November 28, Part Two, A Little About a Lot of Things
I don’t have much time left, I feel like I should stay up all night and get my writing in, but I can’t. I do have the day off from working the cashiering job tomorrow, but I have employees that would like to work. With the cold snap we’ve been having I don’t really want to work, but we do need to make money to pay the bills so I really have no choice but to work-if only for part of the day.
The high tomorrow is supposed to get to about 35, but it’s supposed to feel about six degrees colder than what the thermometer shows all day. That means it will be brisk working outside. For some of our jobs the person that handles the ladder, usually a guy, is the one that works outside while the rest of us girls/women work inside. Then when we finish with the inside we will help with the outside.
Tomorrow, all our jobs are on the outside, something I’m not looking forward to at all. I could just drive everyone there and stay in the car, which I may have to do part of the day as my knees are still healing-they are a lot better, but not perfect. They won’t be perfect I don’t think unless or until I get a knee replacement, but someday’s they are better than others. They’ve been healing up each day from when I sprained them. I think if I didn’t have to stand on them for my whole shift that they would be a lot better, but that’s how life is.
If I wasn’t working tomorrow, I could spend the whole day writing. Why is it that a few days ago when I did have some quality time to write, I was word-less. I won’t say I had writer’s block, because I don’t really believe in that, but I wasn’t in the mood to think of something worthwhile to say.
Now, that I’m getting closer to the wire I don’t think I’m too concerned about having something worthwhile to say so much as getting to the overall goal of 50k by Friday. I’ve never been this close before, it’s rather fun don’t you think?
For those of you that this is your first nano. When you get those 50k words completed make sure you get them verified with the official site, I think you have to upload your writing somewhere on the site. I haven’t done it myself yet, so I can’t help you there. I did ask a friend about it and she gave me some hints as I’ve not been keeping every word I’ve written since much of it is from so many different sources.
I hope to have time tomorrow evening to copy everything I’ve written on my many blogs onto a word document, then I’ll see how many words I’m lacking. I should be able to find some of the chats that I chatted (lol), and I can find all the reviews I did for the month even if I didn’t actually remember to use them.
The problem I might have is that my workers might want to work Friday morning and I’ll be working Friday night. I may not get out of work in enough time to work on the document then. Tomorrow, my husband and I planned on going thirty minutes away to a library to hear a talk by four or five authors that have published using different means like self-publishing, small press publishing and maybe others.
One other thing I thought about discussing sometime, and I’ll see how much time I have to do it now is passive voice.
Unfortunately, I know that I overuse passive voice on here. One thing I do like about Word Press is that it will tell you when you have used passive voice; the thing I don’t like about it is that it won’t give you suggestions on what you can do to make it better. When I’m not writing in a hurry, I’ve taken the time to try to make it right, but nowadays I’ve just been okay-ing the post since I’m trying to get as many in before midnight as I possibly can.
I’d like to get better with active voice, not using adverbs, or at least knowing when it’s okay to use them and when it’s better to steer clear. State of action verbs I know are no, no’s. I attended an online conference last month and learned a bit about that, but the author leading the workshop says you have to use some, just not the amount that many of us do use. So that would be another area to improve one’s writing in.
There are so many other things that I need to improve in my writing. I took a class at the community college last year and one of them was English Comp. I hoped to learn some of these things, but I think I’d have to talk to someone to find out if there were any classes dealing with these topics. I might have to take courses through the writing site that I keep talking about, since I know they do teach about comma’s and punctuation. That in itself would be a good start.
An additional 920 words in this post. (Slowly I’m creeping up there. This will make 44,179 for me so far). The coolest thing about adding words to me is seeing the lines get closer to the diagonal line at the top of the stats page.
Related articles
- The Basics of Passive Voice vs Active Voice (youngatink.wordpress.com)
- It Was Written In the Passive Voice (stgrady.wordpress.com)
- Writing & Editing: Find and Eliminate Useless Verbs (mbweston.com)
Is the Human Race Losing Its Ability to Read
Is the human race losing its ability to read and digest what is written, or is it just that everyone is in such a hurry that they don’t take time to think about what they are reading and making sure they understand it properly?
I run into this all the time at my cashiering job, not so much in our personal business, but definitely related to specials and coupons.
We offer a digital coupon to customers that own a cell phone with texting. The phone needs texting because after the person signs up, they are sent a text with a code that they use to put into their computer to make the sign up complete.
