Good news, bad news, and news

There's been a lot going down in Jentown these days, hence my prolonged blog absence. (I've noticed, actually, that by viewing the number of posts per month in the archives, you can easily see when I have a full-time job versus freelancing or unemployed.)

The good news, for me anyway, is that I got word today that my contract with my employer has been extended. So whereas the full-time job was to end next week, it now ends in May. Yay! Steady income! <3

In other good news, Dozer went to the ortho surgeon yesterday for his post-op (after surgery for torn meniscus) and got the all-clear to go back to his normal activities, minus the crazy circus act he puts on while playing fetch. So fetch is now more of a ball-rolling thing (soccer?).

Bonus photo of me in 1983 (age 4) about to whack my little sis in the face with a tether ball:

(Yes, I am wearing shorts. That's just a really long shirt.)

In the bad news category, I got sick with the mysterious illness again (swollen throat and fever)--it was a minor case that went away after a few days, but I still went to the ENT to try and get a diagnosis, only to learn that I will probably never get that. The ENT has concluded that 1) it's a virus, but unknown exactly which (the common ones like mono, strep, etc., have been ruled out), 2) it doesn't seem very contagious (no one around me gets it), 3) it's cyclical in nature for reasons he doesn't understand, and 4) all he can do is treat the symptoms.

Number 4 is unfortunate in that only steroids seem to work against it, and the Dr. says I shouldn't take steroids more than about three or four times a year. Since this is something that I get every two or three months, I plan to save the steroid requests for the bad cases like the one last August, where I was dealing with a high fever for almost a week (the dr. that time gave me antibiotics, which did not help at all).

In other news, Byrd is expressing interest in higher education on his own, without any prompting from me. I bought him an SAT prep book last week, with the hope that he would look through it and realize that college isn't out of reach. We sat down for a couple nights in a row to look over the vocab sections, like fill-in-the-blank sentences and item comparisons (hand:glove::foot:___). He was initially very confused ("Hand dot dot glove four dots foot two dots what? I have to know Morse code?") but seems to be doing better with just a little practice.

I hope he will hang in there and move toward community college as a first step. He's getting too old to continue at his current type of job, as labor, even if it's management-level. He and I both think he could be a great transportation engineer--he's often been consulted by engineers for various traffic projects and works closely with them in a number of ways, he knows the basics, is good at mathematical calculations, and he's a quick study--but the obstacles he's facing to get there are pretty significant, including his inability to read or write well, the length of time since he was last in school (and he never finished high school for that matter), his agoraphobia, and his undiagnosed but blatantly obvious dyslexia.

Anyway...

In my next post I am going to discuss something that has been a popular subject of late: breed-specific legislation versus breed-specific voluntary community programs (i.e. free spay/neuter for "pit bulls")--and why it's acceptable (from an ethical standpoint) to single out "pit bulls" (or other types or breeds of dogs) for special treatment in the latter case, but not the former.

Bonus photo of the word that Byrd slapped down to beat the pants off me in Scrabble:

If I recall correctly, this baby managed to hit several double or triple letter/word squares, and scored extra points because Byrd used all his letters. I think it ended up worth over 70 points, and as it was the last word in the game, I couldn't recover. Well played, sir, well played! (Yes, Byrd gets to use the dictionary freely to look up words, to level the playing field a bit. But still, what a perfect storm.)

The Freelance Copyediting Process

Hi there! Pit bull owner here. Unfortunately, I'm not a drug dealer, gang member, or antisocial thug... unfortunately for you, anyway, because otherwise this description of my job might be a little more interesting!

No, the cold, hard truth is that I heart love grammar.

My experience is with textbooks, specifically middle school and high school literature textbooks. But I've also been on a copyediting team for a technology RFP (a work proposal for the state), and I've done a bit of history, social studies, and psychology textbook copyediting as well.

Sometimes I work on hard copy (paper) and sometimes I work on PDFs or Word documents. It just depends on the job.

This stack of paper below is a grade 9 test handbook; it is what teachers use to give tests at the end of each unit in the textbook. It also has an answer key and a skills chart (that the teacher can review to see what state skills the students are learning).

I usually work on my dining table, or on the living room couch. Byrd built me a huge desk where I can spread the papers out, but then he took over half of it!

Here are the supplies I use to copyedit: a mechanical pencil (or a colored pen), an eraser, a ton of small sticky notes, some "sticky finger" wax, and page flags. The page flags are cut from the small sticky notes.

Here's the copyediting in high gear. I've split up the pages so I can check cross references--that is, references to other pages in the book. I also have to check the answer key and the skills chart for each question.

