I sent in my fee for Spanish, Level 2 last night. I picked up 501 Spanish Verbs from the Post Office on my way home from work yesterday. The julio issue of ¡Piensa en Español! Think Spanish! arrived in the mailbox today.

The thing about 501 Spanish Verbs is that while it will improve my Spanish, it may also improve my English. To use the book, I am going to have to understand, and get used to, these tenses: Present Indicative, Imperfect Indicative, Preterit, Future, Conditional, Present Subjective, Imperfect Subjunctive, Present Perfect Indicative, Past Perfect Indicative, Preterit Perfect, Future Perfect, Conditional Perfect, Present Perfect, Past Perfect Subjective, plus the Imperative mood.

With all the effort we've put into restoring our virus scan software, I haven't had much opportunity to write about Spanish class. That's too bad, because I'm enjoying the class a lot. The class last Monday (el lune pasado) was especially fascinating. We spent almost the entire class learning about directions. It seems like most Spanish lessons teach you how to ask directions. "Disculpa, ¿Dónde es el Banco de America?" I suppose that's because most Spanish lessons are designed for tourists. Last Monday, we learned, for the first time for me, how to give directions. "El Banco de America está en la esquina de la Calle Seneca y la Avenida 4." "El Banco de America está entre la Calle Seneca y la Calle Spring." "Siga por tres cuadras..." "El Banco de America está cera de la biblioteca." - and so on.

Last night, we studied verbs. Last week, I'd written to our instructor and asked for his opinion of the book 501 Spanish Verbs. His opinion was that it was pretty good, but not great. He said that he didn't like the way it was alphabetically arranged. But, he said, if I find it at a good price, buy it. Es siempre útil, he wrote. I found it for a good price at Alibris.com and bought it. It's waiting for me at the Post Office right now. Last night, I understood our instructor's objection to it. He explained to us that there are only about 80 irregular verbs, and those are the only ones you really need to have listed - for the rest, you can learn the basic rules and you know the verb tenses. I see his point, but I don't regret buying the book.

After class, I asked our instructor a question that occurred to me for the first time: Where do irregular verbs come from? I made an early guess that they are the result of words imported from other languages. That was wrong. Irregular verbs, he explained, are typically much older than regular verbs. As languages change, those verbs change with them, but retain some of their original spelling - causing the irregularities. That, and words get changed through common misuse over time.

Last week, the latest version of the Opera browser was released, and I upgraded us from Opera 8.54 to Opera 9.0. The installation went flawlessly, as Opera upgrades always seem to do - I wasn't even prompted to re-boot the computer. I liked the upgrade to the headings in Opera Mail the best. Blogger works better. The "Widgets" look fun, but I doubt we'll need them. Then Phillip tried to play Neopets and discovered that Opera 9 wouldn't run Neopet's Flash games at all. His solution was to install Mozilla Firefox, which he uses at work and likes. That seemed like the best solution, and we are back to a two browser computer. Life was good. I had no beefs with computers.

Then, yesterday Morning, I decided to check my email before my shower. During the boot-up sequence, I was informed that the subscription with our McAfee "Security Suite" had expired. Just like that - with no warning, we were without either a virus scan or a firewall. I went to the McAfee web site, and followed the instructions for renewing our subscription. Eventually, I got to a white screen with the word "Processing" in the middle. I waited for something to happen. I waited some more. I took my shower. When I returned, it was still "Processing." Phillip got up, and the McAfee site was still "Processing." We gave up and shut the computer down. We couldn't tell if my credit card had been billed.

Phillip tried again when he got home from work Monday. The McAfee site "Processed" for ten minutes, and we aborted it. We turned to "Live Chat" - which was rather misnamed, since all we got was someone obviously typing from a prepared list. I believe that we could have typed, "Green rabbits are falling from the sky!" and the response would still be "Thank you for contacting Customer Support. How may I help you?" Eventually, we got a real piece of information: the toll-free number to Sales. Phillip called, gave a woman my credit card information, and we were promised the we'd get an email, containing instructions for installing the new subscription, within ten minutes. When twenty minutes went by with no email, Phillip called Sales back. The department was closed.