Those that have smart phones can even choose which digital coupons they want to use while they are in the store shopping. This is a nice feature for many times we forget to clip those coupons especially when deals are being run on the whole grocery order. Those with smart phones can take time to clip the coupons they want while they are still shopping.
The only thing they don’t have is a read out (printed copy) of the “clipped” coupons which means that sometime things aren’t understood as well as they would have been if they had been printed out.
For instance, often we have specials on pre-cut vegetable trays or fruit trays. Some of the coupons are for specific sizes while others are for ones that come with the dip enclosed in the packaging. When a person picks out the coupon they want to use, no picture is shown. A size is mentioned, but unless the customer has a picture to shop with, they don’t always know which one they are to buy.
I don’t own a smart phone, therefore I do my best to remember to print out my coupons. I don’t remember to get on my computer often enough to make choices, but just like newspaper and magazine coupons digital coupons may have several weeks and sometimes even a few months before they expire.
With paper coupons it’s easy to check them to look at the expiration date assuming you carry them with you and they aren’t on your kitchen table or in a drawer, but the digital coupons you cannot carry with you unless you print them out. Even having a smart phone isn’t always the answer to the problem for the pictures in most phones are too small for the cashier to read and see if the person did indeed purchase what was listed.
The only way to really prove that is if they bring in their printed copy.
That was all background to my story. Within the past few days those of us with texting on our cell phones got a text from the grocery store saying that a special was happening today where the shopper could get five percent (5%) off their health and beauty items along with grocery items. For us, grocery includes anything found in the aisles from one end of the store to another where the aisles are between produce and dairy, other than pet products everything else is considered general merchandise.
I knew this sale was coming up, but I don’t get paid until tomorrow and wasn’t planning on purchasing anything today, so I didn’t go into the screen to ‘clip’ the coupon for the 5%.
Let me say this also, right here, that we get some people that don’t realize they need to actually clip the coupon-granted it’s digitally, but it’s clipped just the same. Also, I found out after we had the program for a while that a coupon can only be used once, then no one takes advantage of them. Otherwise, those with smart phones could keep clipping something that was an excellent deal.
So, I didn’t clip the coupon because I wasn’t expecting to purchase enough to make a difference for I usually don’t buy groceries until I get paid and that won’t take place until tomorrow.
I had someone stop in front of my lane yesterday looking through her receipt. I wasn’t busy at the time, so I went over to her and asked if I could help. She said she had signed up for the digital coupon special but it looked like it didn’t work even though she put her code in the register console.
I looked at her receipt and sure enough she had entered her numbers in, but no discount came off. Since I didn’t take the time to sign up for it, I didn’t remember when the date for it was at that time. I asked if she brought her sheet with her as I could see a loose-leaf notebook, but didn’t know if she had a printed copy with her.
She gave me her printed copy and I found the offer right at the top, but it said on top only valid for 11/28/2012 and at the bottom it restated it a bit different, but basically said the same thing. I pointed it out to her and she said, “Well, they have to get you someway, don’t they?” I explained that it was written right on the coupon she clipped, but she didn’t agree with me. She figured it was done on purpose.
Tonight, I decided to get a few things knowing full well that I hadn’t clipped the coupon but I figured if I wasn’t buying much I wouldn’t get much back anyway. It wouldn’t really matter since I don’t own a smart phone and I wasn’t about to drive all the way back home and then return just to get 5% off of a small purchase. It ended up that I bought over 60.00 worth of food. Ah well. I could have clipped it and didn’t.
Another thing I was thinking about on the subject of folks not reading is that in our city leaves are picked up on the street near the curb before a major snow storm. If at all possible the trucks work their way around the city two times, sometimes if we get a big snow they only pick some of them up once while others do get the two times.
I saw people that had leaves in their yards well before the first pick-up but they probably weren’t too concerned figuring they would make it in the second pick-up. Well it’s already snowed here once, and those leaves are still on the road. Most home-owners are hoping the trucks will make it around one more time. We’ll see.
One thing the city requests is that no yard debris or trash is put in with the leaves, for they don’t want either of those things to break the trucks that scoop the leaves up.
I’ve seen all sorts of tree and yard debris in the piles of leaves along with broken pumpkins, and trash. I sometimes feel like going to those peoples houses and leaving a note on the door.
I know I’ve read things wrong myself and I’m sure it’s something we all do to some extent.
When shopping, though, I generally suggest that the people pick up what they think are on sale, double check the size and sometimes the code used between the package and the shelf tag to see if they match before assuming they have the right product in their hands.
This post is 1225 words while a review and some chatting done earlier today equals to 256 = 1481
Much Ado About NaNo 