'Twas the Night Before Christmas … when all through the house, not a creature was stirring not even a mouse.  Clement Clarke Moore, the author of this infamous poem, first published in 1823, would have had a field day with my own ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas story this year.  Let me explain.
 
A couple of weeks before Christmas, I had this brainy idea to publish a separate Christmas edition of the bulletin.  My problem was that it was now TWO WEEKS before Christmas and time was running out.  So, I turned to the person who usually gets arm twisted into helping me with my last minute crazy ideas … Kristine Hass.  I floated the concept past her and she thought it was a great idea too.  “Okay, Kristine,” I said, “but it’s now only two weeks before Christmas.  We’d have to create and print this ourselves.  Do you think we can actually pull this off?”  With great laughter she said we were both insane enough to make it happen.  So the project got off to a running start and the clock started ticking.
 
After an initial meeting to strategize and map out the sixteen pages of content, Kristine went to town writing and doing all of her creative stuff to make it happen.  My task was to help edit and then get things lined up so we could print it ourselves.  We have a Xerox Versant 180 printing press so doing a job like this under normal circumstances wouldn’t be difficult … especially if you’re professionals like our own Coughlin Family at Sir Speedy Printing.  HOWEVER, I’m a novice, and this is a last minute brainy idea, so of course I’m going to run into issues.  It’s the nature of my last minute brainy ideas.
 
As Kristine was putting the finishing touches on her work of art, I was lining up the paper and everything needed to get it printed.  Given the holidays, I had to have things lined up with absolute precision because there would be slim chances of getting tech support or maintenance help with our Xerox press the closer we got to Christmas.  This was also going to require lots of prayer because if the press went down, there would be no bulletin.  Kristine emailed me her first rough draft on the Sunday before Christmas (December 22).  The publication looked absolutely phenomenal!  With that draft, I started proofing as well as doing some test runs on the Xerox.  I calculated it was going to take close to 14 hours to print the 2,500 copies needed for Christmas.  “Yikes, 14 hours,” I kept thinking to myself.  “You’re absolutely insane.”  We were finally ready to start printing at 12:10 Monday afternoon.  At that time, I hit the button to run the first 1,000 copies.  I pulled a copy to read as it was printing.  Yikes, I noted a couple of typos we didn’t catch earlier that morning and a graphic of our parish logo that looked dreadful.  STOP THE PRESSES!  I made a quick call to Kristine.  She made the modifications and I started printing again.  She then called a few minutes later.  Yikes.  STOP THE PRESSES.  She found something she didn’t like.  Then I found some other issues which halted the presses again.  One of Kristine’s texts in the middle of all of this provided some needed laughter:  “Boldly making disciples … ONE bulletin correction at a time.”  I also laughed at the titles she was giving to the updated files.  The titles went from “FINAL” to “OCD Corrections” to LAST ever!”  By 2:00 p.m. Monday, December 23, I was finally able to start printing the first 1,000 copies of the bulletin.  It looked absolutely phenomenal and was worth all the last minute efforts (THANKS Kristine).  But at 4:00 p.m. panic set in.  I had stray toner bleeding through the copies.  The perfect publication was no longer looking perfect.  I made a very panicky phone call to Michigan Office Solutions (the company that handles our copiers) and our faithful MOS Xerox Tech Scott came to my rescue by 5:00 p.m.  He replaced a part and got me going in no time.  I was grateful!  I did notice, however that the machine was eating toner like sand going through an hourglass that had a two inch opening.  At 11:00 p.m. that night (December 23) panic set in again because I completely ran out of black toner.  I searched all over the PC and found nothing.  I wandered over to the school to see if the school had any of our toner over there.  While the school doesn’t have the exact same machine, I noted its toner cartridges looked rather similar.  The only difference was in the handle, and that appeared to be something that could be swapped out.  After messing with it for a bit, I swapped the handles and was able to plug that toner cartridge into our machine.  Hurray!  Success!  After running about 10 copies (and at this point I only had 1,000 copies printed), I noted I was having toner issues again.  The copy wasn’t so perfect and there was toner showing up in stray places. Now I was in panic mode.  I was out of black toner, I still needed 1,500 copies and I now had to wait until Christmas Eve morning to make yet another panicky phone call to Michigan Office Solutions.  So, I closed up the PC and wandered back to my house.  On Christmas Eve morning, I called our Xerox tech guy Scott at 8:00 a.m.  After I shared with Scott on the phone what I did with the toner cartridges, he said, “Yeahhhh, you probably shouldn’t have done that; they’re different types of toner.”  I kept silent but was thinking, “YOU know that and I KNOW that.  But you’re dealing with Clark Griswold on Christmas Eve.  This bulletin WILL get printed!”  Scott rounded up some toner for me and came to clean up the mess I created.  I was printing again by 10:30 a.m.  Amen.  Just when I thought I was in the home stretch, the waste toner cartridge filled up and needed a replacement.  But do you think I could find a new waster toner cartridge? Of course not!  As I pulled out the waste toner cartridge and inspected it, I figured I could try emptying it so I could continue printing.  So, while mumbling to myself “This will be the mess of the century,” I grabbed a garbage bag, put on some latex gloves and proceeded to shake the waste toner cartridge into the garbage bag to empty it.  This would be like taking a packed vacuum cleaner bag, cutting a hole in it and then shaking it into a garbage bag.  Imagine dust all over the place.  Imagine toner all over the place.  You get the picture.  After vacuuming up my mess, I got it printing again only to run out of toner AGAIN about a half hour later.  You should have heard the conversations I was having with myself at this point!  That was it.  It was now 2:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve and people were already showing up at Church.  I still had to change and put the finishing touches on my family’s dinner that was taking place at the Parish Center that night.  The game was over, but I was able to get 2,250 copies printed.  By golly, Clark was going to get this done and he did … at least 2,250 of his 2.500 copy goal.  It looked BEAUTIFUL and many people commented how much they liked it.  It was worth it, but boy was it stressful getting there.  As I was pushing the boxes of bulletins over to the Church at 2:45 p.m. on Christmas Eve, I was able to breathe a major sigh of relief that my last minute brainy idea actually got accomplished .  This was certainly no ordinary ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas!  I was ready for a major nap or a drink or some chocolate, but that would have to wait!  It was now “show-time” at Church for Christmas Eve!  Maybe next year, we’ll start THREE weeks before Christmas … .or order extra toner ahead of time!
 
Enjoy the week.  Know of my prayers.
 
In Christ,
 
gmb
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