What happens there... or their... or they're...

So my Blog Editor (yes, apparently I have a Blog Editor) informed me Friday that there was a misspelled word in my last post. Did anyone else catch it? It has since been corrected, so if you didn't catch it, you're too late. :) (To be honest, I think my Blog Editor peruses my posts in the HOPES of catching a mistake. Because he seems to take a little too much delight in pointing them out to me. Just sayin'... ;))

Not to defend myself... well, okay, actually -- in my defense, it's rather difficult to proofread your own writing. I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps because when you write something yourself, you're too close to it -- you're too familiar with what you MEANT to say and what you MEANT to write, that even if you accidentally write something else, your brain skips right over it. If my brain KNOWS I'm thinking, "I like coffee and chocolate," it may not even notice if I happen to type, "I lik cofee and choclate." (Okay, I'd PROBABLY catch those misspellings if I wrote them... but no promises...)

And also in my defense -- I am, without a doubt, a horrible speller. I really am. Yes, I might proofread a lot of stuff on a daily basis, but there's a reason I have a dictionary and the Associated Press Stylebook within arm's reach at all times. I CAN'T SPELL. There. I've admitted it. Seriously, when I was a kid, and we had spelling bees at school, I was lucky if I wasn't the first kid to be eliminated. I'd hope for an easy word, like "cat" or "door," but more often than not, I'd end up getting "onomatopoeia" or "bourgeoise" (and yes, I DID have to look up both of those words just now to make sure I was spelling them correctly...). My biggest problem is spelling in my HEAD -- I can NOT, for the life of me, spell words in my head. I have to be able to SEE them. This was my problem with spelling bees -- if I'd been allowed a piece of paper to WRITE down the word I was asked to spell, my participation would've been long extended. But as it was, we were expected to spell in our minds... our little, warped, pea-sized minds...

Fortunately, the very nature of writing and proofreading requires a VISUAL perusal of words -- and what I AM good at is knowing when a word is misspelled when I SEE it. I may not be able to tell you how to actually spell it, but I can tell you it's wrong. (Enter Webster's dictionary...) I'm also pretty good at knowing when to look up a word just to make sure it's spelled correctly. Even if I'm 95 percent sure it IS spelled correctly.

Of course, none of that helped me with the aforementioned misspelled word in my previous post. I shall attribute that one to plain old exhaustion, as I'm often writing these posts right before I head to bed... I can't be expected to do things like "spell" and "make sense" when I'm really, really tired... can I??

And on a completely different topic -- Rick and I are headed to Vegas for the weekend. Not because either one of us is much of a gambler... but rather because it's easy to get a decent hotel room in Vegas for a relatively cheap price. In fact, our original plan was to head down to San Antonio this weekend, since it's close and it would be easy for a quick weekend getaway... but we realized that it would be CHEAPER to actually fly to Vegas and get a hotel room there. Hotel prices in San Antonio were crazy expensive. So Vegas it is. Hopefully it'll be cooler than the last time we were there -- I believe the thermometer was topping out around 113 degrees. (According to weather forecasts, we can expect the temperature to be somewhere in the 60s this time... ah... much better...)

So I'll see you soon with some Vegas pictures... unless the pictures I take in Vegas have to stay in Vegas... I hope not... :)

(DISCLAIMER: There MAY be misspelled words in this post... I really didn't proofread it very thoroughly... I don't even know if I just spelled "thoroughly" correctly...)