Well, dear readers, as I’ve said before (and hopefully will say again), there is nothing quite like seeing one’s book fully designed for the first time. I spent several hours yesterday seeing just that and it looked quite wonderful, thanks to the design skills of Mr. Grant Geissman. Whilst I was there, we fixed a few things and we’re having some fun at the end of this book with a little appendix of photographs of the significant locations in the book. So, now it’s on to proofing – we’ve set up a few new guidelines for ourselves because certain rules of old about what they call bad breaks no longer seem to apply. We normally spend painstaking hours correcting those, but last year I happened to actually open about twenty books written in the last ten years and they all had the kind of bad breaks that we so carefully correct. So, obviously rules change and I don’t think we’re going to be so strict anymore – we’ll do some, but not nearly the number we used to. If it’s good enough for the big publishing houses and authors then it’s good enough for us.
I got up quite late, after about nine-and-a-half hours of sleep and a couple of really odd and somewhat disturbing dreams. I didn’t really have time to do much before it was time to mosey on over to Grant’s house to work. After we finished, we went to Mel’s, where we both had a sandwich. Then I toddled over to Staples and made two copies of the book – one for me to proof, and one for twelve-year-old Melody Hollis, who’s been badgering me about reading it for three week. She really loves the Hofstetter books. Then I came home. My allergies were terrible yesterday. The weather here has been surreal. First, all that rain, buckets of rain, followed by three days of over ninety-degree heat, followed today by a somewhat gray and coldish day. So, I proofed a few pages, then sat on my couch like so much fish, where I promptly fell asleep, just as I began part two of The Ten Commandments.
The next thing I knew it was thirty minutes into part two, so I went back to the beginning and watched part two in its entirety. With a transfer looking and sounding this splendidly splendid, it’s just impossible not to enjoy the film, and enjoy it I did. It’s just a stupendous job by Paramount’s restoration team, and they deserve every kudo available.
I then watched a second motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled Fracture. I assumed it was a new movie, but it seems it was made in 2007, where it promptly bombed. It stars Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling and it’s a thriller, or so the back of the Blu-Ray package stated. It’s basically just the standard issue junk that they seem to do these days. A tired plot with a predictable “twist” that the audience is, most likely, onto a lot before the prosecuting attorney. Hopkins is always fun to watch, so that part was fine. Gosling is just another of today’s mumbling, narcissistic actors, so I simply found him irritating from start to finish, and I couldn’t understand about seventy-percent of what he was saying. Funny, I had no trouble understanding Mr. Hopkins or the wonderful David Straithern. The director, Gregory Hoblit, is competent and no more. But, it moves along and the film looks nice. It was a flop in theaters and must have disappeared very quickly. Transfer was nice. What the title Fracture has to do with the film is anyone’s guess.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I must try to get another good night’s sleep, this time hopefully with only nice and non-peculiar dreams.
Today, I am going on a little field trip to take some photographs for the book’s appendix, probably four or five more shots. Then I’ll have lunch somewhere, after which I’ll come home and proof for several hours. Then I’ll watch a motion picture.
Tomorrow, I have an early lunch meeting, then I have to ship a few packages, although I can only ship as many as I have printed out postage for. The problem with the helper being gone for a week is that I get questions from customers wanting to know if there disc was shipped, and I can’t check the tracking information because it’s on the computer and I don’t know how to access it, unfortunately. She’ll be back on Friday, so some stuff will have to wait until then. Tuesday we have our stumble-through, Wednesday is sound check and show, and then Thursday we start the whole damn routine over again.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a field trip and take photographs, I must have lunch, I must proof, and I must watch a motion picture. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, as I hit the road to dreamland.