In the middle of a manuscript~

Yep, that’s exactly where I am. My first copyediting job arrived via Priority Mail this past Friday on a flash drive—a four-hundred-eighty-nine-page novel about the very controversial subject of medical marijuana. Wow!

I have to say, I am thoroughly enjoying not only the book, but also the process. It is taking longer than I expected though. For that matter, it is taking longer than the publisher thought too, but fortunately he is willing to be part of the learning process. The problem is, I am not sure how much is the learning process, and how much is just the way my brain works. I am afraid if I went any faster, I would miss something important. There is a lot to check.

For instance, do you know when to use who and whom? Is it all right to use the word alright? How about when to say less and when to say fewer, and what about the difference between which and that? Is it twenty eight or twenty-eight? This is just a miniscule sample of the things I have to think about.

Don’t get me wrong, as I said, I love it. I just hope I can do a good job within a reasonable number of hours.

By the way, I am getting quite an education on how to grow marijuana for medicinal purposes! ☺

A to Z Blogging Challenge~

You may have noticed the new button on the righthand side of the blog. I have joined with hundreds of other bloggers for a challenge during the month of April. The challenge is this: post a blog update every day of the month except Sundays, with each one corresponding to a letter of the alphabet. Twenty-six blog posts for the month. The only exception to the Sundays off is April 1st. The "A" post is due that day, and we can't skip the first day of the month, even if it is a Sunday!
I have been looking back at some of the blog posts in 2011 to get an idea of what is expected. The idea is to come up with a theme (or not), and then write the blogs accordingly, in order. This should be interesting! I have already come up with a theme, but I am not going to tell you. I will give you a hint though: I absolutely love to read ... I always have. I am looking forward to this, as I think it will be fun. At the very least, you should be able to count on a post almost every day.
♪ A B C D E F G
♫ H I J K L-M-N-O-P
♪ Q R S T U V
♫ W X Y and Z
♪ Now I know my ABCs
♫ Next time won't you sing with me?

One solution to healthcare~

This has been an interesting and busy week! Not so much with gate guarding — that has all been pretty normal. Moderate days and quiet nights, so we can't complain.
The interesting part, if you want to call it that, began last Wednesday the 8th when I ended up driving to San Antonio to see a cardiologist. I have been having significant trouble with an out-of-whack heart rhythm for quite some time now, and it was getting out of hand. The night before, it had kept me awake until 3 in the morning. Believe me, it is hard to go to sleep when every other beat of your heart is off.
When we embarked on our journey, we made the decision to join a christian healthcare sharing group called Samaritan Ministries. To purchase even minimal coverage with a traditional insurance was absolutely cost prohibitive, yet we didn't want to risk going without insurance entirely. We had friends at church that encouraged us to check out this alternative and we discovered not only a great concept, but it costs far less than insurance.
Samaritan Ministries makes sure everyone knows it is not insurance. The concept for Samaritan Ministries (SM) is contained in the word "sharing". Those of us belonging to SM share our medical needs with each other. When Wayne and I send our check each month, we don't mail it to SM, but rather we mail it to a family that has shared a medical need. For example, when I went to the emergency room this past summer with the same irregular heartbeat, the bill came to around $800. We submitted the hospital bill to SM, and after taking the $300 off the top that we are responsible for, they assigned the remaining amount to other families in the ministry. We received checks directly from them, and thus we were able to pay the remaining amount of the bill. Although there are certainly more details to it, that is the basic idea. We have found it works quite well, and have been blessed as we trust the Lord to provide for our medical needs. No longer are we paying through the nose to support the mainstream healthcare bureaucracy and for that we are thankful.
Back to the heart rhythm issue briefly ... I was able to locate not only a cardiologist, but one that specializes in electrophysiology. (Definition: the science of elucidating, diagnosing, and treating the electrical activities of the heart.) For the first time in 30+ years, I actually had a doctor listen to me — for almost two hours — and give me a diagnosis! He was able to catch the problem on an EKG, and determined that I have a relatively common problem that should respond to beta blockers. There is a surgical option as well — ablation — but I would obviously prefer to avoid that if possible. Anyway, I am currently taking the meds and so far, so good. We will see what happens in the long run, but I am cautiously optimistic.

The beginning of a dream~

It is late – I need to get to bed, but I want to quickly talk about the events of the past week – actually, one very specific event. Hmmm, where to start? I guess an explanation is in order, so here goes.

As much as I am certain my readers will occasionally find an error in my blog, I am pretty good at spelling and grammar. I find all sorts of errors in the written word just about everywhere. (Fellow bloggers, do not fear—I will not analyze your work—at least not out loud.) I just can't help it. I don't have to try to find errors; they just find me. I see them on signs, menus and websites, and in books, magazines and newspapers.

