Coveting thy neighbor's stuff

The feast-or-famine nature of this week's copy editing gig forced me to find creative ways to kill time. When I ran out of lists to make, I decided to spend some time exploring my environment.

To ensure that I was available if and when any editorial work came my way, I limited my explorations to the copy editor's office which has been my home base all week. Even in this small space, I found many wonderful treasures to covet:

• a license plate which reads "META4S"
• a vast library of reference books, including 4 dictionaries, 2 thesauruses and a wide variety of style guides
• all my favorite software, and a hard drive big enough to run it all without slowing to a crawl
• Post-it notes galore, including multicolor flags, minis, traditional squares and 4x6 ruled
• a "Word of the Day" calendar (Thursday's word: philippic, meaning a discourse or declamation full of bitter condemnation)
• an entire wall of cork board
• a giant ampersand paperweight

Hmm. I may have just written my Christmas list!