Remote Printing

My work and play space is in the living room where, from my desk (a gift from Mom and Dad when I was stationed in Montana decades ago), I can hear the garbage and recycling people, and sometimes the neighbor chickens, the sound of Annie's Corgi nails clicking on the kitchen floor as she looks for food scraps, and the distant neighbors using their chainsaws and leaf blowers.

You can't really see it, but among the books behind my laptop is the AP Stylebook. Once hooked, there's no going back.

It was a productive morning in an applying-for-jobs kind of way. I found two, both part-time and both through Craigslist, worth throwing my hat in the ring. 

 DISTRACTION ALERT!

Curious about the origin of that phrase, I find that it began in the 1800s, the action being a taking up of a challenge in the boxing ring. I'm no boxer, but I do remember throwing my hat down in the barrel racing arena before starting the course. We all did it. Whether that was a protest of the protocol of  having to have a cowboy hat on to enter the ring or a misguided assessment of aerodynamic is lost in the hoof-generated dust of history.

Back to the jobs. One was to be the remote "right-hand gal" for a marketing woman based in Mendocino, up north in redwood country. Another was for an outreach manager for a non-profit that trains and stages productions with 50+ aged people. I thought I was pretty clever in my application transmittal email to note that, not only do I know how to work with old people, I am one.

When I apply for a job, I often send the advertisement to the printer, located next to Maureen. From her computer quadrant, she hears everything I do and more. The more being the sound of the printer coming to life all on its own. I holler back to her before committing the job to the queue to avoid startling (aka, "Scaring the shit out of....") her. She's taken to looking at what comes out of the printer, ignoring the recipes but typically saying something positive about the job and my perfectness for it. 

In the immediately previous post, I did not remember to comment about how unusual it is to actually hear back from a hiring person in response to a job application. With the growing stack of jobs I've applied for, I've only heard back from two. Whether that is a function of the utter decline into chaos of basic professional manners or a sign of the applicant-saturated times, I do not know.

Heard Back from Someone!

After probably three dozen resumes sent out, I finally heard back from a potential employer! And actually signed with a human-like name!

"We have reviewed your application. Unfortunately, you are not the right fit for the position at this time. I wish you the best of luck in your job search."

No, not the kind of email you want to read first thing in the morning. Yes, one can (and did) descend into the, "No one is going to hire an old fart like me," and worse places. But one can rise above it all!

One can spend an hour creating a crock pot dish (aka 'slow cooker' if one is sensitive about the other name being a brand name having come into accepted American lexicon, not unlike, "Kleenex," "Coke," and, "Google," the latter of which can be many forms of speech, which is remarkable if not unique in linguistic evolution). I made a version of Julia Child's Boefe Bourguignon without even attempting to pronounce it. Tasty in the taste test.  The Maureen, "Yum!" will determine if the recipe makes its way into my recipe notebook.

Not satisfied with going hungry for six to eight hours, I made myself chili cheese dogs for lunch. No small wonder my jeans are getting tight. Finally, after exhausting all other far more entertaining options, I got to work fixing the corner joint in the bathroom so I could add sheet rock repair to my professional portfolio. I can tell you this:  The YouTube tutorial was informative and helpful but it must take some time to develop the touch. Good thing the dried mud is sandable.

My First Proposal

That would be freelance writing proposal, just to set all you clever, if somewhat dirty-minded people straight right off the bat.

 *** DISTRACTION ALERT! ***

From whence came that particular idiom? I figured that it was from baseball but had to find out. Wikipedia comes through for me again with its entry for, "Glossary of English-language idioms derived from baseball." Fifteen, count them, 15 mouse wheel scrolls of American literal and metaphorical baseball references. Including, for you aforementioned lovers of sexual innuendo, "In interpersonal relations, an individual who can't get to first base with another person is unable to achieve some initial goal or to establish a relationship. A kiss might be first base in a romantic relationship." Mercifully, neither Wikipedia declines to define either second or third base in similar fashion. 

Somehow, in some previous yarn ball unwinding distraction, I came upon a website called Elance that connects clients to freelance writers. I put together a profile and filled in the other recommended information, including signing up for a daily email containing Latest Job Recommendations For You. Every time I see that subject line, I hear the end of an, "As Only Seen on TV," ad - "But wait! There's more! Order now and you get two of these probably worthless devices...."

