No Editor Left Behind

After this horrible week (and perhaps next if I am very unlucky), I will NEVER:

1. work on a book for Glencoe Publishers
2. write, edit, or correlate standards to a Health book
3. sign up for a job that involves only correlating to state standards

I have repeatedly been burned by these three types of textbook jobs, and this week, they all three came together in one nightmarish quagmire that has trapped and tortured me. Accepting this job was a big mistake that has ruined my otherwise lovely week.

If you ever hear me thinking about taking this type of work again, please beat me to death humanely with a blunt Glencoe Health textbook (preferably one that has been correlated).

And while I'm complaining about work, let me go on record with the following statement: State education standards are the worst bullshit bottleneck on our education system. Indeed, Bush's "No Child Left Behind" nonsense should be labeled "No Child Left Un-meddled With," as quoted by one of my witty relations. The education standards are lies told by dirty, overpaid politicians who are trying to distract us from the real problems that school systems face.

[Image from: http://nhumanities.blogspot.com/2005/09/bad-movie-physics.html]

My One Talent Shines

I’ve had quite the busy week and put off studying for my first physical anthropology text until the last minute. Knowing I had two chances to take the test, I decided to go ahead and take the first version completely cold. By that, I mean that the only thing I knew about the test before taking it was that it covered chapters 1 and 2. I didn’t know the titles of those chapters. I didn’t even have a vague idea of what they were about. In fact, I’m not sure I could have told you what “physical anthropology” is.

I got an 87 on the test.

Boy did I feel like a badass. Now, of course, this is my only talent. I can pretty much pass any multiple choice pop-quiz on the first two chapters of any science class there is, even at the college level. No indeed, I am no scholar. I’ve just read, edited, or written every middle school book on science that has been published in the last 8 years. And given my profession as a textbook writer, I am “one” with the multiple choice question. Now, I don’t think I’ll be able to pull that off with chapter 3, whatever it is about…

[Image from: http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/assess/exams.html]

7:30 AM Bedtime

I pulled an all-nighter to finish a work assignment. So painful. I think that it will be the last time I do that *for work* for a long time. I have been told that there will be plenty of that when the baby comes. Great. I ain’t pretty with no sleep.

[Image from: http://photon.sevensquareinches.com/?m=200608]

Audiophilia

I landed a little gig doing a couple of podcasts for a science journal—my first paid work as a freelance science journalist! (I need only do 300 more of these to break even with the cost of my masters degree.) The biggest thrill is that I used this new job as an excuse to buy some fancy audio equipment.

I have been slumming it with a phone coupler that lets my recording equipment tap into my phone line. Only, it worked really poorly and required an old-fashioned phone. Not just any phone—it had to be one with a coil-wired handset (no cordless phones) and the handset could not have the dialing mechanism in it (had to be a phone with the buttons or dial on the base). Also, I found that the audio quality was poor on all but this one rotary phone that we had a few years back—the last time I used this device. Anyway, long story short: Scott threw that phone away when we moved to Boston, thinking “Why the heck would we need some mustard-yellow dinosaur of a rotary phone?” I do not fault him, but trying to replace it has been hell. The worst part is that I have a lovely, pink, vintage rotary princess phone that I bought for our phone nook. But that one wouldn’t do because the coiled wire was hard-wired into the handset instead of jacked in. GEEZ—that means that the only phones that will work with this damn thing had to be made between 1965 and 1975 or something!

So after much lying awake at night worried that I was going to have to back out of my new job for lack of a 1971 Bell rotary phone (how would I explain that to my new client?), I bought the new fancy equipment. It is deliciously high tech! It allows me to patch into the phone line of any residential phone at the base wire. And, it supposedly lets me split the two tracks, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. There is nothing more thrilling than having new gear!

My dream is to convert one of my closets into a little one-woman recording studio. I’m now one piece of equipment closer to realizing it.

[Image from: http://www.pedalcarsandretro.com/Retro_Phones-p-1-c-66.html]

Belly Stats

For those of you requesting documentation of how giant I am, here is a pic that really shows the full story, hee, hee. Sadly, it does not do either of my lovely friends justice…BUT, this is science, people, not a beauty pageant!

Now that I’m in the ridiculous stage of pregnancy, I’m wishing that I had written down all of my growth info laboratory notebook style. For example, I’m just itching to make a graph of my changing girth and my changing weight. I guess I was just feeling a sense of dread back in the beginning, rather than a refreshing sense of exploratory curiosity. All that precious data lost! How selfish of my former self to deny my current self such nerdy delights. I suppose I could ask my doctor for at least the weight info…