A basically average day of work today... I started learning how to copy edit/proof read for BAB today, which I enjoyed, but I'm sooo slow at it! I don't even want to know how many mistakes I made (well, left) either! Luckily Helen will of course be looking at it after me, and she's not expecting a high level of accuracy, since she said her first few goes at copy editing were a bit rough as well... It's hard, because:

a) you get wrapped up in what you're reading (even though I just read it first so I would know what happened as I was correcting), and then,

b) there is sooo much stuff to look for! Double spaces after periods (what is with that? I'd never even heard of people doing that till I got to Weekender!), comma usage (which I have to look up, since we all know I'm shocking at commas!), British vs. American spelling (and both look pretty much correct to my middle of the road Canadian eyes), etc. Its ridiculous! I was going along, and then suddenly realised that I hadn't been looking out for something, and would have to go back through, trying to re catch whatever I missed.

c) there is a lot of grammar we didn't learn, or I've forgotten from school - that Chicago Manual of Style is a fat sucker! Also, trying to align everything with our specific style guide...so much to remember haha!

I actually really enjoyed it though, somewhere in me there is a little bit of an organized perfectionist (just a bit haha), so that was appealing to that little methodical bit of me. That was basically the majority of my day at work though, just going through the feature and one other short piece took me four hours! By the time I typed something for Bill, reorganized my workspace a little bit, etc. That was all I had time for.

Went to teach, which was fine, except I wasn't able to move the lesson to be a half hour earlier on Thursday so that I could go see a press screening of the new Hugh Grant/Drew Barrymore movie, Music&Lyrics which SUCKS! I sooo wanted to go see it, as it is a total chick flick! I guess I'll just have to go when it actually comes out! I think I'm going to Happy Feet in a couple of weeks - Go penguins! And also maybe Babel, which should be really interesting with the sign language component (and the first Japanese women ever nominated for an Oscar, I believe).

Got home around eight, and had an email from Peter, which was forwarded on to him about scholarships in Japan - there are a lot of them! I was looking through the big list, and some also had pretty high rates of recipients vs. applicants, which is encouraging. I think on Friday I'm going to go to the office of the website I was looking at and pick up some more information to try and figure out what I want to do and what my options are if I decide to stay here...

There is one university in English, Sophia, but they only accept 70 students a year in the English faculty of liberal arts (!!), plus, I'm kind of tempted by learning Japanese in one of those 18 month killer courses which also prepare you to study at a Japanese university. I'd just be a bit worried about not passing the entrance exam though (like for the university afterwards) (especially in math!) Decisions, decisions! (and we all know how much I love them :s).

Peter got home surprisingly early, around nine, so we ate some pasta which I'd just finished cooking, and I got an exciting pile of stuff from home - insulin, a book, a Pilate's DVD, a veerrry cute card from the Richmonders, and soooo excitingly, the Schleich vaulting set!! Thank you!!

(isn't it great!? Schleich is really really nice hand painted plastic figurines, animals, knights in armour, farm animals, etc. All very realistic and correct, and high quality stuff - we've bought it for Aly, and the vaulting one is great - I should use it to explain to people what the hell I'm on about when I try and explain vaulting, which is not as easy as one might think!)

Other than that, not so much going on this evening, I'm tired!! Read my book to review on here a bit more, and watched most of the Apprentice: LA, but fell asleep during the end of it before coming up to blog. Tomorrow, I get to sleep in!! We're having our 'Girls Night Out' monthly event through work, which I'm going to, but since it's right near the office (at Paddy Foleys), and starts at 7, I'm going to go to work from 1-6 or so instead of 10-4, so there's less of a break, plus more sleep for D, yay!

xox
D