Almostgotit.com

Naturally I only discover an idea after several others have already picked it up and run far, far away with it.

Kristin writes poetry using only the subject lines from the hundreds of pieces of spam she receives. Here’s her most recent endeavor:

I didn’t want to hurt your feelings

cheryl didn’t want you to know
your breath needs help
your weight is a problem
you aren’t what employers are looking for
nobody wants to hurt your feelings
you should ask yourself
why does anyone care about you?
Speaking of gouging my eyes out….
a personal letter from santa
writ large
let me tell your wife
you hate to be wrong.

Then there’s Morton, who’s created a whole Anthology of Spam Poetry blog, and pairs his poetry with vignettes of the folks who — probably — wrote it.

Now What?

My friend, you are in trouble
I don’t think you know about this
We have bad news for you
Your credit card was removed
Your account has been limited
You have feelings of guilt and embarrassment
Your VISA is fraudulent and it will be suspended
Your order status: passion wasted
– Grover Ramos

When Mr. Ramos was five, his family packed everything they could carry and walked, rode buses and crawled their way from Columbia to cross over into the United States. They constantly crisscrossed the country seeking work on various farms and small factories, which has left Mr. Ramos to believe that he has seen and learned more about the United States than many natural born US citizens. His poem “Now What?” is characteristic of his work which tends to reflect on the cross modern dilemmas of the hyphenated American.

Of course, another reason to keep blogging is all the great spam you start getting after a while.

I don’t just mean the sex ones, though there is that. Here are some of my more printable favorites:

How do you do…
The Regard! The Excellent forum! Thank you!
There was merrily!
This simple prodigy!
All the best!

They came and found music, and dancing! There was exceeding brilliance, and also (most likely) Haiku! How much more complimentary could they be?

Hi all!
Excellent forum, added to favorites!
I simply mad about this forum!
The Good lad an author! I much like site!

And I simply mad about such enthusiasm, and hardly even feel it necessary to correct a little gender confusion. Good lad it is.

One time, I got several in a row like this one, and I would give up half the dictionaries in my house just to receive another:

orange-winged parcel-gilt midden mavis nitrogen cycle meter fixer openside planer palm fern oat grinder pea green opera cloak mining claim mole catcher muck rolls paper-baling Oceanic mongol Pan-saxon one-act mullein pink opium-drowsed mild-savored nitro-hydro-carbon oil beetle mint camphor opening bit passage hawk Pagano-christian officer plant Pan-turanism night-overtaken noble-natured Olive oil castile soap one-pounder narrow-shouldered moss-brown non-recoiling Non-syrian Mid-asian parish school muskus grass oyster plover ninth-known pack twine nimble-mouthed oyster tree party-zealous Monroe doctrine now-being opium drinker palm beetle open-caisson moon-struck Non-sanskritic orange peel oil-yielding naked-eyed mighty-brained mid-aged murexide reaction palate bone pack road paper-selling mid-refrain much-devouring Old bactrian oat bread mutton cane ostensible partner oil cup mud-color never-say-die olive-shadowed out-of-town mouth footed olive gnat nail bone mezzamine floor

Ah, just read it and weep.

I always suspected that ordinary people got jobs by having the right degree, combing the want-ads and pounding the pavement, or by having an Uncle in the Business. But nothing about my own search went at all as I expected! Here’s what I did to get my current job:

1. Go to church — not necessarily dressed for success.

I realize there are those who deliberately attend Our Lady of The Lexus to network between services with other powerful people. I have no idea how effective that is, because I was always too busy in the nursery or (later) teaching Sunday School or (later still) leading Bible studies, financial management seminars, and art retreats. But two of the job offers I received this past year came through non-Lexus-driving people I’d met, originally, at church.

2. Write a musical.

Monica, the executive director who has recruited me as her replacement, also attended our church occasionally, where she sometimes played the organ and helped organize a community performing arts series — when she wasn’t touring Europe with her own music. I didn’t know Monica well at the time, but several years ago she filled in on piano at a couple of rehearsals for a musical I’d written and was producing at the church. Last week, she brought up those rehearsals again, insisting that anyone can do that can also run a board meeting.

3. Say yes unless there’s a good reason not to.

A couple years ago, I met Monica again when she came to my office at The Institution That Shall Not be Named bearing brochures for yet another arts series she was promoting. The series didn’t quite fit with our mission, but she’d made it so easy by bringing me the brochures that it was no problem tucking them into our own promotional material that we were distributing soon anyway.

