Never, ever do this.

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It can be tempting to date someone who works with you, especially since you spend the majority of your waking hours at your job. Your coworkers are the people you see the most and with whom you spend most of your time, so you get to know them pretty well. You get to know their tastes in music, food, clothing, vacation destinations, and so forth.

There can be chemistry between coworkers, and an attraction can take place. This is especially likely if the other person has the same tastes as you do. You might start to wonder, “What would it be like to go with her to our favorite restaurant?” or “What would it be like to go to the beach with him?”

STOP RIGHT THERE.

Do not date a coworker.

First of all, it is unprofessional. A person’s professional life and personal life should be kept separate and should never be mixed with each other. If you are in a romantic relationship with a coworker, it might not be long before you start calling them “sweetie” or “honey” at work. ICK.

Second, there will be too much togetherness. As was previously stated, your coworkers are the people you see the most and with whom you spend most of your time, so you will see your significant other at work and at home for a total of nearly all of your waking hours. Your significant other needs a chance to miss you, and vice versa.

Third, many romantic relationships end in a breakup, and if you and your coworker eventually break up, seeing them at work will be awkward at best and downright painful at worst. You don’t want to put yourself through that.

And don’t even think about trying to date a married coworker.

What are your opinions on dating a coworker?

What are you going to do about it?

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In my previous post, I discussed the signs of climate change that I have personally seen. My husband has seen similar signs. This week, I would like to talk about one thing we are doing in order to do something.

We live in a condominium with an HVAC, also known as an electric heat pump. The HVAC unit produces air conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter. From what I have read, HVAC units are more efficient than gas furnaces. We love ours, although we know it is at least 15 years old and we are dreading the day it gives up the ghost.

In the summer, we turn our thermostat to 76 or 77 degrees Fahrenheit. “But that’s boiling hot!” you say? Try turning your thermostat to 78 degrees, which is the temperature recommended by the US Department of Energy. Seventy-eight degrees has proven to be too warm a temperature for my husband, so we compromise. I have to admit that we turn the air conditioning to 75 degrees at night when we go to bed, but at least we are not like some of our friends, who keep theirs at 70 degrees all day and all night. (I hope said friends own stock in their power company.)

As for our power company, every month it sends an “energy report” to each of its customers, telling the customer how much energy they used compared to customers in similar homes and customers in the “efficiency zone” (the top 20 percent of homes with the least energy use). I’m glad to say that my husband and I have landed in the “efficiency zone” more than once. And even in the months when we do not, we always use significantly less power than the average of similar homes.

It is too bad that our condo association will not allow us to install solar panels on the roof of the building. My aunt and uncle have solar panels and are living completely off the grid. Similarly, their daughter (my cousin) and her family power their home with sunlight. I admire them very much for this, and I have to admit that I am a little envious.

What are your suggestions for mitigating climate change, one step at a time?

It’s there, whether you like it or not.

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I’m talking about climate change.

Forgive me, please, because I’m about to be controversial again. Talking about climate change should not be political, but it is.

I want to talk about the things I have observed firsthand that tell me that our climate is getting dangerously hot.

I have been watching the weather forecasts on TV since I was about 14 or so. I am now 51. Back in the late 1980s, there were not as many “excessive heat weather alert” days forecast as there are now. And I really don’t believe that there were as many in the early 1980s, when I was in elementary school and would spend part of the summer at day camp. At day camp, part of the afternoon was spent outside playing on the playground. Nowadays, the afternoons are so hot that it makes me wonder if the day camp staff sends the children outside anymore. When the heat index is 105 degrees Fahrenheit, aren’t children prone to heat-related illnesses?

I know at least that adults are. The state of Maryland has lost 12 people to the heat this summer so far, and it’s not even August yet.

One of my friends told me that she knows a woman who sends her children outside to play at 5 o’clock in the morning every summer because it’s just too hot any other time.

