Okay...I suck...

At freight forwarding. I brought a nice case of chaos to the table, today, when dealing with a shipment prepping to go to London for an art fair. I didn't ask for a commercial invoice for the books they're sending because I didn't think it was all that many, but when I learned we had to have one, anyway, to get the books in and out of the UK, so I contacted the shipper and got one. No biggie, right? Except it was 55 books valued at nearly $200K. Meaning all the work I'd done on the airway bill and customs paperwork had to be completely redone. From scratch. Brain still reels from it. And that's with me not doing all the correcting by myself; we had to get it done by a certain time so my supervisor had to step in, and he's got something of a short fuse when it comes to things like this.

Man, I'm making myself a checklist with little boxes beside each requirement and doing each shipment according to that.

But then, I got two calls about possible packing jobs -- one in Colorado, one in Paris (which I won't be able to do because it conflicts with the Seattle Book Fair and I'm working that, AND THE GODS HATE ME!!!!!!) -- but we got a guy in Paris who can probably do it so I probably wouldn't have gotten to go, anyway, since the air fare would be massive. But still...I wish the fates would stop teasing me like this. Anyway, those I have no problem working up a cost and estimated time to do. And then doing them when the job comes in.

So now I'm in some stratosphere of "Duh" and unable to concentrate so I dunno how much more I'll get done on BC-3, tonight. I'm dancing around 61K in wordage but I went through and solidified the first three chapters so I don't need to revisit them till the full first draft is done. And I have my new ending all set, too, with a small coda. Some sections are coming out and going into their own story or novella. I may even get obnoxious and see if I can get them illustrated by an artist who posts his work online. It's bizarre photoshopped stuff -- like man-eating plants and creatures out of a "John Carter of Mars" story doing awful things to amazingly buff, half-naked men -- but it's so unreal it's funny. His name's Telemachus...and I'd link to him but you'd think me a real pervert if I did that.

Hmmm...http://www.telemachus12.com/galleries.html

And a meandering I'll go, again. I'm off.