Monthly Archives: March 2008

Sparky: Now With Wheels!

There were lots of fun things that happened this weekend, like trips to the farm, maple sugar, the boy’s very first Easter egg hunt, playing with his cousin, dinner out in a grown-up restaurant featuring a decadent plate of ice cream with real whipped cream and gourmet chocolate sauce… but I think one of the most exciting things that happened this weekend (certainly for HRH and I) was the triumphant acquisition of Sparky’s very first tricycle.

He wasn’t as enthusiastic about riding it as he was about petting it and taking it for walks and showing it off to people.

There’s a second-hand shop in the next town that I always hit for new coats, pants, shirts, and whatever else may be lacking in the boy’s ever-being-outgrown wardrobe. This time we got a new light spring jacket (not that he needed one; he has a raincoat and a perfectly good light spring coat, but this one had Dash and Mr. Incredible on it. Come on! How could I pass that up?), lined splash pants, and the tricycle. The trike was fifteen dollars. We were very impressed with ourselves. (Do you have any idea how expensive new tricycles are? It’s ridiculous.) Now we don’t have to introduce emotional stress into our godsdaughter’s life by asking her if she would be willing to pass along her old tricycle.

When we went downstairs to the garage to do laundry yesterday, he found the trike and wrestled it from the storage side to the laundry side. He wanted to bring it upstairs with us, and was very upset when I informed him that tricycles are not played with indoors. If things keep melting the way they’re doing out there, and the weather warms up just a bit more, then we can try the riding to the corner thing. Although I’m willing to bet that he’ll ride for a few feet then walk it along the rest of the way there and back.

No Really

Seriously, why didn’t any of us catch some of these before the book was typeset?

Meer, meer, meer.

No, they’re not tragic or drastic or hold-the-presses kind of things, just phrases I would have arranged differently or words I would have substituted if I’d read the book laid out like this. Maybe when the next book comes back for copy-edits and so forth I’ll reformat the text so it looks Real and The Right Size, and maybe then I’ll catch more of these things.

Spent a couple of hours this morning setting up my freelance account and profile with the new company, and getting to know all the ins and outs of the web interface for assignments and such. I also downloaded a few instructions that were updated since or missing from my original info packet. Good to have on hand. I added them to my file of hard copy references.

Okay, back to the proofs.

A Quick Hello

Hello, dear readers. I have the boy at home with me today so I won’t be properly working till his nap and therefore I can’t devote much time to an update, but these are worthy of note:

1. We had a lovely weekend with my parents. More later.

2. The test editorial review evaluation I did in January got me hired as an ongoing freelance editor! Very nice news to discover in the inbox upon coming home after five days away. The company is currently moving so they’ve suspended ops for a couple of months, but they want me to set up my log-in and account and such now so as to be ready when things kick off again. This is extremely happy-making, as it gives me reliable work and income when I’m not on contract to write a book of my own. And as the frequency and number of manuscripts I edit is basically controlled by me (there are a pool of editor/reviewers, you see) I can handle things as the fibro allows, and do more when I feel sharp and/or want a larger paycheque.

3. We get our new-to-us stove this Saturday morning. Hurrah! Only four more days without an operative oven! I have been, perhaps overly optimistically, planning a roast Saturday night with one of the organic beef roasts that I have been hoarding in the downstairs freezer all winter. (Who am I kidding. I’ll start with something less expensive, so I can gauge the oven’s quirks first. There’s a chicken in the upstairs freezer that I’ll do instead.)

And a belated happy vernal equinox to everyone!

From the ‘Why Didn’t Any Of Us Catch That Before?’ File

Argh. Why does it take laying a book out to catch certain errors? Maybe because the formatting really emphasises the flow of things, so you can see where it kind of breaks down. At this point, though, only absolutely essential edits are allowed.

In other news, I’m really liking the proofreading and edit-making directly in the PDF file.

I’m going to have to stop at three, though, because I have to pack for the trip.

Hurrah!

I just opened the PDF of the page proofs for the Pagan Pregnancy book, and it looks absolutely beautiful. This is the final actual-pages-of-the-book layout; this is exactly what it’s going to look like. The design is lovely. Not that I was worried, but it was like opening an unexpected gift.

My day has just improved exponentially.