I'm checking for grammatical errors, typos, incorrect answers, style inconsistencies, and pretty much anything that doesn't work or make sense. I mark and correct most of the little issues directly on the page. I put queries--questions for the editors, usually about issues I can't resolve because they are too big for a quick fix--on sticky notes on the page.

Any page with any sort of mark or query must have a page flag, so the editor knows the page has been "touched."

This particular document was supposed to be "mostly clean"--that is, it wasn't supposed to have a whole lot of problems. But you can see from the page flags that "clean" is a subjective term!
Here are some other important supplies: a big bag of pecans and a tray of cinnamon rolls. Other staples include Coke, Oreos, chips or popcorn, apples, cheese and crackers, and anything else I can stuff in my mouth with one hand while writing and turning pages with the other.
Of course, it's important to have a laptop or computer on hand. Not only do I use an online dictionary/thesaurus, the online Chicago Manual of Style, and research sources for fact checking, I also listen to J-pop (Japanese pop music) on Web radio while I work.

Why J-pop, you ask? Aside from the fact that I like it ("NERD!"), it's also very difficult for me to sing along. When you're trying to read and edit a document in English, the last thing you want to do is listen to music in English. Pretty soon, you're so busy rocking out to the lyrics that you've lost concentration (and probably missed a bunch of grammatical errors). With J-pop, I get a nice tune that keeps me awake without confounding my language skills.

And yes, I've tried classical music, which has no lyrics at all. It puts me to sleep!

So, there you have it. After I'm done with the entire document, I turn it all in and wait for the next job.

If you're thinking this is sort of an unusual occupation for a pit bull owner, let me break it to you gently. You should know that most of us actually do have normal, boring jobs as teachers, writers, technology experts, doctors, and so on.

Sorry to disappoint.

Just kidding... Back to work NOW

Job #1 is still scheduled to start next week.

Then an old client of mine called me up yesterday and asked for help on a project.

I totally accepted. Hey, I like money.

But that makes Job #2.

I'm desperately trying to get Job #2 done this weekend, but it doesn't look likely. Which means I'll be working two jobs next week.

Still, I feel a little selfish.

Am I a bad person for taking on two jobs when so many other copyeditors are desperate for work?

Back to work

My new contract job starts next week. It will last for a year, if all goes as planned.

Yay! I'm actually glad. And not just because I love copyediting.

I didn't think I'd get tired of sitting around all day doing my own projects. But when you don't have a "real job," suddenly you don't have an excuse to avoid all those things you've been procrastinating about.

I didn't want to file six months' worth of papers. I didn't want to update Byrd's Quicken (four months out of date and hand-entry required for three of the four months). I didn't want to weed the driveway. I didn't want to clean out all the kitchen cabinets. I didn't want to organize the closet.

But I did. Because they were on The List I Created (Of Things I Really Wished Someone Else Would Do) and I couldn't think of a reason not to do them.

Starting next week, I can go back to procrastinating. Cause I'll have a "real job" again.

Whew.

In other news, Star got her CGC certificate in the mail.


She is really not very photogenic. She always looks really pissed or freaked out or bored in photos, and unlike Dozer, she doesn't react to words, so I can't get her excited just by saying "treat."

Dozer responds to about a dozen different voice commands and he knows the names of all of his various toys (he will bring the correct toy when given its name). He's one of those dogs I have to spell around, to keep him from getting excited about r-i-d-e-s in the c-a-r. He's also really good at observing the interplay of tone of voice, body language, speech patterns, and more, so even when he doesn't understand the words, he knows what's going on.

Star, on the other hand, just sort of stares, no matter what I say. She's learned to respond to voice commands, but doesn't seem to know the difference between them unless I use hand signals as well. This is starting to be a problem in agility, where, if I don't get my body language precise, she's just as apt to take the tunnel than to go over the A-frame, even if I'm shouting "A! A!"

The only words she clearly knows are "Star," "No!," "Leave It!" and "Yes!" She seems to understand positive versus negative tone of voice, too.

I'm a bit confounded by this apparent language barrier. It requires a whole new set of communication skills on my part. I'm used to having dogs that speak English. :)

With luck, agility classes will help. I'm hoping it will eventually click with her that the sounds coming out of my mouth actually mean something.

I survived last week... but...

Okay, I'm still alive and my nerves are (mostly) intact. The last week was... um... what is the word I'm looking for? "Insane" doesn't seem strong enough.

Unfortunately, it didn't end with last week.

This week heralds the dawn of a new age in our house. It is the age... of STAGE 3!