Clearly, focusing is an issue for me this morning. So. Back to Elance. I rapidly developed for myself more filters; lenses, if you will, through which to distinguish what scares me and what does not. For instance, working for someone on a distant shore, whose cultural values I know nothing about, appeals to me not at all. Nope. No Nigerian princes for me.

I found a job yesterday that appealed to me. Blog writing. I kept the tab open for 24 hours, as I often do for potential jobs, to let my reptile brain process the possibility. This morning, I went for it.

The site has you make a proposal. Slightly intimidating to a life-long bureaucrat, even one who has many friends in consulting. So it took me a couple of hours to construct what I'm guessing a viable proposal looks like. So satisfying to hit, "Submit."

Now it is time to stop thinking about fixing the bathroom wall and do something. It is going to be too hot to play outside, anyway, much as Merlin enjoyed watching his Shorter Mama and me Sawzall pruned branches into green recycling bin friendly lengths.

A New Author

Or so I thought. I added Niece Natalie as an author on this blog as she, like me, is in the unenviable position of finding work. We come at this challenge from vastly different angles.

If you imagine our lives as your basic pie charts, I've been all the way around to 9 o'clock, with about half of that including work experience.  Enough, in fact, that I remember the days when potential employers would inform you of their disinterest either by letter or face-to-face (as happened with me in high school when I alone among my friends was unselected to detassle corn then faced the further indignity of not being taken on as an apprentice brick layer).

On her pie chart, Nat's barely at the 3 o'clock position in age with a sliver of that being work experience. I know from talking and texting with her that her last employment was less than intellectually satisfying. The previous Starbucks barista gig got her through college at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and living in the style indicated by her residence in the off-campus town of Isla Vista.

Nat and I have much in common. We're Northrups, for one, Nat being my brother's only biological child. We're both tall - at her high school graduation, the school handed out diplomas in increasingly vertical size order so Ed warned me that is daughter would appear near the end of the ceremony. We both have the distinctive Northrup sense of humor and share a moderate cynicism. Both of us have Bachelor's degrees in anthropology, mine a B.A. in cultural, hers a B.S. in physical. Both of us are adept with the written word and loath passive voice. Neither of us has much use for organized religion; good thing, that, or our sinning ways would end us up in hell. 

In employment-seeking land, our differences stand out. My vast experience equals, I'm sure, to, "We don't want to hire some old fart who's set in her ways." I've mentioned before how obvious it is in many employment notices that only young people need apply. Nat's work experience, by contrast, lacks much in the way of demonstrable success (experts encourage resume writers to include measurable accomplishments such as, "Drove product sales up 1,000% in six months."). She has a working knowledge of Spanish and I am a total doofus gringa. I had to learn all things computer and apps to keep up at work. Nat was born with a cell phone in her hand.  In fact, Nat taught both Dad and me how to text and take selfies.

I invited Nat to join me in blogging about the work of finding work. Stay tuned.

Building My Portfolio

I applied for a job today, making it a good day. Looking at another job, I again thought, "If only I had something about that in my work experience portfolio." Instead of letting that squeeze me through the knothole of insecurity, I thought about the value of work. It is a capricious thing.

My first thought was the memory of reading a resume of a student assistant who listed as a skill his comfort with operating power tools. "Big whoop," I thought but in less kind terms. In hindsight, there were times at ugly public meetings I ran that the value of applying his skill set would have been invaluable.

Mentally popping back further in history, I thought about the early women's movement. I wonder if there are feminists still working to quantify the value of being a mother. That would include:  all that goes into parenting (intimidating enough on its own without all of the paramedic, logistics, budgeting and nutritional/thermodynamics science involved) ; relighting a pilot light or clearing a flooded carburetor as my mother did, among her many other "more womanly" skills like refinishing furniture and sewing my clothes;  knowing what old wives tale to apply to any given cleaning conundrum; and countless other tasks that, when a dad does them makes him so cute and just the best.

Yes, that was an unfair shot at fathers, especially mine. He taught me how to ride and train horses. He made no distinction between what a girl (me) and a boy (my brother) should learn. We both knew how to change the oil in the family cars and, with Dad, built a Bradley GT with a kit, and a Volkswagen chassis and power train. He taught us the basics of electricity and plumbing, either out of the deadline for a school science experiment or household exigency. I can solder. Learned that building the model train set. And on and on. 

Both of our parents' greatest lessons to each us were curiosity and critical thinking. Wonder how it works, how it should work, how it can work better. Sure, that led Ed and me to disassemble a capacitor and blow ourselves across his room one dull summer afternoon (followed by our shrilly innocent duet, "Nothing!" in response to our mother's shout from downstairs, "What are you kids doing up there?"

