The eyes have it

Well, I always thought I should have been a proofreader. I catch mistakes in everything I read.

I finally have my big chance. ;) My stepdad has written his biography and has asked me to proofread and edit it for him. It's over 500 pages long! He has led quite an adventurous and exciting life, and it is very interesting reading about it. I cannot believe all the details he remembers from his youth; I sure don't remember that much. (But then again, I can hardly remember what happened yesterday, haha) Names, dates, places, everything. When it's finished, he is going to have it bound into a book and give a copy to each family member.

The work sure is hard on the eyes though. And I find myself going back and forth, and making changes to prior changes as I read on further. Should the chapter end here or there? Should that have been a comma or a period three paragraphs ago? Did he really mean to capitalize that word, or is it a mistake needing to be fixed? Should this word be which or that? And why is my computer picking tonight to be a pain in the ass and freeze up every 10 minutes?

Although it's been many hours of sometimes tedious work, I feel honored to be the first in the family to read it. It's been fun. And I hope that I fulfill his expectations and edit it correctly, without changing the meaning of anything he wrote or altering his unique style of telling a story.

OK, enough rest for the weary. Back to work now. I just pray it doesn't take me as long to edit it as it took him to write it.....two years.

Cat