A life in progress

I haven't posted anything in quite some time.  But, it turns out I have some free time these days. Like everyone else in America - and it seems the world - we are affected by the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak.  Last night, Nevada followed the examples of New York, New Jersey, Washington, and other states announcing immediate closure of all non-essential businesses for the next 30 days .  Prior to that, some businesses had voluntarily closed or reduced hours, including some of the largest casinos in the world - all MGM properties on the Las Vegas Strip . So, this is weird.  I mean, it is weird everywhere, but it particularly weird in Las Vegas.  We are literally the city that never closes.  Before today (or maybe more accurately, before Sunday when things started shutting down), I could go out at any time of the day or night and find someone to serve me a five-star meal, find a shop that would sell me a Rolex, or purchase a luxury car.  Some might...

I've had some "not great" customer service experiences in my life. Today may be the first all out fail.  So bad, that I feel it necessary to call them out for their terrible service. Ladies and gentleman, I present to you - Avis (the car rental agency). This morning, my husband texted to tell me that he'd accidentally left his keys (car, house, etc.) in his rental car, which he'd just returned to the Little Rock Airport.  He knew this because the Avis agent called him, but he was already on the plane and didn't get the message until he landed for his layover. He was having trouble with cell service, so he asked me to call. No problem.  Right? Wrong. I called about a dozen times, but was never able to get through.  I got service errors, busy signals, and a couple of times, it almost seemed like someone picked up the phone and then hung up on me.  I tried hunting for an online chat feature or an email address.  No luck.  I even tried the Avis o...

A few days ago, I got in my first ever Twitter scuffle (I won't call it an all-out Twitter war, because let's be honest, I'm not that important) with a local journalist.  He wrote about the contract dispute between the teachers and the local school district, blaming teachers and labor unions for the school district's budgetary problems.  I disagreed.  A lot.  I also felt the facts he used in his article were misleading, and in some places outright incorrect.  So I responded to him directly and wrote a fairly lengthy blog post airing my opinion. OMG!  Kermit is using the wrong your/you're! If you haven't read the first part of this post, it's fairly lengthy.  In short, I talk about how teachers are educated professionals that deserve to be treated with respect and deserve to be paid a reasonable salary.  Eventually, teachers leave the profession for lack of money. I shared it on social media and got quite a bit of feedback - much more th...

Today, my local newspaper published an article blaming teachers for the shortcomings of our schools.    Not teachers' skills,  or dedication, or knowledge in their subject areas, but their paychecks.  Basically, the TL;DR version of the article, and to be very honest, there's no actual reason to read the article because the "journalist" (and I use the term very loosely) just made up a lot of crap, is that the school district is having massive financial problems (true) which is a direct result of teachers fighting for pay raises. So. Yeah. Let me just start with some basic facts, because this is not going to be pretty. I started teaching in 2007.  My base salary was just under $30,000.00 per year in a large urban area.  I made so little money that as a single person, I qualified for county housing assistance for two years. Let that sink in for a moment. I was a full time teacher.  The county subsidized my housing.  More amazing...

I haven't been able to spend a lot of time blogging lately.  Mostly, that's because I spend all of my time lawyer-ing, which involves an absurd amount of writing.  Writing for fun after writing for work just wasn't working out for me. However, now that things are settling down a little bit, I can sit down and write a little bit about the new world of lawyer-life that I've found myself in.  Since the world is obsessed with this idea of "the first 100 days," and I've been an attorney for 100-ish days, it seems like a good time. Since I've transitioned from teacher to lawyer, people have a lot of questions...  Ok, maybe not that question.. I'm going to try to answer some of them..... 1.  Do you like being a lawyer? A: Generally speaking, yes.  Sometimes it is hard -- actually difficult.  While I'm not doing anything physically exhausting, I am expending a lot of mental energy.  I have to stay focused and I have to keep...