.- quantum uncertainty -.

So come parlare l'italiano. Posso anche scriverlo. So il presente, l'imperfetto, il futuro, il condizionale, il congiuntivo, l'imperativo. Farò dei errori, si, ma faccio dei errori in francese e inglese, anche. Non sono una macchina, sono una persone.

Posso usare i numeri ordinali -- primo, secondo, terzo, quarto, quinto, sesto, settimo, ottovo, nono, decimo.

I problemi saranno con il comparativo e la forma passiva, penso, ma con la composizione e con la lettura, spero che tutto vada bene.

E un po straniere. L'esame non e solamente per questo semestre, ma per tutti i miei semestri d'italiano. Se non capressi qualcosa due anni fa, farei dei errori oggi. Non penso che mi piaccia.

Non mi sento troppo bene non più, ma sarò bene dopo l'esame, per certo.

Devo andare a presto. Mia madre viene per portarmi all'università in qualche minuti.

Vi vedrò dopo l'esame.

Pensate dei buoni pensieri per me, per favore. :)

I love Italian. Really. I do. I don't think there's a more beautiful language than Italian. I love the rhythm, the cadence, the style, the flair.

I also loathe it more intensely than I thought was possible.

I have a test at 2:45. On ordinal numbers (first, second, third, primo, secondo, terzo), the passive form, relative pronouns, the imperative and the subjunctive.

I am confident of my ability on the numbers and fairly reasonably okay with the subjunctive. The pronouns and imperative are so-so. The passive form? Gah.

I don't tend to use the passive voice in ENGLISH, much less Italian.

I really think this may be my last semester of Italian. It makes me sad, but also, there's this huge wave of relief at the idea of not cramming a whole new language, complete with verbs and tenses, into my already-full brain.

The only motivation I have right now is to learn this so that when I go to Italy this summer (June, baby! 2 weeks!) with my parents, I'll be able to tell them I'm going out and not to worry, because I can speak the language, too. I refuse to be stuck at my parents' sides for two weeks when I am somewhat capable of speaking with the locals.

... I highly doubt I'll wind up speaking in the passive form to some random person in Italy, though. :P

Well. It's been an interesting few days.

First of all, the election results. We have a Conservative government in Canada now. Except it's a weaker government than the Liberal minority we just had. See, in Canada, we have Parliament, right, and the Prime Minister is the head of the party that has the most seats in Parliament. There are 308 seats to be won in Parliament, so if the party has 155 or more seats, it's called a majority government, because that party with 155 or more seats gets to basically overrule everyone and pass whatever bills they want.

The Liberals had 133 seats, so when the Conservatives, the Bloc Quebecois and the NDP (New Democratic Party) all voted together, they toppled the government, leading to this election.

WELL, hahaha! The Conservatives got 124 seats, the Liberals got 103 seats, the Bloc got 51 and the NDP got 29, and an independent got a seat. So the Conservatives got an even WEAKER government than the one they just toppled. Mwahaha. And since the Libs, the Bloc and the NDP are all further to the left than the Tories, I think same-sex marriage is currently safe.

That's about all the good news.

My poll clerk was incompetant. Due to her stupidity, I thought I'd lost three ballots. Do you know how bad it would be to have lost three ballots? If my numbers don't add up, I DON'T GET TO GO HOME.

In the end, it was just that she'd forgotten to tick off three people as having voted once they put their ballots in the box, but that's half her job. She was supposed to cross out the names as I handed them a ballot and tick them off as they deposited the ballot in the box. IT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, PEOPLE.

Anyways. 15 hours, I was there. And I came home to Stephen FREAKING Harper as my Prime Minister.

But then I went out and picked up JB from her polling station (how I WISH she'd been my poll clerk!), then we got ice cream, picked up some of her stuff from her place, came back here, ate ice cream and didn't watch Stephen Harper's speech. No, instead, out of protest, we turned off the TV and watched The L Word.

Blew off Anthro the next day, but made it to Italian.

I slept for 13 hours, last night.

It was lovely.

What is not lovely: Italian test tomorrow. Whee. On four tenses, three of which I can barely use in French, plus some other... things. Eesh. Wish me luck.

At least that's going to be followed up by TV with JB. :)

Ciao, tutti. Il mio esame d'italiano è alle 7 stasera. Che faccio? Studio. Ma voglio sapere perché ho deciso di prendere italiano. Non sono molto bene con le lingue (solamente inglese. Il mio francese non è troppo male, ma non è molto buono non piu!), e mi domando perché ho preso italiano ancora.

La ragione è molto simplice: l'italiano mi piace. Le mie vote non saranno fantastiche, ma ho voluto apprendere la lingua italiana.

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Hi, all. My Italian exam is at 7 this evening. What am I doing? Studying. But I want to know why I decided to take Italian. I'm not very good with languages (only English. My French isn't too bad, but it's not great, either!), and so I ask myself why did I take Italian again?

The reason is very simple: I like Italian. My grades won't be fantastic, but I wanted to learn the Italian language.

That's why I'm finishing my third semester of Italian, that's why I'm planning on a fourth and possibly a fifth and a sixth.

It's that classic battle. Wanting to learn versus wanting a good GPA. I have SO many credits to do that I could have taken any number of introductory classes to virtually any topic to help eat them up. But I decided to challenge myself and learn a third language. A third language which has resulted in the two lowest marks I've had in my university career -- a B- and a C. A C. I did better in STATISTICS than I did in either of my introductory Italian courses! I got a B+ in Stats I and a B in Stats II. The world has gone mad if I did better in a MATH course than a language course!

