I can't make my spreadsheet work

When I try to sort my spreadsheet (which is Quattro Pro, but it works as far as I can tell exactly like Excel), it will only sort a column at a time, which means of course that every gets screwed up. because I'm trying to treat the columns as fields, and the rows as single entries. How do I lock the rows straight across so that, for example, if I sort the items in column A alphabetically, the material in the other columns stays aligned with the proper entry in column A? I would have thought this behavior would be the default.

My submission tracker thingy doesn't work properly if I can't group all the entries for one title together -- as it gets longer it becomes harder to know whether I've seen all the places a story's been.

Of course this would be much simpler if the damned stories sold.

Dogs are camera shy

I worked really hard this afternoon to produce a few good pictures. But I guess I did it, even though the dogs kept walking out of the frame or looking away when I wanted to take their picture.   Click the picture to find the rest of them, including the tug pictures.  Meanwhile, while I was getting behind in posting pictures, LiveJournal changed how the galleries look and unilaterally changed my settings to no copies allowed.  I've gone through and fixed almost all the galleries to copies allowed.  Though I hope if anybody finds any of these pictures interesting enough to use for something they will let me know about it.


On another front, I have prepared five stories to take to the post office tomorrow.  This is because I actually spent time looking at what's out and what's not and discovered these stories were either unsubmitted at the time or have been languishing long enough to consider them rejected.

On another front yet, I spent the morning getting trained for Snapshot Day next Saturday when volunteers up and down the coast will be testing water quality in the coastal watershed streams.  I'm signed up for the Moore Creek watershed in Natural Bridges Park, but I might be reassigned since I said they could.

Dissolved Oxygen tests are amazingly complex and tedious.

By the way, if you happen to live in any of the California coastal counties, you should totally consider volunteering this Saturday: it doesn't matter if you haven't had the training, they'll find a spot for you.  You can find out more here.
Other volunteer things: Santa Cruz County is short about a hundred election day workers. Here's the announcement, but it's not the current one -- it's from way last November.  I heard about it on the news but since I heard late Friday I haven't called yet.

And finally: we've got Summer Pattern Weather, guys.  Overcast and chilly in the morning, hot and bright in the afternoon, and windy in the evening.  It's not summer yet, though, because the grass is green yet.