I am a perfectionist. But, I am also lazy. And a drama queen.
What an infuriating combination of personality traits.
Not only for me, but for everyone close to me. I am sure my co-workers think I am certifiable, what with the level of OBSESSING I've done over the 392-page cookbook that I FINALLY--FUCKING FINALLY--sent off to the printer today. Last week I spent a grand total of eight waking hours in my house. I lived at my office. I thought those days were a part of my DC past, not a part of my Western, laid-back present. Boo.
For the better part of the last couple of months, I have scanned and rescanned those 392 pages of budgetary-responsible cooking, hunting for the slightest imperfections. I have been thrown into melodramatic tizzies by the poor workmanship the previous "designer" so graciously left for me, and by my own piss-poor memory and disorganized ass. But what absolutely nearly drove me to drink by 9:32 a.m. daily were the thousand or so degree symbols. I've been scanning these pages for random, infuriating symbols that are really just superscript "o"s instead of proper glyphs. Good Golly that looked so, well, disheveled.
(I have a question that I think is perfect for Bibliodiva: is there a formal name for a degree symbol? For all my bitching about this I really shouldn't be ignorant of its proper nomenclature.)
Geezuz, I hope I don't find one of those little fuckers that I've missed until the damn book has been back from the printer for at least two months. At least. I think my skin will spontaneously peel right off my face and my left eye will pop out of my skull if I see one of those lurking, hideously fat degree markers in the next 60 days. Make that 90 days.
Whoa. I need some sleep. (Without dreaming of the index. I am not exaggerating; I've woken up every night for well over a week dreaming about the layout of the index.)
After I get some sleep, I am going to get me a life back, too.
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The DC job that I just left involved a lot of formatting and a bit of graphic design, and over time I developed that kind of crazy attention to detail too. For example, sometimes there would be these bullets that LOOKED exactly like the perfectly round, black bullets that we used, but were sneakily slightly oval-shaped. Only I could see the difference, but I would spend hours scouring our documents to make sure I had eradicated every single oval and replaced it with a perfect circle.
ReplyDeleteI totally feel your pain, is what I'm saying.
Oh My Good Grief. I'd have NIGHTMARES about those little ovals... I would!
ReplyDeleteI hope you took a week or so off in between jobs. You deserve it!
I didn't! I'm not taking any time off at all! I start on Monday!
ReplyDeleteThe reason for all these exclamation points is that I am SO DUMB for not thinking of taking time off. I had never changed jobs before and it just didn't even occur to me as a possibility, even though I had vacation time saved up at my old job (which I will get paid for). I only thought of it once everyone at work started asking me if I was taking time off.
At least next time I'll know.
From my limited searching, the only thing I could find out is the degree symbol is called..."a degree symbol". Amazing how that works out!
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