I forgot my PJs—AGAIN.

So last night, instead of waiting until about 10 p.m., I started packing my bags for DC before dinner. By 9:45, I was in bed and the majority of my belongings were already packed neatly inside the car. I had even left myself a little note in the bathroom with a few lingering items that I wanted to be sure I didn't leave behind in the morning. I was feeling rather self-congratulatory at this point, and I even bragged to my mom about my preparedness. I even had all my meals planned out and packed for my time away. For the first time in 4 weeks, I was going to leave the house on time—and I wasn't going to forget anything.

I know now that pride is a sin. I left the house this morning more or less on time, feeling confident that I had packed the things I needed, and I arrived at the office in under 3 hours—an all-time record. I was doing pretty good. This feeling of confidence sustained me throughout the day. It wasn't until I left the office and opened my suitcase at the house I'm staying at that I realized I didn't pack any pajamas. I had put my favorite pair in the wash yesterday, and because I didn't need to pack any of the other clothes in that load of laundry, I forgot completely forgot to pack the PJs. Now, anyone who has ever roomed with me can tell you that as soon as I come home for the day, I immediately change into sweats or Pjs. The reason for this is twofold: (1) I wear my jeans multiple times between washings and if I take them off sooner, they have a decreased time to get dirty and/or stretched out, and (2) I like to be comfy. So after I finished eating the leftovers I had packed for dinner, my heart sunk as I realized that I didn't remember packing my Pjs, and that fear was confirmed when I unzipped my bag and discovered with was PJ-less. Luckily, I overpacked in almost every other way possible, and I had tossed a pair of exercise pants in my bag (just in case I felt the urge to get in shape, an urge which hasn't presented itself even remotely in the 4 weeks I've been coming down here). The work out pants are very similar to my PJs, and I had also packed an extra t-shirt that I knew when I packed it that I wouldn't wear it to the office but decided to pack it anyway—thank goodness.

Aside from the realization of my omission of sleepwear, my day went very well. Like I mentioned before, I managed to make it to the office in record time—under 3 hours, and that included filling up on gas! I even almost decided to do the drive without the help of my often-confused, semi-helpful GPS (although I decided to give it one more week). My new friend (intern, Rachel) was again at the office and she greeted me in her usual sun-shiny way, which made me feel happy to be there.

I got to do more indexing today (yay—not) but I finished that in record time as well. I then received a few more projects, including an editing assignment, a photo-downloading assignment (which ended up being somewhat stressful), and a new writing assignment. Today the senior editor asked me what topics I would like to write about for the magazine. I must say, I was taken a little off-guard. In fact, I was pretty speechless, which very rarely ever happens to me. What did I want to write about? Oh man. There were so many possibilities, that literally, my mind went blank, and to tell you the truth, I looked kind of stupid. She suggested I brainstorm a couple of topic ideas and then discuss them with her to flush them out for ideas. She encouraged me to write about stuff that I knew all about, stuff that came easily to me and that I didn't need to do hardly any research on. She wanted the pieces to be slightly more conversational. I brainstormed a bit, ran some ideas by her, and then wrote one of the articles. I liked it, but I'm not sure yet what she thought of it, so I'm waiting for some of her feedback. Tomorrow I'm going to work on a couple more of those ideas.

So in my belated post, I talked about how I did my first real editing last week, and how I came up with a new title for that one article. Well, I looked at the InDesign documents for the July issue and it looks like my title is going to stick! I'm not sure if much else of my editing stuck (actually, I was a little annoyed to see that a lot of it didn't) but they like the title! And it's going to be on the cover of our July issue! Hooray! I know it may seem like a relatively small victory, but for me it's kind of a big deal. It will be the first time that something I came up with will be in print that thousands of people will read. Now I just need to get my byline...

I also was invited to attend my first event with the magazine staff! On June 3 the Young Horse Trials are being held at Morven Park, which is an international horse park in Leesburg, VA, only a 30-minute drive from the office. So today the senior editor asked me if I would be around that day so I could go with them :) I have no idea what we are going to do all day or if we plan on covering the event in the magazine, but I do know that it will be an entire day at a horse not as a rider, not as a spectator, but as a member of the press. It sounds pretty good to me! I'll make sure to take pictures when I go.