I got the proof copy of Understanding Your Bible yesterday and found a couple of minor layout issues which I quickly corrected. I sent the revised PDF off to Amazon for review and got an email early this morning that it was ready for inspection. Normally that means ordering a proof copy but I figured I didn't need to do that because I'd already seen one. So I just went through a very careful review using their online review tool...and found one more goof. The Table of Contents has the wrong page number for the last chapter. It's off by One. Page. Aaargh.
I immediately fixed that and sent in the yet-again revision. Now I wait for the next OK.
While eating lunch the UPS guy brought the proof of the second book. I was on the fourth page when I found the first mistake that needed fixing so I opened MS Word to make that change and any others I might find.
NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
The bullies at Microsoft decided they knew better than me about how my document should be formatted and took it upon themselves to "fix" a series of "errors." They gave me no way to revert to my version. (I know what you're thinking, but the "revert to last saved" didn't get rid of their "fixes."
THEY WEREN'T ERRORS!!
All my page breaks were gone. All my diagrams were totally messed up. The lists of questions at the end of each chapter had been reformatted so the last question had wrong indents, wrong font, and wrong style. In several places a random paragraph had font size changed and the text turned into all caps. And more.
I spent hours trying to get things back to what they should have been before I opened the doc. I could NOT fix the diagram on page 132 and had to call in help. Dear Suzy Bates, the C.E. Director at my home church is a Word wizard and I enlisted her help in solving that problem and finding a way to prevent Microsoft from doing this to me again.
Seriously, this made me a combination of very angry, very frustrated, and very discouraged. I thought I was SO close. And should have been.
Now I *think* things are set—that the minor issues I needed to fix after seeing the proof are done and all MS messes cleaned up.
I'm afraid to close the doc lest this happen again next time I open it. I think I'm going to export it to PDF, send that to Amazon, and live with whatever that produces.
The plan was to work on Sally after lunch and get the carb dialed in. That didn't happen!
Nor did we go shopping and out to our usual pizza joint as our Valentine's date. (We have a low maintenance relationship, for which I am very grateful.)
I leave for NY a week from tomorrow. At the coffee shop this morning I got another sermon done and an outline of the attached S.S. lesson. Each week's S.S. class takes off from the sermon the hour before and works issues related to the topic through interaction. Which is to say if they're not the kind of people who participate readily I'm in trouble.
Meanwhile we're trying to think ahead to what I need to take for a month on my own 3,000 miles away with one suitcase to put it all in. Tomorrow Pam will pick up refills of some prescriptions I don't need now but will before my time in NY is done. It's not like I'm going to the interior of Tanzania; they have stores there. Probably even a Walmart. But I'd like to be mostly prepared.
I'm hoping the weather is good enough for me to go on daily runs. I'm starting to get my legs back and don't want to lose my progress because of a month off. I'll take my cold-weather running gear and hope I can talk myself into gutting out runs in nasty weather if that's what happens.
I really am thankful for a great wife and almost 47 years of marriage. We have fun together and I sure depend on the ballast and balance she brings to my life.
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