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Confession

Posted on July 29, 2008 by Nancy

I have a confession to make. I can’t spell. (Are you now thinking, “Didn’t I read somewhere that she’s a technical writer?”) Yep. That’d be right. I’m a technical writer who can’t spell. Spell Check has saved my life (and my job!) Shhhhh! Don’t tell my boss!!

I only use Firefox as my browser because it has a built-in spell check. (Funny, Firefox comes up as spelled wrong LOL)

I was much relieved when one of my three IM’ing applications came out with a version of built-in spell check.

And I always have my email checked when sending work email. (Personal email is composed in the oft-mentioned Firefox. Blog entries are composed there too…)

I’ve been known to copy/paste into and from Word before sending something out (even a simple IM) so everything is spelled right! Anal. I know.

The things that really trip me up? Graphics software. I’m boogying along, manipulating some graphic and I have to add some text to it… BAM! Ah crap. How do you spell that?? And it’s not always easy to fix a graphic once you’ve got it all together. (I tend use Word as mentioned above. Then I save in layers and have “source” graphics so I can go back and fix text if I need to!) They need to add spell check to all graphics packages!

But spell check doesn’t catch typos that are actual words! Or homonyms. Don’t get me wrong. I know the difference between they’re, their, and there. (I also know that should be “among” because there’s more than two, but it looks funny, doesn’t it??). I always write around effect and affect – because even if I look those up I still don’t know the difference. *blush* I think I just got the hang of who’s and whose. Maybe. I use the common errors in English website a bunch, but probably not as much as I should. LOL

So, I guess what I’m saying is…if you see an error in my blog … feel free to let me know. I’ll be highly embarrassed (LOL!), but I’d rather fix it right away instead of finding it myself a few days/weeks/months/years later and wonder how many people noticed. 🙂

Filed under: me | Tagged: confession, spelling | 7 Comments »

I’m Famous!

Posted on July 24, 2008 by Nancy

LOL! Ya – okay…maybe it’s just that whole “15 minutes” everyone supposedly gets…

Anyway, a guy who writes for the Dallas Morning News, Matt Wixon, emailed me asking about our Staycation! (He obviously found my blog entries…dunno if he’ll be back, but HI MATT! if you are 😉 ) He’s writing a book about Staycations and just wanted to chat with me about ours. How cool is that??

If you didn’t get the chance to read about our week, here are the posts:

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7

And Matt mentioned that I’ll get a copy of the book when it comes out. Sweet!

As long as we’re talking about how famous I am (tee hee!)…I edited a book that’s sold on Amazon! The Pet Mouse is a cute children’s story with kick-butt illustrations. (And no, I don’t get any royalties…) As proof that I actually did it, this is Crystal’s website. She mentions me in the Bios page on there 😉 The bio is from before Logan was born though… (And Cheryl, if you’re reading this, I know – it doesn’t hold a candle to your book 😉 heh)

I can also say that I’m on a record/cassette/CD! A well known Vermont folk singer, Jon Gailmor, wanted kids to back up his song, Dirt!, and knew my kindergarten/grade school teachers…so we had a field trip to the recording studio and sang the chorus with him. Our picture is even on the back of the album. And the song received an honorary mention in 1984 as Best Children’s Song from the National Academy of Independent Record Distributors! We also got a tour of the radio station Jon worked at and even made an appearance with him on PBS! HEY! So, I’ve been on TV too. *grin*

What are your 15 minutes? If you write about them, I’ll link to you at the bottom here…just let me know 🙂

Filed under: me | Tagged: 15 minutes of fame, famous, recorded, staycation | 3 Comments »

Mom’s Clubs

Posted on July 23, 2008 by Nancy

I joined the Mom’s Club of <my town> recently. Why did I do this when I’m already part of my awesome Mother’s of Twins Club? Well, a few reasons, actually. First is that I believe you can never have too much support. It’s great to see the views of lots of people, mesh it all together, and come up with what works best for me and my family.

