In this post, I'm going to continue practising tenses and conditionals. I feel that if I study them hard enough, I'll probably be able to apply the grammar more readily (and spontaneously), which gives me a strong incentive to really bear down on these forms.I’ve been practicing grammar lately and I'm going to continue doing this for a while. Studying the rules is interesting even though I often have to go back to square one and revise them over and over.

It's been raining non-stop for about an hour. I'm sitting on the balcony, feeling a humid, fresh breeze and the sunshine streaming in through the window. The weather is getting nicer and nicer, which makes me happy. When I was living in Russia, the people there were always complaining about the cold and wind. I can relate to them to some extent because the winter in Russia is truly tough. However, I've always chosen to just grin and bear it. I'm now living in a place with a comfortable, warm climate and like it a lot. I'm particularly waiting for the end of March because from that moment on, a lot of new flowers will be emerging all spring. I suppose that I'll be walking much more than I do now and will probably be hiking in the mountains within a month.

 I’m listening to a podcast called “Stuff You Should Know” at the moment, and the hosts choose truly interesting topics for their episodes. Last week, I listened to episodes about the invention of LSD ((lysergic acid diethylamide) and the reign of the British kings, and they turned out to be insightful and informative. I also recently listened to an episode about flamingo breeds. I never thought I'd be interested in such topics, but this podcast turned out to be right up my alley.  

As soon as I've finished writing this post, I'm going to see this dog that lives in the park. I've seen her on the street a lot, but we've only just recently become friends. Once, I was sitting on the bench and she made a beeline for me and sat next to me. Since then, I've walked with her occasionally and she seems to have gotten used to me. I suppose she's been living here for a couple of years, but I've never seen her with other dogs. The truth is, I'd loved dogs for ages before I met this one, but I never thought I'd like a dog this much. Of course, she isn't all sweetness and light, but I think we get on like a house on fire. In April, it'll have been a year since the first time I met her.

She'll probably be sleeping or poking around in a search of food. I'm going to buy her some treats and play with her for a while. I'll feed her before we walk along the lakeside, otherwise, she might fight with the other dogs who live there. She's already fought with them before, so I don't want it to happen again. At the time of her fight, I'd been out of town for a while. When I returned home my neighbors told me that "my" dog had been injured. As it turned out later, the dog had been fighting with other dogs for weeks before this last skirmish. If I hadn't left the city that day, maybe she wouldn’t have been injured because we went on so many walks together. I sometimes feel a little bad about this incident. OK, it's time to finish this post, or I'll have been writing it for years before I stop.