Rudynate

Only three years between procedures? What's up with that?

I'd clean out and go back to the hot stud that made you want it so bad. He sounds like a keeper. Just make sure he knows you're a beginner.

I don't know anything about Orlando.Is there any reason to go to Orlando, besides Disney World and Maxx?

If I were ever to go to Orlando, Maxx would be my "Top" priority.

I get a lot of compliments on my build from young straight guys. But they always qualify them with "for your age."

I get hit on by men around my own age a lot. Which is great. I didn't notice it until I became one of them, but there's a large population of successful, in-shape, well-kept men in their 50s - 60s who chase after each other instead of chasing after young men. I'm finding I really enjoy this group. Now and again, somebody in their 20s - 30s hits on me online. I have an interesting flirtation going on right now. A classicly tall, dark and handsome real estate broker, around 60, who I assumed was straight. But I'm not sure he is anymore. We've had lunch a couple of times and he sends me flirty emails. We've talked about doing a deal together.

Before they disappeared, he had a lot of great massage reviews. I might be going to New York late this fall. Andres could be on my list of things to do.

It also helps if you can find materials that are deliberately slowly-spoken. From time to time, I listen to the the slowly-spoken German news on Deutsche Welle. Then I listen to it again at normal speed.

That's what I use as background music - KDFC.

I'm speechless.

Me too, R & B is my favorite sex music. For general background music, I like classical, particularly any of Mozart's piano concertos.

The guy I knew wisely realized that he had a shelf life as a model, left modeling, got an MBA. The last time I talked to him, he was happily working away as a product manager in Silicon Valley.

I've known many waiter/models, actor/models and model wannabes. I've known one real model - the real thing - he was a runway model for Armani in the early 90's, lived in Milan, traveled the world. It always puzzled me how he became a model. He was a nice-looking guy, for sure, but not the kind of nice-looking one usually associates with models of international stature. He was a redhead, maybe that had something to do with it.

I took a 3-week immersion course in German quite a long time ago. When I flew back to the US, I sat next to a German woman who was going to visit relatives for Thanksgiving. When I told her what I had just completed, she switched to German and wouldn't speak English and kept reminding me to speak German. We talked the entire 10 hours back to the US. I was toasted by the end of the flight.

I had completely forgotten about sex as a learning modality for foreign languages. I lived in Europe long enough ago so that it wasn't uncommon to end up in bed with someone who didn't speak a word of English. It was always fun to pick up a few words of his language in the time you spent together.

It's a difficult sound to master for speakers of English.

I think the Dutch, as a whole, may speak English better than any other national group on the continent. The Danes might be just about as good. And Dutch men, well . . .

I think it is. A young Dutch woman demonstrated it for me, and it sounded like someone who had bad post-nasal drip trying to clear his/her throat. Dutch is supposed to be easy for native speakers to learn because the words can be so similar to English words, and the grammar is not much more complicated than English grammar. I remember when I was in high school learning Latin, the grammar was so complicated that I thought, "No wonder this is dead language."

Krankenschwester and Krankenhaus may be my two favorite words in the German language. To a native speaker of English, they are inherently funny just because of their sound, and they are doubly funny when you know that they mean "nurse" and "hospital." And then "Krankenwagen" for "ambulance" is pretty funny too. There is that sound in Dutch, the one that the Dutch say only a native Dutch speaker can get right. I had a friend years ago who was a doctor. He went to medical school in Amsterdam and had a Dutch wife. He spoke Dutch very well, I loved to listen to him. He said it wasn't a difficult language to learn at all.

That doesn't mean that you don't hire native speakers. It does mean that the hiring process is broken because it allows unqualified people to be teaching.

At the high school I attended in New York State, one could learn Spanish, French, German, Latin, Russian, Italian and Hebrew. I don't know whether those options are still available, maybe not, since public education is being starved out of existence.

I went to high school with quite a few Puerto Ricans. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the manner in which they combined Spanish and English. Sometimes they would begin a sentence in English and complete it in Spanish. Other times, they would begin the sentence in Spanish and complete it in English. Sometimes they would speak a sentence that was mostly English sprinkled with Spanish. Other times, the sentence would be mostly Spanish sprinkled with English. It was really interesting.

I did a three-week intensive German course at the Goethe Institut in Rothenburg in Northern Bavaria. It was astonishing how fast you learn in the immersion setting. When you don't have the option of peeking at a dictionary, you become very resourceful at understanding and finding a way to say what you want. When I was in Frankfurt, before the course started, I was walking along and I saw a big sign, "Ladenflaeche" on the window of a big empty store. In the context, even though the word was unfamiliar, I recognized immediately that the sign said "retail space." In an immersion environment like that, you have such "Aha" moments 10's of times in a single day.

My French teacher was an old lady, close to retirement who spoke French with this godawful American accent. She made no attempt to speak with an authentic accent. Even as a kid, I used to ask myself, "What's wrong with this picture?' Many years ago, I knew a wealthy old lady. She was the widow of a Texas oilman and seemed to have piles of money - she drove around in a Bentley and had a small household staff. She spoke French fluently, but with that same godawful American accent that my French teacher used. She liked to surround herself with people who spoke French, preferably native speakers, but non-native speakers who were skilled enough were OK , too. She would have lunches and dinners with 10-12 guests where only French was spoken. It was incongruous to hear her speak, because, on the one hand, her command of the language was so good, but on the other hand, her accent was so bad. I could never understand how somebody could have made the effort to become fluent in the language and yet make no attempt to speak with an authentic accent.

I was at a Meetup in Mountain View and I talked with a guy from a tech startup in Mexico. His English was outstanding and what was particularly interesting was how rapidly he spoke. He said he learned most of his English by watching English-language TV.