Second is because I figured it would be nice to meet more people in the town. We’ve been here just over a year and have met a few people through church and things, but – you can never meet too many. (It’s just keeping track of who is who that I’m TERRIBLE at!!)

Third is because I figured this would be a great way to find out what goes on around town.

So…today the membership chair came over with her kids to “check us out.” This wasn’t really said in so many words, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it was. I totally understand the not wanting crazies in the club thing, but…I have to say it felt a little strange to be on THIS end of it! Okay, not THAT strange that someone thought that there is a possibility that I’m crazy, but you know! Anyway, she was SUPER nice and her kids are around my kids’ ages, so that was nice. And apparently I passed (no, really!!) so I’m in! YEAH! 🙂

And I felt like I got a secret handshake…all the moms of the club get a little something to identify themselves to other moms. How neat! (And nope, I’m not going to tell you what it is…they might kick me out! LOL)

I’m already breaking rules here since the club is supposed to be for stay at home moms only…but since I work from home two days a week and might be able to get out to an event or two, they let me slide. And I’m pretty sure that they have stuff going on in the evenings as well.

I’m actually really looking forward to participating in some of the future events.

Filed under: me | Tagged: mom's clubs | 2 Comments »

I’m Free!!

Posted on July 22, 2008 by Nancy

…by accident. *sigh*

I’m no longer strapped to the pump at work. After our staycation, I forgot to pump the last two days. oops. 😦 Most of me is doing a little dance. I no longer have to worry that I’ll forget to lock the door and someone is going to walk in on me (I swear I check that thing 3 or 4 times…). And I no longer have to sit in the cold locker room…in front of a mirror because that’s where the only outlet is…And I no longer have to PUMP!!

But – it also means that I’m giving up the *only* 10 – 15 minutes a day that I was able to read! (no happy dance about that part.)

It also means that Logan is only getting breast milk in the morning and at night. Which is okay – he *is* over 10 months old now. But he’s also not getting a lot of ‘regular’ milk – he doesn’t seem to like it all that much, and he’s really not old enough yet to be getting it anyway. So that means we rely on a lot of very watered down juice throughout the day…and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Filed under: Logan, me | 4 Comments »

5 Things Friday

Posted on July 11, 2008 by Nancy

Cat does a 5 Things Friday and asked if people would like to do their own. By now you know I’m a joiner…so here goes! 🙂

5 Things you might or might not know about
my education:

I started out in pre-school at a private school called the Otter Creek School. It was run by two couples: Stan and Priscilla, who were the pre-school/kindergarten teachers. And Anne and Marty who were the grade school teachers. When I finished 2nd grade, the school closed because one of the couples divorced (coincidentally, the same year my parents divorced AND they stopped the Easter Egg hunt at my church – my world was collapsing! …the things you remember…) Since it closed, that lead to…
Starting 3rd grade in public school: The Vergennes Elementary School. Since Vergennes isn’t very big, I already knew a bunch of people who went there, so it wasn’t too traumatic. Elementary school went through 6th grade, so that lead to…
Going to Vergennes Union High School. The high school was for grades 7 – 12. No middle school since, again, Vergennes isn’t that big. The average class size is around 100 kids – so you pretty much knew everyone in the whole school. (plus, my step-mom is the band teacher, so you get to know about more than you really ever want to 😉 Okay – I wanted to know. LOL)
College was at Clarkson University. A small engineering school where the ratio (at the time) was 1 girl to every 7 guys. I started out as an engineer, but *hated* it. I really liked the school so I looked around to find something else and kind of fell into Technical Communication.
After college, I’d have enough of school … for about a semester. When I was at Clarkson, my department chair had been asked if anyone would be interested in attending grad school. At the time I said no way, but then realized that I would be stupid to pass up an almost all expeses paid degree. So off I went to the New Jersey Institute of Technology and got my master’s degree in Professional and Technical Communication.

Filed under: 5 things friday, me | Tagged: Clarkson, NJIT, school | 1 Comment »

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