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Just when I thought I graduated a friend warned me: As soon as you think you know about rivers, you get humiliated by one.
Well, luckily that didn't happen this month but the newsletter gave me a dunking of a different sort. After years of schedules, I usually pride myself on meeting or beating deadlines.
February sneaked up on me and blasted me with a cold awakening.
There I was at midnight, thinking I could whip out a newsletter in record time (less than 8-10 hours) since it was deadline time. There's no point in boring you with a litany of what went wrong but the timing was cosmic. The computer, lovely 'puter, decided to go into slow motion. The cable connection went south. Then, oh, joy, I opened what I hoped would be great stuff only to find pictures embedded in Word.
Microsoft Word (groan, this is not the time to hold forth on Bill Gates) has this cute thing where you can plop pictures in a document. When they don't float around, it's pretty neat. But just try getting them back out so you can use them in the code for publishing online. It's possible. So is climbing Mt. Everest, losing weight, or extracting your own teeth and it's almost as much fun.
After a long, fruitless session, it was time (3 AM) to do the only sensible thing: make cookies and eat them.
Another session followed in between other minor commitments (like the day job, for example).
At this rate, editing this thing will be so fattening, I'll need a 20-foot tripper just to stay afloat!
Someone sent me photos and no story. Time for creative writing 101. But this isn't a fiction letter, it's a newsletter.
Hmmm. Much more of this and the cookies will be replaced with Scotch, straight up.
Lack of sleep finally took it's toll making me sick so I missed a meeting for the first time in a long time.
Naturally, that was the one where I've heard that I got some kind of award. I don't know what it was but maybe we'll find out this meeting.
Before I have to join Overeaters Anonymous or AA, won't you help, please? Send me trip reports and stories. They don't have to be fancy. In fact, less is more. Plain text in an email is lovely. Scribbled notes on a paper napkin suffice. I'll do the spell-check thing and basic editing stuff. Just the facts, ma'am.
Send photos in slightly less than a jillion megabytes in one message. Send me funny items. Send me sad items. Send me ideas for events and trips. Send me a new cookie recipe (the chips and oatmeal are long gone).
If you send complaints, remember that I may be on the next trip with you and I do own a water gun. Paybacks are not a pretty sight.
See you on the river...
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