Editing

An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Thursday, December 14, 2000
One year ago: Sick at Home
Two years ago: Some Guys

I've spent most of every evening this week working on the Swingout Northwest newsletter, now titled "SONW NEWS". I couldn't think of anything more clever. I have a file for each issue, seeded with known info like the date, and the events for that evening. I've gotten a lot of good ideas for this project from Chaz Baden's "Daily Newszine Baby Steps" page, which is advice for people putting together convention newszines.

This is a type of project that I enjoy. I get into the zone with the endless tweaking and editing.

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We had some visitors at work -- a man associated with a partner website that we work with, and his wife. They were traveling to Portland, Oregon, but diverted to Seattle for a few hours because he wanted to meet us all and check out the situation. (There's a possibility that we'll be working more closely with these folks.

In a nice coincidence, a corporate gift from them to us from Harry and David was delivered while Chip and our guests were sitting around the conference table. It ws one of those stacks of boxes, all done up with a ribbon and a little red bird. Chocolate, pears, apples, and nuts -- tasty!

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Yesterday we had our office holiday outing, to Spazzo's restaurant in Bellevue. We'd thrashed around and tried to arrange something else, but we left it too late and people's schedules were too complicated. We already knew we liked this place, so we kept things simple and opted for the known quantity. Chip's wife Sally and his son Eric (he's five) joined us. Everyone got a nice bonus check!

We had a good view of the construction happening below us next door -- they are still in the excavation phase, with back hoes and diggers of various sizes. Eric was interested in these for a few minutes, but I don't think heavy equipment is his thing.

One of the fun things about having tapas, which is what we usually get there, is the amount of passing and interaction with the other folks that you have to do. It's family style, and everyone gets a few bites of everything.

The only negatives: there was sand in a calamari that I had (that's one factor in favor of slicing the calamari up into little rings, I think), and when they brought the dessert platter, they didn't have the espresso mousse! We'd been looking forward to that dish, particularly.

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It's really turned cold, wet and wintry this week. After I got home yesterday I was walking to the other end of my neighborhood to run an errand. I decided that I'd look for a hat and gloves at City People's Mercantile on the way back.

I found a suitable hat for my big head, and a warm pair of gloves. Both coordinate with the jacked I got on Sunday as a volunteer for Swingout Northwest. Both are wool-- the hat was knitted by people in Nepal, and the gloves were Canadian. I also looked for gifts for other people, and went into a shopping fugue, wandering around and putting things in my basket.

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This evening I finished my laundry, and dropped off the first issue of the newsletter at Kinko's. I'll pick it up tomorrow, and drop it off at the camp registrar's house on my way north. Of course, as soon as I came back home, I had mail telling me that I wouldn't be getting a welcome message from the camp chairman for the newsletter. It was really too late for that, anyway. But I discovered I misspelled someone's name. D'oh!