Shipped!

The pre-algebra book shipped to the publisher this afternoon at 4:30 and we are done. Well, I am done. My co-worker V still has to compile the teachers edition to be printed up separately in binders, but this will only take her about a day and was not on the do-or-die August 1 deadline.

Props to RB, my InDesign ace-in-the-hole, who came through with fantastically straightforward directions for putting together an index after the company that was supposed to do it flaked out on us and left V on the verge of a heart attack. Only a couple of days before, when he asked me what I was doing at my job these days, I said, "Are you familiar with Adobe InDesign?" and rather than laughing himself utterly to death, he was like, yeah, it's what I do. So when this index situation came up, I knew who to go to.

V's response to the instructional email was: "OK, this is what the InDesign book says, only much more clearly and in about one-fifth as many words. I'm printing this out." (It's always good to know that your friend who writes technical manuals as a major element of his job does better than the people who Adobe hired to explain it.) She was also particularly fond of the line that read: "InDesign's index functions are as lame as its table of contents functions are wonderful." One day I came in to work to find a post-it note on my desk that said "I could kiss your friend. The index is going to work." Etc. Etc.

Top (of Mind) Ten Victories from my Job:

1. My name did not appear as Sally Field in the acknowledgement pages, despite Max referring to me as such for the last few weeks.

2. When I called Robert to check the explanation of demand functions that I wrote for the book, he had no corrections for me. I cleaned up an entire section about revenue and cost functions. I have not totally lost my command of the most basic level of microeconomic theory. Nobody will need to revoke half of my undergraduate degree.

3. I rewrote a question so that the chemical solution that resulted from the combination of two other solutions was not referred to as "the final solution."

4. I did not kill a person who once said something that was (inadvertently, I believe) patronizing. I even got over it. Almost entirely.

5. I fixed so many bad answers to problems you would not believe. (Or maybe you would.) I only once made a disparaging remark about someone not being able to answer their own problems, and I don't think he heard me (but I felt like, oh shit).

6. I wrote problems that I was (to my knowledge) able to answer correctly, including one that made a co-worker laugh out loud when she saw it. I will share this one later because I am particularly pleased by it.

7. V pronounced me "scarily fast" and "eerily efficient" at various times. These things are true.

8. I did not miss a day of work in two months, despite migraines, cramps, fevers, and other (minor) problems.

9. I always had salad in the (free, all you can eat) cafeteria for lunch, and I never had dessert. I had ice cream on our ice cream social day and enjoyed dark chocolate chips on vanilla ice cream very much indeed.

10. Despite Max's insistence that I was going to keep working for him this fall, I stuck to my research writing plan hard enough that today I overheard him admit to someone else that I have "other plans" for the coming year but that he hopes to have me back next summer. I have been genial and non-commital on this point. Taking my cue from my dad's mother, I have taken the "that would be great" line, emphasis on would.

Since I sort of accidentally wrote ten things, I will number them in a Late Night-esque style and leave it at that (for now).

I am totally taking the weekend off, sleeping in on Monday (which in effect means sleeping until 7:00 or 7:30 instead of 6:00, but god what a difference it will make), and then getting back into this other stuff that I have let go for the past week or two as we made deadline on this book. (We did not, however, make book on this deadline.)