This and That

I Proofread; I Eat

If you write much of anything, you need to proofread.

Errors in grammar, usage, and spelling can be very entertaining to the reader. But you may not want to have your writing provide that kind of entertainment.

Proofread your work!

Now let me break some bad news to you — we all easily miss some of our own mistakes.

Any honest proofreader or editor who knows his stuff will agree with me on that point.

So what to do?

Get another set of eyes hitched up to another brain.

But the cost is prohibitive. And I doubt your health insurance would cover the procedure.

It would be significantly less expensive for you to hire me.

If your piece has a maximum of 500 words, I charge $5 for English and $10 for Spanish.

For more details, including qualifiers and other prices, come on over to my Proofreading Service page.

My name is Mark Roth and I approve this message.

PS: At times I even email Web sites to tell them of typos and other errors I see. This morning I contacted USA Today (One EMP burst and the world goes dark) about a typo in one of their photo blurbs. It used to say “These eectricity transmission lines….” I just checked a bit ago; they fixed it. I haven’t heard back from them, though.

Mature Content

Oh, wow!

I wonder if that title will hang up in filters hither and yon. 😯

But this is only a light news quiz.

You know you’re keeping up on (some of) the news when you know the correct ending to this statement:

“We found a way to bring innovation to a category as mature as….”

Please post your best guess as a comment.

Please don’t post the answer if you had to use a search engine to find it.

If the correct answer isn’t given within 24 hours or so, I’ll try to remember to update this post with more information.

Thanks!

Update: I posted the above at 6:22 am (Pacific) on October 27. Now it is 8:10 am on October 30. The answer is … bath tissue!

Thank You, Tiger Stripes

We didn’t want you in the first place.

But you came anyway.

And you walked right into our lives and into our hearts.

A forlorn, abandoned kitten with a crook in your tail.

But you grew quite a bit in the last couple of months.

Into a healthy, lovable, funny, entertaining, comical, beautiful kitten.

Then we moved to a different place.

Our former landlords would have given you a safer home than this.

But we were too attached.

And I guess I was too selfish.

Tiger Stripes watching me
Watching me change the oil

Now you’re gone.

I just buried you out back, at the edge of the woods.

I can hardly believe it yet.

You were just too fearless and dumb when it came to vehicles.

But I thought you feared the ones zooming by on the road.

Either you didn’t.

Or last night one swerved onto the shoulder to “get” you.

And to think that just last evening I was thinking we should give you to our former landlords.

And now it’s too late.

I’m sorry. For us in particular.

It seems like heartache upon heartache in the midst of enough woes.

Maybe that’s why it hurts as much as it does.

So…thank you for the happiness and comic relief you brought to us.

We will miss you. And so will your good buddy, “Uncle” Tyke.

Tiger Stripes and Tyke
Keeping each other company

Haiti: Some Good News

1.3 million are said to be living in the temporary camps in Haiti, nine months after a devastating quake leveled the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Although it is making headway in recovery, the United Nations notes that the country is still struggling with reconstruction and rebuilding a government.

However, Haiti has successfully avoided a second-wave disaster of epidemics and social unrest. The people’s resiliency has been astounding. There are hundreds of reports of a spiritual revival taking place amidst the squalor of the temporary housing sites.

Source: Haiti remains resilient in the face of disaster

Good News from Chile Mine

Here’s some great news from a disaster site:

Rescue workers on Monday reinforced a small drill hole to serve as an umbilical cord to 33 miners found alive 17 days after a cave-in in Chile’s far north and say it will take months to dig them out.

In what relatives called a miracle, the miners on Sunday tied a note to a perforation drill that had bored a shaft the circumference of a grapefruit to the refuge where they are sheltered, 2,300 feet (700 meters) vertically underground.

[…]

Rescue workers now plan to use the bore hole to send plastic tubes containing glucose, hydration gels and food down to the miners to keep them alive while they dig a new shaft to extract them — which could take up to four months.

“The wait is very different now,” said Elias Barros, 57, whose brother is among those trapped. “It is a wait free of anguish. This isn’t over but we are much more hopeful it will end happily.”

Source: Chile secures lifeline to trapped miners

May they all get out alive.

Above all, love God!