One year...

Autumn turned "one" last week.

It's amazing how much she's grown in that one year, and even the week since. She's such an independent little girl now, and really bright. I don't know where she learned half of what she knows. She's crawling all around now and really on the verge of standing up and walking around.

Her first sign is caterpillar.. because she likes the caterpillar that Nerise and James got her for Christmas last year. She's always pointing and signing caterpillar so that we'll pull it down from the top of the sofa to let her play with it.

I've been trying to learn Mandarine this last month. I'm taking a break right now, but I've been listening to mp3 recordings from chinesepod.com pretty much nonstop for about 2 or 3 weeks. I'm waiting for a new usb mp3 player I ordered before I get back into it. I've learned quite a few basic words, but I've a long way to go. I'm beginning to think that if I can actually achieve a moderate skill level in more than one language, that I should look into linguistics or low level interpreting. Perhaps interpreting text... or even editing english text.

Actually, I'm a bit torn as to what I really wanna do...
I seem to be good at.
- Working with my hands (detail)
- Figuring out how things work (mechanically)
- Taking things apart and putting them together
- General Analysis

In fact I analyze things without intending to many times. I suspect that this is why I take so long when I read a book. I take every minute detail into account and try to reason why it is so. I tend to spell check and grammar check as I'm reading something for the first time. I also look for hidden clues and meaning in whatever I read. The nice thing about reading is that I'm allowed to do this at my own speed. Because in real time, my overanalysis seems to create a lag in my response time. This can prove to be somewhat irritating to some.

That's all for now.