Procedural Notes

Containing guidelines, pointers, previews of things to come, information gathered for the sole purpose of making me feel important enough to lay down ground rules for a blog, and other assorted mumbo jumbo. If you will.

1) I will be in Spain, taking Spanish classes and speaking in tongues. (Okay, just Spanish, with some English thrown in. You never know, though, when you could start rambling in an old language from ancient Sumer.) Thus, this will be a Spanish blog in every sense of the term. I’ll put the titles in both Spanish and English, but the posts will be in Spanish. (After this one, of course.) If I’m able, I’ll provide a quick translation with the help of Babel Fish or FreeTranslation.com, but you might have to do that yourself. If so, understand that those services aren’t perfect by any means. They are good enough, though, that you can grasp the content of the post, if not the nuances of voice and... proper word order.

2) Because I will be writing in Spanish, and because I’m not yet fluent, I’ll have to look up words a lot. I’ll consult the nearest dictionary or WordReference.com, and oftentimes I’ll “d’oh!” when I realize I actually did know it and just forgot it. So, to track my progress on that front, I will put an asterisk next to every word I have to look up. Hopefully, I’ll have to look up less and less words as I go along. This is to enable both you and me to look back at my n00bness once my time here is done.

3) Commenting: I’ve set it up so that everyone can comment. Unfortunately, sometimes the comments are labeled as from “Anonymous” if the commenter is not already registered with Blogger. So, just in case, if you’re not registered, put your name at the end of your comment. I like to respond to comments, and I like even better knowing who I’m talking to.

4) Photos are a must for whatever place I go to. (I never know why. ;D ) Some posts will just be public links to Facebook albums, so you or I won’t need to translate it. Yay!

5) I’m also taking photos for the IDS while I’m here. If I’m able, I’ll post links to photos that appear in the paper.

6) The Oxford comma is king here. Everything will be in Spanish (so maybe I should call it the Salamanca comma!), but that doesn’t change anything. Serial commas will be added to the penultimate item of lists whether you like it or not. This is not the AP.