Main Entry: book*map
Function: noun
Etymology : Middle English, from Old English boc; akin to Old High German buoh book, Gothic boka letter; Medieval Latin mappa, from Latin, napkin, towel
1 : the map of a book; summarizes the content of the book, page by page.
Main Entry: sig*na*ture
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French or Medieval Latin; Middle French, from Medieval Latin signatura, from Latin signatus, past participle of signare to sign, seal
1 : A large sheet printed with imposed pages so that, when folded, pages will run consecutively; usually comprised of 8, 16, or 32 pages
While the relationship between these two terms might seem tenuous to the untrained eye, they nevertheless share a very special connection. Similar to human relationships, the importance of this connection is often taken for granted and only realized when a disagreement happens. In the worst cases, the result is not unlike a highway collision, crashing so loudly that the world of publishing, for a moment, comes to a screeching halt to rubberneck and check out the damage.
Since most people find analogies to be useful, let me use one here. The pages of a book are like pennies, “cents” which add up to a certain dollar amount for the entire book. Imagine all of these pennies add up to $10.21. So, you pull out your wallet to pay for the book. Ah, but then you realize that you only have quarters. No pennies, no nickels, no dollars, only quarters. How many quarters do you need? You need 41 quarters, which adds up to $10.25. “But Erin!” you might protest. “That’s more than $10.21!! I don’t need that much—you’re ripping me off!” But of course, you know that’s not really true, because I would owe you 4 cents in change. If the “cents” are the individual pages in the book, then the quarters are the signatures. So, if I were to add five pages to the book, boosting the price to $10.26, that would mean that you’d need to give me another quarter to cover the extra five cents. Because you have to pay me (whether you like it or not) in twenty-five cent increments. And if I only have pennies to give you for change, that would mean that you’re getting a nice handful of pennies back (24 pennies, to be exact).
In keeping with this analogy, a bookmap is kind of like your itemized receipt for the book, accounting for every single penny, including those 24 “extra” ones I’m giving you back as change. If this receipt doesn’t indicate a dollar amount that is a multiple of $0.25, then there’s a problem. If someone decides at the last minute to alter the number of pages going into the book, but forgets about the whole increment thing, everything is thrown out of whack.
Moral of the story: remember that bookmaps and signatures love each other. They may seem indifferent to one another, but remember that their relationship is not to be neglected. They might need a little help with this—it’s a good idea to encourage them to pick up the phone every once in awhile and check in with each other. Chat about the weather, the latest neighborhood gossip, etc. Because, remember, if they get too out of touch, you might get hit by some shrapnel when they finally do collide and have one of those wake-the-whole-neighborhood fights. And no one wants that.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Erik & Kelly
Keep praying for these guys. This is the latest from the updates website:
May 29, 2006
Erik has been resting fairly well these past few days. Saturday we discovered a bed sore on his backside. It was inevitable as he hasn't been out of bed since we got here over a month ago. It's hard for me as i just don't want him to be in any more pain. It hasn't seem to bother him too much and the nurses are taking excellent care of him.
The boys are doing okay. My mother has been taking care of them and she's doing a great job. I've tried to get her help, but you can pray that God will sustain her. We have two very active boys.
The other day, Alex (2 and a half) asked my mom if she was his daddy. Life is confusing even as an adult, but certianly more so for a child.
You can continue to pray for wisdom as to whether or not we should bring erik home. You can keep praying that by God's grace he will daily sustain us and help us to continually hope in Him.
much love,
kelly
May 29, 2006
Erik has been resting fairly well these past few days. Saturday we discovered a bed sore on his backside. It was inevitable as he hasn't been out of bed since we got here over a month ago. It's hard for me as i just don't want him to be in any more pain. It hasn't seem to bother him too much and the nurses are taking excellent care of him.
The boys are doing okay. My mother has been taking care of them and she's doing a great job. I've tried to get her help, but you can pray that God will sustain her. We have two very active boys.
The other day, Alex (2 and a half) asked my mom if she was his daddy. Life is confusing even as an adult, but certianly more so for a child.
You can continue to pray for wisdom as to whether or not we should bring erik home. You can keep praying that by God's grace he will daily sustain us and help us to continually hope in Him.
much love,
kelly
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Insomnia
I can't sleep. Sigh. Tomorrow morning is going to be another sleepy one. Shannon had better proof my stuff extra carefully. Who knows how I'll spell "cyanobacteria" with my eyes closed?
