So my new job is going well! It turns out proofreading is very suitable to my personality. I get to sit in a quiet room all day, alone, look at writing, and tell everyone what they're doing wrong. Perfect fit, right?

Things I Like About My New Job

• Getting to dress up. It's not mandatory. In fact, most people in my office wear jeans and t-shirts. But I've always preferred to be overdressed than underdressed, and besides, I'm always hopeful that maybe a publisher or something will come in and be like, "GOOD GOD, what good taste she has! Clearly I must hire her and pay her $120,000 a year to edit in my office!" It can't hurt, right?
• High heels. I am so not a heels person. But I've been wearing them because they look pretty. Most days I change out of them at lunch, but it's the thought that counts. 
• Getting my own office. See?

  

  My computer
  
  

  

  Some pics I have.
  
  

  

  My Poe cup (for collecting the staples I take out of papers I edit) and my purple skull pen.
  
  

• Thirty minute lunches and two breaks. I've never had longer than a 15 minute break, so this is nice.
• Sitting down!
• Editing. I just like doing this. 
• I get to use a red pen. A LOT. 
• Learning. It's only my second week and I know so much more today than I did a week ago. I'm so glad that I got the opportunity to work in an office and see how things work! And I like being on this side of the writing industry better than the actual writing part. I mean, I still like to write, and one day I'd like to publish at least one book. But this works well for me, too.
  
  

Things I Dislike About My New Job

• My biggest and only real gripe with this job is the commute. It takes me between 30-45 minutes to get there in the morning and 45-65 minutes to get home in the afternoon. Which sucks, because it's technically not that far, but tell that to Orlando traffic. 
• I haven't figured out time management yet. I've never had things where it was like, "Get up at 6:30am and don't come home till 6:30pm and then figure out what to do with the rest of the day." I'm still trying to figure out how to balance work, the stuff that needs to get done (like laundry and cleaning and caring for Bix and Sherman) and the stuff I'd like to do (reading, shopping, sleeping. These always get pushed to the bottom of the list).
• There are stretches of time where there's no work to be done in the office, and I'm technically not allowed to read fun books in between. This makes me sad.

  

Overall, it's going well. It's extremely unextraordinary, but I guess that's okay. For now. It's a means to an end.

You know how superheroes have the boring alter-egos with paper-pushing day jobs and a sensible wardrobe? I feel like the boring alter-ego. 

Only I don't have superpowers and a spandex suit with a cape to spice things up.

A working class hero is something to be.

I got a job! 

Like, a real, grown-up, not-in-retail, office job! I'm going to be proofreading. This is kind of right up my alley.

("...she said on the night before her first day of work. Ask her again in a month, and she'll sing you a different tune.")

I don't want to say where, exactly--or rather, I don't want to say for what company. The "where" is Lake Mary, which is a not inconsiderable distance. It'll take me about 30-45 minutes to get to work every day depending on traffic. 

That's just one of the many things that aren't "quite right" with the job. I mean, it's in editing, which is great. But it's far away, doesn't quite pay what I'd like or what I think I should be making, doesn't have benefits, and we only get a 30 minute lunch break. 

I think it says a lot about my character that the not 1 hour lunch break was almost a deal breaker for me.

But here's the deal: as they say, it's easier to get a job once you have a job. If nothing else, I will learn the names of other publishers or editing companies to which I could apply. And the experience is priceless for me at this point. Nobody wants to hire a girl whose most impressive skill is reading clothing labels (even though this is crazy useful as an avid thrifter...I digress). This office is incredibly tiny, so everyone in there is cross-trained to do everyone else's jobs, so not only will I learn technical proofreading in a professional setting, but I'll learn the basics of office admin, graphics, layouts, and how to answer those phones with more than one line (push ALL the buttons!)

So while it's so incredibly far from "the dream job," it is a job, and for that I'm grateful. 

Tomorrow's Day 1...wish me luck!

Just typical dinner conversation with the Daniels'.

Review of Richmond.

Hi! I'm home now from Richmond. All the weddings are over. This pleases me, not because I hate weddings or I'm anti-love or anything Scroogey like that. It's just a relief. 

So my trip to VA went, overall, pretty well! I was terrified going up, having never been on a plane before and having no one to kind of guide me through it. Luckily, it's not brain surgery, so I figured it out. The TSA in Orlando was not nearly as scary as everyone made it sound. I half expected to have to empty out my entire suitcase, strip down to my skivvies, and pass some kind of "are you a terrorist or not?" test. Luckily, I didn't have to do any of that. 

