Since June of last year, I have been working with another graduate student to write a user manual for a piece of medical software developed here at the U. We finalized the text in late Feb and have been tweaking and tweaking up until late March. Then the files were whisked away to the printer. So after two weeks of proofing and waiting, it seems like the book is finally here. But is it here in my hands, where I can appreciate the tangible rewards after 10 months? Oh no, it's stuck over in someone's stoopid shipping department. The bureaucracy is killing me. Maybe it's the state budget crisis. Are state employees just trying to look busy?

I swear, this printing project has been full of middlemen. Last week during the proofing, I was sitting in the prepress room at the printer's with their resident Frame expert and it was bliss. Just the two of us, figuring it out. No sales people, no professors, no middlemen from pub services, just two professionals discussing the craft.

So it's Friday afternoon, I should be at the gym. But I'm waiting for their people to call their shipping people so they can find a van and deliver the 500 books. And I just need to see them! I need to make sure my name is spelled right, 500 times.