u/jessbird

i have pretty bony hips and i'm also NOT a light packer (slowly but surely working on this lmao). i'm about 5'6/125 and have gone through a few different packs until i found one that worked really well for a small frame (shoutout gregory deva). the pack is suuuper adjustable, fits beautifully, but i'm always shleppin like 40lbs on moderate-to-difficult treks over 6+ hours.

what's currently working —

• constantly rotating weight from hips, to shoulders, to off-shoulder (e.g. unbuckle hip belt and fully loosen shoulder straps and prop/hoist the pack with my hands, bit hard to describe)
• padding hips with a folded shirt
• making sure hip belt isn't on the seam of my shorts or something
• walking sticks/trekking poles, obvi, to soften landings
• packing lighter RIP

the deva already has really cushy hip pads, but after this last trip, i'm thinking about literally getting some cushy shoe insoles (or something similar??? idk) to put on the tops of my hip bones for better shock absorption.

i know ultimately the solution here is to just pack more efficiently (i'm taking advantage of REI sale to downsize my sleeping system and my tent), but curious if anyone else has any workarounds for this specific affliction.

brainfart on my part — i have a short brunette pixie and im bleaching it today. i’ve done this before, a couple times, so im not TOO stressed but curious if i should try a mask before bleaching. i feel like folks have reported mixed results.

I'm trying to make some place cards for an event — something I've done many times before — using Data Merge. It's a super simple sheet, only two fields (Name and Table). Screenshot attached for reference (names scrambled).

https://preview.redd.it/zvdbx5c8bmzg1.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=6896d009cd5030a8dcce7fbe0920db81c7e86985

I created the original sheet in Google Sheets, cleared all formatting, removed all blank cells, exported as CSV. Data Merge wouldn't take it.

Tried using Numbers instead of Sheets, exporting as UTF-8, no dice. Tried UTF-16, no dice. Tried ACSII, no dice.

I don't get any error messages, just zero response from the Data Merge panel. I've closed InDesign, restarted, updated my Creative Cloud, pored over all the forums with the same issue. What am I missing here? Is it the ampersands??? I'm losing my mind.

EDIT: just in case anyone stumbles upon this in the future having the same issue, i'm 90% sure the issue is that my headers were lowercase instead of capitalized, which seems stunningly stupid but maybe they weren't registering as Headers in lowercase? no idea. i opened an old spreadsheet i'd used for a previous data merge project, replaced all the fields with my new info, and tried to upload to indesign and it worked. i then went back to my 7+ CSV files that hadn't worked, tested re-importing them with capitalized headers, and they all uploaded successfully.