What I did on my Vacation

It was a vacation week for me last week, and what I did on that vacation is probably less notable than what I did NOT do. Because I didn't work. Not really.

I had plans to work. I was going to print off the relevent financial information for last year and take it to my accountant so he could file my corporate and personal taxes... but I didn't. I was going to write my skit for the upcoming Angels Over Sandpoint Follies production... but I didn't. I was going to clean and organize my office... but I didn't. I was going to sort through my clothes and take to goodwill everything I don't wear... but I didn't. I didn't even post on this blog. (Sorry, Marianne.)

I did read and re-read a number of books, some quite good (make sure to check out Thunderstruck, a non-fiction book about the late 1890s and the lives of Guglielmo Marconi and Harvey Crippen. And Laurie Garrett's Betrayal of Trust is a perennial favorite for me). I watched a tournament of 10-12 year old girls playing club volleyball in Spokane. I attended the Erika Luckett concert at DiLuna's (AWESOME!). I played our second game of volleyball (losing both matches and thereby continuing our dead last position). I watched my favorite football team get creamed in Superbowl, and competed in Karaokee competition with my beautiful girls. I watched the last home basketball game in Clark Fork for our girls (again, awesome. Rayna Allen went out with a blaze!) and I visited with my son, who was down in our area for a week.

I also worked... a little bit. I taught my classes at Clark Fork (their newest newspaper should be out this week), and organized a meeting on our extra-curricular programs for the Booster Club. I did my bookkeeping work for the mad scientist. And I bought a new design program to do layout on the River Journal, and then lost myself playing with it on the computer for a couple of days, learning how to use it.

If I can figure this program out, it's going to save me a lot of time when putting together the pages for the paper, but until I do, the learning curve is going to be costly in terms of time spent. For example, it took me 35 minutes one day to figure out how to center text in a frame. And I still didn't actually figure it out - I mean, I didn't learn where the software stores that information. But I did find out a keyboard shortcut that works.

I have been putting together template pages for the next issue of the paper, and hopefully I'll be able to put those pages together without too much difficulty and in time for meeting my next deadline (next week). Keep your fingers crossed for me.