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In honor of April 1, I'll be your April Fool.
It's been called to my attention (mostly by my charming, former public relations manager, press-release-writing wife) that I'm usually good for at least two typos per posting.
The irony, of course, is that I'm a professional writer/reporter. So, theoretically, I should be able to string together a few paragraphs of error-free thoughts. This is is proving to be quiet the task for me.
I'll defend my self breefly first. I type these postings in Blogger's dialogue box as opposed to typing in MicroSoft first, which offers a grammar-spellll checker. Blogger doesn't check for grammar, so I get some homonyms wrong form time to thyme as well as some other misplaced words or botched word ordering.
That's my excuse. Now for my rationalizations. Bottom line: I don't care enough to edit closely for grammatical errors. I'm just trying to get my thoughts out their, so after I type the original, I scan the article a second time just to make sure I didn't leaf something out and that my thought process makes sense...at least two me. And I run the spell check to cover any really embarrassing typos.
To serve as a constant reminder of this blog's purpose and my own shortcomings, I decided to add a permanent Disclaimer in the left-hand column, so now I'm free to screw things up terribly...it already has been disclaimed.
And finally, please don't judge my ability to write/report from this blog alone. Otherwise I probably won't be able to freelance anymore.
Happy April Fool's Day!
So unlike several other foreign service office-related blogs, I never bothered to include a disclaimer stating that the government and I are not related, our views are different and so on and so forth.
I didn’t think it was particularly necessary as I am not a government employee, and my first posted concluded with me stating, in so many words, f*#$ the government.
But after posting for a couple of weeks, and as I have learned more about the FSO subculture, I’ve decided to add this small disclaimer: Sometimes, I’m wrong, just slightly off, or embellishing.
I was inspired to add this disclaimer after doing a little research and discovering I’m not technically an EFM because that acronym denotes a dependent status. Now, I imagine Natalie would argue that I am indeed more dependent on her than I ought to be, but as far as the government is concerned, I’m actually an Appointment Eligible Family Member (AEFM), because I could serve as a direct-hire employee for either a Family Member Appointment (FMA) or Temporary Appointment (TEMP) position. (Holy crap this just keeps spawning more acronyms!)
AEFM interferes with my blog title, and as I have no intention of ever working for the U.S. government (one my many mantras, to Natalie’s chagrin and possible embarrassment is: “I don’t work for the government; the government works for me.”), so therefore, I have no problem dropping the “A” and never mentioning it again.
So in conclusion, please don’t take my postings as any official government stance and please don’t hold me accountable for any inaccuracies. My writings are based on memories intended to be entertaining, and I don’t double check facts and figures.
