Late night German

I woke to heavy frost and thick fog, both of which soon gave way to steady rain, which got heavier through the day and into the night. I didn't go out. It was a day of little jobs and of significant progress with the big post-mouse clean upstairs, which, to try to make further incursions less likely, is turning into the large-scale sort out of excess textiles of various kinds which I've wanted and needed to tackle for a long time. As I move boxes to a temporary holding area to facilitate cleaning and make space for sorting, I'm rediscovering the size of the space, and realising that if I can keep the floor clear, it would be big enough for yoga...

I didn't take any photos, and realised late in the evening that my daily German was not the only thing I'd not got round to. I have somewhat mixed feelings about Duolingo: as a linguist and former language teacher, I'm frustrated with its avoidance of clear, grammatical explanation, so feel the need to supplement it with other reference sources, and I'm frequently irritated by the fanfares with which it greets every completed lesson. However, it clearly works well enough for me to rush late in the evening to complete a lesson and maintain my "streak", which now stands at 128 days. I've had several phases of teaching myself German over the past forty years, using various methods, and can get by with basic transactional language, but have limited conversational competence. Now, I suppose I'm mainly hoping for future travel: we've always enjoyed visits to Germany, sometimes meet members of my German sister-in-law's family, and now that my bilingual niece is living in Germany, my brother and sister-in-law are spending more time there. I'm probably also just trying to keep my brain alive, and my daily fifteen minutes on Duolingo is a small commitment which so far seems reasonably fruitful - I'm regaining confidence in what I used to know and adding to it.