Fresh air

At the Heart of Wisconsin Chamber of  Commerce Mardi Gras Business Expo in February, I signed up to win a Rainmate II.

I didn’t have a lot of time to visit the booths, but at the Water Works table, I was hit with a blast of fresh, scented air. I stopped to talk and filled out the slip to enter the drawing for one of 10 Rainmates.

The Rainmate II is a device that adds a little humidity and your choice of scent to the air. An electric motor circulates the water. It cascades down the sides of the plastic bowl. A bulb inside will turn it into a night light. You add a few drops of essential oil, and voila – fresh air.

The Rainmate II operates in the Hilltop office.

When I learned I won one, I told my co-workers I was bringing it to the office. We can use the fresh air here. Our office is smaller than rooms at my home, too, so it should work well. We also can use it in our sensory room, with supervision.

I haven’t used essential oils, but I know a little bit about them. Different oils have different properties. I went to Family Natural Foods to see what was available. I bought a pre-mixed blend called Peace & Harmony. It has peppermint, patchouli, orange, lavender and basil oils. It has a minty floral herb scent. The bottle lists its benefits: centering, calming, balancing.

We turned the Rainmate on the other day after adding a few drops of oil to the water. My co-worker and I stood over it. We smelled … nothing. We both have colds that have rendered our sinuses pretty much useless. Everyone else who came into the office or down the hall commented on the nice smell. I let it run until the end of the day.

We turn it on for an hour or so here and there. The motor is a little noisy, but I can tune it out. Today, for the first time, I can faintly smell it. My cold must be improving. I’ll be happy when I can fully appreciate our fresh air machine.

Typing is not just for journalists

I’ve been doing a lot of typing.

I always do a lot of typing. My co-workers tease me when I get going. It sounds like I’m really whizzing along. What they don’t know is while I can type fast, it’s not terribly accurate. Thank goodness for spell check and autocorrect in Word. There is a reason I got a C in typing in high school.

At least accuracy wasn’t a job requirement. You just had to be able to type. Seriously. When I was interviewing for my first reporting job, the city editor sat me down in front of a manual typewriter (yes, we still had those) and told me to write a weather story. “Just make it up?” I asked a little incredulously. I thought they’d make to go interview somebody before I started writing. “Yeah, just type something,” he said.

So I did. I put in made-up quotes and really tried to make it a good weather story.

I didn’t need to bother. They didn’t even read it. They just wanted to know if I could type, and it’s obvious when you put your hands in the right place and plunk away that you can type. I got the job. I wonder if it was just my typing skills. I hope not.

One of the tools of my trade.

But after 20-plus years as a journalist, I got pretty good at typing – fast, anyway. I used to have to type in copy that people would drop off. Toward the end of my journalism career, I coordinated the community pages, which involved a lot of contributed copy. Not all of it was submitted by email. I’d get fliers and hand-written notes, copies of the previous year’s program with changes penciled in for this year. I’d have to type them all, put them into a readable format, all prepped for print.

I don’t have that kind of typing these days. Mostly my typing involves emails, the occasional letter and this blog.

But the past few weeks, I’ve been typing a manual for our home care business. We have a hard copy, but we need it edited and available electronically to make changes in the future.

It’s actually pretty mindless to just type, to look at the copy and recreate it with your keyboard and monitor. It’s a little more challenging to edit as you go and make sure you don’t introduce any errors that spell check won’t catch. 

I’m busy with other stuff, or the manual already would be done. But there are other parts of my job that pull me away, and the typing gets pushed to the bottom of the pile – literally.

I feel a little guilty that it’s sitting there right now at the bottom of my stack while I’m typing away on this instead. But this is more fun. And maybe, unlike my weather story, someone will actually read it.