We have a friend.* I’ll call him Dewey.** Dewey is a visual artist. Dewey owns a fancy printer. “You should come over and print photos on my printer!” he used to tell us enthusiastically, and repeatedly. Then after we got engaged, it turned into: “You should come over and print your wedding stuff on my printer!”
Fine, Dewey. You convinced us. Saves us from having to pay to print our invitations and RSVP cards, right? And so recently we commenced Project Printington: The Printness. What follows is the project’s trip report.
ROUND ONE
We pack up our preordered paper supplies and booze and head to Dewey’s house. Look out kids, WE ARE ABOUT TO PRINT SOME SHIT.
6:30 pm: We’ve arrived. This is going to be fun!
6:51 pm: Install printer driver.
7:05 pm: Test print!
7:06 pm: No? No test print? You want me to download a driver update first? Eyeroll.
7:29 pm: WOOOO! Finally! Test print!!!!
7:32 pm: Hmmm, the color is off.
7:37 pm: Adjust color.
7:44 pm: Adjust color again.
7:49 pm: Wait, why are there lines running through the text?
7:52 pm: Clean print heads.
7:54 pm: Um, it came out sideways. And there are STILL lines.
7:56 pm: Adjust color.
8:02 pm: THIS IS SIDEWAYS.
8:06 pm: THIS IS SIDEWAYS, TOO.
8:07 pm: How the #@*% does this thing work?
8:13 pm: Fine. There’s nothing we can do about the lines. Yeah, okay, you can only see them if you look really close. I know nobody is going to look that close. Let’s just do this thing already.
8:14 pm: Send batch of ten to print!
8:28 pm: BURRITO. MORE BOOZE. It’s a celebration, bitches.
8:35 pm: Another batch of ten! We’re rolling!
8:54 pm: Okay, next batch of ten. Printing slowly. Ever. So. Slowly.
9:12 pm: Wait, these ones are coming out super streaky.
9:17 pm: Clean print heads.
9:24 pm: Ooh! Better! Let’s do another ten!
9:41 pm: #$@&*$ LINES.
9:49 pm: Clean print heads.
10:07 pm: MORE. #$@&*$. LINES.
10:28 pm: Admit defeat. 24 more invitations need to be printed, not to mention all of the RSVP cards. Plan to regroup tomorrow. Maybe the ink just needs to be replaced?
10:36 pm: Home. Feel dejected. Eat ice cream bar in hopes that it will solve all of my problems.
11:11 pm: Problems apparently still exist. Screw you, ice cream bar.
ROUND TWO
Hey! Maybe I can print the rest of the invitations at work! And the RSVP cards too! In the middle of the day, without anyone finding out!
12:23 pm: Printer error.
12:37 pm: Printer error.
12:50 pm: Printer error.
12:51 pm: $%@* !&#$%!@*&#@!$*#@!&*%$@*&#@!$
12:58 pm: Printer error.
12:59 pm: [redacted]
ROUND THREE
Back to Dewey’s house, sans beau. He has rugby practice. Printer, I shall battle you alone. And boozeless.
5:57 pm: Printer has brand new ink. Print heads have been cleaned. Prepare to submit to my will.
6:02 pm: Test print. Okay. Not perfect, but not bad. Let’s roll.
6:20 pm: First round of ten done!
6:44 pm: Second round of ten done!
7:03 pm: Third rou… wait, there are more lines than EVER. On ALL of these.
7:06 pm: Clean print heads.
7:12 pm: Now the lines are multicolored! It’s like they are all having sex and giving birth to little baby rainbow lines!
7:16 pm: Okay. Maybe it’s just tired. Maybe the printer is revolting against its suffocating lot in life. Let’s change it up by test-printing an RSVP card.
7:25 pm: Sob.
7:31 pm: Wail.
7:35 pm: Give up. Pack up. You win, printer. So long, you miserable bastard.
ROUND FOUR
Duck out of work and go to the local copy shop.
2:34 pm: Check out available paper. Choose one.
2:42 pm: Hand over PDF files.
*** next day ***
12:10 pm: Check proof at shop.