Anyways, I'll probably get a B- or a B (if I'm lucky) in this Italian course and the next one should be similar. Nelly, the awesome Mature Student Advisor, has informed me that "though the Sociology program LIKES that you're being diverse in taking Italian, they don't really care that you got a C in Italian if you got a B in Stats."

But my GPA. Ouch. Technically, I need to get an A- in my courses to drag it up from 3.35, since a B+ or lower will bring it down. It's currently 3.35. I expect to see it drop.

And I'm going to stop talking about grades, now, and get back to studying for my exam which is in FOUR HOURS.

Also, new icon, because I like the badly photoshopped Santa hats on my friendslist.

Is it just me, or is the negative really easy in virtually every language?

"They eat too much." becomes "They don't eat too much."

"Ils mangent trop." becomes "Ils ne mangent pas trop."

"Loro mangiano troppo." becomes "Loro non mangiano troppo."

French gets a bit tricky, because you have to have ne ... pas in there somewhere, or something along those lines, but Italian's much easier, a lot like English, where you just stick in the negative before the verb.

Back to studying.

Did you know that there are over THIRTY irregular past participles in the passato prossimo in Italian?

THIRTY. Thirty PLUS.

Thankfully, I already know... ... wow, I know 20 of them pretty well from my prior classes. But still.

And the imperfect is okay, too.

But there's a ton of present-tense irregularities that just SUCK. To ascend, which is "salire", is crazy. It's salgo, sali, sale, saliamo, saliate, salgono. Where the hell does this G come from, and why is it only in the first person singular and third person plural?!

Grr. There are others that are just as mystifying, as well.

In other news... no, wait. There IS no other news, there is just my Italian test in TWO HOURS.

Okay, no, I lie. JB was over last night, we watched Commander in Chief, Weeds, Kitchen Confidential and How I Met Your Mother. Tomorrow, after Research Design, we're coming back here to watch Alias. And tonight, tonight is Lost and that makes me happy, because my mom is picking me up after my test and driving me home and I get to watch my Hattrick match (part of it, anyways) and then LOST and yay.

Right, so I'm aware that Italian and TV are my entire life right now. Sue me.

Back to studying some irregular verbs and wondering why the hell I took Italian in the first place.

PS: If my parents didn't speak halfway decent Italian and I hadn't been able to speak Italian with them during, oh, I don't know, EVERY SINGLE CONVERSATION I HAD with them this summer (it's funny, mom and I start out in Italian, degrade to French, end up in English and then say goodbye in French and Italian), then I would be SO MUCH MORE SCREWED for this class than I am now. As it is, I've used my Italian all summer, although not all that much (mostly first person and usually the present tense), but my parents corrected me on certain things all summer. I feel good about this, now. Hopefully the test will not blow away all my confidence.

Studio adesso! (I'm studying now!)

Italian. English.

Adjectives and univocal lipograms about skanks, cats, a glad man, Alaska, Canada, tramps and bastards.

Then off to C's. I told her I'd help her type up some old school papers she wants to archive (I know, I know.), so I went over, typed up stuff, had brownies, watched some bad television, laughed a lot and had a good time. She even paid for a cab ride home for me.

I'm really tired and have to meet T at the metro station nearest his place around 1-1:15 tomorrow.

Taking the metro is 12 stops (and a transfer to another line) one way and 13 stops (no transfers) the other way. I guess I'll just bring my iPod and go the thirteen stops in one go. Ooh, maybe I'll bring my camera and take pics of all the stations I stop at and go the other 12 stops with the transfer on my way back.

Or, you know, maybe I'll just doze.

Shower now. Maybe more to say later.

I need to reboot my computer (my soundcard is odd. I usually have to cold boot my laptop again, after turning it on, to get the sound to work.), but I'm currently downloading How I Met Your Mother -- the pilot of Alyson Hannigan's new show. I'm also keeping an eye out for Kitchen Confidential's pilot, starring Bradley Cooper and with ... wow, I totally blanked on Nicholas Brendan for a minute and nearly typed Xander Harris. Woo. Buffyverse habits die hard.

Weeds 1x07 is up for download, so I'll be grabbing that as soon as I reboot. Oh, I love this time of year. I watched Las Vegas' season premiere (and have a lot of questions) and now HIMYM and soon KC and then Weeds...

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Enough TV. School was awesome today. I nailed a few things in Italian class (and I found a podcast I ADORE! Paolo in America! It's great, it's Italian, and I listen to it on my way to Italian so that I'll be in the right mindset for Italian.) and then went to English, where we were asked to REWRITE Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky.

That is, replace all the words that aren't "real" words with ones that ARE "real". So basically, I massacred Jabberwocky, and I have guilt for rewriting Lewis Carroll. That said, I don't think my version of Jabberwocky was all that bad. Hopefully. :)

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Rebooting time! More later, doubtlessly.

And I have finished my Italian homework, finished my English homework and then spent TWO HOURS replying to Italian messages on Hattrick.

My intial "hey, help me practice my written Italian" turned into a thread of over 300 messages, and humour SO does not translate all that well between English and Italian, let me tell you, but it's fun. My fingers ACHE from all the writing, though, and my poor dictionary and verb book are going to be showing signs of wear and tear soon. ;)

Still, it's a lot of fun, if time consuming. Normally, I can wade through 30 messages in like, 15 minutes, 20 or so if I want to make a few replies. 30 messages in Italian takes me about an hour and a half to two hours. I AM NOT USED TO BEING SLOW. It irks me.

Anyways, TOTALLY bedtime now, 'cause I have to be up around 2ish to make sure I get to class on time.