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Obie
Brief update on the cat: He's doing fine. He's very happy to be home, and we're settling into a routine. He doesn't have to be in the cage 24/7 (like they told us at first). We're allowed to have him out as long as he's under our direct supervision--and direct means direct. Obie obviously has no sense whatsoever of his limitations with the cast on his leg, and if we turn our backs for a second, he's trying to go down the stairs or jump on the back of the couch. The first day we had him home, he slipped away from me and started walking on the ledge behind the railing, above the basement stairs! No fear, no common sense. That's our cat.
Here's a picture of him in his cage. Poor boy. We had to take him back to the Dr. today so they could check his cast (the first of many weekly checkups), and I think he's still mad at us about that. He does not like that place!
Here's a picture of him in his cage. Poor boy. We had to take him back to the Dr. today so they could check his cast (the first of many weekly checkups), and I think he's still mad at us about that. He does not like that place!
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Injured Cat (update--this is a long one)
I decided it would be a good idea to blog about the recent kitty cat drama, just to keep you all informed. If you’ve already heard this and are sick of hearing me talk about the cat, feel free to stop reading. I’m just putting the story down in one place so I don’t necessarily have to rehash the details every time someone asks.
The short version is this: Obie broke his foot yesterday. We discovered it yesterday morning. It requires expensive surgery and 6 weeks of recovery, during which he’ll be confined to a crate 24 hours a day.
The long version (aka “whole story with all the gory details”) is this: Yesterday morning I was feeding the cats and noticed that Obie was being more vocal than usual. He usually meows while I’m getting his food, just because he’s fat and greedy and hungry, so I didn’t think much of it. But when I turned around, I noticed he was walking more slowly than usual, and that he wasn’t putting much weight (any weight, after closer examination) on his back left foot. I got him to lie down so I could look at it more closely—his foot was definitely swollen and there was a red line (for lack of a better word) running up the side of his ankle. I thought it looked like a cut, but I didn’t see any blood, so I was confused. Craig looked at it and said “I think he’s broken something…”
I dropped him off at the vet on my way to work. They said they’d take X rays and give me a call. I asked, “So, if it is broken, what happens?” She told me that most of the time they can just wrap it or cast it, but that depending on the type of break, it could require surgery (to put pins in the bone), which would be significantly more expensive. Okay, I thought—we’ll wait and see. How bad could it be?
:Sidenote: So how did this happen, you ask? Well, since we didn’t actually witness it, we can only speculate, but we have enough information (both from past experience and from the scene of the crime) to put together a fairly accurate guess. First, we know that Obie likes to play on the stairs. We’ve seen him do this, sticking his whole body through a gap, wrapping himself around a stair. As well, twice we have witnessed him fall through the gaps onto the basement steps below (no injuries—just a thud and then he was up and playing again). He’s clumsy, and he doesn’t learn from his mistakes. So, we assumed that his injury was stair-related in some way. Secondly, Craig found a clump of white hair on the railing going down the basement steps (this still makes me cringe). Deduction: he must have hit his leg on the railing as he fell, which would explain why he’d never injured himself during any previous falls, but managed to break something this time. Lastly, the clump of hair was on the inside of the railing (as in, toward the wall). Based on this (and the X-ray results, which I’ll get to soon), I think he probably fell, caught his foot behind the railing, while the rest of his body continued to fall on the other side of the railing, and…well…*snap* :end sidenote:
So, the vet’s office called me during lunch and asked permission to sedate him for the X rays. They said he was “very aggressive,” which I thought was super odd for him—he’s not at ALL aggressive. But he’s not really a fan of the vet’s office, in general, plus I figured he was in a lot of pain. So, whatever—sure, drug him if that’s what you need to do to get the X rays.
Later that afternoon, the doctor called me to give me the results of the X rays. I could hear the concern in his voice right away. “Yeah…this is a pretty bad fracture…” Obie’s tibia (shin bone) was dislocated from his ankle, and his fibula (the other, skinnier bone) was fractured in three places. He said that if it was just an issue of the bones being broken, it wouldn’t be a big deal (“The joke with cats is, put two bones in a room together and they’ll heal.”). However, the dislocation had probably caused some significant ligament damage, which isn’t something he could fix at that office. “He’s going to need to see a specialist.”
