I have just returned to my room after an incredibly long day. Let's see...

Got on the shuttle from the hotel to the Convention Center, and managed to sit behind a fellow on a cel phone. As best as I could tell, this fellow is involved with some concern that has a garden store. Apparently, there was some sort of tomfoolery occurring there last night, because someone tried to jimmy the lock. He had no response from his security company, and wasn't very happy about it, so decided to call them. Well, he apparently mixed up the number for the security company with the number for his payroll company, and thought that was just so funny he had to laugh about it and share it with everyone.

So, he called his girl Tuesday (no, seriously, his assistant's name was apparently Tuesday...mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be days of the week), and she was having a terrible time finding the number for the security company. (Maybe his life would have been better if he'd have hired a girl Friday. Maybe they get progressively more expensive, but also more competent, the later in the week you get. I don't know.)

Anywho, when Tuesday couldn't come up with the phone number for the security company, he decided to call someone who was apparently his assistant, who was already downtown at the Convention Center. Now, why these garden store people were at a school board convention was beyond my powers of understanding, but so far as I could tell, there were one of two possibilities:

* the garden store is run as some part of a project by a school board, or

* this fellow is a garden mogul (which is nowhere near as prestigious as being Grocery Man, I assure you!) and has a fellow garden mogul get installed, with him, on the school board.

Anyway. This is the danger of talking on your cell phone on a bus.

In any case, I left Garden Guy to his own devices and arrived at the Convention Center. After talking with our superintendent, I made the decision not to go to the session on school board communication and instead went to one on school levies.

Memo to self: NEV-ER, EVER START A MONDAY MORNING OFF AT 9 AM WITH A DISCUSSION OF SCHOOL FINANCE.

EVER.

EVER.

Yeah, that was a bad idea.

OK, so, then we headed into the general session, where there was a keynote speaker by a woman named Consuelo Castillo Kickbush. She gave an uplifting, emotional and fascinating speech about growing up in a barrio in Texas, and being dropped into a category of "not college material" mainly because of the perception of how people with her skin color and her address were not good at learning. She perservered, made it through college, and became a Big Shot in the U.S. Military. (Yes, she probably had a more specific title than Big Shot and was in a branch, and I don't remember either of them. I've been on my feet for twelve hours and this is my first chance to sit down. What do you want from me?)

OK, so, then, ate lunch and went to the trade show. As someone said, the trade show is a lot less interesting when you just didn't pass a levy.

I know membership in the Ohio School Board Association has many benefits, but one of them I did not expect was to have whole areas of practice I am interested and passionate in set out for me. First was a session on domestic violence. While I am all for education on the problem and believe passionately in it (and, indeed, that's one of the main points of having this blog), it was nice to be in a room with a bunch of people who cared about the issue and already understand a good bit about it. I nearly jumped up and down for joy when the speaker said, "You know, domestic violence doesn't have to involve physical actions. It can also involve emotional, psychological, verbal and [special emphasis here] financial abuse."

It's nice to see someone who understands this. I just wish she had a job as a judge or a guardian ad litem.

From there, I wandered over to Starbucks, and came back to the convention center, where my next session was a session on public records. (Seriously, if there are two areas of the law I am passionate about, it's protecting battered women and making sure public records are available to all. In that order.)

After that, we went to dinner. I didn't have dessert, although I would have if only they'd have had University of Michigan cookies on the menu. But I understand why they weren't; it's a tough recipe.

Put in a big bowl and beat for three hours.