Week of 23 February - 28 February

Goals

• VL 19, 20. 
• LLPSI Cap.VII, and VIII including Exercitia and ancillary texts.
• Review areas of weakness from previous week using Latin via Proverbs, Vulgate Verses, Traupman's Lingua Latina and Bradley's Arnold.

Stretch Goals

• VL through Unit 24.
• Read Cornelia.
• LLPSI through Cap X including Exercitia & ancillary texts.

14 weeks until NTRPG Con. 21 weeks until CL2015.

Week of 16 February - 21 February (update)

Completed worksheets for VL 16, 17, 18.

Week of 16 February - 21 February

Goals

• VL 16-24. 
• LLPSI Cap.VII including Exercitia and ancillary texts.
• Review areas of weakness from previous week using Latin via Proverbs, Vulgate Verses, and Bradley's Arnold.

Stretch Goals

• Read Cornelia and Ora Maritima.
• LLPSI through Cap IX including Exercitia & ancillary texts.

15 weeks until NTRPG Con. 22 weeks until CL2015.

Week of 9 February - 14 February (update)

No progress. Down with flu all week. Blech.

Week of 9 February - 14 February

Goals

• VL 16-24. 
• LLPSI Cap.VII including Exercitia and ancillary texts.
• Review areas of weakness from previous week using Latin via Proverbs, Vulgate Verses, and Bradley's Arnold.

Stretch Goals

• Read Cornelia and Ora Maritima.
• LLPSI through Cap IX including Exercitia & ancillary texts.

16 weeks until NTRPG Con. 23 weeks until CL2015.

Week of 2 February - 7 February (end of week update)

Completed Exercitia for Cap VI.
Completed VL Unit 14 and 15.
Submitted application and deposit for CL 2015.

Observations

• Need to memorize the little words.
• Need to memorize the words that force a case.
• Numbers...struggling with when and how to decline unus, duo, & tres.
• Personal and Demonstrative Pronouns.
• Need more practice with getting adjectives to match in G, N, & C when it isn't obvious.
• Reread and study Cap. V-X and beyond; solid on Cap I-IV.
• in+Abl vs in+Acc; different meanings and when is each appropriate.
• Sing vs Pl with Passive verbs.

NB -- subject of sentence determines sing vs pl
e.g., Saccus a Syro portatur. -- singular subject (Saccus) / singular passive voiced verb
        Sacci a Syro portantur. -- plural subject (Sacci) / plural passive voiced verb

Week of 2 February - 7 February (mid-week update)

Completed Exercitia for Cap III, IV, & V.
Watched VL Unit 15 videos.

Pressing forward with Cap. VI.
Planning to complete worksheets for VL Units 15-24 over the next couple of days.

Week of 2 February - 7 February

Got nothing done last week between day job and chest cold.

I did notice while listening to LLPSI on my commute that I have nearly complete and effortless comprehension up to about Cap X, 50%-80% from XI through IIXX, and it decreases pretty rapidly from there.

I can still pick out individual words or phrases and get the "gist" of the passage. But it's on the level of my Italian.

Carrying last week to this week:

Goals

• VL 14,15,16, & 17. 
• LLPSI Cap. III & IV including Exercitia and ancillary texts.
• File application for CL2015

Stretch Goals

• VL through Unit 24
• Read Cornelia
• LLPSI through Cap V including Exercitia & ancillary texts.

17 weeks until NTRPG Con. 24 weeks until CL2015.

Week of 26 January - 31 January

Goals

• VL 14,15,16, & 17. 
• LLPSI Cap. III & IV including Exercitia and ancillary texts.

Stretch Goals

• VL through Unit 20
• Read Cornelia
• LLPSI through Cap V including Exercitia & ancillary texts.

Week of 19 January - 24 January (update)

Completed VL units 6-13 last night. All review of basics.

Tonight doing VL units 14 & 15, Pronouns, and LLPSI Cap III including Exercitia.
Next week for those items.

