So along about the middle of the night, our latest issue, The Kelpie, went live on Amazon. Really…if you can stand a little explicit biology (this one is relatively tame in that department), you have gotta read this crazy little squib. It’s quite short — probably reading it beginning to end will get you through the waiting room at the dentist or the doc’s office. But what it lacks in length, it makes up for in Halloween spookiness. Our author came up with the craziest idea, and from there built it into quite a dark and spooky story with an odd, didn’t-see-that-coming twist.
Only one serious hangover from yesterday: the new Excel file I built for WonderAccountant to view the details of checks and deposits (now that I can no longer use Quickbooks online in its new incarnation) crashed when my computer went down yesterday. (You’re surprised by a catastrophic crash, after all those shenanigans? Surely not!). MS Office for Mac saved the files as “Version 1.” When I saved it back down to disk as an .xlsx file and then tried to reopen the file from that location, I got a “corrupted file” message. NOTHING I tried would reopen it.
But I did manage to reopen the “version 1” file, which I’d stupidly closed because Excel wouldn’t let me open a file with the same name, by calling it up from “Open Recent” in the File menu. You must be calling on something that resides in memory when you do that. When I saved it back down AGAIN as an .xls file (which usually works), it again wouldn’t re-open. Saving it as an .xlsb file finally did recover it and save the data in a file that will open.
Claro que it’s time to back up that entire disk and DropBox to the flashdrive…
Ugh. I worked until 11 p.m. last night, having started at 5:30 a.m. What a bitch of a day. Now, though, only about 75 pages of Honored Client’s book remain to be re-read, so I probably will be done by the time we meet on Friday. I sent him what I’d finished so he’ll have time to review 95% of the book, just in case something comes up on this end.
I’m supposed to go to a local FINCON group’s get-together this evening. Though they’re meeting at my hands-down favorite Valley restaurant, it’s way to Hell and gone in Tempe, and the weather is threatening some major rain. Really, I do NOT want to drive to Tempe through rush-hour traffic in a storm. It’s dangerous enough to navigate that effing freeway under the best of conditions…I do not use the term “fellow homicidal drivers” lightly. When it rains, people around here go absolutely BATSHIT. Batshit on the surface streets is bad enough. But on the freeways? Holy cripes.
The grill cleaning dude came by at 7 this morning. He said it was raining between here and the East Valley, whence he had to drive, and that people were already running amok. Said it was truly a horrible drive.
Today’s next chore is to figure out how to use Mailchimp to send out my newsletter, which has been sitting on the hard drive for several days. This will require sitting through a 25-minute video — probably more than once. I know I’m going to hate that, and so I’m putting it off. Hence, this blog post. 😉
Just picked up $245 from a client. Tomorrow I should collect another $800 from a second rather charming client, and Honored Client…well, who knows? I haven’t toted up the time. But at $60/hour, it will be enough to bring home a little bacon. This will be good, because yesterday The Copyeditor’s Desk, Inc., disbursed a shitload of money to writers and editing subcontractors.
Wow! Here it comes: the sky is getting black and the wind is picking up. Just ran off to shut down the pool equipment as lightning and thunder begin to crash around us. Dollars to donuts we lose the power (and the wireless connection) again.
And so, to publish, before we’re shut down…