4. Go a little overboard sometimes.

Mostly because I loved the idea (and partly because everyone said I couldn’t/wouldn’t/shouldn’t,) I spent a recent year putting in way more hours than my part-time, minimum-wage employer was paying me to organize, promote, and find collaborative funding for a 4-city tour for a top-notch New York performance group. That performance became a bench mark for our Institute and donations increased exponentially after that. And guess what? Monica was in the audience.

5. Love thy neighbor.

When my neighbor Betsy was dying at home, she needed 24/7 care in place in order to qualify for hospice care. As a single person on social security, that was going to be a problem for her. The only obvious thing for me to do, especially as my working days were pretty empty then, was to organize a care schedule by calling upon her vast network of friends. One of those friends remembered me… and she just happens to be Board President of the non-profit that just hired me.

When you’re traveling, ask the traveler for advice, not someone whose lameness keeps him in one place. – Rumi (13th century poet)

Michelle Goodman over at the Anti 9-5 guide is rethinking her very successful blog. Another of my favorites, Wishy the Writer is on a blogging hiatus, and now I’m reviewing things myself.

It happens. Anyone can start a blog… it’s keeping it up that’s the hard part. It takes a lot of time, it’s scary (who ARE all these invisible people haunting my pages, most without ever saying a word?) and sometimes it’s exhausting maintaining any kind of consistent theme or focus.

I don’t want to quit though. I’ve learned so much, and “met” so many cool people, and there are still so many ideas and directions to try out and explore. Emily over at The Rocky Road of Love and Other Great Recipes has hit upon a marvelous formula for her blog, though she’s still fairly new at it. Her professional experience writing to a schedule and writing for television, among other things, is for her a great advantage, and she has graciously offered to help me brainstorm a bit.

Don’t ever be afraid to ask for help from good people. I’ve also asked a friend (the executive director of a very successful inner-city non-profit) to be my “executive director buddy” and tell me everything he knows. Being too proud to ask these brilliant people for advice would just be too silly. Not everyone is qualified to give advice, of course, but when you find someone who is further ahead than you are, but still travelling themselves on the same road, you’ve found a pearl of great price.

Grab it, if you can!

Here’s to starting over again, beginning a second career chapter, and trying things a new way!

My mother often made Italian biscotti for Christmas. Traditionally made with nuts, anise flavoring, and very little fat, they have a long shelf life – as do many job skills! And like many a woman’s career, biscotti is baked in two stages. This version makes an old favorite into something wonderfully new by using pistachios and dried cranberries! Try serving these with coffee (or red wine!) for dunking…

1/4 cup light olive oil
3/4 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1 1/2 cups pistachio nuts

Preheat oven to 300 degrees, and prepare a cookie sheet by lining it with parchment paper. Beat oil and sugar together. Add eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each. Add vanilla and almond extracts. Mix dry ingredients together, then gradually add to egg mixture while stirring. Fold in cranberries and pistachio nuts by hand. Wet hands with cool water and use them to shape dough into two 12×2 inch logs on the prepared cookie sheet. Bake for 35 minutes until light brown.

Remove pan to cooling racks for 10 minutes, meanwhile turning oven down to 275 degrees. Cut logs into ¾ inch thick slices on the diagonal, and lay slices cut-side-down on the parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake slices 8-10 more minutes until golden-brown and dry to the touch. Cool and store in air-tight container.

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Never tried biscotti, or no time for cooking? Order some from Peggy’s Biscotti – she’ll even let you try a couple for free! And don’t miss her wonderful COMMENT, below…
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The reason I’ve not been blogging is that, besides being in major house-rearranging frenzy, getting kids back into various school routines, and celebrating a 21st wedding anniversary (Yay, us!) I seem to have landed myself a job. I will be directing a non-profit “quality of life” organization with a large donor base and a history of visionary projects, several of which will come into fruition under my watch this coming year. It’s very exciting.

It’s also scary as heck. I know a little of what I’m in for, delving into the non-profit world, having worked for a large non-profit organization once before. Hours can be endless, results can be hard to measure, and working with a large number of volunteers and board members (who are also volunteers) is often like herding cats, or trying to stuff an octopus into a plastic grocery bag. One needs a fair tolerance for chaos, in other words!

Moreover, I’ve never supervised a paid staff before, let alone run a meeting using parliamentary procedure. What if I really do pick my nose?

And, speaking of blogging, where do I go from here with this one? How to (almost) survive working for a non-profit? How to (almost) get your working groove back after staying home with children for several years?

