Procrastinating with Pixma
It’s embarrassing. I’m totally intimidated by another modern device. A printer. My daughter Betty says this is impossible. She says: “Mom, you put the paper in the top and press print.” Easy for her to say. She’s half my age and her computer doesn’t even have PhotoShop.
After attending a photo workshop last summer, sponsored by Canon, I ordered what the rep said was their best printer. Well, they had a bigger one but I couldn’t lift it, much less afford it.
So after a few weeks, Rob calls from the camera store, F-11, to say the printer is in. Too late, I’m leaving for California, so they stow it for me.
When I get back, I bring in my MacBook so Rob can set it up with the printer. I watch carefully, every step, taking copious notes because if I don’t write down every single thing, what every menu says, where to find it in the computer, what the settings are meant to be and what to do if somehow those settings change or go missing altogether, I’m toast. Don’t laugh. Stuff happens. And when it does, I blither. I shriek: Where did it go? Oh, damn. Now what do I do? MacBook never answers. Surely Canon’s Pixma 6700D wouldn’t answer either.
Usually, as frustration mounts, the expletives get stronger. My neighbors think I’ve gone over the edge. They might have me hauled away, like that poor woman who was arrested by an off-duty policeman for swearing at her toilet. In her own home. She was later released when a judge said even the F-word is protected as free speech.
Anyway, I knew I needed to print something right away or I’d forget how. But when I got Pixma home to Big Sky, I realized I had no paper. Not even one sheet of recycled office paper. Aach!
So without ever turning it on, I hauled Pixma to California with me the next week, then left it there while I drove my granddaughter Amy back to Montana for a vacation. When I took her home, I found I had no paper there either and the nearest store is an hour away. Back to Montana with Pixma in the Subaru. This black hulk was becoming an albatross.
So, late in August, I move into my new digs in Bozeman, where Betty says I’ll have nothing to do but read, write, make photos and, with any luck at all, print them. By now, I don’t even know how to turn the thing on. Or where the cables went, or the user’s manual or my notes.
Procrastination is a wonderful thing. It frees us up to do the things we want to do. Well, the things we feel capable of doing without raising our blood pressure or scaring the neighbors with our ranting.
So, last week a scheduled photo trip was canceled, 60 mph winds, blowing snow and temps in single digits. I decide this is the week. I have paper, I find the AC power cord and the USB connector, I dust off Pixma and reach for the Direct Printing Guide, 72 pages of type, diagrams, trouble shooting tips, none of which I understand. I’ve found my notes, but I don’t recognize them as anything I ever wrote. Insert dingbats here.
I call Betty and ask if her husband Mark might be persuaded to come over and help me. He does.
We fire up the Pixma. Green lights blink, it makes noises. He puts a sheet of office paper in the top and tells it to print a page from my text file. The paper comes out blank. Now, I’ve read the manual and know you have to press the Auto Sheet Feeder or Cassette button. Mark’s the pro, and I know something he doesn’t. Perfect.
Then we switch to photo mode, load the glossy and open my photo library. One by one we drag six photos of different color and tonal value to PhotoShop, prepare them for print, reducing the size for testing so eight or nine will fit on one sheet of paper.
Mark says to print test sheets using six other photos. Right away. Before I forget. He leaves. There’s only one problem. I know how to position the photos in the menu, but not on the paper. I know it goes in print side up and comes out bottom first. But are the left and right corners switched?
After an hour, I have prints of several sizes centered and some double exposures. Interesting, but not what I had in mind. Frustration mounts, I’m ready to swear. Wait. Breathe deeply.
I’ve been told I’m deficient in spatial relationships. Maybe that’s why I can’t get my mind around this layout thing.
My shoulders hurt. I quit before I get arrested for swearing at my printer. As Pixma sleeps, I try to tame my brain, settling my bum on the cushion in meditation.
A song wanders through my mind: Procrastination is funny/ it makes a cloudy day sunny . . .