My one cousin opined that pretty soon we as a society are going to have to shift summer vacation to spring so that children can be inside in an air-conditioned school all summer. I could not agree more with her. Who says you can’t get cabin fever in the summer? I often do, when it is simply too hot to be outside.

Have you personally noticed signs that the earth is getting hotter? Or have you noticed otherwise?

Becoming intelligent about artificial intelligence

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This past week I began a seven-week introductory course on artificial intelligence (AI) for editors.

The course is taught by the naturally intelligent Erin Servais, who is also a dynamic speaker.

The week before the course began, I downloaded ChatGPT and played with it a little. I had never used it before, nor Copilot, Gemini, Claude, or any other popular AI platform. ChatGPT astounded me. I told it to write a poem about Garfield the cat, and in about two seconds it brought forth a rhyming anthem about the fat cat that read like a Shel Silverstein verse.

We have only had one session so far, but I have already completed our first assignment, and the results were hilarious. (I do not feel comfortable sharing my assignment here, since it is part of the course.) I got to read the results of some of the other students as well, and they were equally humorous and outrageous. Sometimes I wonder if ChatGPT ever laughs at itself.

It frightens me that some people use AI to write research papers for them or even to write novels. Would I read a novel that was generated by AI? Only if I were fooled into believing that it was written by a human. Of course, any human who uses AI to write a novel obviously does not like to write and is doing so only to make ill-gotten money. Shame on them.

I am definitely looking forward to learning how to use AI tools to copyedit more efficiently, fact-check, and write my own macros. However, I am also anticipating the class session in which the ethical implications of AI are discussed. I have heard from numerous editors on LinkedIn that there are AI detectors that can supposedly tell whether a work was written by a human or by AI. Unfortunately, many of these editors have run works that they wrote themselves through an AI detector and seen the detector tell them that 80 percent of the work was AI-generated.

Sigh! Can we win?

With the proper skills, yes.

“What have you done lately?”

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Freelancers are often asked that. Our family and friends know that our workflow is not steady (and neither is our income), and so they want to know what kind of work we have done recently.

I actually accomplished a few big things this past spring. More happy clients, more satisfaction on my part, more money. You can’t argue with that. So what exactly did I accomplish?

First and foremost, I completed a project for a new client who was recommended to me by a good friend. This friend knew well about my skill and excellence as a copyeditor. The new client owned a small business and had a website. He was an ESL (English as a Second Language) client, and so the English on his site needed some assistance. I not only fixed the grammar and capitalization on the site, but improved the wording and flow of the language. Once the changes were made on the website, it read much better. The client told me that on a scale of one to ten, my editing was an eleven. Editors don’t get that kind of compliment every day.

I also worked with my longtime client, my friend’s company, which had recently revamped the product description pages on its website. It turned out that on some of the pages, certain links were not displayed properly and were confusing to customers who needed to click on them. It was my job to find which pages had erroneous links and record them on a Word document. This meant that I had to go over some 1,700 product pages. Thankfully, I only had to spend roughly 30 to 60 seconds on each page. I did this for a reduced rate, since it didn’t directly involve editing.

Finally, I edited marketing emails for the same company, most of which did not need any changes. I always enjoy these at least somewhat, because they have gorgeous photos on them.

Here’s to more projects coming my way. What did you accomplish this spring?

Scam-A-Rama: Beware!

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As long as there are evil people in this world, there will be scams aimed at stealing the sensitive information of others. I have learned this the hard way and I am much more vigilant as a result.

Today I will discuss two types of common scams which easily trick innocent people: text scams and email scams.

Text scams involve text messages on one’s phone (usually a smartphone, although I can imagine that those with a basic phone might be prey to them as well). The victim receives a text that spoofs a phone number or email address and pretends to be (usually) from a financial institution or government entity (such as the IRS or the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration [MVA]). The text will “inform” the victim of something alarming, such as a large sum of money having been withdrawn from their bank account or that the MVA is penalizing them and they had better pay up or else.

