Another long day at work. 11 hours before I forced myself away from the computer. Oy vey! Got the 57-page book done. Got lots of help from my co-workers on all the other work. Still haven't figured out my February book, but Vicki and Muriel will train me in tomorrow and that's good.

We had a team meeting which I can't talk about, but one of the results was that I came up with the idea of creating "Best Practices" fact sheets that we can send to our vendors. This is for tedious discussion of things such as hanging punctuation, proper use of tabs, etc. We really need to create a way to interact with our vendors productively and see some progress in their abilities to meet our standards. Of course, I don't have any time to produce such documents, but I would love to see it happen. Somehow. Some day. Maybe I can track down a couple of typography teachers and see if they would be willing to provide feedback on the project. I'm thinking of Nick Shin and Ilene S for this sort of thing.

After about eight hours of plowing through jobs, I spent a couple of hours just clearing off my desk and setting aside the projects I need to finish when I have time to work on them. I need to write a couple of paragraphs and find pictures of Mom's 80th birthday party to share in the team newsletter. I have to update the auxiliary dictionary instructions. And I have to finish up my IDP -- Individual Development Plan. Like I'm gonna find that time. Yikes!

A couple of good things this week: two of my co-workers commented on jobs that I had started, but fobbed off the edits because I was tied up on the huge book. Both mentioned that the files were set up in a way that showed somebody really cared about quality work and made it easier for the edits by planning the documents correctly in the first place. It was great to hear because it's the sort of thing I do, but never know whether it's worth the effort.

I updated the flyer I did for the December 18th anti-war protest. I killed a reverse I did because the cheap printers we are using are unable to maintain the black without blurring the whites. Just goes to show you that creativity means nothing if the printer can't print it!

Ravenhub is having trouble with his ankle causing sharp pains in the cold weather. I keep bugging him to call the doctor or go to urgent care, he keeps putting if off. I know the feeling, so I'm not about to whine too much. It's easy to avoid the doctor. But this pain seems over-the-top and has lasted over a week. He claims he will check on it tomorrow. We'll see.

Side note: Our 10-year-old neighbor once told us that "We'll see" was the equivalent to an 80% "No." -- he was working on percentages in math class and found a way to apply it in a real-life situation.

Got an e-mail from the Central Labor Union about a protest tomorrow at 7 am. The Public Housing workers have gone on strike. We're gonna try to make it. It will be cold and dark. Why can't we plan all our labor disputes for the summer? LOL!

Tomorrow night I'm going to the annual meeting of the Minnesota Tenants Union. It should be short and sweet. Some good victories this year -- especially the rental application fee ordinances. Not bad at all!