I called Craig, upset, and explained the situation. He probably needed surgery. It would probably be expensive. The vet wants us to take him to an animal emergency room. We both needed to leave work early and take care of this asap.
We went to the vet and they showed/explained the X rays to us—one word: “ouch.” When they brought Obie out to us, he was very upset. If you’ve ever been near a feral cat or heard a wicket cat fight, he was making similar noises. Yowling, hissing, spitting, screaming—there isn’t an adequate word for the tortured sounds that were issuing from his carrier. I think I started crying again. They said he was just in a lot of pain (even with the pain meds they’d given him). Later, at the animal hospital (when he started freaking out again in the waiting room), they said he might also be disoriented from the anesthesia (remember, they had to knock him out in order to x-ray his leg)—I knew that this sometimes happened to people when waking up from anesthesia, but apparently it happens to cats, too. I think this was one of the more upsetting things for me, just listening to him scream like that and not being able to do anything for him.
So, they checked him in at the animal ER and we waited to see a doctor (he started flipping out in the waiting room, so they came and took him to the back. A very sweet nurse came out periodically to tell me how he was doing, that he had settled down and was comfortable, etc.).
When we finally got to see the doctor, she explained that we had two options: the first (and best) was surgery. The second (and cheaper) was to just cast his leg and see how it heals. Given the potentially significant ligament damage, surgery was definitely the best option, and just putting a cast on it would bring several risks that we weren’t sure we were willing to take (such as the risk that it wouldn’t heal properly, that it would have to be re-cast if it moved or came off, and basically the fact that if it didn’t “take” the first time and we decided to do surgery later on, scar tissue would have developed enough that the surgery would be more complicated and possibly less effective than if they just did it now). Plus, the “cheaper” cast option wasn’t exactly cheap anyway (over $1000 in the end). It looked like we were going to have a big fat bill regardless, unless we just decided to put him down (which she didn’t even mention and we weren’t going to consider, anyway). So, we decided to go with the surgery. We may have to sell our firstborn son to pay for it, but it’s a sacrifice we’re willing to make.
So, that’s where we are right now. They kept him overnight and did the surgery today. They called Craig earlier today and said that the surgery went really well. We might pick him up tonight, or they might keep him another night, depending on how he is when he wakes up.
Besides the expense, another difficult thing (which should have occurred to me earlier, but didn’t somehow) is that recovery time is going to be about six weeks, during which he will need to be crated. Like, 24 hours a day. My big, active, socialite cat is going to be confined to a cage for six weeks. This will be very interesting indeed.
Remember the electrical burn drama from last fall? (btw, we finally concluded that the burn was the result of Obie licking an outlet, not chewing on a cord. There were no chewed cords anywhere in the house, and we had witnessed him licking electric outlets in the past) We laughed about that in the ER waiting room yesterday, as we were filling out paperwork and came across a question asking “Has your pet had any serious injuries in the past two years? If yes, explain.” I remember thinking that was drama…that was nothing compared to this.
Amanda’s blog recently asked “Why do we love cats so much?” I am asking that question myself this week…asking it all the way to the bank!
(And ShanNON, if you’re still reading, did you notice my careful use of the words X ray, X-ray, and x-ray? Each with their own special spelling, punctuation, and part of speech? You can check the Style Manual, but I think I used them correctly each time.)
The short version is this: Obie broke his foot yesterday. We discovered it yesterday morning. It requires expensive surgery and 6 weeks of recovery, during which he’ll be confined to a crate 24 hours a day.
The long version (aka “whole story with all the gory details”) is this: Yesterday morning I was feeding the cats and noticed that Obie was being more vocal than usual. He usually meows while I’m getting his food, just because he’s fat and greedy and hungry, so I didn’t think much of it. But when I turned around, I noticed he was walking more slowly than usual, and that he wasn’t putting much weight (any weight, after closer examination) on his back left foot. I got him to lie down so I could look at it more closely—his foot was definitely swollen and there was a red line (for lack of a better word) running up the side of his ankle. I thought it looked like a cut, but I didn’t see any blood, so I was confused. Craig looked at it and said “I think he’s broken something…”
I dropped him off at the vet on my way to work. They said they’d take X rays and give me a call. I asked, “So, if it is broken, what happens?” She told me that most of the time they can just wrap it or cast it, but that depending on the type of break, it could require surgery (to put pins in the bone), which would be significantly more expensive. Okay, I thought—we’ll wait and see. How bad could it be?
