They also have packing tape... and bubble bath...

I had some freelance proofreading work for a couple days, courtesy of Jen up in Chicago (thanks Jen! :)). I read through a catalog full of journals and calendars and photo albums – which, to be honest, was a lot more interesting than the freelance work I get every year from my previous employers. They like to inundate me with 40-page annual reports every winter, each one prefaced with a desperate plea of “is it possible for you to get this back to us today?” Um, no. (Actually, that's not true. It IS possible now and then, especially if I don’t drive all the way home to proof… last year I picked up a report from the bank and then drove to a Starbucks a couple miles away, where I fueled up with a triple-shot caramel macchiato and knocked the whole thing out in three hours flat. I then triumphantly returned the report to the bank, where I was greeted like the hero that I am and carried back out to my car on the shoulders of grateful typesetters. I’m pretty sure that’s the way it happened, anyway. Although I MAY have been imagining that “hero” stuff because of my caffeine high…)

Anyway, the catalog was a nice change from my usual proofreading work. And although I found plenty of reasons to wield my Red Pen of Corrections, I only found ONE misspelled word in the entire catalog. One. I hate it when that happens. I mean, on the one hand, it can mean that whoever typed that thing was a very good typist and speller… but on the other hand, it can mean that I missed all the OTHER misspelled words. What if there were fifteen misspelled words, and I only caught one? What kind of horrible proofreader would that make me? I just know that somewhere in that catalog, “stationery” was spelled “stationary,” and I totally missed it. I skipped right over the stationary stationery. How could I have missed that? Sigh… (I suppose there’s also a possibility that I’m being paranoid…)

After I finished proofing the catalog yesterday, I looked at FedEx’s website to see where I should go to return it to Chicago. And I was happy to see a “Pak and Ship” store listed on the website, located right across the street from my neighborhood, barely a mile away. Well, that would make everything quite easy and convenient. So I went over to Pak and Ship… but as soon as I walked in, I had a bad feeling about the place. It seemed less a packing and shipping store and more a Hallmark and bath store. I’m not sure you should ever see tubs of “body butter” for sale at your local FedEx shipping establishment. What’s more, the store was manned by an older couple, who were apparently going for a “mom-and-pop” atmosphere. But I went ahead and showed Pop what I needed to FedEx, hoping the racks of birthday cards and tubes of hand lotion were simply a façade for what was, in reality, a very professional business. However, my hopes began to fade when he took one look at the catalog and said, “oh, I’m not sure we have a box for that…”

So I waited patiently as he rummaged around on a shelf and pulled out a “small” FedEx box, then held it next to the catalog and said, “nope, that won’t work.” I explained that the catalog had arrived in a MEDIUM box of the same type, assuming he could return to the shelf and bring one back to the counter. Instead, he mumbled something about “I’m pretty sure we don’t have any of those boxes” and disappeared into a back room. When he returned, he confirmed that they had NO medium FedEx boxes in the store, but if I wanted to, I could buy a larger plain cardboard box and use that. But seeing as I was hoping to look at least SEMI-professional with this proofreading job, I declined the plain cardboard box, worrying not only about how a non-FedEx box would look, but also having a slight suspicion that Mom and Pop would slip some jam and Pepperidge Farm cookies into the package…

I ended up going to Kinko’s… specifically, FEDEX Kinko’s – it seemed like a much better choice, considering the fact that “FedEx” was right there in giant letters on the sign over the door. They had plenty of FedEx medium boxes and FedEx airbills, one of which I filled out with several bits of information in the wrong spaces, so I had to cross things out until it looked like it had been filled out by a ten-year-old. As I carried the box to the counter, all I could think was, “these people are SO going to think I’m an idiot…” Is it really THAT hard to fill out a FedEx airbill? Oh well… at least I found a real FedEx box…

Is anyone else having a strange craving for Pepperidge Farm cookies? Maybe I’ll head over to the Pak and Ship… I mean, at the very least I can pick up a tube of lilac hand lotion…