A Learning Experience

Movie Quote of the Day:
“I’m making this up as I go.”
–Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark

Since DH is home this week, it allows me a little extra time in the morning so I’ve been watching the local morning news. At the end of the program this morning, they did a story about the next Indy movie. They said a script had been approved and they were waiting on a yes from Harrison Ford. This is not news to me; I already knew that (being the obsessed Indy fan, I keep abreast of all the developments). Anyway, one of the anchors said, “I’ve never seen any of the Indy movies.”

HELLO? Did I hear that right? He’s NEVER seen these movies? How does he live with himself?

Of course, I’m the girl that wrote my own Indy adventures with my best friend in junior high. She was more of an artist than I was and illustrated it, comic book style. She and I were Indy’s sidekicks on a mission to find…something…I can’t remember what our adventure was. But I do distinctly remember going to “Pookie Wookie Palace”. heh heh I’m so sad I don’t have it anymore. I have no idea what happened to it. Lost in transition from teen to adulthood I suppose. That was my first foray into fanfic.

My first full-length novel (on notebook paper, about 200 pages, front and back and all handwritten) was the story of a girl who got sucked into the future and into the middle of a inter-galactic war. It was my Star Wars-ish space adventure with just a touch of Star Trek thrown in for good measure. Can’t find that one either. Not that it’s publishable, or anything. I’d just like to read it again to see how bad it really is…and how far I’ve come.

My stories haven’t changed much over the years. They’re still about a guy and a girl and falling in love. The backdrop may change from a contemporary setting to a fantasy world to the cold depths of space. But the theme is still the same. It took me a while to decide what kind of writer I was, but when I looked back at the types of stories I wrote and I saw the recurring theme of it, I realized then that I was indeed a romance writer.

The Frustration of Computers
Yesterday at work we had a proposal to get printed and bound. I had tab dividers to print and covers to print and laminate. This is all standard stuff when it comes to getting a proposal ready to go out.

However, the printer decided it was not going to cooperate.

Of course, this is because it knew I was on deadline and decided to be cantankerous. The tabs would feed through the manual feeder and then just before exiting into the top tray, they’d stop. Just stop. And the printer would “think” it was all done printing. Not realizing this, I would continue to print the tabs and then jam the stupid printer. So once I realized what was happening, I could “manually” remove the tab from the innards of the printer. Talk about a pain in the arse. It took me nearly an hour to print eleven sets of tabs (at least there were only three per set).

Finally got those printed and then the stupid printer decided it didn’t want to print the last section (from Word) correctly. Had to make it a PDF file to get it to print.

THEN went back to GBC punch the covers and everything and get them bound. The first cover I put in the punching machine STUCK. The little teeth wouldn’t release it. GRR Luckily, we still have Old Reliable and I was still able to get all eleven copies bound and ready to go.

So…I’ve learned you really can’t depend on computers and/or machinery in a time crunch!