Priorities and Fishing

Oh, it’s a busy time for the book. Luckily, though, we were not too distracted to remember we’ve got a fishing trip coming up in June. But that’s six months away you say. True, but guess what? Dartmouth Grant cabin reservations open up six months in advance and the Management Center, usually our first choice, goes first. (Something to do with the indoor potty, we believe.) As is our post-Thanksgiving custom, Phil sends around an email with choice of dates and cabins, gathers input

from everyone, and then picks whichever cabin and weekend he wants. Then precisely 6 months from the day we want to arrive, he calls Outdoor Programs at 9am and the deal is done. And, it is; we’re all reserved for the Management Center second week of June. If only our food procurement went so smoothly!

Meanwhile back at the book, the book design is finalized. You don’t think about it when you read, but someone has to make a lot of decisions about how the words look on the page—fonts, titles, page numbers, indentations, and photo locations…a million things. Luckily Grace from Peter E. Randall is very good at this stuff and we pretty much loved her ideas out of the box. The design is beautiful.

Turns out we had a lot more to say than planned, so we’ve had to futz with font sizes and line spacing, but she worked her magic and now it all more or less fits in a book! We are also wrestling with some last minute legal issues with copyrights and permissions, but luckily we’ve got access to some terrific intellectual property lawyers.

It’s all coming together and we should have packages to go out to book critics in early January and should still be on track for the May 3 publication date. Stay tuned!