Finally Done

I was up before 9 a.m. yesterday morning, and I had hoped to get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal wrapped up and uploaded to the printer’s web server by early afternoon. But we all know how plans can sometimes go awry, don’t we? I ran into some problems in layout, basically in making small transitions from the PC to Mac format in some of the photos and artwork.

That put me behind schedule, and about the time I got that problem figured out, we lost power toy the AC outlets on one side of the motorhome. And, of course, it was the side where our computers were plugged in. I thought it was a breaker, but we checked them, and they were all good. I didn’t have a lot of time to troubleshoot the problem, so we used some extension cords to reach another outlet, and I was able to get the computers back up and working.

About 3:30, my cousin Berni and her husband Rocky arrived, and I’m afraid I had to be rude and talk to them while I worked on the last two pages of the paper. They were meeting Berni’s sister Vanessa here, before heading back up to their home in Muskegon, Michigan, and they left about 6 p.m. By then I had printed out a proof copy of the paper, and Miss Terry was going through it at high speed, because the folks at the printer had already called asking me how soon I’d have the files to them. It was after 7:30 by the time I finally made all of the corrections Terry indicated and got the files uploaded.

By then we were famished, and Greg and Jan loaded us into their truck to go find someplace to eat. Jan suggested King Wha, our favorite Chinese restaurant, and we all agreed with that real quick. It has been raining hard here for days, and it was cold and ugly, so the hot and sour soup really helped us warm up.

I told Greg about our electrical dilemma, and he quickly diagnosed the problem as a tripped GFI circuit. Back at the motorhome, we couldn’t find the bad GFI, but after a few minutes of head scratching and checking, Miss Terry remembered that there was an outlet in the back of a cabinet in our bedroom, and sure enough, it was a GFI, and indeed it was tripped. She reset it, and we were back in business. Thanks Greg, I should have thought of that myself.

The printer called a couple of times, to inform me of some problems with a couple of ads, and I uploaded new copies of the ads to their server, so they could replace them. This has been about the hardest time we’ve ever had in putting the paper together, but now that we seem to have made the changes necessary for the transition from PC to Mac, hopefully the next time it will be easier. I definitely plan to make a couple of dry runs between now and the time the next issue rolls around.

The last couple of days, I have only been answering e-mails that required a fast response, so if you wrote me and didn’t get a response, I haven’t been ignoring you, I just didn’t have time to reply. I’ll try to get back to you soon. 

As I write this, at midnight, the rain is still pouring down, the wind is blowing, and I keep thinking that just three days’ hard driving south would put me in the land of palm trees and white sand beaches. As soon as we get the paper back and mailed, we’ll be heading that way just as fast as our wheels can roll.

Thought For The Day -  Never go to bed angry. Stay up and plot your revenge.

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