12:12 pm: Hmm. Color is way off. Can it be adjusted?
12:13 pm: Do I wanna come back and look at a new proof? No. You know what? Just do what you can. At this point you could change it from teal and yellow to red and purple and I would probably just shrug.
*** next day ***
11:20 am: Fork over $79.
11:22 am: Leave with invitations and RSVP cards.
6:47 pm: Assemble invitations, RSVP cards, stamps.
*** next day ***
7:59 am: Deliver finished envelopes to post office.
SO. After being a week late getting out the invitations, we managed not only to extend the lateness several more days with our printer woes, but to also pay more for our troubles. What a privileged bunch of jerks we are.
LESSONS LEARNED:
- Start earlier.***
- Don’t trust a fancy printer.
- Be suspicious of people named Dewey.
- The color on the screen will never look remotely like the color on the paper.
- Ice cream doesn’t solve anything, but I will continue to eat it anyway.
__________________________________________________________
* Shocking, I know.
** I’ve begun watching syndicated episodes of Malcom in the Middle at the gym every morning. Sue me.
*** Story. Of. My. Effing. Life.
Booze won’t help either, but it makes things more fun. So do burritos.
I second the booze & Burrito idea.
Thank you for writing this post. It cost us a pretty penny to have our outer envelopes printed but it was so worth it – for the exact reason that I don’t have the patience to go through the hassle you went through. So you get lots of credit – I wouldn’t have made it past round 1.
And this is why I could watch the printer smashing scene in Office Space over and over again. Highly satisfying. I recommend it for therapy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFS06Z0CCpk
Hope you celebrated once the invites were in the mail!
I disagree. Ice cream and booze help everything. Especially printer catastrophes (which I remember from my days working in events with finicky printers and weird paper sizes. Arg). I’m feeling better about not having a color printer right now. It means I can go straight to the “pay someone else” step without DIY guilt.
Also, it’s done. And really, no one will know they’re late because they’ll still arrive at least 6 weeks ahead of the event, right? Yay! So now I think you need more ice cream and booze to celebrate.
This is why me & DIY don’t get along.
Love your description. I can relate. I hate printers. And having to buy ink. The cost of ink just makes me furious. Sigh.
For the wedding our invites turned out okay and my little printer miraculously was agreeable, but we had to resort to paying a print shop to print the programs because my (very same) home printer just was not working out. Thankfully, a sane bridesmaid spoke reason to me and I was just too exhausted to care, so I gave up and somebody else had it printed and brought it the day of the wedding. Whew…a lifesaver.
Boo for meltdowns induced by printers. At least you are DONE.
This is why I keep rethinking the idea to print out the invites at my friend’s house. I will be knee deep in vodka after an hour of mistakes if that were to happen!
This is why I love your DIY posts.
8:28 pm: BURRITO. MORE BOOZE. It’s a celebration, bitches.
hehehehe
I will know distrust individuals named Dewey as well. Glad its done? Sorry you had to deal with the madness up to that point though
hahahah. this was awesome. seriously. ok- so what i mean is your telling of the story is frigging hilarious, but what happened totally sucks.
also- ice cream makes my belly hurt- but i eat it anyways when i am angry-sad-happy- ya know. whenever.
Also ALSO- I LOVE the fax-smashing part of Office Space. More so now that I work in an office.
I would love a burrito right now.
Also, you may have just convinced me to get the invites printed by someone other than me.
This was quite similar to my experience, but I called it quits sooner and addressed the envelopes by hand. They weren’t the prettiest, but it got done.
A Dewey is responsible for the less-cool library organization system, too.
Isn’t it great not to care anymore? To just stick the damn things in the mail? I think there’s an important lesson there. 🙂
I hear ya. Everyone’ s like, weeeee DIY! DIT! (Which, for the record, I always end up DIM (doing it myself. But I digress.) Then this sh*t happens. I’m about to do round 2 meself, with the fan programs that we’re doing — and the only reason we’re doing them is because the church doesn’t have air conditioning and that business is going to be EFFING hot.
Also . . . the ever so elusive I-will-start-my-next-project-earlier pledge. It just sits there and mocks me. Constantly.