Simple simply ain't simple

Because a University for Seniors luncheon next week is at our Russian class time, we decided we would try to sit at the same table. I volunteered to make a table tent

Русский Стол
Russian Table

As you can see above, the Russian is no problem with my computer. The big problem was rotating the text so that it would be right-side up on each side when I folded the paper.

I could find no way of rotating the text in Word. What I could find in the help files was not on any of my palettes. I tried Excel instead. I did find Text Box in the Insert Menu and I could rotate the box with the text in it.

The next hard part was getting the "two sides" balanced on the paper. It seemed each box was on a different page or somehow otherwise badly balanced. I finally would click print, look at the thumbnail, cancel, readjust the boxes, and repeat until I was happy with the result.

I had printed one copy a plain piece of paper with much grinding of the printer. We had cleaned it once recently, but kept putting off doing again.

I put in a sheet of matte photo paper for heavier stock and clicked print. Grind, grind, and then grind again. "Load paper in main tray" Darn it, there is paper in the main tray. Adjust paper carefully. Grind, grind, same error.

OK, OK! I'll clean the printer. With a bit of searching, I found the generic instructions for cleaning the printer on HP's website. I unplugged the printer, turned the back towards me, and opened the back access door. There was a little piece of paper peeking out at me! I couldn't pull it with my fingers and went downstairs to get needle-nose pliers. That did the trick but the little piece of paper was a quarter sheet of paper.

Neither of us could remember printing quarter sheets recently. How long was that in there causing all the grinding? And why did it choose this job to position itself to stop all printing?

Once I put everything back together, the paper fed properly. It still made noise, but nothing like the awful racket before.

Some two hours after I started, I finished the ten-minute job.

I also put the result in a protected space in my backpack. That should ensure that I will have it at the luncheon to "reserve" our class table. Is that Murphy I see peeking in the window?