My major accomplishment last week was getting The Longer the Fall off to the printer. That’s…kind of a big deal. In fact, it’s such a big deal, it really hasn’t hit me yet. Milestones miss me a lot these days. I’m always running too fast, I always have ten other pending projects that are overdue and that’s all I can think about. I accomplish something, it gets checked off the list and tossed into the “OUT” basket and zoom, on to the next thing. That’s how I feel right now–the holidays were way too long and slowed me down far too much. Now I’m trying hard to get back up to speed, and as usual, I’m just getting one massive sucker-punch after another.
But The Longer the Fall is at the printer. I spent four solid days doing the final edit and tweaking. I looked up some last elusive facts and finally got onto the phone with some very nice people up in Maine who were incredibly helpful. I wrote an Acknowledgments page for this book. 🙂 I cleaned up the file and imported it into InDesign. I’ve really gotten good (and fast!) at laying out book blocks. The Longer the Fall looks so much classier than Mortal Touch. It’s got cute little decorative dingbats. It’s got an Acknowledgments page and a page blurbing other titles in the series and a whole page of quotes from reviews of Mortal Touch. (That’s for the ARC, I hope to get some real blurbs for the final book.) Of course, I realized one thing I intended to correct and forgot, after I sent off the files, but I ordered a proof, and I’ll fix that before I order the short run of ARCs to send out. I just got notified that the proof has been shipped, it should be here in a day or so.
Now I need to get the cover design done!
More adventures with Customer Service…last March, I bought a digital kitchen scale to use for weighing and calculating the calories in my food. I’d really gotten dependent on it. I realized that when the foolish thing started to misbehave some weeks ago. I never mistreated it, but the button that powered it on and zeroed out the readout got progressively “stickier.” At first I thought it was because my counters are so warped, the scale wasn’t sitting level. But no…the button was failing. Finally, it wouldn’t work at all. However, if I popped a battery out and back in, the scale would power on, and then it seemed to be accurate. But that was a nuisance–and I found that I couldn’t manage without the scale. I was having enough trouble getting back to my disciplines as it was.
So, I ordered a new scale. The old one, an Escali brand, was about $30 from Amazon.com, I ordered one very similar, but a different brand, from Amazon for slightly less. Then I rummaged around looking up the paperwork on the Escali scale, and found that it supposedly has a five-year “guarantee.” I e-mailed the company, and they replied, almost immediately, saying I could send it in for a “warranty evaluation.”
Well, I thought…why not? I had to fuss around getting all the documentation for the online purchase, and I waited until the new scale arrived, because I couldn’t be entirely without one. As soon as I had the new scale, I packed up the Escali scale and shipped it off, and I guess I’ll see what they say. (The brand is really irrelevant, they’re all made in China.)
I’ve been updating and reviewing financial spreadsheets for the past two years, and getting ready to get my taxes done, and I’m really amazed at how well I’ve been doing. Of course, I’ve been cutting expenses to the bone and I live more frugally than most people could stand to even think about…but not to the point where -I- feel particularly uncomfortable, and clearly it’s been paying off, big time. I can’t believe how much I reduced my expenditures for things like groceries, pet supplies and utilities in the past year–I cut my heating oil bill in half! By Light Unseen Media spent about 50% more but its income increased by 250%! I hope to be really well positioned when the economic recovery gets going.
My new Dell computer’s delivery date has been pushed back a week, now they’re saying January 27. Meanwhile, I was glad this week that I have four browsers (so far!) to choose from, because Google implemented these new “security” measures on gmail and suddenly I couldn’t get into my gmail account at all from MSIE. I had to log in with…oh, it was either Firefox or Safari, I forget which–so I could turn the effing “security” off! (I have Symantec security software, Windows firewalls, a firewall on the wireless router–yeesh, nothing ever gets through.) I am not at all happy with Google these days, but what can you do? It’s like refusing to breathe the air because you’re offended by nitrogen. I’m totally enslaved to the Internet!
After the Patriots were blown out of the playoffs in such a humiliating fashion by the Ravens on the 10th, I will confess: I watched the Colts trounce the Ravens on Saturday with malicious satisfaction. So there! I like Peyton Manning, the Colts’ quarterback, he’s a fine player. (And cute. 🙂 ) It’s just that my first allegiance is to the Pats. But, still…after the Pats losing, and now the abysmal Senate election, I am seriously not a happy camper right now.
Of course, these disappointments are mere irritations compared to the ghastly and ever-worsening news from Haiti. I donated some money toward the relief efforts, but the magnitude of the suffering is simply too vast to comprehend. Thing is…I feel like I’ve seen this coming for years. I didn’t expect an earthquake, but Port au Prince has been poised for something this awful for a long, long time. So much human suffering is 100% preventable, but people just won’t face facts and do what’s necessary.
The past three days have been devoted almost entirely to shoveling snow and collecting a database of genre book review blogs (a task so tedious, I had to shut down every distracting app on my computer–e-mail, browser tabs, etc–and practically tie myself to my chair, *sigh*). Tomorrow, I feel like pulling down all the window shades, unplugging the phones and doing my taxes–or maybe, stay in bed (under the covers) and catch up on manuscripts and queries on Pig! Of course, I won’t (stay in bed, that is–the mss and queries are screaming for my attention and they’re going to get it). But that’s how I feel at the moment!
All my friends who went to Arisia–I’m glad you had a great time! 🙂
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