deposit was only $0.48. Now it’s $2.04. If the average keeps going up, maybe I’ll even finish early.

Of course, this is all in aid of paying for me to get a master’s degree in modern languages so that if I ever become too ill to have a physical job, I can still work to keep the money coming in (and for fun, and also maybe as a side hustle while working my day job).

And there are other ways to pay for schooling besides handing the school cash and saying “Here you go.” If I don’t start this until past 65, then I might be able to get some of my classes tuition-free. Then there are fellowships, which are like scholarships, except that it seems that there’s some kind of work component. My impression is that it’s like if scholarships and work-study programs had a baby and that baby went to grad school.

So I guess I need to start researching how to get a fellowship and figure out how to prove my dedication to an as-yet-undecided-upon language.

Also, I don’t know if I’ve come right out and said this, but I definitely need to go to a public college or university for this. $16,000 is the adjusted-for-inflation cost of my MSIS from when I got it in 2009 until 2016 when I started this program. I figured that most of the increase in tuition and fees from then until 2031/2036 will be taken care of by interest on investing that money. I hope.

Our Gratuitous Amazon Link this time is Steelheart, Book One of the Reckoners trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. I really enjoyed this, though I do disagree with how readily Chicagoans would agree to refer to the city as “Newcago.” I grew up there. If you search for “Marshall Field’s,” the site FieldsFansChicago, which advocates changing the name of the State Street store back from Macy’s to Fields, shows up on the first page of results. There’s a meme that shows 233 S. Wacker with text saying “Spelled W-I-L-L-I-S. Pronounced ‘Sears.'”
So, yeah. I don’t see “Newcago” happening.

More Musings on My Future Reading

Pray for My Goodreads Account

November 14, 2020 3 of 8

So I’m going through my next Goodreads account for future Gratuitous Amazon Links and, oh, my God. Like, I’ve got read dates for the first and third of Brandon Sanderson’s Reckoners series but not the second. And one of the books on my bed right now is Sanderson’s The Rithmatist , which I’m pretty sure I’ve read at least twice, and it doesn’t have a read date, either.

And none of my Foxtrot compilations (two of which are on my bed right now) are my Goodreads account at all. I’m marking all of those books as “currently reading” just so I don’t have to go dig them out of the morass of 300-some read, currently reading, want to read things on my Goodreads account.

I’ve been pretty good about actually keeping up with the Dark Horse Comics Avatar: The Last Airbender books, but they aren’t on my Goodreads page either.

I think the easiest way to tackle this would be to lie and make up read datesdo all of the cartoon/graphic novel things first and then maybe pick the other books by how thick they are?

So. Flagging all of the cartoon books that I can think of as “currently reading” has caused that topic to balloon to 35 books. Fortunately I should be able to knock them out pretty quickly.

I hope.

Gratuitous Amazon Link time! We’re going to finish off the Madman’s Daughter trilogy here. I remember liking the first two, but can’t remember anything about this one, so read at your own risk. A Cold Legacy, by Megan Shepherd.