folding, formatting, and the logo that broke the bookseller's back

It's easy to lose perspective when you're, you know, me.

Over the last week I've been producing a Great Big Newsletter to mail out to no less that a thousand people, along with a few other publishers' catalogues and lists. My Great Big Newsletter is 4 pages of book cover pics and blurbs, a covering letter and an order form.

Given that the programme I'm using of necessity is simple old Word, I've not done at all badly with my text boxes and my tables and my logos and it looks a pretty bang-up job, though I says it as made it. However, when it came to the order form, my tables and my text boxes began disagreeing with each other, and since the computer picked that exact moment to implement a go-slow, the frustration started mounting.

As we all know, that is the moment to go for a walk, or at the very least a cup of tea and a flick through the jobs section of the Dominion Post, imagining we'd really prefer to go for that "Sophisticated Lady Hostesses - earn a thousand dollars an evening" advert, or in fact anything that didn't involve a computer ever again, before taking a deep breath and starting again. And as we all know, none of us accept that at the time, and continue to sit and click and click and sit and click...

Eventually, due to the disagreement between the table and the text box, and their insistence that our fax number and email simply didn't belong in either of them, the computer made a final decision that an illegal operation had occurred and it must immediately close down and not let me back into my document.

Twice.

This meant bringing home the rest of the afternoon's other work to do in the evening, and it was while working on the general store newsletter last night that the final straw came. I duly downloaded the New Zealand Book Month logo (September, since you ask), and...it disappeared.

When I tried to put it into my newsletter, I couldn't find it. My little doggie search icon with his magnifying glass shrugged and said he couldn't find it either. Yet it was downloaded, and squatting insidiously like Philip Larkin's toad somewhere on my hard drive.

This is what finally brought me to tears last night.

I'm feeling much better now. I spent much of this afternoon folding a thousand pieces of paper from Auckland University Press in half and realigning my perspective settings.

Knitting? What knitting?