Missourian night shift

WOW! What a week.No matter how much I think I am caught up, it still seems like there is too much to do.
This week has been mostly a Missourian design week. I was scheduled to design the cover story and three jump pages for today's paper , and my shift was last night. With the Missourian redesign and all the other reworkings, the daily cover story has been given more play. It has been decided in order to give more focus on the visual elements of the cover story, the designers would get it a few days before their night shift to read it and start forming a concept. I got my story Monday (the front page story about about Rockbridge boys basketball), and I started working on the page 1 centerpiece and the jump pages. I was lucky enough to get a double truck (two page spread) for the photo essay that went with the story. It was a lot of hard work narrowing down my photo choices (from about 13 photos to 6), but I really enjoyed it. It made things a lot easier talking through things with the photo editors and also the assigning editor. I'm the type of designers who likes to talk to people a lot about my work as I'm going through the process. I think the feedback I get really helps me perfect my concepts.
Once I had the cover story and the photo essay done, it was time to move over to the nightside. That was a whole new experience itself!!! It was a crash course with plan system, deadline, dispatching, etc., etc., etc., ......... It probably would have been a good idea to get a crash course with someone else on shift earlier in the week. I DON'T KNOW WHEN I WOULD HAVE FOUND THE TIME TO DO THAT, but I learn best by just doing. I think I would have asked just as many questions even if I had watched someone else do it. Everything was fine...the pages went to print...and I'm not dead!! I'M DEAD TIRED, and a little dead to the world...but not dead!!
I hope you all have a chance to look at the paper today. For the rest of you, I'll post the jpegs as soon as I get to the Missourian and can see the PDFs!!