All over the place
Today is press day for the Veggie Patch Gazette. I swear, the only days I look forward to going to work are when I go to work offsite, so I don’t have to deal with my vegetable garden.
I was in at midnight on Memorial Day, in a panic about possibly sending the wrong copy (i.e., the outdated server copy) of the paper to the printer, but I gave ’em the right one. I did have to fix a couple of corrupt PDFs, but that took all of 10 minutes. Unfortunately, I had made a full PDF for Cruise Director and Demure of the server copy, so I had to make a *good* copy and forward it — timestamped 12:22 a.m. In addition to the promised litany of Cruise Director’s comments when the thing comes out, I can certainly expect my office hours to be on the agenda, too.
Tiff said I must be dedicated to fly to the office at midnight on a weekend in my jammies, but damn it, I needed to be able to sleep!
Although I had taken yesterday as a personal day, I had to go to the Veggie Patch to pick up the printing checks, to the tune of $50K, that were a week late. That’s good, ’cause we wouldn’t have a paper without them! But it sucked to have to go into Club Medicated when I didn’t have to.
While I was there, I checked my VM. Turns out Cruise Director had ripped Ad Angel a new one over some decisions the layout guy and I had made with ad placements. Topping the list is that I ran a paid ad twice, when all he wants are his precious house ads run all through the rag. Unbeknownst to him, I had depleted all of the house ads — even the backup ones I had requested to be made for my convenience — so I asked Ad Angel if she minded if I ran an outside ad twice. She’d said OK.
So now that she’s involved in this cyclone of stupidity, she’s making the thousandth plea to Cruise Director and Graphics Goddess to have more house ads in more sizes at my disposal. I reminded Ad Angel that the last time I put a house ad into an empty space in the paper, I couldn’t sit down for a week, after I got my ass chewed out for running a dated ad. That’s the problem — all the house ads that have previously run have dates for special offers on them. So, effectively, I am damned if I run a house ad and damned if I run a paid ad for free — even though the latter makes our advertisers happy and thus more likely to send more business our way. But I digress.
I am probably gonna hear about it, too, that I ran a two-page ad for one of our rivals as the center spread. Ad Angel had e-mailed, asking me to avoid that at all costs, but after we added a bunch of pages and goofed with the layout, I flat-out forgot the request. Personally, I figure that our rivals will be happy with that, which may just make them more inclined to toss some money our way in the future. But Cruise Director will hit the roof. I’ve been warned.
I was so annoyed at the whole ad situation. Nobody cared that I was cutting paragraphs out of stories and doing last-minute interviews (per Cruise Director) on production day — my adrenaline kept me going, but unfortunately, my head can only hold so much information, and certain details escaped me. Luckily, they don’t know how many errors I made on the print order as well as on a couple of files that I sent to the printer, or they’d really have my ass. The good thing about the printers is that they are working hard to earn our money, so they work with me and help me to get over the glitches quickly and quietly — but at work, when you screw up (even a lil bit), your ass is hung out to dry and your ego is sent packing.
I snarked to Ad Angel that I thought workplaces were supposed to be learning environments. But yet no matter what I do, it’s wrong and the whole world feels Cruise Director’s wrath when it isn’t what he envisioned it to me. He was editor of his college paper (100 years ago) and while yes, he does understand my job better than anyone else there does, sometimes I feel like he just doesn’t get it (like when he asked me to spell out New York in a headline — which is a bad journalism practice!). And then he makes comments about the photo quality as well as who is in the photo (i.e., can we cut a particular person out of the shot — when that person was the one who sent the goddamn photo!). Ergh. I could go on. …
Unrelated, I had an eye exam yesterday, as my glasses have bit the big one, and it’s not even like it’s been sunny so that I can wear my prescription sunglasses when I’m driving. I have my mangled frames taped up so that the left lens doesn’t fall out. 🙂 I’m such a dork. LOL. But I did pick up a new pair of glases, as well as a year’s supply of contacts — both of which will be ready in 10 days. Meanwhile, I am attending “Contact Lens Class” on Monday morning, to teach me how to not poke my eyes out. Heh — I’m so friggin’ uncoordinated, I have no doubt that I will be bleeding out my eye sockets in no time!
I totally forgot — my birthday present to myself is an emerald ring set in white gold. The story was bizarre — I had been traipsing around Landmark Mall with Shan, looking at jewelry and bemoaning the expense of emeralds as well as the fact that they can’t be set in silver because the stone is too hard and the metal is too soft for the two to ever work together. Lo and behold, I suggested we go into an upscale jeweler so that she could get a ring guard for her engagement ring, and so help me, we saw my ring — it was set in white gold and it was on sale too! So yay, I have my first emerald in a silver-looking band — and it’s my birthstone too. I promised Shan I’d give it to her daughter on her 18th birthday (because by then I hope to have upgraded a wee bit!). Now to just get the kid out of the womb — can’t wait till September!!!