Taking a break and some photos

Enough of this job search weirdness.

Had to go to the post office today, and it was closed until 2 pm, which gave me a great excuse to hang out in East Nassau and take photos for awhile. Click here for a new screen or go here.

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No thank you for the job offer…

Earlier this evening I received an email that gave me deja vu all over again (See Aug 20 entry), and I responded as follows, after I had emailed Aon corp demanding an explanation:


X-Received: 25 Aug 2001 00:13:28 GMT
From: Debbienor@aol.com
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 20:13:17 EDT
Subject: interview info
To: mgoodman@abc

Upon reviewing your resume, I would like to schedule an interview with you for a career, sales or management trainee position. I am interviewing in the Albany, NY., area for a few positions, Monday, August �27 & Tuesday, August 28 from 11:00 am to 5:30 pm. When would you be available ? The interviews will be held at The Clarion Hotel and Suites, 611 Troy-Schenectady Rd., Latham, NY 12110. Telephone 518-785-5891. Please feel free to visit our website at www.aon.com, Please return an e-mail of your availability . I look forward to meeting with you.

Thanks you,
Debbie Norton

My reply:

Monday, I had a rather strange experience with people purporting to be recruiting for your company and in fact, just sent a letter regarding the experience to the VP of Human Resources at Aon. It started out with an email just like you’ve sent me. Isn’t that fascinating?

I am not interested in sales positions, which one person conducting interviews on Monday indicated to me were the only positions available. Furthermore, I found some of the questions on the application form to be unprofessional, non-pertinant to job performance and bordering on harrassment.

Not sure what sort of campaign you’re running, but it strikes me as more than peculiar.

I will be pursuing this, since I feel that it is not about hiring me, but probably more to do with selling me whatever you have to sell. I have just sent an email to Aon with a copy of your email indicating that I will pursue this matter with the NYS Attorney General’s office if I do not hear from them directly.

Further, I have posted to the message boards at Monster.com about this experience and will be keeping them apprised of the situation.

Mary Beth Goodman


About an hour later, if that, believe it or not, emailer Debbie Norton from ??Aon?? called to find out what could possibly have made me so upset. I told her I had already contacted higher ups in the company and would await hearing from them.

no no no, no sales. She is recruiting.

I mentioned the highly unprofessional questions on the “application.” She wondered what I could possibly be talking about. I allowed that if she didn’t know, I couldn’t help her.

It did come out that the reason the email was identical was because the man who had previously contacted me and arranged Monday’s interview had given it to her to use and that he had trained her. I had the impression she had just started. She also knew the person who wanted to keep my form (steve) and allowed as she “didn’t interview anything like him.”

“Please call me if there’s anything I can do for you.” Don’t think so hon. Think I’ll wait and see what your home office says.

Totally bizarre. Feels like some really bad b movie. Maybe “return of the high-pressured pod people”!


Geesh, in the last days of my unemployment (hurry up Apple and send me the paperwork PLEASE) my life is turning into some weird soap opera of job seeking.

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progress report

I forgot to mention that the quilting is further along than what is shown here and in the link. Tonight I finished: the hearts in the vases and flowers, the first big circle of feathers and the first feathered corner. Cool beans! Doing the center lily block flower was not pretty, and especially not easy. If I have time I’ll go back and do a few fixes. No fixes until it’s all done though, that’s the sort of time constraint I’m under here.

Back to work now for a little while.

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Quilting and group projects

well, I’m taking a hopefully short break from the grant quilts to get the NYQuilts! raffle quilt quilted. Pat put in quite a bit of time putting the top together. I know she really did more un-sewing and re-sewing than is good for a person’s morale, but it came out looking great. She wasn’t undoing her own work – one of the downsides of doing a “group” project.

anyway, we got it layered and pinned on Tuesday. I just put up some photos so she could see them and thought I’d share them here too.

vase from lily block Carolina Lily Block

Want to see more?

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No speak da cat

There is apparently no way to successfully translate “Bill, sorry, there are no liver treats” into something that cats will pretend to understand.

speaking slowly: BILL…….. there…….are………no………liver…….treats.

I’m reminded of that great FarSide cartoon – what dogs hear: blah blah blah blah Ginger! blah blah blah Ginger! what cats hear: (empty balloon)

Poor Bill the cat – he REALLY has a liver treat jones. Either that or he’s serving as spokescat for the herd. Bill, there are NO liver treats. blah blah blah TREATS.

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