and that you may tie to

・Looking at a translation text and wondering where the fuck ランス市 was (the most obvious transliterations would be “Lance” or “Ransu”), and finding it was Reims, brought me an instant memory of Susan Baker saying “...and can you tell me, Mrs. Dr. dear, if Reims is pronounced Rimes or Reems or Rames or Rems?” to which Anne demoralizes her by replying “I believe it’s more like ‘Rhangs,’ Susan.” “Oh those French names,” Susan groans. (Points to L.M. Montgomery for making Susan Baker hands down the most memorable character in Rilla of Ingleside, I still have a lot of her dialogue in my head years after the last time I read the book.)

・It's been my experience in my own and other people's language learning that skillful language learners are the ones who are good at making connections--between the new language and the one(s) they already know, within the new language, and so on. So that instead of endless confusing lists in your head, you have an ever-expanding network of connected nodes, as it were--spiderweb fashion, I guess, although I always picture it as a hexagonal pattern like those New York sidewalks. Do other people experience this? Would it actually be a feasible model in some sense for a foreign language course? (Not planning to create one, just curious.)

・Reading a collection of Tove Jansson's letters (expertly translated by Sarah Death from the Swedish). My usual habit of preferring letters/diaries to fiction; they're delightful, art and writing and family and life in Helsinki and a startling number of lovers both male and female, all written up with immense verve and flair.

・My Yuletide fic is getting itself written faster than I expected, with 5K so far in rough sketch form; I think it will end up in the neighborhood of 6K or so, but it needs rewriting like nobody's business and also some review of the canon for details and style. And it might be terrible anyway. Still, I have hopes of finishing it in a timely fashion and doing some treats as well.
(I've been pretty faithful about writing at least one sentence a day on my original thing as well, just so I don't completely drift away from it; we'll see where that goes.)

・Studying Chinese, I couldn't remember the word for mouse, as in the computer kind, so I just typed 小老鼠 (mouse, the whiskered kind). Half right, it’s 鼠标 (mouse indicator).

・Photos: three varieties of fruit (laire, I think I promised you a persimmon tree last year, here is one), some seasonal and peculiarly local images, and a cat-in-a-box.
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Be safe and well.