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*COMING MONDAY* Recipe for Daring Do-over, Double-Baked Biscotti

There were so many great questions and comments to my first post about blogging with photos that I just have to follow up!

The quick instructions I gave in the previous post will work, and if getting too techy makes your head hurt and your elbows get all twitchy, then stop reading right here. Which is just fine. I’ll never love technology for its own sake either!

For those still reading, my brilliant brother has reminded me that it is still probably best (if you are able to do so) to optimize/compress your photos *before* you upload them anywhere. (Easy on Photoshop: just choose “save for web” option. With Corel or other photo programs, you can usually choose the “save as” command and specify that you want to save file at a higher compression — or at a lower resolution, which means the same thing.) This will make your photos load much faster, which matters for readers with a dial-up internet — especially if you use a lot of photos.

I do this all the time with my webpage work, but was just being lazy with the blog!

Optimizing isn’t really an option if all you’re doing is linking to photos someone else has already uploaded to Flickr, though, so a fast work-around is to use SMALLER versions of the photos! I may do this from now on, while optimizing my OWN so I can still use them at 500 pixels wide. I like ‘em big, especially when I am looking them on my tiny notebook’s screen!!

As you may gather by now, there are many ways to make blogging very complicated. It can quickly become overwhelming if you let it, so in a word: don’t. It’s perfectly acceptable to use a good shortcut until you have the time, skill and inclination to dig deeper and wider.

It’s the Carnival of Human Resources for August 22, and I’m the one lurking over here in the corner wearing the false mustache. I wasn’t strictly invited, but some of my favorite bloggers were, and these collections of HR posts are always valuable to a job-hunter like me.

Blog carnivals are a great idea, by the way — there are many creative ways to organize one, though generally a group of bloggers agree to post on a common theme or topic, sharing editing/hosting duty on a rotating basis. And who better than a bunch of human resource professionals to take advantage of this double-helping of networking — building community among colleagues while building readership at the same time?

So come on in. I’ve got a spare mustache in my pocket with your name on it!

Since you asked, all the photos on this site are either my own or available for use with attribution through creative commons licensing, with the exception of the Elizabeth Dewberry/ Robert Olen Butler portrait and the photo of Anne Lamott’s book I used last week, both of which were already in such wide re-syndication I don’t know their original sources.

I realize I am being more scrupulous than most bloggers. It is also rather painful not to use all of the other glorious and oftentimes-much-more-suitable images that are widely available on the web, but I feel pretty strongly about this.

Pictures are great on a blog, though, and I’ve been putting all my blog photos (uploading them) onto Flickr.com, a free service which is very easy and fast to use. Besides saving server space, Flickr.com does all of the optimizing and resizing for you so you can dispense with photoshopping them first — another time saver! Flickr also carries a large data-base of creative commons photos which you may use — be sure to check the terms first.

To use your uploaded Flickr.com photos:

1. In your Flickr.com account, click the photo you want to use to open it. You can choose one of three sizes — be sure the size you want is open.

Right-click on your photo and choose “properties” to display the URL, (looks like “http://yourphoto.jpg”) Highlight and copy that bit, without any of the stuff after “.jpg”. Paste the URL right into your blog if you’ve got the editor open already in another window, or paste it into “notepad” or something to save it for a minute.

In your blog posting window, click where you want the image to go and EITHER use the “insert image” button or, by hand, insert the following code, changing the brackets from [ ] to < > (I can’t do it here or the web will think it’s code!) Substitute your own photo’s URL and title in place of http://yourphoto.jpg (and keeping all the other quote marks in place)
[img src="http://yourphoto.jpg" alt="Name of your photo"/]

Feeling fancy? If you’d like the text to wrap around your photo, try this code instead (remember to change all the brackets from [ ] to < >):
[p align="left"][img border="0" align="left" src="http://www.your photo.jpg" alt="Name of your photo" /]

Do you use photos in your blog? Tell us about it and post a link to your blog here so we can all admire your work in person! (Hint for newbies: leave your blog URL in the space provided when leaving a comment, or use this code in your comment text to make a link:)
[a href="http://yourblog"]Name of your blog[/a]

Today my friend Emily over at The Rocky Road of Love has posted my recipe for sweet summer squash chowchow. Her blog continues to delight a growing audience with its ongoing love story-with-recipes. She’s another of my mentors, and I plan to borrow a few of her adjectives, if she’ll let me.