A quick post to wish everyone a Happy Mabon. My weekend has been positively insane.  I'll post something about it either later today or tomorrow, but for right now, I just hope everything is going well for everyone this holiday!

The newspaper industry thrives on deadlines.  Have to have your story written and proofed by a certain time.  The ads have to be finished and popped into the paper by a certain time.  The document has to be ready to built at a certain time.  So imagine my lack of surprise at the screaming phone call I received this morning right before I was due to go to work.

The story actually begins about two weeks ago.  My paper supports the local high school paper by selling ads and printing it.    I am sure that the ads sold do not actually pay for the printing.  So, this is the first issue of the new high school year, and we have a new ad director to boot.  I tried to impress upon him that like all deadlines, it would be in his best interest to meet this one.  Needless to say, he missed it.  He actually missed deadline by about five hours.  He wanted to miss deadline by over a day.  

What he actually did, to make deadline was to find out what ads ran in the last issue back in May and ran those ads.  The problem there was immediately evident to me, but not to him.  When he went to actually sell those ads, there were several that didn't actually want to run, and a few more that hadn't ran then that wanted to run now. Unfortunately that meant sending a new ad list to the high school.  The high school had already started to build their newspaper.

Which brings me to this morning.  Everyone expected me to FIX IT!  

When the individual who called me yelled that into the phone, I asked her what I was supposed to fix?  She responded with a "Just get in here!"  When I reminded her I was coming in anyway, she hung up on me.  Some people can't handle stress, others thrive on it.  She is of the former.

When I walked in and found out what the problem was, I told them all I could do would be to call the high school faculty advisor.  The pressman responded with "Oh.  I can do that."  He proceeded to call her and got the problem solved.  So I am not sure why I really got the call at all this morning.

I have one of those "Don't Panic!" signs out of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy mounted at my desk.  I think it's time to blow it up poster size...

On Saturday morning, I was sitting in my living room reading e-mail when a knock came at my door.  Thinking it was one of my husband's friends, I opened the door without looking, only to find a thin little man in a suit who looked like no one so much as the preacher man in Poltergeist II.  

He told me he wanted to share the word of god with me and wouldn't my life be so much better if I let Jesus in it?  I told him this was a pagan household and pointed out my no preaching sign on the door.  He said he didn't know what it meant, but I think it's pretty obvious, don't you?

Anyway, I am one of those folks who had a fairly traumatic childhood in regards to the church, before my goddess revealed herself to me. 

Just the few moments I had to deal with this creep at the door had me shaking, all the memories pouring on.  Coming from a fundamentalist background has left me -- my whole generation of my family, actually, with all sorts of issues. And I know we aren't the only ones.

I have to wonder if this fellow knows what sort of things the christian church put us through, and if he did, would he have come around proselytizing to folks who have heard it, lived it, and found it lacking?

I like to think he was a better man than that, but it is possible he was more concerned with putting another check in his "got ya" book to show his god after he dies, than he was with the people he was talking to at all.  

 Does that make any sense, or am I rambling again?

Hello, everybody.  Just a quick note to describe myself.  I am a paginator in a mid-sized town newspaper in Oklahoma.  I am also an aspiring author; just gotta get up the guts to submit my manuscript to a publisher! 

 

My life tends to circle around newspapers.  Not the news, per say, but newspapers.  The latest in layout style, the trends in hiring and firing, the drama.  It's a regular soap opera there, what with the angst.  All My Reporters, As the Press Turns.  One Newspaper to Live.  The renaming of soaps to suit a newsroom could go on and on.  

Anyway, I am more likely to post about the world of newspapers than anything else, so I hope I don't bore anyone with that.

I hope to meet a lot of good people here, and I welcome discussions from everyone!

 

BB, 

Kari