Since I am not currently getting much writing of my own writing done, I will report on my other writing-related activity, editing. There is a lady John works with who has written a book about American wildlife, in English, and she asked if we would proofread it. I had done a proofread of her last book, so I said yes to be nice. When it came, it didn’t look like too much.

Except then I opened the envelope and found that it was double-sided (!). 270 pages. It took me a while to get started, mostly because I didn’t feel like it, but when I did finally start, I had to take frequent breaks to come down from the murderous rage it left me in. I tried writing a few journal entries about the experience while I was still in the middle of it (I finished it this morning and stuffed it in her office mailbox after lunch—woot!), but they all looked like this:

::stabbity::

That’s not good, especially since I couldn’t decide if I wanted to stab out my own brain or hers.

I know she is not a native speaker of English, but even German requires sentences to start with capitals and to end with periods. How hard is that? And if she had just turned on spell check, I wouldn’t have to fix “arev” (are) and “tofen” (often) EVERY. SINGLE. PAGE. Which would explain the murderous rage.

She did throw me a bone in the form of some howlers, but I decided not to mess with them. She talked about bears “making love”, and snails “shooting love-arrows at each other”, and my favorite, “the beaver’s running sore.” Sounds like an occupational hazard in the porn industry. *snarf*

I also discovered in the course of this project that the Staedtler “Noris Club triplus” red pencil sucks ass. When you sharpen it, the point is way too sharp, and then it immediately snaps off when you put pencil to paper. The color itself is very faint, and pressing harder just makes more of the lead break. I bought *2* of these bitches because my other red pencils had gone missing. I dug out what was left of my beloved Faber-Castell “Colour Grip 2001” and used it until it was literally too small to hold. Isn’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever seen?


Once I figure out where I bought it in the first place, I will never go anywhere else for my pencil needs ever again.