I have chocolate cupcakes that my friend brought to work for my birthday, yay!

I believe I am supposed to share them, and I admit there are too many for me to eat alone. Er, probably.

Mmm, cupcakes.

Katie-bo-batie, how was your birthday?

If Allyson is still around. I got the package a few weeks ago. Dude. Amazing. If I ever let myself be photographed w/o makeup, I'd show you before and afters.

I have to work this weekend, so if I find anything cute and special it may have to be yours. Don't say I shouldn't because again, Dude. Amazing.

Also, Rick, the people whose houses are falling over, or who are flooded out of homes, or who get stranded on rapidly filling freeways or get jammed in traffic because everyone's avoiding that one road with the really big rock (do any of your friends have a rock that big?) aren't quite of the diamond shoes variety.

it turns out that despite the fact that she isn't an actress or a singer or a writer or whatever, people enjoy paying attention to her. She's the object of people's attention

I admit I don't know for sure that she's seeking the fame, but haven't seen anything to indicate she's reticent about it (the book about nothing, the crappy singing, the half-nekkid pictures, etc don't help, since they sure look like attempts to capitalise on nothingness, as opposed to going her merry insanely rich way).

So I just applied for a job through Monster. Sent my resume, and the company had three additional questions. I had to answer "No" to the one about previous experience editing for a business-to-business publication, but I've done a fair amount of other kind of editing, right?

Nope. Got an immediate e-mail response of "No, thanks." Does that seem stupid to anyone else?

Got an immediate e-mail response of "No, thanks." Does that seem stupid to anyone else?

They must expect to get more than enough applicants anyway. Like, maybe they figure it's an easy way to reduce the number of applicants from 300 to 100 (numbers I pulled out of my ass).

hmph. It's still stupid.

Nope. Got an immediate e-mail response of "No, thanks." Does that seem stupid to anyone else?

In the sense that they don't really know what you can do yet and now they never will? Yup. But in the sense that their priority at this stage is probably to try to weed things down to a manageable number, and that there are tons of people out there who apply for things despite having none of the requested qualifications? Still sucks, but I can see where they're coming from.

I'm one of those people whose background and experience could be applicable to all kinds of things, but there isn't the obvious pathway from one job to the next. That's a big part of why it took me so long to find my current job - which is virtually the same role as the position I'd burned out on in the first place. [Fortunately, I'd been out of work for so long by that point that the burnout had a chance to dissipate.] But anything where you have to explain why your credentials fit their job is a tough sell in this economy.

Got an immediate e-mail response of "No, thanks." Does that seem stupid to anyone else?

It's stupid because they rejected you. But from the employer POV, I can understand, because B2B writing and editing are a different skill from other kinds of writing (and I say this as someone who's written for the trade and consumer press). It's not a bad filtering tool if they really don't want to do any training, though "no, thanks" for a job you think you could do always sucks.

For those keeping track, the lemon pound cake is amazing.

Ugh. I have a "Okay, so we fucked up" meeting in ten minutes. Not only is there nothing we can do about it (the project is cancelled due to things other than us having made a mistake), but it's been rescheduled 4 or more times, because one of my co-workers keeps being vague about his availability. He's a mandatory attendee, and he's not in yet. In fact, neither of the attendees from my team are here yet.