I think...

the BearFic is DONE.

*tiredly blows party horn*

Now all I have to do is format it, print it, take it to the post office, and ship it off.

I'm far better today. Da Boy? Got hammered on day one, was pretty good on day two, although he went to bed early, and is FINE today. *glares* Darn him and his six-year-old robust constitution. At least I got some sleep last night. This is progress. Climbing stairs = still bad, however. *sigh*

I think...

the BearFic is DONE.

*tiredly blows party horn*

Now all I have to do is format it, print it, take it to the post office, and ship it off.

I'm far better today. Da Boy? Got hammered on day one, was pretty good on day two, although he went to bed early, and is FINE today. *glares* Darn him and his six-year-old robust constitution. At least I got some sleep last night. This is progress. Climbing stairs = still bad, however. *sigh*

Ahahahahaha. Ahaha. A-HA. *diez*

Did I really just say this in my last entry:

Now all I have to do is format it, print it, take it to the post office, and ship it off.

And what a lovely dramafest THAT turned out to be.

Adventures in formatting, printing, and post officing, let me show you them.

As many of you may or may not know, I use WordPerfect. I know everyone uses Word, Word is the Gold Standard, I should switch to it for a myriad of reasons...but I don't wanna, frankly.

Of course, this causes problems when my printer acts up. As in, spewing black ink randomly on the edges of the page, when I've just put in a brand-stinkin'-new brand-stinkin'-name cartridge. I tried printing out the first page of the story numerous times, and it kept giving me that. I printed out the cover page a couple of times, and it gave me a lovely and strange black rectangle on the page. Yeah, that ain't gonna fly.

So, I call my local Office Max. "Can you print out a WP doc?" I ask. "Nope, sorry." Well, CRAP. What sort of OFFICE STORE can't print out a common format? So I call Office Depot. "Sure, but the print person leaves at 5:30." So, I get the doc onto my thumb drive and race over there, ten minutes to spare.

And the first machine she tries it on won't open it.

I headdesk. Almost literally. Reluctantly (she can sense my despair, but wants to go home, I can tell), she tries the other machine. It pulls it up and prints it out freakishly quickly. YAY! thinks I. Until I see it, and it's in Ariel font. I need it in Courier. Which it's saved in. AUGH.

Dammit. I should have tried Kinko's, shouldn't I have? Hell, they're open 24 hours. Okay, next time.

So, anyway, I give her $2.75 for a doc I can't use and come back home, pissed off and nearly in tears from frustration. "Screw it," sez I, and decide to wrestle with the printer again. So I tell it to print the whole doc. Have a party, printer! Maybe you'll get your shit figured out halfway through and I'll at least have that much I can use, and then reprint what I couldn't use, right?

And it prints. And it's pristine. All that drama...for nothing. Whatever, eat my shorts, Epson. Fine, I get it packaged up with a SASE and hie me to the PO, which, in my memory, closes at 6:30.

I get there at 6:15, and there's one car in the lot. One. My PO is NEVER this not-busy. Crap! thinks I, did they close early because it's New Year's Eve? You know what, screw it, I can use the self-service gizmo and stick it on the card if they're actually closed. I passed "heartily sick of this shit" about six exits back. But there's no notice on the door, so I walk in.

And they're open. I'm in an out of there in, like, a minute. This never happens. I breathe a sigh of relief and wish my postal peeps a Happy New Year. And the BearFic is off to Writers of the Future.

Now watch it get lost in the mail...

Ahahahahaha. Ahaha. A-HA. *diez*

Did I really just say this in my last entry:

Now all I have to do is format it, print it, take it to the post office, and ship it off.

And what a lovely dramafest THAT turned out to be.

Adventures in formatting, printing, and post officing, let me show you them.

As many of you may or may not know, I use WordPerfect. I know everyone uses Word, Word is the Gold Standard, I should switch to it for a myriad of reasons...but I don't wanna, frankly.

Of course, this causes problems when my printer acts up. As in, spewing black ink randomly on the edges of the page, when I've just put in a brand-stinkin'-new brand-stinkin'-name cartridge. I tried printing out the first page of the story numerous times, and it kept giving me that. I printed out the cover page a couple of times, and it gave me a lovely and strange black rectangle on the page. Yeah, that ain't gonna fly.

So, I call my local Office Max. "Can you print out a WP doc?" I ask. "Nope, sorry." Well, CRAP. What sort of OFFICE STORE can't print out a common format? So I call Office Depot. "Sure, but the print person leaves at 5:30." So, I get the doc onto my thumb drive and race over there, ten minutes to spare.

And the first machine she tries it on won't open it.

I headdesk. Almost literally. Reluctantly (she can sense my despair, but wants to go home, I can tell), she tries the other machine. It pulls it up and prints it out freakishly quickly. YAY! thinks I. Until I see it, and it's in Ariel font. I need it in Courier. Which it's saved in. AUGH.

Dammit. I should have tried Kinko's, shouldn't I have? Hell, they're open 24 hours. Okay, next time.

So, anyway, I give her $2.75 for a doc I can't use and come back home, pissed off and nearly in tears from frustration. "Screw it," sez I, and decide to wrestle with the printer again. So I tell it to print the whole doc. Have a party, printer! Maybe you'll get your shit figured out halfway through and I'll at least have that much I can use, and then reprint what I couldn't use, right?

And it prints. And it's pristine. All that drama...for nothing. Whatever, eat my shorts, Epson. Fine, I get it packaged up with a SASE and hie me to the PO, which, in my memory, closes at 6:30.

I get there at 6:15, and there's one car in the lot. One. My PO is NEVER this not-busy. Crap! thinks I, did they close early because it's New Year's Eve? You know what, screw it, I can use the self-service gizmo and stick it on the card if they're actually closed. I passed "heartily sick of this shit" about six exits back. But there's no notice on the door, so I walk in.

And they're open. I'm in an out of there in, like, a minute. This never happens. I breathe a sigh of relief and wish my postal peeps a Happy New Year. And the BearFic is off to Writers of the Future.

Now watch it get lost in the mail...