Proofs

I was a little stressed out this morning when I realized that our package hadn't arrived from Canada. WTF? Our printer said that our page proofs would arrive today. After locating the FedEx slip and making some calls, I arranged to have the deliverer come back sometime before 4:30. That would be too late to sign off and return the pages, but it was surely enough time to grab some food. Ad guy/self-defense columnist/movie reviewer/drunken master Kiyoshi made a Tacos La Flama run, and sure enough I had the box in my hands when he returned.

The food was good, and the new mag looks good, too. We found some mistakes--a typo, a change in cover price (four cents more for U.S. readers, almost a buck less for Canadians), an unwelcome caption, shifted graphics, blah blah blah. It's probably not that interesting to you, but everything that slips through is like a dagger to us. How could we miss that stuff the first time around?

After dropping off the proofs at the local Kinko's with plenty of time to spare, I walked down to Sawtelle. There were shoppers, people eating late lunches, and uptight drivers all around. I ran into Eric and we plowed through a boxload of CDs and DVDs to review for next issue. No victory laps for us, it's onto the next mag just like that.