The truth is that a bank will never text a customer—banks usually communicate by way of email or postal mail. Nor do government entities like the MVA or the IRS communicate by text. Scam texts also often have a strange-looking email address or unknown phone number associated with them. The best thing to do if you suspect a text is a scam is to delete it. Do not touch any links or call any phone numbers that the text gives you.

Then there are email scams. In this type of scam, the victim receives an email that looks like a legitimate billing statement, often with a genuine-looking logo of a company like PayPal, Amazon, or McAfee. The statement says that the victim owes a large sum of money for a product or service that they never purchased, and provides a phone number for the victim to call if they did not authorize the sale (and they never did). Often, the “billing statement” contains grammatical mistakes or typos (this is the first thing for which I look when I receive one of these).

One word: DELETE. Calling the phone number on the fake billing statement will connect you to a scammer who will pretend to want to help you, but who will trick you into giving them control of your computer (something you should never do) and steal your personal information and/or your identity.

What kinds of scam bait have you been subjected to? (I have gotten several of both of the above.)

The ugliness of beauty

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Let’s talk about beauty magazines for a minute.

I read them when I was a young teenage girl. Specifically, I read Seventeen. (I have heard it said that 14-year-old girls read Seventeen, while 17-year-old girls read Cosmopolitan.) And I learned a lot from reading it.

I learned that you need to use a base coat when you paint your nails. (“Don’t just slick color on bare nails.” Perish the thought.)

I learned that when you get up in the morning, you should do some exercises to “get the juices flowing.” (Sorry. Not before breakfast.)

I learned how difficult it is to start a modeling career.

And I learned what sexual dreams can really mean.

In retrospect, I never liked how reading beauty magazines made me feel when I was a young teen. I felt “less than” because I did not follow the “proper” procedure for doing my nails. I felt inadequate because I had terrible acne that nothing, it seemed, would help. I felt downright ugly because I could not do anything with my hair.

Although I was never unfortunate enough to develop an eating disorder, I could see how such magazines can contribute to that or trigger it. The models on the covers, in the pictures inside, and in the advertisements were so slim, thin, and beautiful, and their bodies were hair-free—waxed to perfection. (The issue of body hair on women is a whole other one that I will not get into right now.)

Suffice it to say that I felt unattractive while reading beauty magazines. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why I read them for several years. Reading them was a mistake; I should have spent the time reading juicy science fiction novels.

If you are the mother of a teen daughter who is drawn to beauty magazines, please sit down with her at some point and tell her she is beautiful, and nothing will change that. Tell her she is just as beautiful to you as the models in her magazines. Then love her like the beautiful person she is.

Putting on my ten-second literary critic hat, part 2

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Today, I would like to talk about a different kind of cookbook: Robin Cook books. *rim shot*

Seriously, though, Robin Cook is one of my favorite novelists. He is a physician, and his brand of medical science fiction is right up my alley, given that I am a scientist who has worked in biochemistry and molecular biology. I may not be a medical doctor, but I definitely enjoy the science in his novels. I also love imagining the characters in my head (what reader doesn’t?).

So, today I am going to write about three of Dr. Cook’s novels which I thoroughly enjoyed.

First, there is Toxin. This book centers on a deadly strain of E.coli bacteria which gets into the food chain and kills the main protagonist’s daughter. Given that the scenario is very realistic and could happen anywhere, this novel is frightening in a non-supernatural kind of way. The main protagonist, Dr. Kim Reggis, is a believable character (my mind casts Goran Visnjic as him, without the accent) and one secondary character, Roger the fast-food manager, really stood out for me for some reason (perhaps because Dr. Reggis belts him one). There is also a scary scene near the end.

Then there is Shock, most of which I read while on vacation years ago in Wildwood, New Jersey. The main story, about women who donate their eggs to a scientific company, is definitely compelling, and I kept turning the pages, wanting to find out what was going to happen next. However, although the two main protagonists, Deborah and Joanna, are well developed in terms of their intelligence and curiosity, they were rather disappointing to me in terms of how they relate to each other. They are supposed to be close friends, but they never cry in each other’s arms, for example. Nor do they stay up late venting to each other about their past boyfriends.

