Whew! What a week!

Long long week for me. It was about like Easter. Last week, hardly anything to do at work. This week, completely the opposite. Typically, I just have a few weekly tasks including one church service folder (aka bulletin) to produce. This week, four different things with one major major project.

We put out our semi-annual newsletter. I'm now responsible for finalizing the layout and producing it on the printer/copier. I'm not complaining about this at all, but I would have preferred to do it the week before - or a month before. I'd also prefer it to be several times a year because it could be smaller and less info-intensive per issue and basically for the congregation be more informative and timely. It's 16 pages long made into a booklet format which is 4 pages front and back stapled. Broken down, 4 doesn't seem like a lot, but with almost 300 copies to be made, the copier had to work for about 7 total hours on the newsletter alone. I am SOOOO lucky this week because the copier cooperated nicely. There are other times however, I am sooo tempted to slam the company it's from based on frustrations, but I'm thinking positive here, so I won't go there.

The other three things that had to happen was to get a funeral bulletin done for a funeral Thursday afternoon; the regular Sunday bulletin; and another unusual project, a program folder for an Organ and Hymn Fest we're having Sunday afternoon. Oh, it would have been so nice to have the info for the innards on that, let's say, last week? But no, I didn't get it until Thursday. Nice, huh? I was getting a little crabby by Thursday. So if I know you personally and snapped at you, I'm sorry. I think you can understand though. I was already crazy-busy and was feeling like I hadn't accomplished anything yet and was thinking I wasn't going to finish everything up.

The pastors were a bit overwhelmed, but I truly think I had it worse. They only had to prepare ONE sermon a-piece. Me? I had to produce all four of those items. I truly think it was the inconvenient timing of the newsletter that killed me. It's a really big project figuring out which pages can/should be color and making them on opposite pages for economical printing, yet it still flows and makes sense as a whole. Plus, adding in clip art to flesh out the columns and blank spaces. That can take a lot of time finding the right graphic.

Then silly, me, I volunteered to take care of the bulletin cover for the Hymn Fest. I am glad I did though because I was very much inspired. Maybe I'll enjoy it DURING the hymn fest. If you're in the Cupertino area Sunday, stop by to hear a bunch of musicians (5 organists, 2 trumpets, 1 trombone, 1 timpani, the choir) and the congregation celebrating an upgrade to our awesome pipe organ. 4:00 p.m. at Lutheran Church of Our Savior, 5825 Bollinger Road in Cupertino. Err... stalkers need not swing by of course. I'd hate to have to have someone hurt you. If you love organ music - the classics of course, Bach, Mendelssohn, etc - this is the place to be! (Someone else was supposed to take care of publicity, so if you are local and didn't hear until now, I'm sorry :(
Here's my bulletin cover! I took a bunch of photos of the organ Friday about noon. Then about 4:30 when I was feeling less overwhelmed as 3 of the 4 projects were done, I took more. I spent about 3 or 4 hours last night picking the images and making that collage. Worth it though if I do say so myself.

Amazingly enough, after putting the copier to hard hard usage and only have a few minor paper jams (no codes to stop the presses and pray for a tech to clear the code) I managed to finish my work for the week at the regular time of noon on Saturday. WooHoo! Ok, so I skipped one or two tasks, but they are minor and can be done next week anyway. The bills will get paid and the services will go on as scheduled, and the newsletter already arrived in some people's mailboxes already today! I'm impressed with the USPS, bulk mail is pretty fast.