The flight up was fine--scary. I almost ripped the head off my little deer, Rosebud, during takeoff. You're just sitting there and it's going slow, kind of like a massive bus, when all of a sudden WHOOSH--you're going like 200 mph. It made me dizzy. And I was totally panicking because the plane started listing to one side and tilting, and I was like, "I AM GOING TO MEET MY MAKER," but this is apparently normal. Once we were in the air, it was peaches! Although, on the way up it was dark, so I didn't get to see too much. The lights were nice, I guess, but more interesting were the big dark patches. It's nice to know there are still some areas, however small, that are uninhabited. 

Although they were likely water, so I'm just spewing romanticized fluffy garbage about the earth and humanity for no reason.

Landing was fine. And luckily, Meagan and Adam (the bride and groom) were kind enough to pick me up! This made me feel a lot better. If you've watched the first episode of the Sherlock BBC series, you know why I was afraid of cabs. I did ultimately have to get one, but at least not in the dark. 

Our hotel was really pretty. It's a historic inn in downtown Richmond. 

That's my room! ^

It was very scenic, and the rooms were pretty, too. Definitely a historic place, in that everything wasn't super refurbished and up-to-date, but since we all know I got dropped in the wrong century, that suited me just fine.

The scariest part of my trip was getting into a car accident. The hotel offered a shuttle service, which was great because there's this Poe (as in, Edgar Allan) museum that I was desperate to see so they offered to take me. About a minute into the drive, we got hit. My mom and I are still debating whether we can say I got "t-boned" or not, but basically someone (either the driver or the woman who hit us) ran through an intersection, and our van was the one that got hit in the side and front. Our mirror and headlight were lying in the road, and my door was crushed to the point where I had to get out the other side. Luckily though, our car sustained the least amount of damage. The woman who hit us had it worse. Her front bumper fell off entirely and the hood was crunched. There was definitely a lot of glass in the road....scary. Luckily (miraculously), no one was hurt. But it was definitely one of those things where you see it happening in slow motion and my thought process was like, "Maybe I should tell him to stop since that other car's not stopping. Nah, he knows what to do. Besides, no one likes a backseat driver tourist. Oh wait, he's not stopping. We're going to get hit. Should I move over or yell? I should probably pray. 'Sweet Jesus!' Okay, now brace yourself for impact since you didn't move over." All in about a half second. And then WHAM. We got hit. I got slammed against the side of the car, but again, luckily I wasn't hurt. A little bruised, but that I can deal with. THANK GOD there was no blood or I would've been puking and fainting all over Richmond. So that was kind of scary.

AND I NEVER GOT TO THE POE MUSEUM! 

I did finish a book and a half and watch an ungodly amount of Spongebob though. Not an entirely unpleasant way to spend time.  :)

And the wedding flew without a hitch. It was absolutely beautiful. It took place in the oldest cemetery in Virginia in a Civil War chapel. Extremely romantic. Then the reception took place at the Bolling-Haxall House in Richmond. Google it. It is glorious. And the couple looked beautiful and I'm so incredibly happy for them (I don't have many pics to share, unfortunately, because when you're actually in the wedding, you can't have a camera on you all the time). 

I did have to catch a cab on the way back to the airport, but luckily the driver was a nice guy and didn't try to murder me. He informed me that he was born in Philly, fell in love with a woman who cheated on him with a policeman, and it came down to him either killing a cop or being killed by a cop. So he came to Richmond to see his parents, lost everything in a poker game and had been there ever since (like something out of a Hallmark movie). But he'd raised 3 daughters ("by three different women," he proudly informed me), sent them all through college, and had lived a good life. "I'll tell you something," he said. "No matter who do you wrong, you do right. That's how you get ahead in the world, and that's what's gives you bragging rights." I was like, "Wow, that's incredibly insightful, thank you." And then he goes, "I only have one foot, you know." At which point I thought to myself, how safe is it to be in a cab with a guy who only has one foot?? But I guess you only need one for driving, so...

The flight home was MAGICAL. I loved flying in daylight. The takeoff was incredible. It was extremely overcast in VA, so when we made our ascent we flew straight through this massive cloud bank. And then, as soon as we emerged, BOOM: sunny skies! It was so crazy! And then we hovered above this sea of clouds. I felt like a fairy princess. Or Han Solo on Bespin. GREATEST THING EVER!

 

My favorite, though, was seeing the Atlantic as we made our way through Florida. The water and the beach is incredible from "on high." So glorious. I loved it. And I'm so glad I wasn't terrified! I thought I was going to inherit my father's phobia. I'll admit, takeoff is still scary. So is landing. But the actual up in the air part is absolutely breath-taking. 

So that's my story! There are different pics on my Twitter if you'd like to see them (major props to whoever got Instagram on Android. I love you.). I'm so glad to be home, though. It was FREEZING in Virginia (45 and rainy/windy the day of the wedding, with naught on but our little black dresses and dress shoes! Brr!), so I was definitely happy to be back in the heat. 

I am such a swamp creature.