Let me eat cake

I went to Target yesterday to get an eye exam and new contacts. The optometrist told me the contacts I've been wearing for the last few years of my life (Acuvue 2) are basically crap and bad for my eyes. Not to mention my tendency to wear the two-week lenses for two months or more (I'm poor). I have a follow-up appointment on Monday, but I was sent home with a pair of month lenses at a slightly weaker prescription. Which seemed like a good eye-dea (look, I'm funny), since it will make my eyes work and not be lazy and possibly improve my vision, until I was driving home last night and couldn't read the street signs until I was much closer.

Flowers in the back yard last week. Lilies are beautiful. I'm allergic to them.

I love my job. The people I work with are nice to me, and the work is interesting and at times a little challenging. Basically I read news articles and edit them for grammar, spelling, punctuation and AP style (or Pioneer Press style, where it differs from AP). I also look up all the names and addresses and stuff for accuracy. Then I write headlines for the articles and send them on to the editors. Later, when the pages have been laid out by another editor, they're printed and hung on a clip where I can go and take them (the "proofs") and read the ones that don't have the articles I edited on the computer, to look for any mistakes that were left in the text ("copy"). I also check the photo captions ("cutlines") and the headlines ("heds") and secondary headlines ("deks"). So in a way, I'm really just getting paid to read the newspaper and make it more readable for others.

Some of the mistakes I find in the articles are a little outside the ordinary. Last night there was a movie quote from "The Natural" (a baseball film) in an article. I read it and wondered if it was correct (so many people misquote movies but are sure they had it right), so I looked it up and watched the YouTube clip of it and found that it wasn't. So I fixed it. It's not a huge deal, but there probably would've been people who would have written in and said we had the quote wrong. So even things like that fall in the scope of my job.

Sometimes the articles I read are just fun. Here's an excerpt from one I was looking at yesterday, about a retiring police chief:

"On one burglary call, the two of them and a third officer were setting up outside the home in question. The third officer was trying to take a position behind what Bellows described as "a Charlie Brown Christmas tree" — tiny, scraggly and wholly insufficient to cover him.

Vonhof and Bellows looked at him and started laughing so hard the woman inside the home opened the window to ask if they were OK."

People generally know what they mean to say when they write, but they don't always know the words to use. As evidenced here (the orange box is text we've cut, but it remains like that so editors can verify the changes we're making):

Laughter may be the best medicine, but that's not what the author meant here.

I also saw an email yesterday that I received earlier this week (my weekend) from the senior editor telling me about a job opening for a copy editor at the St. Cloud Times. It's the newspaper in St. Cloud, about 45 minutes away from St. Paul. I am going to apply, but I'm a little nervous about it because if I get it then I will be far away from my parents in Oregon and sisters in Utah. But it's kind of dumb to worry about getting something I haven't even applied for yet. We'll see what happens. I need to update my resume and portfolio and everything first, and once that's done I can apply for other jobs closer to home as well (like the reporting one in Rexburg — although I now know that I prefer editing to reporting).

This morning I ate then went for an hour-long bike ride. I keep getting frustrated with myself for not being stronger or having better endurance, and then I want to stop biking. But then I realize that I'll never get stronger and faster unless I keep at it! So I do. I've found a couple routes in the area that range from 8 to 12 miles and are just the right level of challenge for me right now.

My 20-mile bike ride on Monday took me by this pond.

At 11:45 Val and her niece Emma picked me up to go get cake for lunch. We picked up Val's half-sister Natalie from her work then went to Cafe Latte. Oh my goodness. I felt a little like Bruce Bogtrotter eating my Chocolate Chocolate Cake, and I didn't even start on my Salted Caramel Cheesecake which I brought home and will probably eat tomorrow.

"Her sweat and blood went into this cake, and you will not leave this platform until you have consumed the ENTIRE CONFECTION!"

From left: Natalie, Val, Emma

Beautiful art at Cafe Latte.

After our cake, we went over to this cute little boutique of pretty things. Cowboy boots and jewelery and books and magnets and trinkets and buttons and cards. The kind of place where I could easily spend a lot of money on things (that sparkle!!!) that I don't need. I did buy a couple of things to send to my sisters in Utah.

Right now I'm watching Mulan. I love that it's 88 minutes long, so I know I can start it at 2:20 and having time to finish it and still make it to work on time. I remember seeing it in the theater when it came out in 1998 and being so freaked out when the Great Wall gets attacked at the beginning. This movie is intense! Now that I've seen "Fiddler on the Roof," I appreciate the contrast and similarities in the matchmaking scene here and the song "Matchmaker, Matchmaker." I'm pretty sure I would have failed any matchmaking test ever. That freaking cricket ruined everything. This is why it's important not to bring bugs to important events.