Done. (Sorta.) (Until next time...)

Heh... I'm a really mean editor. Sometimes it's a blessing. Most times it's a curse. :p

I'm as done as I'm going to get on that science paper without passing it back to my former boss. I'm not real happy with the discussion section. He's going to be even less happy when he sees it. I moved a bunch of material to the intro that he told me not to. :p But I couldn't leave it where it was, because it was most definitely intro material, not discussion material, and furthermore, my version of how to tell the readers about our study is way more right than his. So there. Dangit. :p

This means that the discussion section needs a completely different opening paragraph now. I would've written it, but it was 2:30am by the time I reached that point and I was very tired, not to mention out of food. I'd been taking apart that discussion section all day, and at this point I couldn't tell you what it says even if I tried. (But I could still put it into grammatically correct format. The clauses may make no sense to me, but at least they are arranged properly.) And besides that, I'm the editor, not the writer. I can only fix what's there. I can't put something there that isn't because I don't know what it's supposed to be.

I'd say that overall I probably did at least 3 drafts per section on the thing. I printed out the original and went over it. Step one was to translate what the heck each run-on sentence was trying to say, and putting it into English syntax instead of German (he's a native German speaker). Entered all that and printed it out again and went over it again to finetune the English syntax version. That was when I noticed there were huge chunks of material in the wrong spots, which meant moving a lot of stuff around, and redoing sections I'd thought were done. Basically a flurry of incorporating bits and pieces of material into the stuff that was there originally, breaking up whole wrongly-located paragraphs and putting each sentence into a separate correct location. Then more printouts to go over the whole thing again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In the end it turned out that all of the results WERE actually present. They were just in a very strange order. I fixed that. ;) I ended up ignoring the table captions, though, figuring that if the reviewers hadn't complained about them the first time, then obviously they actually understood what the tables said without more help, and so I would just leave well enough alone. Just because I don't personally understand the tables doesn't mean it's wrong. (And also it would take way too much effort for me to figure out what the captions are supposed to say, because I'm the editor and not the writer...)

The abstract turned out to be okay, so I didn't touch it.

Oh well. I'm through with it, and now I'm going to die for it. ;) What a life, huh? I guess editting is mean no matter how you approach it. After all, it feels like I'm taking a piece of your soul and shredding it. But I have standards to stand by, and I never do things halfway. It'll either be done right, to my very high standards, or not at all.

I wonder how likely he's actually going to pass it back to me for another editting round when he's done going over it again. I bet he submits it without telling me. :p I'll be very annoyed if he decides to ignore all of my changes and submit it as it was before I started.

*sighs*

Meanwhile, for ellsea's pleasure, my beef barley soup recipe:

5 small red potatoes
5 carrots
5 celery stalks
an onion
a small carton of mushrooms
stir-fry beef (I don't like stew beef; too much fat)
1 cup barley
some corn (I use frozen; just don't use canned)
some peas (I use frozen; just don't use canned)
some green beans (I use frozen; just don't use canned)
one gallon beef broth (If it's canned, like Swanson's, I would recommend a 2 cans broth : 1 can water ratio because otherwise it's too salty.) (I quit salt at around the same time as I quit caffeine...)

paprika
black pepper
cayenne pepper
Worcestershire sauce


Cut the beef into small pieces. Brown. Dice the onions and slice the mushrooms. Add those in too. Saute'.

Add the beef broth. Bring to boil.

While it's heating up, wash the carrots and celery and chop into small pieces.

Rinse the barley and dump it in when the water is boiling. Stir.

When it boils again, dump in the corn and green beans. Stir.

When it boils again, dump in the carrots and celery. Turn the heat down a bit so it's not boiling as fast. Stir occasionally.

Chop up the potatoes. About an hour after you put in the barley and brought it to the second boil, dump in the potatoes. Stir.

Twenty minutes later dump in the peas and turn the heat off. (I have an electric stove. If yours is gas, let it come almost to a boil again before turning it off.) Stir. Sprinkle in copious quantities of black pepper and paprika. Not as much cayenne (it's not intended to be super spicy - just give it a bit of a kick). A couple dashes of the Worcestershire sauce, though I've left this out before without any huge difference.

Stir and cover. Let it sit on the stove slowly cooling overnight. Put it in the fridge the following morning. Eat for lunch. ;)


I've gotten rave reviews on this soup before. It's probably the best out of my repertoire. That last step about leaving it out overnight may sound scary but I've never killed anyone with my soup by doing that. ;) You can stick it in the fridge directly if you want, but you might end up endangering all the other food in there by putting in something that big and hot right away.

Also, it's important to let the flavors blend together. You can eat it right after you're done adding the spices, but it won't taste right at that point. (It'll be edible and all... the full flavor just doesn't show up until the next day.)

The order of vegetables as stated above is important too. Stuff will cook at different rates. It took me a while to work out exactly what order to do it. Total cooking time has to be at least an hour and a half or the beef won't be tender enough.

I have yet to actually make this soup for myself this week. This is definitely looking like it'll be a takeout week. After that it'll be too late to do any huge vats of anything, because I'll be preparing to go on two work cruises back-to-back, and won't actually be home for a week and a half. I'll be well-fed though. Cruise food is always plentiful and excellent. :)