catching up

So, that was a bit of a break. A perfect storm of regular due dates, rush projects, and minor crises conspired to keep me away from my February manini project for a week. But now I’m back on track and catching up.

I am supposed to be working on a rush work project right now, but they sent me the wrong file, so now I’m in a holding pattern until the new file comes in. Perfect time to knock a few things off the list!

This morning, even before the wrong file arrived, I cleaned up the baseboards. I don’t think they’ve been touched other than cursory dusting since this house was built the year after I was born, so it was time. Forty-some years of accumulated scuff marks from vacuums took about an hour to scrub off to a point where they were much less noticeable. One of these days we’ll repaint all the trim in this house, but for now this makes me feel better, not seeing giant gray smudges all over the baseboards at the top of the stairs.

Onward.

The next thing I tackled was organizing my business reference notebook. As much as I love the idea of going paperless, the reality is that, for me, some things are just easier to have on paper. Over the years, I’ve accumulated a bunch of style guides, memos about payment and other procedures, emails about pet peeves and name changes and such from my clients. And I’ve saved a few other useful tidbits here and there, too, like a chart of the Chinese dynasties (I work on a lot of Asian studies books). They’ve lived in a three-ring binder for the last decade or so, willy-nilly, no rhyme or reason.

I had some nice vinyl three-ring tab dividers left over from a project I worked on last year that is now over, so I pulled that notebook apart and reused the dividers to make divisions in my notebook for each of my clients (and subsidiaries, for a few). I tore apart all the stapled things and put them individually into sheet protectors so I can simply flip through to find what I need. And the binder is one of those good ones that has the rings mounted to the back cover, so everything opens neatly flat. A few non-client-related things have crept in there over the years, so I culled those and stuck them in a different binder to deal with at another time.

I even made a label for the cover and the spine. Done.

Next.

A long, long time ago, I kept passwords and other computer-related data in a little book. Dumb, I know. As I was digging through some shelves a few weeks ago, I found my little computer book and determined to do something with it. I had no idea if anything in it was still relevant (my Sprynet access info from 1996, anyone?), but figured I should check.

Very old Microsoft Office serial number: no.

Old address for emailing photos directly to Flickr: no, this is now a different address.

Very old assorted Adobe keys: no. Have since upgraded and have different keys.

Passwords for an email account I deleted: No.

Eighteen more pages of the like: No, with one exception. Exception entered into 1Password, pages shredded, and we’re done with that.

Now what?

Oh, the magazines… the magazines…

Got a good start by sorting them into piles and tossing those I’m just not going to get through, but the updated file seems to have hit my email, so finishing with that is just going to have to wait a while.