Two, Two, Two Posts in One!

OK, I am tired of the numerical format. Counting my blessings has certainly served its purpose – I spend time each day thinking of all the many things I have to be thankful for, and I'm much less negative. Of course, that comes along with having a job and a paycheck, and the bar exam being over, and the house hunt being over. But, still, I'm not feeling crappy, and I've made my point. So the counting's over.

With that being said, I'm still totally thankful. What is uppermost in my mind right now is the Department of Education. Let me clarify for a second: when they hold exams for a state position, it's open for any state department. Each state department has at least one Public Information Specialist, and some have upwards of a dozen. Some departments are Department of Transportation, Department of Public Safety (state troopers), Department of Art, and the list goes on forever. So you can see that some might just be jobs, but some you could actually be passionate about. Well, I've always been passionate about education, and the Dept. of Ed. just so happens to be the first state department to contact me after my exam results came in. Two days ago the Communications Manager called me, and I was able to have a secretive phone interview sitting in my car at work. The phone interview went extremely well. The manager and I had a great rapport, and I put a lot of stock in things like that. He said my resume was "extremely impressive" and seemed to really like a lot of the answers I gave. He also let me in on a little secret that we examinees are not told: there were only 14 people placed into the top band I am in. From those, he contacted what he called the "top 5." So, that does mean he called 4 other people to interview for the position, but that means he placed me in the top 5! So, we chatted for about half an hour while I was praying no one was looking for me inside. Then I turned my cell phone off, because I don't keep it on at work.

When I left work and turned my phone back on, I had a voicemail from the administrative assistant to the Director of Communications wanting to set up a second interview with me – yippee! Now, of course this was after 5:00 already, so I waited until this morning to call back. When I arrived at work, I sat in my car for a few minutes and called at 8:00. She seemed very nice, but there were only a couple of blocks of times for me to choose from – there were no offers to meet during lunch or at 5:15 after work, even though I'd explained to the manager yesterday that I'm currently employed. So I took an appointment in the late afternoon for next Monday, but I feel guilty about it.

I don't know who made it to this next round of interviews. When I spoke to the manager yesterday (Wednesday) morning, he said there were 2 out of 5 people who hadn't returned his call yet. Perhaps it's only between me and one or two other people. I have no idea. I just know that if this opportunity doesn't work out, the next department has got to work with me a little more because I'll get fired if I keep taking time off to interview.



I forgot to ever blog about the preacher's visit. Here's what I wrote the day after, but I forgot to ever post it:

Last night the preacher and his "posse" came over. It was really only 2 other nice people – I guess big group of people splits into smaller groups to go visiting, and our group contained the senior pastor because he had to talk to me about baptism. We had a lovely visit and got to know one another, and he of course had to ask me about getting baptized. I told him I understand that it is something I will have to do again. He clarified that the church is not judging Methodists or our way of doing anything, but that they are committed to baptism by immersion to symbolize the death of Jesus, the burial (going beneath the water), and rising after 3 days. I can live with that. It was good to get that cleared up too, and not just hear, "This is the correct and only way to be baptized. Period." Then I wouldn't be joining the church. Anyway, I still got emotional discussing it with him, but he really put me at ease explaining that it's just the way they do it, they're not claiming I've been taught incorrectly, etc. That would have greatly offended me. But that didn't happen, and I still like him very much.

Yesterday afternoon Z left for an overnight business trip because he had to be in court in north Alabama first thing this morning. I have two reasons for being happy about this: first, he is a little bit ADD, so having a job where he can travel around the state and not be cooped up in his office does him a world of good; second, he gets reimbursed for his time away, so each month he gets extra pay for any overnight trips he took. That will add up to be a nice, albeit small, bonus.

So I guess I'm the official copy-editor at work. Don't think I get any credit for it. I most certainly am not on any of the mastheads. I'm not even listed on any of our Web sites, even though my title is Marketing Director, and people might need to contact me. Besides that, I've been here for 3 months… Anyway, I now copy-edit all seven of our publications, as well as our internal newsletter. I'm constantly having editors override me and my changes, however, even when my changes come straight out of our company's style guide which was – wait for it – written by the editors. They honestly cannot decide if they want to spell it website (their current preference), web site (our style guide), or Web site (AP style). It's annoying, but I can get over that. The real atrocity occurred a couple of weeks ago, though. I was copy-editing our largest magazine, the only one on sale at book stores, grocery stores, etc. (the rest are by subscription only to those in the industry). As I was reading a several-page story, I became very confused. After flipping back and forth several times, I realized that when production had flowed the copy onto the page, at least one sentence was lost. It simply was not there. No problem – I had caught it on the first round of proofreading. So I marked it, along with a million other corrections, and returned it to production. After the magazine shipped to the printer, I thought all was right with the world. The problem with being the lowly copy-editor who the editors refuse to speak to or acknowledge in any way is that I never get to look at things after I put my two cents in. When I see them again, the magazines are already printed and my changes have either been made or ignored. At my old magazine, shipping was the end. Of course, we published every 2 weeks, so there was no time for changes after the printer got it. But here, the printer ships back another round of proofs and gives us one last chance to check for any glaring mistakes. The head of production (essentially, my job at my last magazine… that causes some tension) asked me to look over it one last time, which was the first time I'd been asked to do that. (I've only been copy-editing for about a month or so.) As soon as I got to the problem page, I noticed the missing sentence hadn't been corrected! I got very upset and showed it to the head of production. She got very upset and showed it to the head honcho. The head honcho, in all her wisdom and level-headedness, decided that it wasn't worth the hundred bucks to ask the printer to fix it in order to salvage our editorial integrity and save our readers the confusion of wondering what they'd missed. I later learned it was not just one or two sentences. It was an entire paragraph. And, to clarify, the first page was actually cut off mid-sentence. So there was an article or adjective or such, no period, then you flip to the next page, and you're reading about a completely different topic. Way to protect our image. I don't know who I am working for, but I know I don't respect them for that decision.