Finally, let’s talk about Vector. I loved this story, which is about bioterrorism. Of course, I read this book before 9/11, so perhaps if I had read it afterwards, I would have been frightened rather than fascinated. It has very interesting characters, especially Yuri, the Russian cab driver, and the two ex-soldiers who are his cohorts. And given the US’s current relations with Russia and the very real threat of bioterrorism, it will probably come off today as scary.

If you have read any of Dr. Cook’s novels, which ones have you read? What did you think of them?

Putting on my ten-second literary critic hat, Part 1

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Let me talk about Michael Crichton for a minute, if I may.

In the 1990s and 2000s, I very much enjoyed the work of this prolific bestselling novelist. So did many other people, and several of his novels were made into movies starring A-list actors. In 1994, he became the co-creator and co-executive producer of the hit TV drama ER, a show to which I was addicted for years. Crichton passed away in 2008, but several of his works will remain etched in my memory forever.

My favorite novel by Crichton is Prey, which was never made into a movie and I’m glad about that, given that I like to use my imagination. The characters are well thought-out and have vivid personalities, especially Jack, who narrates the story. And the story will at least make you curious about nanotechnology if you haven’t already heard of it. It may even scare you if you think about technology revolting against its creator.

I also enjoyed Jurassic Park, although I must confess that I saw the original 1993 film before I read the book, so I was stuck with images of the cast in my head. At the risk of sounding like a complete snob, I have to say that the book was superior to the movie (what book is not?). The novel contained much more detail in terms of the description of the dinosaurs, human characters, and scenery. I especially appreciated the introduction, where Crichton discusses how science today is done “in secret, and for profit” rather than for all the world to discover.

I really liked Sphere, which I remember reading in a laundromat while waiting for my thick bedspread to be washed and dried in the heavy-duty machines. The outer-space concept was fascinating. I never saw its movie adaptation and I’m glad I did not, given (among other things) that Sharon Stone had been cast as Beth, while in my mind, Beth looked like one of my college biology professors.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention Airframe. I absolutely loved this book and its surprise ending. The novel taught me a lot about commercial aircraft and pilots, and made me wonder if I should ever fly again.

If you loved a Michael Crichton novel that I did not mention here, which one was it? If you loved one that I mentioned here, what did you love about it?

Beach booking

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A little over a week ago, I returned from a vacation in the Outer Banks, North Carolina. For those of you who are unfamiliar with that area, it consists of several beautiful beaches.

I am a beach person. I absolutely love to spread out a blanket and towel, slather myself with sunblock, set up a beach chair, and…READ.

I love to read on the beach, especially a good novel. Granted, I rarely, if ever, read an entire book while on a vacation. However, I cannot be on the beach without a good book. While in the Outer Banks, I read Freeing Yourself from Emotional Dependency by Sara Leone. This is a self-help book, not a novel; however, I find it to be an excellent read.

Some books which I have devoured on the beach include Carrie and Christine, both by Stephen King, High Five by Janet Evanovich, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling, and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.

The beach, although wonderfully calming and peaceful, can become somewhat boring without a good book. Sure, I like to listen to the sound of the waves and lie down and fall asleep on the beach, but sooner or later, all of that gets old. When I read a book on the beach, it feels as if the characters are joining me on the beach while having their escapades. There goes Stephanie Plum, chasing her latest criminal while the seagulls fly and shriek overhead. There’s Christine, the Plymouth Fury, speeding through the streets of Ocean City, Maryland. There’s Gryffindor Tower standing in the sand next to my hotel.

When not too crowded, the beach provides just the right about of sound for recreational reading.* The sound of the waves provides a soothing background. When a reading environment is starkly quiet, things can become creepy.

*I mean recreational reading only. Academic or critical reading should be done in a completely quiet surrounding area.

If you are a “beach bum” like me, do you read on the beach? If so, what kind of material?