As you can probably surmise from the above photo of me looking full of myself with printed manuscript in one hand (sans the recipe section) and a tasty libation in the other, we are finished with the book. At least the first phase. Next will come all the editorial discussions and consequent minor (we hope) changes. Then the copy editing (a real drag) followed by galleys (requiring yet another read), and then the actual printed hardback. All that aside, we are through for now, and our lives can get back to some semblance of normalcy (or at least as normal as our lives ever get).

We got the manuscript finished on time only to learn that our editor is backed up on another book project and won’t be able to get to ours for another week. So, says she, take another week. But we’re already finished. So, we’ll spend this week reading the manuscript from the beginning, a luxury we’ve never had before.

I received a lot of suggestions from readers who were appalled by the messy, disorganized desktop of my computer (not to mention the messy desktop of my real desktop). All of you who were so appalled really don’t know the half of it. Pictured below are my desktop (in the top photo) and my laptop. As you can see, both desktops are in dreadful shape. I plan to fix them with a whole lot of dragging and dropping over the next few days.

I know, I know, it’s pitiful.

Despite my whining about the pdf files that automatically save to the desktop, I kind of like it. It means that with very little (read: none) effort on my part, each attachment I open and each pdf file I pull down is saved in a place that ultimately makes me deal with it. If I use Adobe Acrobat Reader (as I did for many years on my PCs) I open the pdf files then have to put them somewhere if I want to save them. Typically when I’m surfing the medical literature I don’t take the time to save them (unless it’s the specific paper I’m looking for) so I don’t. I always figure that if I really want the paper I can find it again. Problem is, I often can’t. The way it’s set up on the Mac – where they all save automatically – I ultimately stuff them away somewhere, but I always know they’re in one of a couple of places. So no more frantically searching the medical databases for a paper I remembered but didn’t save. I guess having a grotesquely cluttered desktop from time to time is a small price to pay. I still wish there were a way to open the pdf files in Preview and save them save automatically into the folder of my choice instead of on the desktop, but such is not to be. I am tremendously grateful to all of you who took the time to try to extricate me from this mess with your suggestions via the comment section. Thanks very much.

If you want to see how happy I am to be finished with this phase of this writing project, take a look at the YouTube video below. Watch the guy in the yellow sweater. He’s almost as happy as I am.

You get the idea.

Now that I’ve got some free time, I’ll go through all the comments that have stacked up. It’ll take me a few days because there are about a hundred (literally), but I’ll get them done. This blog isn’t the only thing in my life that has fallen behind since I’ve been under the gun the past month or so on this book – there are a lot of other projects I’ll be digging out from under as well.

Thanks for your patience. I really appreciate it. I’ll have another real post up in a day or two.