I waited to check my email from work this morning, since I was trying to keep our online activity to a minimum since we still no firewall. The promised email had not arrived. It still wasn't there toward the end of the morning, and I wrote a complaint email to Customer Support. I complained about the poor customer support, our worries about how many times my credit card had been billed, the lack of the promised email, and about not being warned that our subscription was about to expire. About a half hour later, a new email appeared, miraculously dated last Sunday, warning me that my subscription will end "Today, June 25." When I left for work today, the email with the instructions had still not arrived.

When I got home, Phillip had the instructions and was trying to follow them, but our computer was not downloading the new subscription. He tried over and over and over, but the process kept hanging at the same spot. I had an idea, but no idea if it would work. I suggested that Phillip try Firefox. Phillip did, and the process went a little farther, but would still not download. Phillip gave up, but I had one last suggestion, a last chance effort that neither one of us liked, but we had no other ideas: We tried Internet Explorer. Finally, the subscription started downloading, but it looked like it would take over an hour to complete. (What is a subscription, anyway?)

It was hot in our apartment (we kept ice packs on top of the computer), and we were both frustrated, and getting on each other's nerves, so Phillip sent me out to find a geocache that's been on our DNF list for a very long time, despite several attempts to find it. I spent about an hour looking, but still could not find it. When I got back home, the download was almost, but not quite complete. About three hours after Phillip started working on it today, we had the new subscription downloaded and installed. Our McAfee "Security Suite" is working again. Afterwards, I ran every virus scan, adware scan, and spyware scan we have. Fortunately, our computer is safe. I'm not fond of computers right now.

Hoy es mi primer aniversario en esta clínica.

We had a great weekend! Yesterday, we went geocaching with Snowwolf. There was an event near Bremerton called the GeoPoker Run. It involved finding seven geocaches, plus a bonus cache, placed specifically for the event. Each cache, in addition to being a geocache, contained a ticket that was turned in for a poker hand at the event. Prizes were awarded for each hand, in order of their rank.

We brought Snowwolf with us because he had posted a note saying that he would be at the event if someone could give him a ride. Phillip contacted him and offered. Neither one of us knew Snowwolf very well, except for meeting him at an event once. He proved to be a great guy, an excellent geocacher, and a fun person to take on a road trip.

Before meeting Snowwolf on the Seattle to Bremerton ferry, Phillip and I found a geocache in Pioneer Square. This was a cache that I'd tried to find on my own back in May 2005, but couldn't, because of bad satellites and inexperience. Phillip and I tried again in July 2005 and DNFed it. Somehow, we never got back to it until yesterday. The satellite reception was still bad, but we had more geocaching experience and we found it quickly. On the ferry ride over, the three of us did a multi-cache that involved finding things along the way. (What is the number of the buoy, etc.) After the GeoPoker Run, the three of us did the companion Bremerton to Seattle multi-cache.

I had picked the geocache for our 100th find. I also picked our 200th find. So it was Phillip's turn to pick our 300th find, and he picked the GeoPoker Run event, which turned out just right with both the number and the order of the caches we did.

So yesterday, we looked for eleven geocaches, found all eleven, made friends with Snowwolf, and had just the right amount of misadventures along the way. I am excited about geocaching again.

Today was the annual Pride Parade, and the tenth anniversary of Phillip's and my first date. (Our first date probably wasn't on June 25, but it was at the Pride Parade.) We skipped the parade (because of the hot weather) and went directly to the festivities at Seattle Center.

This year, the location of the Pride Parade was moved from Broadway to Downtown. The festivities moved from Volunteer Park to Seattle Center. The reason given was that the celebration had gotten too big for Broadway. It was a controversial move - there was a protest march on Broadway yesterday. (We missed it, of course.) I was among those who felt that the parade should have stayed on Broadway, because of the community identity. I was fond of telling people, "It's like having an Asian heritage festival in Ballard. There nothing wrong with it, but why would you do it?" Today, I changed my opinion. I saw the huge crowd (news reports estimate the crowds to be between 150,000 and 200,000 people) and realized that, yes, the Pride celebration really has outgrown both Broadway and Volunteer Park.