First, some sad news: The friend who I was worried about earlier was having serious health problems, and she passed away early this morning. Rest in peace, Sylvia--your friends and family love you.

Obviously, that was a hell of a downer, but I guess glumness is the appropriate mood for inputting proofreading changes, because I finished the last five chapters of the Trang layout today. And that was despite Word doing what it does best--suddenly and inexplicably developing major issues. I've been using the Merge feature to incorporate the proofreads into the layout with no problems for 18 chapters, and then chapter 19 comes along and Merge suddenly starts working in a different and much less helpful way. I have no idea why--I experimented with different settings to no avail--and I have no clue if the next time I use it, it will resort to its former self or remain this new, decidedly less-helpful creature.

Also I was trying to pull up a word by kerning a line, and Word would not tighten it up until I kerned up the entire paragraph. That got the word up, and then I went and un-kerned all the lines except for the one I had kerned in the first place. And the word stayed up, because Word is apparently just that lazy.

I am probably going to switch computers in a few months because mine is quite elderly. Whatever I get, I smile knowing that because I am no longer a freelancer and because Smashwords will soon accept ePub files, I will not have to use Word again.