Monday, February 22, 2010

And You Thought It Was Over...



My Farm during the holidays.

A few people here and there and on Facebook have asked me what ever happened with my Farmville farm. I guess not everyone defriended me when I went through my phase of posting a new picture of my farm every day! Some even found it amusing! (Well, to my face anyway!)

Long story short, my farm became really high maintenence and I started spending over an hour a day on it! This became a huge problem over the holidays where my farm got so crowded and messy that I couldn't even deal with it anymore! Anyway, I think for a while I was just over it and I started forgetting about my crops, and a lot of them kept dying and then for a few weeks I deleted all of my crops completely.

Well, this past week, I decided to get in the saddle and start farming again. Mainly because there are so many new and exciting additions to the world of Farmville and the only way to get them is to either spend money on my PayPal account (are you kidding, I'm unemployed!) or to farm and "make money" to buy the new things! Ok, I'm probably going to have to get with it and stop letting my plants die, but in the meantime, check it out!


New horse stable.

My new villa.


My rides area.

Lotus flowers and sugarcane. LOL.

Dead poinsettias.

Dead sugarcane.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

I LOVE JK Rowling

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm a total nerd who loves JK Rowling and Harry Potter. I think she's brilliant and I love her Harry Potter books which on the outside seem like children's books, but then have very adult themes. I've read each one at least 5-7 times and I think she is the only celebrity that I'd stand in line to see or stand in line for tickets to see. Well, maybe Christian Bale too, but I think that's a whole different story.

I just saw this video of her doing a commencement speech at Harvard last year, and wanted to share. My favorite part is where she says, "Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two." Because recently, I think I have been confusing the two and I totally used to make fun of the people who did and now I'm one of them! I guess it's something that I'm going to have to work on. Anyway, I just think that this is a pretty inspirational speech and if you have the time, you should check it out. And I realize that most people do not have 21 minutes to spare to watch the whole video, so you can also just read it here. That's just how cool I think she is!

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

GPA...um, Whatever!


Thanks to a good friend of mine who connected me with her friend, I received an email this week from a recruiter at a company that I had been keen on getting into. I was super excited when the recruiter contacted me via email...until I read what she wanted...my GPA from both undergrad and grad school. Yikes! Let's just put it this way...after years of being a studious student, I stopped caring about grades the moment I got accepted into college. Seriously. I got a C in cheerleading my senior year of high school. Oops!

But the more I think about it, the more I wonder. Does school GPA really matter in the real world? I mean, I'm sure it matters to subjects like rocket science or brain surgery. But to the sales and marketing jobs to which I'm applying now? Really!? I've never had anyone else ask me for my GPA for a job before, so I started to sweat. These days in times of stress, I look to the internet, so I did some research online to see what people have to say about this matter and I came across a quote from a fellow blogger: "Great sales people tend to be great socializers, which likely means the keg trumped the library when it came to late night pursuits." Sweet. I'm totally going to start using this as my excuse as to why my GPA hasn't been in the top 25% of the class since high school! I wasn't focused on my GPA because I was concentrating on my real life skills! So there!

Anyway, in case you're wondering, I did send over my GPAs to the recruiter and I'm still blogging about it so obviously it wasn't a positive answer! Oh well...on to my next pursuit!

Thursday, February 4, 2010

What's My Story?


I've had about a week and a half of unemployment this time around and so far, it's been pretty good. The last job at the video game company where I was getting home at late everyday really made me not do anything at home! I forgot how nice it is to be at home on a weeknight and have dinner with my husband! Anyway, I was really excited this week because it was my aunt's birthday and my cousin invited me to dinner on a Tuesday night. If I was at that job, I most likely would not have been able to make it to dinner and I definitely would not have been able to make these DELICIOUS cupcakes that I found online! Mmmmmmmm...buttermilk cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese frosting...Thanks Pat and Gina Neely! Tasty!

Anyway, back to the topic at hand..."What's My Story?" I had a phone interview yesterday morning and leading up to the interview, I was stressing about what my story was. I was wondering if the recruiter was going to ask me why I was only at the last gig for 2 months before I quit and I was trying to think of how I was going to spin it besides just saying that I worked for a Douche Lord. Should I say that it was just a contract position? Should I say that the work/life balance wasn't there? Should I just say it wasn't a good fit?

Well, it turns out I didn't have to say anything at all. I said that I was there for 2 months and was now looking for new opps and she didn't question me at all! I wonder if this is because there are such high turnover rates at companies these days and it's not uncommon to leave anymore? Is this because of Gen Y!?!? In any case, I'll take it! I still have my version of the story to share, and I probably will have to refine it a little more, but I definitely don't think this aspect of my job search is going to hold me back. My technical skills on the other hand...hm...well, we'll just leave it at that for now.