I just finished the indexing project in InDesign last night–(huge sigh of relief here and immediate crash with some mindless reading and sleep).

This project resulted in absolute, utter, raging discombobulation around here. Not because of the material, not because of the people with whom I was working, but because of software and file problems. Still, the time spent solving those problems engendered chaos. My to do list is astronomical: car to be inspected, taxes to be paid, house to be cleaned, bee hives to be inspected…. Frankie (the cat) has yet to forgive me, and even the ladies of the hives felt it–I changed their feeders to a different style just because cleaning and replacing was much faster.

In spite of that list, I’m contemplating something to do tomorrow that will be total pleasure. I came close today with an unhurried trip to the grocery store to get milk. Not to feel that I should be home working while I accomplished such a minor errand was wonderful. (The down from my grocery store trip was to learn that Maple View Farm–that provides milk in glass bottles was damaged by fire so won’t be supplying milk for about four weeks.)

Tomorrow, however, is going to be part of my post-work crash. I think I’ll indulge myself with a trip to Weaver Street Market, which also means I’ll be passing the “bee store” just in case there is anything the ladies need. I’m in search of some of my favorite “convenience” supplies for the freezer when I’m really pushed for time: Dorot frozen herbs, garlic, and ginger. (Of course that choice of the market location couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with proximity to Matthew’s Chocolates, could it?  No, certainly not!)

Now, back to what I really started to post about: all the problems with files for this project. Before I started this project I let the compositor know that I was working in Adobe CC 2016. We did a file test with me saving my .indd files back to .idml. Worked perfectly. So I started indexing the first section–biochemistry–and returned the file as planned. Problem–wouldn’t open; redo in CC 2014 and save as .idml. Problem–file opened but all the track changes which were essential to the editing staff were gone.

Download CS6 from Adobe CC. Redo biochemistry and microbiology–files open, track changes are kept. Problem for me–program crashes as I’m trying to delete and add to the existing index. Those of you working in InDesign know it’s not an instant load–much time spent restarting the program, until Lucie Haskins let me know a kind of work-around. (Thank you, Lucie!)

You just don’t delete but mark the necessary deletes for manual delete. (I have to say I appreciate all the comments from Facebook friends that helped with this problem, too.) So instead of clicking the delete button on the index panel, I started typing DELETE into the records that needed to be removed. (The compositor was kind and said that would work.) The frustrating part of all this–well it takes longer to type DELETE and save than to simply delete–but less time than restarting InDesign multiple times.

I finally “bitched” to the editor and I think I found the source of the problem–these are files that have been around for ages, and have undergone multiple index revisions  (this is the fourth that I know about) so they are littered with markers that are probably unused in the current versions! I did have a friend test on a different computer and these files still crashed InDesign. After the editor gave me the history of the files, I suggested that in the interest of preserving those files and having an updated index, it would be best to remove all the index markers, and re-index the book for a fresh start. (This is a book that gets a yearly content revision and index revision.) I’ve not had a reply to that email yet.

All in all, this has been a serious learning experience. I’m pretty comfortable with InDesign now, and I certainly learned something about my work habits under adverse conditions. I don’t lose it regard work, or the bees, but I do lose it with cooking and cleaning. I don’t get too PO’d with Frankie since I have PawSense to handle his forays across the keyboard when he thinks he’s been ignored for too long.

Fortunately there were some immediately edible things in the freezer–but any cooking simply fell through the cracks–and with it went the weight-loss plan that had accounted for 13 pounds! There were too many trips to the local diner , sometimes for meals because I simply couldn’t face cooking, and sometimes just to get out of the house and away from the computer. That’s part of my work-from-home that suffered from my lack of cooking. Usually my grocery shopping takes care of the need to see the outside world.

With luck, I won’t encounter this kind of thing again but I need handle the cooking and housekeeping better while it’s happening.  Calls for some thought on how I can do that (since Frankie simply will not cook or clean) and the bees need to be fed when there’s a dearth.