We have been remodeling our house since the moment we moved in (nine years ago). The house was nearly unlivable when we acquired it. It had no A/C or heat, the strangest floorplan imaginable, two additions that didn't quite attach to the original house (we discovered old asbestos siding buried within two walls), and a mosaic of flooring that appeared to have been chosen based on what was on sale at the hardware store--pink, white, and aqua tile, black linoleum, pink and tan carpet.

Stage 1 involved demolishing and rebuilding the original house while we lived in the two additions. This took years. We ate and breathed sheetrock for longer than is probably healthy.

Stage 2, which we started last summer and are just now winding up, was the exterior remodel. This included the front yard (sprinkler system, gardens, landscape), siding, fence repair, and so forth.

Now we are at Stage 3: demolishing the crappiest addition (pier and beam with known rotten walls and floors) and entirely redoing it. The good thing about this project is that the addition has a single access point, a hallway that can be closed off with a door. So the debris should be contained.

Also with Stage 3 comes the total revamp of the A/C system. We are getting a new A/C unit, installing the interior unit in the attic rather than under the stairs, and redoing the vents. The reasons for this are two: one, the A/C unit we installed way back when we moved in was small and cheap, and was only supposed to be a temporary fix to keep us from dying in Texas summers. Nine years later, that temporary fix really, really needs to be swapped for something more efficient. And two, the upstairs loft portion of the house relies on a window unit for A/C at the moment. It's time to get some vents cut so we don't need the window unit anymore.

Stage 4, I believe, will involve the backyard, the back porch, and possibly the garage. We do not have a back porch or garage, but we plan to build one of each. The backyard needs to be leveled, fenced, and landscaped as well.

Right. So as of this week, I will be dealing with construction, once again, inside our house. Starting Thursday, we will have guys in here redoing the A/C.

Also this week I have three doctor's appointments; I am getting another book to copyedit; Star has obedience class; and I have standard household chores to deal with, complicated by the construction because the laundry room is... well... it's in the addition that's being torn apart.

Oh yeah, and on Saturday, my family is getting together for Moussefest, an annual event wherein everyone tries to make mousse that's better than my dad's. (So far he has retained the title and the trophy.) Byrd insisted on entering the contest even though neither of us have ever made mousse before!

If I pull off this week...

...I will be really amazed.

On Monday I have a legislative commission hearing to sit through, which could last four to six hours or more--unless I can squeeze out early, which is what I'm hoping for.

On Tuesday there's Star's obedience class.

On Wednesday I have a meeting with folks to strategize for another commission hearing.

And I also have a literature textbook to finish copyediting by the end of the week, plus a teacher's edition of the same book to be arriving some time this week (I think) for copyedit.

Then there's grocery shopping, laundry, dishes, cooking, walks for dogs, and vacuuming. All of which badly needs to be done.

I am not too sure how this is all going to work.

This weekend was lovely but incredibly busy. On Saturday Byrd finished building my new desk/work station (AWESOME!!) and we cleaned my office. We were up until midnight. Today I recycled a ton of stuff (from the office cleanup), went to a Canine Good Citizen practice with Star downtown, then caught up with blogs. Mr. S keeps calling me, bugging me to play Warcraft with him, but I just don't have the time.

Now I'm off to knock out some copyediting.

So I thought the end of November would bring me a little downtime. Instead I got an unexpected call from an old boss, and to make a long story short, I am now working on two rush copyediting jobs at once. Which is great, because I love copyediting, and more than that, I love getting paid tons of money to copyedit.

But it means no downtime. Except weekends, which I am going to fight to keep free. Not that I'll be doing any relaxing on the weekends, since I've got Christmas shopping and cards and housework and all that jazz to deal with.

Dozer has become both frisky and pesky over the last few days. I'm sure part of it is boredom, and part is the colder weather blowing in. The other night when I was copyediting past 3 am, he began to get increasingly impatient with me. He acts as my "bodyguard" around the house, following me everywhere--it's what he considers his "job"--and I guess he figured it was very late, and he was tired, and he wanted to clock out and get some sleep, and I was being unreasonable by staying up so ridiculously late.

So he started whining: a quiet, yet shrill, continuous gasping sound. I tried to silence him by letting him outside to potty. I gave him a treat. I stared him down. I told him "no," whereupon we had a conversation that went like this:

"no"
whine
"no"
whine
"no!"
whiiine
"NO!"
whiiiiiiiiiine
"ARGH! SHUT UP!"
silence....
silence....
whine

Byrd got home from his job at about 3:30 am, and at my request (Dozer was now whining with every breath out), he took Dozer to bed with him. Dozer did not go willingly, but I think he finally realized I was not ready for bed, and there was nothing he could do about it.