A Dream To (try to) Remember

I got virtually no sleep on Sunday night/Monday morning, partly due to being completely wired because I was returning to one of my 'regular' Temping employers (I say 'regular' because I've only been there twice before), and partly because of the groups of rowdy people returning home from post-Olympic revelry. That lack of sleep didn't do me much good on Monday, when I had to make a start on setting a report for which I'd made a template the last time I was there. It was one of those awkward situations were the template came together easily enough and, in theory, it looked like a simple enough job... but numerous factors outside my control made it rather more complicated than it should have been.

For example:

• The report had basically been typeset - formatting, images and all - in MS Word in such a way that, upon importing the text to InDesign, significant portions were stripped
• While I'd found an 'easy' way of making use of the pre-made MS Excel pie charts and bar graphs, saving the time and effort of remaking them in Illustrator (also useful because the person who set the Word document liked those charts more than the Illustrator ones I'd made up as examples), there were about 50 pages of the bloody things
• The Word document weighed in at 88 pages... the Report was supposed to be only 60 pages

Really, what messed this job up is that someone had gone to the trouble of (a) making all the charts in Excel in the first place and (b) formatting the fucking Word document, despite the fact that it was very definitely never intended to be the final form of the text (why would anyone add footers?!). With the addition of the charts, the document was so screwed up that something that should have been one page ended up spread over three.

Seriously, people, bare text. That's all you need to provide. Charts to be represented as 'Chart X', boxouts to be bare text.

It ended up taking me two and a half days to unpick it all, get it into sensible formats, and then pull it all into InDesign to be properly laid out. The section I dealt with in the first half of today turned out to not be quite so bad as I'd expected - it was made up of nine or ten sections in which there were four subsections, each with a pie chart and some with an 'interesting fact' boxout tagged on the end.

I reasoned that, far from needing up to four pages per section, one DPS should be sufficient, with the charts laid out as consistently as possible. Varying amounts of text accompanying each one complicated the matter slightly, but I'd completed that task by noon, leaving me time to fiddle and refine my layouts elsewhere prior to getting it checked out by Editorial. Amends tomorrow, I suspect...

But! Back to Monday...

...Because I was rather surprised by a couple of things. My colleague mentioned to one of the salespeople (long since moved to a different floor) that I was back during a phone conversation, and I actually heard her enthusiastic reaction. A little later that day, one of the others - instigator of some of the strangest conversations - paid a visit in person to say hello, shake my hand, and wish me well.

Perplexing. When did I get popular?

This was evidently such a conundrum that a similar event occurred in my Monday night's dream... I was wandering around some leafy London suburb and just happened to bump into that same guy. We had an essentially similar exchange, and then went our separate ways. It gets a bit hazy after that but at some point I was assaulted by some kind of small monkey-squirrel thing and, upon capturing it in what, for all the world, looked like the sort of rigid leather case you'd use to store a telescope, I started wondering how to dispose of it.

For whatever reason, while I wanted it dead - vicious little troublemaker that it was - that wasn't an easy option... I just had to get rid of it in such a way that it wouldn't be found.

Somehow, I found myself on a cliff edge, looking down toward a rocky beach which, strangely, had a dense forest off to one side. The leather case slipped out of my hand (honest, guv'nor!), and the creature bolted from it. Reluctantly, I decided I'd have to try to recapture it... And then probably bury it - inside the case - in the sand.

Of course, climbing down the rocks wasn't as easy for me as it had been for the creature, and I ended up dislodging a bunch of box files just after starting my descent. They fell down the cliff and crashed onto the rocks below, their contents strewn everywhere.

Box files, you ask?

Yes... but, of course, it wouldn't make sense that there would be box files on a cliff. Looking down, I found I was, in fact, at the top of a ladder, looking down to the floor of my old bedroom... only much larger. The box files contained my comics. My toys were visible in cupboards nearby.

After that, I don't remember enough detail to continue... I think I just tidied up... but possibly not. Shame I didn't get round to this yesterday... it was a very entertaining dream...

In other news, in the hope that karma will see me right, I have bought a set of three paintings by one of my former staff, who's moving home at the end of the month and so auctioning off some of her old paintings. I bought one several years ago, which now occupies my lounge wall. Strangely, the sum I paid for that one painting is the same I'll be paying for the three new ones - prices have been slashed for the auction. I am fighting off the urge to splurge on other things as well, since my finances still aren't great... I've missed out on a great deal of splurging opportunities this year owing to lack of funds.

Part of me thinks I should throw caution to the wind and take that holiday I was (sort of) thinking about at the beginning of last year...

In other other news... has anyone else ever experienced that horrific moment when you realise that it feels as if there's something moving on your face because there's something moving on your face?

Anyway... best get myself to bed now...