Maureen, wisely, doesn't usually bother to ask. When she has, the answer has been anything from, "Whittling a book stand out of the pruned redwood offshoot," to, "Seeing what is inside of a eucalyptus nut." I also save us a fair amount of handyindividual money. Electricity scares me (no doubt informed by the aforementioned capacitor incident) but the only thing that stops me from any plumbing project is not being able to make the wrench budge. I'm pretty darned good with spackle and bathtub sealant, too. And the whole yard maintenance thing, a.k.a. forestry management, is my bailiwick exclusively. 

This week, I intend to add sheet rock repair to my portfolio. We haven't painted the bathrooms since we moved in 20 years ago and, for whatever it was that inspired me, now is the time. Our house, like all those in the Oakland hills, shifts around. That means cracks in the sheet rock joints, as shown below. I did the research and now own enough repair supplies to possibly even tackle the four-foot horizontal crack in our basement that opens between 1/2 and two inches, depending on the season and the moisture of the soils beneath the house. I'll see how well this relatively straightforward bathroom project goes first.

Classifieds

I wondered if newspapers still ran classifieds so, when our local Montclarian appeared in our driveway, it seemed the perfect moment to satisfy that nugget of curiosity. We haven't had a newspaper subscription in years, you see. 

At first, we both grew weary of the general lousiness of the "local" papers - the San Francisco Chronicle and Tribune (before they became one), and the Oakland Tribune (which never really amounted to one newspaper at all). Maureen grew up reading the Chicago Tribune, I dallied with both the New York Times and the Washington Post. Small wonder, then, that we were print journalism snobs.

Given my accidental career in public relations, I've long been an armchair follower and critic of trends and developments in journalism. It seems to me that the consolidation train was on the tracks long before Internet news caused print media's ultimate derailment. All of the local East Bay papers, some that published Pulitzer prize reporting, folded into the Bay Area News Group in 2006, after the Alameda News Group acquired the San Jose Mercury News (and decimated the ranks of its talented and decorated reporters). That was only one year after the birth of the big mama of news aggregators, the Huffington Post.

I still read analyses from the Pew Foundation, Columbia School of Journalism, and others, about how the stodgy mastheads of the ships of information freedom and democracy failed to adapt to the new age of infobits and infographics. Much hand-wringing about the death of print journalism contributing to, if not causing, the polarization of the body politic and even some hints that we, the people, have chosen the fork of the road taking us to diminished critical thinking capacity.

It turned out that the Montclarian had a story about the reopening of a quasi-public horse riding stable near our house. Maureen and I rode there together decades ago in what I described as a condo horse arrangement. For $150 a month each, we got a couple of private riding lessons and weekend trail rides. We enjoyed the experience, and our horses Two Story and Doc. So sad when the concession folded. Given Maureen's passion for all things horses, the stable's reopening seems a wonderful employment opportunity for her. Not the classifieds, but any job lead works.

The Montclarian did have job classifieds but nothing like those I remember reading when I first moved to the Bay Area in the mid-1980s. Then, it took a long time to get through them. Every job and potential career was there for all job seekers to consider - from artists to xenophobes. Okay, I made up the xenophobes and it only phonetically fits the A to Z pattern desired. Still. 

Yesterday's classifieds surprised me. One, that there were any at all. Second, that almost all fell under two first letters: E-ngineers and T-echnology. Not a bartender, cook or domestic help job listed at all. I'd hoped that hyperlocal jobs might be listed but no. Why the likes of Intel, Hewlett Packard, and Apple would spend any money to purchase classifieds in a newspaper with a circulation approaching the hundreds is lost to me.

Time to dive back into Craigslist and Indeed.com.

Time Flies

When you get behind on your email, time zooms by. I've been at it for two hours. There were a few personal emails and mostly job notices, each of which I scanned to more closely examine those that showed promise.

The question is, how did I get so far behind? In retirement, there are no weekends. More accurately, every day is a weekend day. If one actually knows what day it is. I usually know what day Monday and Thursday are; Monday is Merlin's rally obedience training and Thursday is nose work training.

Nose work training got us an accomplishment a couple of days ago (was it Saturday?). Merlin and I competed for and acquired our first title in the sport! Explaining how nose work competition works is too long and complicated to go into here, but my Diablo Valley German Shepherd Dog Club page on the subject, along with the embedded links, explains it all. And a picture shows all. That's my boy!

