This waiting is nerve wracking

ahhhh, this is so nerve wracking waiting for DHL to arrive with my cookbook!!! I don't have a tracking number so I can't see its progress but I have checked my email a million times to see if the publisher had written to say the delivery had changed or there was something wrong with the book.  I have texted my guy a million times to see if it has arrived, so much so that I have run out of credit on my phone!  I was up at six this morning; even unconsciously I must have been thinking about the book arriving today. This is like being five years old on Christmas morning and being told you have to stay in bed until your parents get up before going downstairs!!! I wish the time would pass more quickly!!!

And so the learning continues - and I am succeeding

Okay, I am making some progress.  Last night I spent some time working on my new website to coincide with the release of the cookbook.  I am starting to decide that truly you can learn anything you set your mind to if you work at it.  I registered my new domain name for the website.  The company that is hosting my website suggested that I set up a CNAME to redirect traffic from my visible domain name to my hosting provider.  What?  So I literally just followed the steps of their instructions, and set up the rerouting of the traffic and guess what it worked!!  I have no idea what I did or how it works on the internet itself but I guess I did it right because if I type in my web address, it redirects to my website and masks the name so no one knows it is actually hosted somewhere else.  Anyway, see even in explaining it, you can tell I still don’t understand what I did.  But it works; you just have to tiptoe through the instructions and hope that you don’t screw anything up too badly!

I also got an email from the publisher letting me set up more online bookseller sites that will host my books for sale including some new sites previously unavailable to me in Canada. So the books will be available in the United States, Ireland, United Kingdom, Europe and now Canada.  I was pretty excited about it and the book really will be on almost all the most popular book selling websites like Amazon and Barnes and Noble, Blackwell, Ad Libris, Indigo and Chapters.

And best of all, I got the confirmation email that my proof has been shipped and should be here tomorrow!  First hurdle crossed, since I am assuming they would not send me a proof if the book was completely assembled incorrectly so I must have done something right last week while laying out the book and the cover. So with my proof I will be checking the final proof for errors, margins, picture quality, stuff like that.  I am so excited cause tomorrow I will see for the first time the result of all this work over the last six months!!  Yippeee.  Tomorrow may be a day full of tears when I finally see it.  

What's up with California

Okay seriously, how many newspapers are there in California!?!  So as you know I am still working through my email distribution list for my press releases and I found a great site which lists links to all newspapers by state in the United States.  I have already finished the UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia, Hong Kong and South Africa. And now I am working on the United States.  I have done about ten of the smaller states just to get myself started adn to feel like I am making progress.  But for anyone, including reporters in these very newspapers foretelling the demise of the printed newspaper, they should try transcribing the editor contact emails from the newspapers in California!  I have been working on this list alone for three days now, probably 15 hours in total and in an alphabetical list I am only at the town of Pacifica, maybe just past half way through the list!!! This list is killing me!  But just have to keep going so I have all my contacts!  There is a remarkable repetiion in newspapers names by the way; there are tonnes of Sentinels, Gazettes, Journals, Dailies and Acorns!  Such is my life right now, endless email transcription. Anyone want to buy this master list when I am done! :>

I am so sore

I am so sore!  Yesterday we got to the house about noon, or just before, and we decided it was all painting, all day.  Sure sounds easy, till you have to do it.  My brother in law and sister in law both came down to help us so the four of set to it.  We painted trim upstairs, down the staircase, through the front hall and then the living room and dining room.  We painted all the upstairs hall walls, main hall and living room and dining room!  Too much work.  I have such a pain between my shoulder blades.  We painted for 8 hours, with four people painting, amazing how much work painting is.  But I am so happy.  The colour I choose are beautiful.  The hall ways are one tone lighter then the living room and dining room and with the new crown moulding and all the trims painted brilliant white the colours just shine so well.  It is beautiful even if I was exhausted.  I could barely get up to go to work today.  I need my day job almost as a rest from my weekends!  A rare treat though after working we took our great helpers out for dinner around 8 to a middle eastern buffet restaurant with belly dancers for entertainment.  I gorged on hummus, baba ganoush, dolmades, salads, tabbouleh, great rices.  They had whole fish grilled, lamb, chicken, sausages, it went on and on.  And great mounds of hot fresh bread.  I was in heaven.  This place is only 10 minutes from our new house; oh it is going to be dangerous living so close!

Taking a break and dreaming about my new kitchen

What a good day.  Okay so last night, I heard back from Leslie, yes another Leslie, my customer service rep at the publisher about my files.  She said I did fabulous loaded them correctly and if there are no mistakes she will be sending me my proof by Wednesday.  Now I am starting to get excited.  We went to the house today to do some work.  My brother and father came down to help. My brother brought his dump truck, yes I have a brother with a dump truck he is an arborist and so needs one for his business and together with them and four friends we emptied the house of all the debris we have been collecting.  We took out the old kitchen so now the big dreaming has started on what the new one will be like.  We also lifted all the old tiles.  What a job that was.  There I sat on the floor a hammer in one hand a chisel in the other, lifting these old tiles,  hard work, dirty work, but it is finally all out.  So literally now the finishing jobs can start.  We decided today to run our new hardwood right into the new kitchen so I will have hardwood in my kitchen!  We stopped on the way home to look at new tiles, backsplash tile, and counter tops. Saw some beautiful travertine, marble, and granite, it is going to be hard to pick.  And tonight we are both tired and have decided it is going to be all us time.  No house talk, no work on the cookbook, website or advertising distribution lists, just us and left overs for dinner.  Whatever we can scrounge in the cupboards is dinner tonight.  Somewhat ironic I suppose considering I just finished a cookbook last night but sometimes leftovers are fine and being together is more important than cooking a meal.  Taking a break from everything and trying to unwind and relax after the last three weeks.  I need it, he needs it, we need it!

Production ready files at the publisher - hurray

It’s done.  I just uploaded the production ready files to the publisher.  Files are checked, problems are solved, and man does it look good!  I can hardly believe it.  I have to admit it hasn’t really sunk in that I am finished.  I have a speedy, anxious feeling on the inside, kind of a keyed up feeling. I am have been running so many directions and thinking about so many different aspects of it that it hardly seems real that it is actually finished.  I ordered my full run proof today and should have it by next Friday.  I hope once I have it in my hot little hands that it actually feels real!  Besides that, this last push has practically killed me.  I haven’t been eating, no sleep, always stressed, I feel like I could sleep for a week.  I am exhausted!  Happy but mostly exhausted!  Happiness will come later, when I am rested enough to recognize it!!! Yeah for me, first major milestone crossed!  Now let’s just hope I did it all right and there aren’t any problems with the proof.  See my next worry to keep me up at night.  But for now, yeah for me, and now sleeping for 36 hours!!!!

It's almost midnight but I am DONE

It is almost midnight but I am done!  The fonts are fixed, the PDF created, book is proofread and layout checked.  My eyes are sore, square and burning, really hope the proofreading is accurate.  I seem to get dumber as the night passes.  But the best part, the cook book files are DONE!!!!  Yippeee