Acronyms and Angst

If the F-word offends, just ignore it in the following blog rant. I will use acronyms instead, though the meaning will come through loud and clear. (If you're curious about the definitions, they're explained at the bottom of the post).

I was finished with The Book on Wednesday, all rewrites and editing done. Yahoo. I had planned on spending Thursday and Friday changing the format into a pdf file, fiddling with an artsy cover, then sending it all to CreateSpace for my printed copy. I did one last scan on the computer and noticed a page had quotation marks that weren't in Times New Roman as they should have been.

How curious. 

Zooming the page to 200% for a closer look, I discovered that half the quotes were okay, but half had changed into a different font altogether. And not just on this one page but throughout the entire flaming book. For no apparent reason. Indiscriminately. Randomly. In some places, the quotation mark at the start of the sentence was different at the end. WTF..???

--Pause for screaming, gnashing of teeth and hair pulling--

I have now spent the last three days painstakingly--line by line--going through the entire book, changing every oddball quotation mark and apostrophe back to Times New Roman. I tried every trick I know to do this in one fell swoop, but of course, that would be too frigging easy. Let me just go on record here: NEVER use Microsoft Works for something this important. Ever. Hell will freeze over and Satan will be ice skating before I will go through this agony again.

To the acronyms. My book is FUBAR'd, a Charlie Foxtrot of epic proportions. I suppose I should just consider this a SNAFU and not look for reasons the Universe is telling me to BOHICA. I'm nearly finished with all the changes and have only been set back a week. All I can do now is say OSIJCO.

*******************************************

This morning on Ozzy's hike, I took a few photos because it's a gloriously beautiful day in Edinburgh. The sun is shining, birds are chirping, the daffodils are blooming. Below are two pictures, one of the boats at low tide on the Almond River, and one from the Manse (where the vicar lives) with the daffs growing out of the grass, and the Kirk in the background.

*********************************************************
This is where you stop reading if you don't want to know the definitions to the above acronyms. Look at the lovely photos instead and imagine the world is full of sweetness and light, not Satanic writing programs.

WTF: What The F***
FUBAR: F***ed Up Beyond All Recognition
Charlie Foxtrot: Cluster F***
SNAFU: Situation Normal All F***ed Up
BOHICA: Bend Over Here It Comes Again
OSIJCO: Oh Sod It Just Carry On