The next day (it must have been Sunday) include spending an hour or so corresponding with a friend, as I do via email on a weekly basis. For whatever reasons (other than to give myself a break from perusing job listings), I spent much of the rest of the day catching up on The New Yorker editions that were piling up.

Yesterday, it was a trip to Marin to have lunch with a friend and colleague in the place once known as work. 

Sometimes I just sits but mostly I sits and thinks. I reconnected with the contact in a transportation planning agency who set up a meet-and-greet with the head of communications there. Learning that the agency board had just approved a training budget, I reintroduced me to said head of communications, offering up again an outline for a training plan. I certainly have the experience to speak knowledgeably about handling difficult (if not downright scary) public meetings, worse than the ones that caught her agency's staff quite unprepared.

Another buddy did the introductions to create a get-to-know-you meet-up with people in the firm for which she works. I'm very appreciative. And, since my mama did not raise a fool, I've spent a few hours looking at the company website to learn what I could about them and explore more about their business niche. Interesting and tentatively exciting.

We're leaving soon to take Annie for her final eye exam. It looks great to me so we're hoping for the all clear from the veterinary ophthalmologist.

Volunteering

"They" say, particularly to young people trying to enter the workforce, that volunteering is a good "in." Maybe. Certainly, paid and unpaid student assistants acquire job skills and connections that frequently result in employment. I am dubious, however, about the indentured servitude that seems to haunt the non-profit sector.

I've never been a rabid do-gooder, as my Dad likes to refer to them. Working at the American Red Cross, as a paid employee, cemented for me an aversion to that. I honor the Red Cross for all the good that it does but a couple of experiences soured me to getting overly involved in non-profit work.

First, I came to conclude that members of the senior (paid) management couldn't make it in the real world. Acknowledging that my observational data set is limited, I'm sticking to that. The ones with whom I've had experience, both inside and outside of the Red Cross, are way too wishy-washy and afraid of their shadows. And sycophants to the board. True, a board of directors is a governing agency; however, in non-profits, at least, that is primarily a fiduciary responsibility.

The board members themselves, it seems to me, are quite puffed up with their own self-importance. With some good reason, I suppose. Money, or connections to money, are why they are on the board. There's a wannabe factor going on here, too. Non-profits are sharky political arenas. Without the kind of watchdog oversight of a corporation or government and, frankly, without the capitalistic imperative, ego and power-over prevail.

I can say that. I've served on boards of non-profits. Not on big mother non-profits like the Red Cross or Sierra Club, mind you. I saw for myself what one's inflated view of oneself can do. I fear that I was obnoxious. On one board, I was the designated 800-pound gorilla sent in when another non-profit got anywhere near our territory. On another, I was a, "My way or the highway," kind of gal. I was at my best when I relaxed and marveled not at what the non-profit stood for but for what it actually did, and did well.

What put all of this into my head this fine Monday morning? I just signed up with AARP to help kids learn how to read. Every day, I'm grateful for having learned how to read. I learn so much about the world around me and reading keeps me entertained when I'm somewhere waiting for service. Nothing like a medical system's privacy policy to keep one's attention, you know.

I also read to write. I know of no better way to learn about writing than reading. Books, certainly, although I don't read as many of those as I used to. I'm better and keeping up with The New Yorker magazine. Best. Writing. Ever. I read it cover to cover, taking care not to skip ahead to the next cartoon. I read articles about subject matter that is of no interest to me because the writing is that good.

I also volunteer as a Writer/Coach, working with high school kids. It is very satisfying. I haven't been at that for very long so have no profound conclusions to put forth. What has struck me so far is how articulate and thoughtful the young people are, and how tentative they are about simply putting down on paper the thoughts that so glibly slide out of their lips.

Some think it odd that I so enjoy working with kids. When I began being a mentor in an elementary school near our office, one of my coworkers guffawed at the very idea. "Carol? Working with KIDS?" Here this: we all must reach back to offer whatever we have to build up those younger (or less fortunate) than us. However that best fits for us.

You Got to Have Friends

No posts for a couple of days as I descended into a job seeker's funk. Ugly place where one doubts oneself, the future, the motivations of others, and goes back to review the warped, dismissive and disrespectful if not outright immoral and corrupt motivations of one's past. Funk. 

