Gray, gray, wet misty day. Awful morning. I got to work at 8:09 as I promised Charlie. He was in a terrible mood. Richard Curtis called and said his copy of Fritz’ manuscript arrived without a last page. God only knows how that happened. I was embarrassed and Charlie was livid. We express-mailed Richard the last chapter, which is only two pages.

The day got no brighter. I felt as though I were running in place. Finally, I managed to jam in both Heinlein’s and Simak’s obits and appreciations. By the end of the day, Charlie had mellowed enough for me to ask him if I could have Thursday and Friday off for the trip with my parents. “Sure,” he said, “as long as the issue is out.” I think it will be.

Because of the Heinlein additions, the issue was so big I had a hard time backing it up. Had to squash it. Also discovered that someone had obliterated the floppy back-up by overwriting another file onto it. At least I think that’s what happened.

First one in, last one to leave.

Not sure what “squashing it” meant here. Possibly doing a Save As, which seems obvious now and wasn’t back then. It might have been risky given the bugginess of Aldus Pagemaker, could have resulted in the entire file being overwritten and then erased.

Backing up was no simple matter. It involved, as I recall, a mysterious black device and some DOS commands.