That'll teach you.

I'm getting extremely close to the end. I was feeling very good about where I'm at. In fact, I was even semi-boasting about being able to turn in my piece a day early and enjoy my day off (I am taking Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off from work to get this piece and my insanely long production book out the door). I got so much done on my book... it is currently at 160 pages or so. I only have about 20 pages of that left. Yes! And I went through my piece another time last night... marking down my edits and such. 

But here's the stick. I hadn't opened my Pro Tools session since Mooney returned it with all the audio levels corrected and with the polished narration. Mooney's session was created in a Pro Tools HD environment, and my humble system is centered on Pro Tools LE. If you switch between software versions, you run the risk of losing some audio plug-ins (thus affecting the sound originally anticipated). 

To take care of all of this business, I scheduled an HD studio at Emerson for the maximum amount of time they allow. A measly four hours. I arrive 15 minutes before they open... just to make sure I have all the time I can. I get in to the studio. I open the session. The dreaded "(1) Missing Audio File" comes up. Stay calm. I'm sure I have all the audio files. Maybe it is just a file that was muted. Or isn't needed. Or anything. I do some poking around... NOOOOOOO. My narration is missing!! I can't do anything without that piece, so I get some heart palpitations going. Call Mooney. Yes, they are indeed missing (somehow not copied to the session he gave me). FREAK OUT. He can't email them to me (too big and his studio doesn't have internet anyway). I don't have time to leave, get on the train, get to my car, get to his studio, get the session, get back in my car, get back on the train, get back to my studio at Emerson. I now only have 3 hours and 45 minutes at this point. So, I desperately call Seth. Always the champ, he immediately says yes, he'll go to Mooney's studio and bring the session to me. As much as this stresses me out (I am currently in the studio... waiting on the session... losing precious precious precious time to work), I see a few MIRACLES in this. One: Seth was awake and answered the phone at 10am on a Saturday... totally willing to be my gopher. Two: Mooney was at his studio already, sitting at the computer he originally mastered this on. Three: Mooney was completely finished with my session but he hadn't deleted it off his system yet (oy! can you imagine?!).

It is now 10:41am. I have to be out of here (session saved to disk, files bounced, etc.) by 2pm. Best case scenario: getting the files by 11:30am. What I've learned: pay attention to that voice that tells you, "You should check Mooney's session before you need to work on Saturday."