Last night, as I slept fitfully having to prop myself up in bed more that I'm used to (long, self-destructive story not worth relating here), I looked out my window to see a big orangish moon, framed by trees. I've been looking for a meditation word. It came to me. Faith. Not the faith associated with organized religion; a more eclectic faith.

I've not written about support from friends. Finding that inspiration in emails this morning, what else could pop into my head but one of my favorite songs, Bette Midler's, Friends. It not only makes me perk up every time, it is one I sometimes perform a credible, if off-key and missing-phrases but very loud rendition of.

As I look back at that paragraph, I think of my friend with a Ph.D. in rhetoric with whom I correspond weekly (via email, no worries about me actually writing letters). Casual as those communiques are, I always take care with my use of the English language. I'm not sure that one italicizes names of songs in either academic or Associated Press style. I am quite sure I am going to hell, however, for ending a sentence with , "Of." I also have a tendency to over-use commas, influenced no doubt by learning to write radio scripts from a broadcaster friend from long ago (now a Facebook friend).

At one point in my career, I was the same age or younger than most of my closest colleagues. That changed at some point. I came to enjoy and relish my work with younger colleagues. I remain in contact with a handful of them who have gone on to become very successful. High energy and scary intelligent young people who are now encouraging me at every step in my transition to apply myself to something other than getting through level 245 of Bubble Witch Saga. 

There are others still serving in government positions keeping their eyes out for me in that sector, giving me ins to make my presence and expertise known to their current colleagues. And still others of more recent acquaintance sending me emails about jobs identified out of our shared interests.

Then there's my partner/spouse/lover/main squeeze Maureen. 

Writing that many slash description brings a memory of being in a van with five other lesbians, powerful and political women with whom I served on the board of directors of Bay Area Career Women (BACW). We called ourselves, "Professional Lesbians," referring to ourselves as being in "straight" jobs, often of considerable corporate influence, not as in making money from our "preference." The queens called us, "Dykes on spikes," and, "Lipstick lesbians." We were in the middle of the god awful California Central Valley, coming home from having met with women in San Diego to help them form a group like ours. We spent at least an hour talking about, when/if the day came that same sex couples' relationships were recognized, what term we'd use to describe our relationships. As I recall, we concluded that partner was the least sexist and most politically correct. Did I mention that this was in the wee hours of the morning?

I still primarily refer to Maureen as, "My partner," as she does me. If I knew anything about writing sonnets or odes, I'd insert one about Maureen here. She's lived through so many of my black Irish funks, so many of them originating with my work. Of late, she's taken to uttering an effective admonition to me to, "Quit beating up on my partner!" Thank you, best friend, for your faith and for being you.

P.S. I would insert here a picture of Maureen from when we first got together. She was all gussied up for the BACW New Year's Eve gala, and giving the photographer (me) her best come hither look. I suspect she'd kill me, though, so I'll resist the temptation. Instead, here's one of us together from that same night.

Management Fads

I ran into a new one in today's perusing of job notices. I'd never heard of a, "Scrum Master," and it sounded to me to be dirty work. Off to our other friend (via our BFF Google), Wikipedia.

"Scrum is an iterative and incremental agile software development framework for managing product development. It defines "a flexible, holistic product development strategy where a development team works as a unit to reach a common goal", challenges assumptions of the "traditional, sequential approach" to product development, and enables teams to self-organize by encouraging physical co-location or close online collaboration of all team members, as well as daily face-to-face communication among all team members and disciplines in the project."

I think what all those trendy words and misplaced commas mean is everybody playing nice in a sandbox with minimal parental supervision and a desire to build a pretty sand castle.

That sent me on a trip down memory lane to visit management fad pull-outs of the years gone by. I missed, by only a year, our entire organization being taken through the ordeal of everyone literally wearing different colored hats. Why? For reasons that no one could articulate to me because they either dissolved into giggles or became nauseous.

I did get to go through the Lewis Allen navel-gazing. We all, I mean all but the managers and executives, spent many hours in many meetings and off-sites figuring out who was a Circle 1 (decision-maker) and who was a triangle (obstructionist - my interpretation, nor Mr. Allen's). For every element of our regulatory work. I did enjoy staying in Monterey at the Asilomar Conference Center, though. For months, you could hear cubicle arguments about someone not being the shape or number that they thought they were. All the project managers continued to do whatever necessary to get around the downtrodden and shrill support people, and all was back to right again.

