Thanks to L’Empress and Nora, who were both right – after posting yesterday I did some searching and found a bunch of free PDF-ing software. But I won’t even need that because it turns out version of Word on my Mac will save as PDF (just to make it counterintuitive enought to qualify as Microsoft, that function is under Print rather than Save As). It seems odd to me that my home Word can do it, since the work version of the some program can do that only with the help of Adobe Acrobat, but perhaps Adobe makes its money on corporations.
Problem solved, anyway.
The question of when and whether I’ll have a business trip(s) to the US remains frustratingly up in the air; everyone agrees that it would be useful, but our industry is in a downturn and we need to conserve money. It remains to be seen how that balance will work out. Of course, I am hoping for the two trips the leader of my project originally wanted me to make, partially indeed because we can make things work better that way. Partly, or course, so I can go see She-Hulk, the Best Cubemate Evar and the Ant-Doctor and some others, maybe get to row with them, and complete my (extensive and growing) shopping list. There are things you can find fairly easily in Taipei, like most foods. There are things you can get here or have shipped with a little more effort / money, like yarn and English-language books. There are the things you can get if you’re willing to spend lots of extra money on them, like the protein bars I gave Rudder for our anniversary. And then there are the things that don’t seem to be available at all, like e-books (copyright reasons, I think – I did see one in the Netherlands, but it cost twice what it does in the US) and silver wire and findings (for beadwork). I don’t think both trips will happen, but one in October still looks reasonably likely. I’ll wait for further confirmation before I ask She-Hulk if I can order stuff and have it sent to her house, though.
I’m Rudder-less and need to keep myself amused for a bit over a week more; plans for the weekend involve a haircut and a jaunt to the bookstore, plus maybe a look around for a climbing store if I can’t find the local climbing guide at the bookstore. Rudder has finally made reservations for the trip that was supposed to be for my birthday. (Last March.) (Grr. I’m still annoyed, especially since it turned out he’d thought we’d agreed not to exchange anniversary gifts and I’d thought we agreed to exchange them. Hence his protein bars and my … nothing. Did I mention grrr?) I haven’t thought of anything more fun for this weekend, anyway. If I’m lucky the package I ordered from Jimmy Bean (mostly bags, just two skeins of yarn) and the beads of the month will be arriving soon. I like getting stuff, even when it’s from me.
I have no idea which of us was right about our agreement. Most likely both / neither; we’ve been having troubles lately about thinking we’ve agreed on something and then finding out we both went away thinking different things. Fortunately it’s mostly been on cases where we could laugh about it, and now we know we need to be more careful to be clear. On the off-chance that he’s right, though, I’m glad I misremembered – I do like getting presents, but giving them is nearly as much fun.
And it’s even better when you get a reaction like this.