I love to read, and this has been true since I was around eight or nine years old. As a child, my nose was in a book every chance I got. One Christmas when I was about 13 or 14, my main gift was the entire set of Trixie Belden books, which at the time, numbered 15. I wouldn't have been happier with a trip to Disneyland! I didn't even come up for air for the next week. Although I don't actually remember how long it took me to read them, I can almost certainly guarantee that I finished them before I had to go back to school after New Year's Day. I have always been a fast reader, and as my family can attest, once a book draws me into its magic, it practically takes a bomb to get my attention.

Fast-forward many, many years ... part of our plan on this fulltime RVing adventure was that I would supplement our income by finding work as a proofreader. Before we left California, I signed up for an online writing and proofreading course. The wealth of information I gleaned from that course was this ... it taught me where to find the information I would need in order to be a proofreader and or copyeditor. It also taught me that there is much more to proofreading than simply grammar and spelling.  Finding a job was harder than I anticipated, and up to this point, I had no success whatsoever.

That has now changed. A couple of weeks ago I read a book that I simply loved, and I e-mailed the author to tell him "thanks" for such a great story. Before e-mailing him though, I looked him up on the Internet and found that not only is he an author, but he has a small publishing company as well. On top of that, he is a well-known name in the publishing industry. In my e-mail, I told him of my desire to get into proofreading and asked him for suggestions.

Unbelievably, he answered my e-mail, thanked me for my kind remarks about his amazing book, and asked if I would do a sample edit for him. Ummm, let me think about that ... would I want to do a sample edit for a famous author and publisher ... which just might get me into the very career I have wanted for years? That's a tough one ... hmmm ... OF COURSE!

Well, the long and short of it is, I did the sample edit, he was very happy with what I did, and now I am just waiting to receive a full-length manuscript for editing! Can I just say that I am extremely excited about this?? On top of that, I will be "copyediting" rather than simply "proofreading." Proofreading is a very important job and I think I would enjoy that too, but I am thrilled with the prospect of being part of the process a bit earlier in the sequence of events. Proofreading, as I understand it, is the very last thing that happens in the life of a book before actually being published. Copyediting happens toward the beginning of the process and is much more involved.

If this turns out to be something I can do on a regular basis, it will help us out in so many ways. It will help our finances sure, but the most significant thing is that it will give me some way to contribute to our finances that won't require me to hear anything. Most of you know that I am moderately hard of hearing. I am painfully aware that my days are numbered for being able to work in a campground office, taking reservations over the phone and registering incoming campers. At this point, I can still do that successfully, but I have to admit that it is exhausting. No one that does not have to strain to understand what is being said all the time can comprehend how tiring it is. I have learned not to be embarrassed to have to ask people to repeat what they say, but I do understand that it is annoying for them. I can't expect to continue to work in a customer service industry when it gets even more difficult to understand the customers than it already is. This has been something I have been concerned about, and I am very thankful to the Lord for providing this opportunity. Now I just need to do a great job so that I can continue. 

Meep Meep!

We have a roadrunner! I saw it yesterday and was so excited. You know by now that I love seeing wildlife. I have posted pictures of deer, cows, spiders, ducks, alligators, etc. Well here he is:

He was running around out in front of the trailer for about 15 minutes or so. I hope he comes back! Of course it could be a she~

On a different subject all together, the flame burning off the excess H2S on the pad is super high tonight. It made both of us a bit nervous, but one of the tankers just came through and said it was nothing to worry about. We haven't been able to smell the gas at all, so it must be doing a good job.

New subject ... I am on a roll tonight! We had quite a rainstorm a little over a week ago. I think it was on Sunday the 22nd. Regardless, our rain gauge said we got about 3/4" in about an hour. The next morning, we realized the carpet was wet between the bed and the sink, and it was damp on the other side of the bed too. Our bed is on one of the four slides in our trailer. We naturally, but unhappily, assumed the water was a result of a leak around the slide. Ugh! One more thing to get fixed.
To dry it out and avoid mold, Wayne brought our electric heater into the room, turned it on high, and set it to blowing right on the wettest spot. This has been repeated pretty much every day for the past 10 days since the storm and as of this morning, we were still struggling with the water, which just didn't make sense. Finally, Wayne decided to investigate further and found that a fitting underneath the bathroom sink had developed a leak. The fact that the leak perfectly coincided with the hard rain is so ironic. Anyway, he worked on it before going to bed this morning, and then again once he got up. The problem has been solved ... yay!

Hmmm, I think I have run out of things to write about today, so I guess that's it for now.