We did matrix management until one executive decided he'd be matrixed out of budget. After that, it became a phrase to utter with disgust and disdain, frequently associated with (spitting sound) Management by Objectives. Management By Walking Around was favored for a few, the others finding they had nothing to say to the likes of, "The girls in the typing pool." We had a typing pool because of the firm belief that engineers and scientists didn't need early word processing equipment to type. Typing, you see, was beneath the dignity of those men and we had girls for that. I got myself in trouble having a righteous feminist fit about that.

On, and what engineer could resist business process re-engineering? Every time I asked an engineer what made them special, I got the same response. A moment of silence, followed by a misty-eyed stare to the imagined horizon, and the utterance of the word, "Design." I gave up asking. I did, however, learn that Civil Engineers rule. Chemical, or comical engineers, depending on whether you  were one or not, were regarded as nothing more than domestic engineers. In other words, girl's work.

We were all touched by so many other management schema. Total Quality Management, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Zero Based Budgeting, and on and on. So many taught and embraced by the girls but not so much the men. Or for that matter, the girls who pretended to be men.

When I retired, our organization was still recovering from Six Sigma. What six had to do with the 18th letter of the Greek alphabet escaped me, and the notion of having a black belt in it made me dizzy to contemplate. All I know is that we wasted a ton of time and energy failing to realize that business management models don't work with doing the work of the People of the Great State of California.

I tried to get two books identified as required reading for all employees:  Miss Manners' Guide to Impeccably Correct Behavior and The No Asshole Rule. This chick thinks that would have solved a lot.

Forecast - Rosy

After reading yesterday's post, which I thought was very clever and quite amusing, Maureen beamed into my location and expressed her deep concern for my emotional well-being. I told her, "It is my blog and I can write whatever I want. Sometimes job hunting just sucks." Then I showered. Before noon, which is one of my new goals for each day. Knowing what day it is helps, too.

Today is Thursday. I know that because, since before dawn but after the birds started singing, I've heard the back-up alarms, squeaking brakes, and loud clangs associated with garbage and recycling pickup. Or, "Garbage and streetlights," as Maureen calls it, channeling her inner Senior Mayor Daley. I thought, sitting at my laptop and noting the date, that today had some other significance. A Jacquie Lawson e-card from a friend reminded me that one year ago today, Maureen and I got married.

That certainly gave today a rosier cast. Then I found a job that I could apply for and would like to have. Rosier still, so off to my camera shots for some inspiring creative work.

How much rosier can it bee?

Expertise, Or Not

The past few days have been hard. Reminds me of once when I was really, really sick and opened a bottle of cranberry juice only to find, "You are not a winner," imprinted on the inside of the bottle cap. I burst into tears and took to my bed.

Observations from Craigslist:

• I appreciate job notices that make it clear this silver-haired white woman need not apply: Women and men of color, bilingual candidates, and first-generation college students encouraged to apply.
• It is sometimes a good thing to not be qualified: Do you suffer from bipolar disorder/schizophrenia/depression?
• If only I didn't live in Oakland and was not such a scaredy cat: Many pleas for drivers from Uber and Lyft, the new entrants into alternative urban transportation. I know someone who recently used the former to get around Seattle and found it to be the way to go.
• I'm running into some that I just can't figure out what qualifications are hidden in the job description: native american proofreader. On further investigation, the poster was not looking to recreate the Navajo Code Talkers. 
• Finding out what knowledge and abilities I don't have: Expert knowledge of The Chicago Manual of Style (what's wrong with the global standard of the AP Stylebook, anyway?), Adobe Creative Suite (at work, first we had to go with Corel Ventura, much more publishing capability than we needed to produce four- to eight-page fact sheets, then we all got trained in the aforementioned Adobe Creative Suite only to then find that there was no money to buy the licenses).

Somehow, I stumbled across Elance, What Wikipedia describes as, "... an online staffing platform." (So glad that the AP Stylemavens finally consented to "online" and "website". Much faster to type than "on-line" and "Web site" as it originally ordained. I signed up, worked a bit on my Elance profile, partially populated by my LinkedIn profile, then took a number of the imbedded expertise tests.

It turned out that I scored barely proficient at all the stuff I fancied myself to be quite the expert. Okay, I had mononucleosis when I should have learned the terms for grammar (what the hell is a predicate, anyway, and why should I care?). I am also way behind on the current jargon for everything. Who knew that a journalism "deck" is a subhead? I figured it was a couple of PowerPoint slides breaking up the text, infographically. 

Bring back the second space after a period and a colon, gonzo journalism, and the Oxford comma.

I need a nap.