• Revised study schedule to get through Visual Latin by end of February and LLPSI by end of May. 
• Clearing schedule to permit 6-9 hours of study after work per week. 
• If VL is complete by end of February, I might move Chalkboard videos up to March & April.
• Planning to plow through LLPSI a second time in June and July before attending Conventiculum Lexintoniense MMXV.
• Thinking about ways to adapt early Capituli for CI/TPRS. Recognize I need a lot more practice with questions, answers, and pronouns.
• I should plan to record all the ancillary materials in MP3 so I can listen to them. The audio input from both VL and LLPSI is very helpful.

Week of 19 January - 24 January

Work ate M, Tu, & Wed.

• Completed Cap II Exercitia on Wed. evening.
• Need to cover VL 6-10 and LLPSI Cap III et IV in next 48 hours. o.O
• May need to revise schedule.
• Committing to UK's Conventiculum Lexintoniense MMXV. 

Week of 12 January - 17 January

Goals: 

1. Visual Latin 1-5 videos & worksheets
2. LLPSI Cap 1-3
3. LLPSI Cap 1-3 (audio)
4. Exercitia for Cap 1-3
5. Colloquia Personarum 1-3
6. Fabellae Latinae 1-3

Accomplishments:

1. Visual Latin 1-5 videos & worksheets | nothing challenging so far
2. LLPSI Cap 1-3 | reading with ease
3. LLPSI Cap 1-3 (audio) | listening with easy comprehension
4. Exercitia for Cap 1-3 | struggling with some Exercitia esp. Cap II, Ex 7-10
5. Colloquia Personarum 1-3 | reading with ease
6. Fabellae Latinae 1-3 | reading with ease

Challenges:

1. Review question words and the case/tense of properly worded responses.
2. Review vocabulary.
3. Pace is challenging when combined with other obligations.

Tap, tap, tap...

Yeah...so...18 months later. Steel Wrist, Velvet Glove never got off the ground.
Real life...sometimes awesome, sometimes a drag.

Anyway...going to log some personal stuff here just so I've got a record of progress.
Latin work/recovery using Visual Latin and LLPSI Pars I Familia Romana along with its supplement Colloquia Personarum.

SWVG: It Begins

Quick IRL Update: loving the new job.

Steel Wrist, Velvet Glove kicked off last night. I got together with some friends of mine, we made some awesome gazpacho, and then spent about 2 hours creating characters for Flashing Blades. There was plenty of goofing off in the midst of that but it is a slow process, especially if the players aren't already up to speed on 17th century Paris, swashbuckling tropes, and related stuff.

We ended up with Ukranian giant (or giantess...no one's sure yet), a small and stocky rogue from the Netherlands, and a German Knight of Malta. No one wanted to be French nor did anyone want to start with a profession.

We're going to get together again, hopefully in a couple of weeks, to actually play. I have lots of threads I can work on in the meantime to give them lots of adventure opportunity.

We did have a good time and that, to my mind, is the important thing.

Changes IRL

Leaving the job I've been at for the last few years today. It's been a good run and I wish the company and all my former colleagues nothing but the best. Looking forward to starting the new job next week.

Not sure how much free time I'll have but will update the blog, especially with gaming and homeschooling stuff, as soon as I've got my sea legs under me in the new role.

Also, blew away the archives of the blog. A lot has changed since the early-to-mid-2000s when I was last blogging regularly. Time for a "fresh" start, more or less.

Steel Wrist, Velvet Glove: A Flashing Blades Game

A few years back I discovered Flashing Blades, written in 1984 by Mark Pettigrew and still available in both print and PDF.

I quickly fell in love with the game and have been playing it, off and on, since then. I'm going to log campaign notes here until I get to the point where I want to build a wiki. For an example of what I hope to put together, have a look at Black Vulmea's Le Ballet de l'Acier over at Obsidian Portal. He also blogs at Really Bad Eggs which has several excellent series on how to set up and run a solid Flashing Blades game..

Updated title and header. Not talking about Catholic stuff as much as I used to. More focused on my Flashing Blades game, how all my gaming fits in with being a Classical (Latin-centered) homeschooler, and my musical interests.

I make no reps or warrants that I won't blog about other stuff, too. :D