December 5, 2012

• “Tomorrow is a brand new day, with no mistakes in it.”

  ^That quote comes into my head at least once a week. It comes from one of the Anne of Green Gables books, perhaps the first one, and I believe it’s Marilla who comforts Anne with these words at some point after Anne screws things up (all with the best of intentions, of course).

  When I was younger, I thought that adulthood meant getting smart about how things work and ceasing to screw up. Having lived as an adult for quite a while now, it seems that was a misconception on the part of my younger self. In fact, my ability to invent new mistakes never ceases to amaze me.

  Earlier this week I had a classic smh moment (“smack my head,” in case you need a translation) at work. I made one of THE stupidest graphic design mistakes ever.  Total n00b.  The Advancement office needed cards printed for scholarship recipients to use when writing thank-you notes to the donors of those funds. The students stop by the Advancement office to jot a note, then the secretary includes a photo of the student and gets them in the mail. 

  We paid an amazing photo editor (look her up: “Command Zee” is the name of her business here in the Upstate) take a photo of Belk Hall in the snow (from last year, maybe?) and make it look 10x cooler. We were going to print 5×7 cards. I laid all the plans with a local printing house (one of the owners has a daughter at Erskine) who enthusiastically tackled our print job with days to spare.  It was a rushed week with a lot of details flying about, so I dashed off the card design late in a day and kept rolling. 

  Normally you get to see a proof of a project before it’s printed, but that didn’t happen this time. Instead, the Erskine dad/printer stopped by my office to hand-deliver our cards–a nice gesture. Or maybe he was around to visit his kid and swung by. Whatever. He handed me a stack of neatly cut and scored cards…. 5″ wide and 3.5″ tall (it’s a horizontal design).

  …Oh damn.

  If you want a 5×7 card, you need to design a 10×7 card (so it folds to 5×7.  

  *sigh*

  Laugh or cry…..  I appreciate the fact that Cliff laughed.

  Dena, from Advancement, sweetly stopped by with a card and tactfully opened with, “I fear there’s been a misunderstanding….”  No, Dena. I just screwed that one up. lol

   

  I also had a very negative encounter with a VERY dark set of outside stairs on Tuesday evening. Not really on par with the Great Fall of Christmas 2009 in the Raleigh airport or the Nearly-Gangrened Knee in the Dominican Republic in 2008. But still painful. Limped around a lot today on my way to the 3rd floor, but I refuse to use the elevator. 

   

  But the real jewel of Tuesday was my realization at 8:30pm, after spending several hours working on the magazine that we’re trying so hard to get finished, which came after several hours of doing a photoshoot (for the above-mentioned scholarship thank-you cards) that I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be at the GAMAC rehearsal at 7:45. Due West is 30min from Anderson, plus I hadn’t had supper yet…..so THAT was a wash.  

  Is it possible to write a sheepish email? I certainly tried. 

   

  Tomorrow is a new day, with no mistakes in it. (Yet.)  

  Let’s see if I make it to GAMAC at 7.  

   

  PS. Shout-out to the Anne of Green Gables series for being a lot better than a lot of people are willing to give credit for. I learned more about the home front during WW1 from that series than anything else I encountered in my teen reading years.  The characters are good, and Montgomery takes the stories well past Anne’s childhood into the lives of her children. It’s a neat example of regional fiction, though I’ve found a lof of kids today don’t have the patience for that series.

  • 9:52 pm
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