Published May 9, 2008

This turned out to be the most difficult issue of the Grapevine that I have ever worked on. As I write this, it is eight in the morning, and I’ve not slept for 24 hours, so you’ll excuse me if I keep this brief. The issue goes off to print in three hours. Under usual circumstances, we would have put this sucker to bed around midnight yesterday… or would that be today. But, this proved to be anything else than a usual press time. It seems as if the printing gods conspired against us. To begin with, we were down one regular journalist who is on vacation. Our loyal graphic designer was also on vacation, but he was replaced with the heroic efforts of a young man who tried his best to learn our wicked ways on the fly; and almost succeeded, if not for that last night, the computer we used to lay out the issue decided that enough was enough and committed suicide, leaving us stranded for more than four hours as we scrambled to retrieve the data from the hard drive. On top of that, our regular proofreader took ill and we had to find a last minute replacement for her as well, luckily another young(-ish at least) man stepped up to the plate and bravely steered us through our regular comma and apostrophe crisis. And the worst is yet to come. The coffee machine broke down. At times like these you seek solace in the fact that so heavy burdens are only placed on those with extremely broad shoulders.

I would like to thank all these people for coming to my rescue at the ultimate hour. Steinunn, who kept me going when everything seemed lost. Hjalti for the bravery he showed in face of an overwhelming task. Jim, who stepped up at the last minute. Gulli, the man who salvaged the unsalvageable. Alli who slaved in the kitchen so the rest of us could eat. Tec wiz Oddur who found the hidden files. I always forget someone, but you people know who you are. It makes me proud to work with such a great group of people. Thanks guys!

To you, dear reader, I say, enjoy the issue. There was a lot of hard work put into. Blood, sweat and tears really. But I choose to look at it as our bad luck for the summer just ran out.