:Sidenote: So how did this happen, you ask? Well, since we didn’t actually witness it, we can only speculate, but we have enough information (both from past experience and from the scene of the crime) to put together a fairly accurate guess. First, we know that Obie likes to play on the stairs. We’ve seen him do this, sticking his whole body through a gap, wrapping himself around a stair. As well, twice we have witnessed him fall through the gaps onto the basement steps below (no injuries—just a thud and then he was up and playing again). He’s clumsy, and he doesn’t learn from his mistakes. So, we assumed that his injury was stair-related in some way. Secondly, Craig found a clump of white hair on the railing going down the basement steps (this still makes me cringe). Deduction: he must have hit his leg on the railing as he fell, which would explain why he’d never injured himself during any previous falls, but managed to break something this time. Lastly, the clump of hair was on the inside of the railing (as in, toward the wall). Based on this (and the X-ray results, which I’ll get to soon), I think he probably fell, caught his foot behind the railing, while the rest of his body continued to fall on the other side of the railing, and…well…*snap* :end sidenote:
So, the vet’s office called me during lunch and asked permission to sedate him for the X rays. They said he was “very aggressive,” which I thought was super odd for him—he’s not at ALL aggressive. But he’s not really a fan of the vet’s office, in general, plus I figured he was in a lot of pain. So, whatever—sure, drug him if that’s what you need to do to get the X rays.
Later that afternoon, the doctor called me to give me the results of the X rays. I could hear the concern in his voice right away. “Yeah…this is a pretty bad fracture…” Obie’s tibia (shin bone) was dislocated from his ankle, and his fibula (the other, skinnier bone) was fractured in three places. He said that if it was just an issue of the bones being broken, it wouldn’t be a big deal (“The joke with cats is, put two bones in a room together and they’ll heal.”). However, the dislocation had probably caused some significant ligament damage, which isn’t something he could fix at that office. “He’s going to need to see a specialist.”
I called Craig, upset, and explained the situation. He probably needed surgery. It would probably be expensive. The vet wants us to take him to an animal emergency room. We both needed to leave work early and take care of this asap.
We went to the vet and they showed/explained the X rays to us—one word: “ouch.” When they brought Obie out to us, he was very upset. If you’ve ever been near a feral cat or heard a wicket cat fight, he was making similar noises. Yowling, hissing, spitting, screaming—there isn’t an adequate word for the tortured sounds that were issuing from his carrier. I think I started crying again. They said he was just in a lot of pain (even with the pain meds they’d given him). Later, at the animal hospital (when he started freaking out again in the waiting room), they said he might also be disoriented from the anesthesia (remember, they had to knock him out in order to x-ray his leg)—I knew that this sometimes happened to people when waking up from anesthesia, but apparently it happens to cats, too. I think this was one of the more upsetting things for me, just listening to him scream like that and not being able to do anything for him.
So, they checked him in at the animal ER and we waited to see a doctor (he started flipping out in the waiting room, so they came and took him to the back. A very sweet nurse came out periodically to tell me how he was doing, that he had settled down and was comfortable, etc.).
When we finally got to see the doctor, she explained that we had two options: the first (and best) was surgery. The second (and cheaper) was to just cast his leg and see how it heals. Given the potentially significant ligament damage, surgery was definitely the best option, and just putting a cast on it would bring several risks that we weren’t sure we were willing to take (such as the risk that it wouldn’t heal properly, that it would have to be re-cast if it moved or came off, and basically the fact that if it didn’t “take” the first time and we decided to do surgery later on, scar tissue would have developed enough that the surgery would be more complicated and possibly less effective than if they just did it now). Plus, the “cheaper” cast option wasn’t exactly cheap anyway (over $1000 in the end). It looked like we were going to have a big fat bill regardless, unless we just decided to put him down (which she didn’t even mention and we weren’t going to consider, anyway). So, we decided to go with the surgery. We may have to sell our firstborn son to pay for it, but it’s a sacrifice we’re willing to make.
