Go Public? Really

So, I went to this conference about college admissions and recruitment. And there were approximately 57 sessions about the internet (Fancy that! Apparently the internet is BIG with the kids these days! Who knew!) and about four sessions particularly about blogging.

The things I learned about blogging:

1) The kids WANT you to blog about work if you work for an institution of higher education (which I do) and have fundamental blogging skills (which I have) and the whole notion that any information about your place of work in a blog is inappropriate/a fire-able offense (a la Dooce) does not necessarily apply when you do what I do for a living. Huh.

2) If you write a REAL blog, from an independent (i.e. not school hosted) site, it is much better than some slick, grammatically perfect (which I'm not) shiny happy marketing piece that all the cool hip kids these days will spot approximately 87 miles away and will shun like the dickens. In other words, you should blog like a real person and not get all stuffy and huffy about it. Huh.

3) That I know WAAAAY way more about blogs and blogging than 97% of the attendees of this conference. Plus I have active an account on Facebook, I know MySpace is dead, I can navigate Flickr and I can say cool things like "Hey boooy, don't be such a beeotch. Get me a brewski!" (Pretty hip, I know.)

With all that in mind: Now I have to decide whether to go public with this blog (by linking it via the school website) and expose all my endless archives filled with countless stories about poop and vomit and other sundries. OR should I make a whole new shiny happy blog which I will fill with cool stuff about the shiny happy world of recruitment but keep out posts about poop, vomit and occasional usage of the word beeotch. But would that really be half as cool as this one?

Plus, if I'm blogging for work, you know this blog would become even more sorely neglected, which would make me (and you, my faithful readers) oh so sad.

What do you think?

Just One More

Here's how you know the folks in Casa Mar have lost their ever lovin' minds: WE'RE GETTING A PUPPY! For real. Cuz' three kids under the age of six isn't enough of a challenge anymore. BORING! We need to add some spark to our family life beyond the thirteen trips I'm slated to take for work in the next three months.

IMG_1663e, originally uploaded by mollymolly.

Now, this photo does not depict our ACTUAL puppy, because Gabe is the only one who has actually seen her and I didn't send him with a camera. But I'm confident this awesome shot found on flickr is a pretty fair representation of the state of things in our puppy's world. He picked out the smallest and reddest girl in the litter (on our instruction) while he was up north spending some solo time with Grandpa and Granny.

Our puppy was born on June 12th in Wisconsin to the Boober Dog's daughter, the Lucy Dog. So, the new puppy is Esste's granddaughter, which is pretty cool. It also means we have to somehow figure out how to fetch a puppy all the way from northern Wisconsin in late July.

And the current hot topic of debate around our house: What will we name the puppy?

The top suggestions are as follows:

Gabe: "Hermione"

Quin: "Blanket"

Ribh: "Kitty"

Crisby: "Bacon"

Hubby: "Get DOWN, Dammit"

Any suggestions from the peanut gallery? Comments are open, fire away!