If you knew this song was coming, then you had to expect that it was going to a be song of the day here. I mean, come on: Former Weki Meki leader Ji Suyeon's first song since Weki Meki disbanded? You had to know I'd be all over that! Fortunately, the song lives up to my expectations: Suyeon's voice sounds beautiful, and the video, showing her wandering through a variety of nature scenes, is a treat.

I got an email yesterday from one of my professors who I've been using as a reference. She said she had a student who was in the process of applying to grad school and was looking to hire an editor to help him improve one of his papers for inclusion with his applications. She remembered that I had experience in editing and wanted to know if I'd be okay with her passing on my contact information to him. I was up front with her about my editing experience (I've done lots of copyediting, style editing, and fact-checking, but no real heavy-duty developmental editing other than on my own writing), and said if she still felt comfortable recommending me to him I was interested. After reading this, she said was comfortable recommending me and would be passing my information on to him.

Now we finally get to the question part of this post: I've never hired an editor. I've never worked as a free-lance editor of this sort. But I know a lot of you have editing experience and/or ties to universities, so I'm hoping you can give me some guidance here: How much do editors usually charge for something like this? Should I be charging by the hour or by word count or what? At this point I have absolutely nothing to go on other than my instinctive valuation of money, which I already know is seriously fucked up from years of being broke.

One of the books I'm currently reading is volume 3 of I'm in Love with the Villainess, a Japanese light novel by Inori. As I was reading this morning, I was struck by this quote from one of the characters:

They say the elderly tend to look back fondly on the past; I think it's because we envy our younger selves, who had yet to make the mistake we've made now. It's easier to wish to change your past than to acknowledge what you've done.

While I wouldn't classify myself as elderly, I can certainly relate to this idea — when I look back, I find myself not thinking that the past itself was inherently better, but instead that had I done something different — if I could have magically had then the knowledge I have now — that I might perhaps have been able to end up in a better place now.

Like many 1980s kids, I was introduced to bonsai trees through The Karate Kid. In the years since, I've intermittently entertained the idea of trying to train a bonsai tree — and maybe someday I'll get around to it. In the meantime, though, I enjoyed reading this article from NPR celebrating the 400th birthday of the Yamaki Pine, a bonsai tree which survived the atomic blast at Hiroshima and then was gifted to the United States by the government of Japan in 1976. I was particularly interested to discover that one of the bonsai experts/enthusiasts featured in the article was from New Orleans, and that one of his trees which was photographed for the article was a bald cypress, which is a type of tree that I'd never seen as a bonsai before.