So, that’s where we are right now. They kept him overnight and did the surgery today. They called Craig earlier today and said that the surgery went really well. We might pick him up tonight, or they might keep him another night, depending on how he is when he wakes up.
Besides the expense, another difficult thing (which should have occurred to me earlier, but didn’t somehow) is that recovery time is going to be about six weeks, during which he will need to be crated. Like, 24 hours a day. My big, active, socialite cat is going to be confined to a cage for six weeks. This will be very interesting indeed.
Remember the electrical burn drama from last fall? (btw, we finally concluded that the burn was the result of Obie licking an outlet, not chewing on a cord. There were no chewed cords anywhere in the house, and we had witnessed him licking electric outlets in the past) We laughed about that in the ER waiting room yesterday, as we were filling out paperwork and came across a question asking “Has your pet had any serious injuries in the past two years? If yes, explain.” I remember thinking that was drama…that was nothing compared to this.
Amanda’s blog recently asked “Why do we love cats so much?” I am asking that question myself this week…asking it all the way to the bank!
(And ShanNON, if you’re still reading, did you notice my careful use of the words X ray, X-ray, and x-ray? Each with their own special spelling, punctuation, and part of speech? You can check the Style Manual, but I think I used them correctly each time.)
Friday, May 05, 2006
Randomness...
...is my favorite. Well, sometimes. It's fun in the right context.
Anyway. Here's a numbered list of my random thoughts on a Friday afternoon on a beautiful spring day, while stuck inside a stuffy office building.
Anyway. Here's a numbered list of my random thoughts on a Friday afternoon on a beautiful spring day, while stuck inside a stuffy office building.
- Chemistry bores me. What the heck is "molar mass," anyway? Is that when you weigh your back teeth?
- Do you ever notice how a group of people can work together in the same place, go to the same meetings, fill similar roles in a department, and still somehow, each one manages to interpret the company dress code in his or her own unique way? (This is not a dig on anyone in particular, nor am I implying anything particularly special about my work wardrobe...but honestly, there are those moments when I'm walking down the hall and find myself pausing to think...."Hmm. Now that was a very interesting choice.")
- Given that we are in the business of publishing, one would think that the shelves in our cubicles would be stronger. I once had a shelf collapse under the weight of some books and stacks of papers. I mean, honestly. What else am I supposed to use that shelf for?
- Dangit--this was supposed to be a list of random thoughts, but so far they're all work-related. I suppose that's what you get. You're reading the blog of a linear thinker.
- I am a slight hypochondriac. My leg has been hurting for the past couple of days. I hope it doesn't fall off.
- If I had a dog, I don't think I would make him wear sunglasses. Or clothes. Especially if he made it clear that he didn't like them. But that's just me.
- When I was in 4th grade, I played Witch #3 in Macbeth. My mom "made" me a costume out of black garbage bags--she told me it would look cooler and spookier than a regular costume, but I think it was more because she couldn't afford to make or buy me anything else. I was on board with the idea until I got to school and realized immediately that my classmates didn't share my mom's idea of "cool." I think that might have been the moment that my childlike, rock-solid confidence in my mother's judgment began to waver.
- Know what made me think of thought #7? I just passed a girl in the hallway who was wearing a very (very) shiny skirt. About as shiny as my garbage-bag costume. See thought #2.
- You know you've reached a key level of comfort and security with your friends when you'll wear a Teletubby head out in public with them. (This happened yesterday. I have some pictures at home--I'll post them later)
- You know your friends have reached that same level of comfort with you when they aren't embarrassed to be seen with you while you're wearing the Teletubby head. Yesterday I learned which of my work friends fall into this category and which ones don't. :)
- One valuable thing I have learned since I started working here is that there are celebrity look-alikes all around you, at all times, it just takes a trained eye to spot them. I had a stop-you-in-your-tracks moment this afternoon. I almost asked "Rachel Dratch" for her autograph, no joke.
- Diet Pepsi honestly tastes better to me than regular Pepsi. Who'd-a thought?
- I spent months and months coveting an iPod. Now that I have one, it's hard to recall what the big deal was. I mean, I enjoy it (especially for running), but it's not as magical as I'd anticipated. It's funny how that happens with the things you think you can't live without.
Okay, enough. I'm out of thoughts.
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