Almostgotit.com

Earlier this week, I somehow stumbled upon a whole run of country-cottage type blogs,  each with a massive, chintz-filled header at top and packed with photos below.  

And, um, soundtracks.

All of these bloggers seem currently to be making their own magazine covers  which they post on their blogs, featuring luscious photos of wide verandas, sweet white wicker, quaint pink roses, and whatever else those blissful homemakers- without- mattresses- mouldering- in- their- back- yards can conjure up. 

I tracked down their online photo toy because I wanted to make a country magazine cover, too.  But I don’t seem to have the right photos. 

Okay. I mean I don’t seem to have the right life, in which those kinds of photos happen.

I did find this bucolic photo we took inside an old stone barn in a cottage farm in England — pretty darn quaint, I’d say — but something funny happened with the photo-cropping.   It seemed appropriate, though, so I just went with it.

I am really conflicted here. I would love to have a beautiful, giant farm house.  And those women’s photos (and magazine covers) were truly stunning.  But I happened to have my speakers turned on when I clicked on several of them, and — I’m so sorry — I giggled until the milk (almost) came out of my nose.

So I made another one, and I have to say, I think this piece communicates something that is so much more authentically *me*. What do you think?

Big Huge Labs has lots of other fun photo toys to play with, too, and you can be sure I’ll be using more of them in future posts.  Just don’t expect any chintz.

Today is Bill Cosby’s Birthday.

A new father quickly learns that his child invariably comes to the bathroom at precisely the times when he’s in there, as if he needed company. The only way for this father to be certain of bathroom privacy is to shave at the gas station.

I wasn’t always black… there was this freckle, and it got bigger and bigger.

You know the only people who are always sure about the proper way to raise children? Those who’ve never had any.

If you are reading this before July 12, 2008 (Happy Birthday, Bill!) something has gone terribly wrong.

The Almostgotits are currently on vacation and this blog is set on “auto-post.”  This blog is also set to automatically accept comments from anyone who has previously commented, so this is your chance to really cut loose…

Creative Commons image by Luna Park

Except for a few very good friends, I am currently ignoring online career advice columnists.  It’s not that their advice is bad.  The real problem with such advice, or any advice for that matter, is that it so often fails in the particulars. 

If I had parented my children strictly according to other people’s advice,  they would be sociopaths and I would be institutionalized by now.  Human relationships just don’t work that way. 

It’s not that I don’t seek advice. I have read lots of parenting books, and with one child entering her teens and another becoming a young adult, I’ve just gone out and bought several more; nevertheless, I don’t ever assume there is anyone out there with more expertise about my particular child than I have myself.  And the same goes with my current job search.

Bloggers, and advice-giving bloggers, walk an especially dangerous road.  We can pontificate for as long as we like without interuption, without editors, and more often than not without even getting much feedback. 

We can get a little weird. 

And every so often, I also get a tiny bit cranky, and find myself reminding HR bloggers, much to their great misfortune, that the employer is only one half of the job search equation, even though the employer’s perspective is virtually always presented as if it were the only one with any legitimacy.  Though employers are, of course, the people with the power to hire,  I submit that the actual power ratio of the employer/employee equation is considerably more complicated than that.  Employment is, by definition, a two-party system.  While it’s fine to keep harping on the one hundred and forty seven rules employees must follow in order to be fabulous, the quality of a company depends just as much on the fabulousness of the employERS.  

Management guru Peter Drucker insists that personnel decisions are the most important ones a company can make.  A clumsy recruiter’s own failure to be fabulous will be reflected in the quality of candidate he hires, either because he may not make the best choices, or because he may not attract the best candidates in the first place.  And that sort of failure is far from minor.  It is, instead, a systemic failure that shall effect (or infect) the quality of the entire company.

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Related posts:
Un-Fabulous Employers: Asking for Too Much Upfront (Next post in this series)
Blind Box Ads: Bad-Ass, or just Bad? (final post in this series)

Last year, it was a terrific party.  The fireflies came out after we’d done picking berries, and we ate and talked and sat around until we filled the country farm house and sun porch and spilled out into the yard where we sat on creaking lawn chairs.  Kids shot off fireworks while the adults sampled jars of genuine Southern moonshine, the origins of which our host couldn’t actually reveal, for legal reasons…

We missed it last night.

It’s complicated.   The Husband got stuck at a long meeting – yes, on Sunday.  The Son needed to have some staples taken out of his head, also on a Sunday, and subsequently discovered that the Minute Clinic model is, perhaps, misnamed.  The Daughter was very mad to miss the blackberry-picking part, even though last year she got two ticks in the process. 

The Mother just pulled out some pork chops, warmed up the grill, and sighed.

Even though her mother is very maddening, I’m very glad that my daughter is willing to load the dishwasher anyway.

I have received three job rejection letters in two weeks.  However,  I met an author at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival who has already received thirty-six rejection letters for one of his manuscripts, and he cheerfully plans to go for an even one hundred. 

I have some catching up to do.

My amazing brother faithfully reads this blog, and has been very helpful with some of the technical problems I run into from time to time. 

He also periodically sends this English major a quick note when I’ve misspelled something.  Thank you, *dearest* brother. ;0)  

Since I also now have completed my most recent set of interviews, and was not offered that particular job, I can now go ahead and post a response to this post about handling rejection by friend Peggy of the Career Encouragement Blog.  

Stay tuned.. 

My favorite color, and with a little help from polyvore.com, I’ve created a lovely dream outfit to go with it!  Ice cream on the boardwalk, anyone?

I’ve been a member of the BlogHer network for some time now, and they finally invited me to sign the paperwork to advertise with them. I’ve just now inserted the code they sent me and have been hitting my “refresh” button over and over to see what sort of ads they’re running. Wow. Good thing Almostgotit finally decided to reveal her secret identity last week… several of the ads seem to have zeroed in on where she lives! (Yes. The Carribean vacation ones.)