The perils of being lazy - Part I

I'm really going to have to stop being lazy and get the heck away from my terminal for a minute or three.

Last night, while my wife and I were in the backyard showing our home, the real estate consultant called. She was having trouble with the email address we had provided her for sending us a proof of the ad. Today, I did nothing but sit at the terminal doing stuff that I should be saving for times when I have nothing more important to do. Finally, at 2:30PM, I decided to use the phone. When I picked up the receiver, I got that signal that there were messages waiting.

It was the message from the consultant, saying that she needed to have the draft back to her for 12:00 noon, today. Oops!

So, I phone her back, give her the proper email address, and within minutes, I have the proof. It was terrible. The layout was perfect, but the content was literally a copy (thinly veiled) of the template it had been modeled from. The consultant hadn't even bothered to change the name of the file. It still bore the name of the prior property.

Interspersed with more blog reading, I worked on the proof. By 5:15PM, I had a version that was almost perfect. It just wasn't as perfect as I wanted. My wife arrived home from work, and reminded me that we had an appointment to view a property we were interested in.

This property was one which had a glowing write-up on the real-estate website, but only a couple of pictures (the front of the house, and the lovely backyard). Well, now I know why those pictures were chosen. The inside of the house was awful. We were looking for 3-4 bedrooms that we could use as a bedroom, music room, and two computer rooms / offices. This house boasted FIVE bedrooms, so we thought everything was perfect. Well, each of the "bedrooms" was slightly larger than a typical walk-in closet. That is to say, barely big enough for one piece of small furniture. If you've seen the pictures of our house, you'll know that just won't do. We spent about ten minutes there - with the last eight being more out of courtesy for the present occupants.

When we got back home, it was time to return to the proofing. Just as I was going to hit the "send" button on my email, I took one last look, and noticed that I had managed to make the end of the ad move over to the next page. I had to spend the next hour trying to find out what words I could change to make just one line disappear from the page. I finally decided to combine two related features into a single descriptive line, and the problem was solved.

At 8:45PM, I emailed the proof back to the consultant. By 9:00PM, the arrangements were made. I should have my website totally updated by tomorrow, and have take-away sheets in my hand in time for this weekend's open house.