Tuesday, 1/21

I really should get off my butt and update it. If nothing else, it'll tell people Loraine's actually still alive.

As you may know, I've been (massive understatement here) a little busy recently, which means that I haven't been able to get to all of those little projects that I've been meaning to. One of those projects, a project I wrote about in here almost (gulp) a year ago, is an update of the “107 Things To Love About Marquette County” list that resides on another part of this website. It's been four years since I last updated it, and in that time several people listed on it have passed away and several businesses I mentioned have shut their doors.

So it DOES need to get updated. And, apparently, a rather major typo needs to get corrected as well.

Now, the list has been up there for almost four years. According to the counter, thousands of people have looked at it. And I myself poured over it with a fine-toothed comb before putting it up. Therefore, it was kind of a surprise when I received a call from a listener yesterday who said she had just read it, and was a little confused by something.

When she told me what that something was, I almost did a spit take with the tea I was drinking.

One of the “107 Things” I mentioned was the Range Bank parking deck across the street from where I work. I love taking pictures from there, and I have a soft spot in my heart for the place anyway, seeing as how Loraine works there. In fact, I even mentioned that in the blog with, sadly, the major typo I mentioned earlier.

The line is supposed to read “Besides, it's where my dear wife works”. Unfortunately, that's not what it actually says. Despite the fact that I thought I proofread it a hundred times, and despite the fact that thousands of people have read it in the past four years, the line actually says this--

“Besides, that's where my dead wife works”.

Just for the record, Loraine is NOT dead. She's not dead now, and she wasn't dead when I wrote it in 2016. Loraine's still working at the building, and is very, VERY much alive.

Unlike, apparently, my brain.

I know how I missed the typo, too. I think I've written in here before about how we are becoming overly dependent upon things like spell-check. If we're writing something and it's not underlined in red, we assume it's correct and we zoom past it. I'm almost positive that's how I missed it. I typed “dead” instead of “dear”, and since I spelled “dead' right my spell-check had no idea I was an idiot and let it slide. I then didn't notice it myself, nor did any of the thousands of people's who've read it over the past few years.

Either that, or they thought I forgotten to tell them about something big.

This all brings to the fore a couple of things—one (and this bears repeating), Loraine is NOT dead. Two, I'm an idiot. And three, I REALLY need to update that list.

(jim@wmqt.com), who's put it on top of the list to deal with after I'm done with the Kaufman show Thursday!