Georgia...Georgia

The week after my second trip to Miami I traveled to Georgia! I spend a lot of time in Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport (eight times in the last 26 days) but getting out of the airport and enjoying the state is something I've only gotten to do twice in the last year. Our program recently added eight new courts, including Paulding County, Georgia, and that one is mine! Paulding County is about 40 miles NW of Atlanta and is a really nice little (but growing) community.

This is downtown Dallas, GA at rush hour =-)

I must say it's truly a breath of fresh air to have a jurisdiction with a population significantly smaller than the others where we work. To make a comparison- Los Angeles has around 22,000 children in foster care. Paulding County has about 94. And they already have a great collaborative structure in place, great court practice, a great child welfare agency- I'm excited! It's going to be fun working with them, and in such close proximity to Atlanta! I LOVE Atlanta! I'm not sure if I could ever move there... but of course I don't love Reno and I moved there, so I guess if God wanted to move me to Atlanta I'd have no objections! After a two day site visit where I met basically the whole town and observed court, I drove up to Stone Mountain, GA for a conference. The entire time I was in Georgia it was overcast and foggy- which was nice! It reminded me of Oregon and was a great backdrop for their gorgeous trees.

This is the view from my hotel balcony

The county is growing so quickly that they have decided to build a new courthouse and county administration center, so on my way out of town I got a tour.

Here is our entourage driving up to the new county complex...

And here is the judge in her "new" courtroom pretending to call us to order. She is great!

So that's it for Georgia- thankfully no mishaps hotel or otherwise. I'm actually posting this from Charlotte, NC... and you'll be hearing about this trip in the not-too-distant future!

Miami take 2

I had the fun task of traveling to Miami twice in two weeks. The first trip was to accompany judges from San Jose to see some of the programs targeted to infant and toddler mental health in the Miami court, and the second was to attend a one day conference. The conference was really great and I found some new faculty something we're always on the lookout for. On the down side... the morning I was flying back I had been awake for about 10 minutes when the fire alarm went off in the hotel. 4:15 a.m. Thankfully it was a short evacuation, but for the first time something actually was on fire, I overheard one of the firemen telling another guest it was a lightbulb. Makes you feel very safe.




Here is the nice fireman explaining the situation to a German tourist. Not a good way to start a Saturday morning, but first class upgrades help =-) Thanks Delta!


On the bright side... I may get some bonus Hyatt points out of this!







And here is a fun picture taken above Florida that same morning.






On a MUCH more important note- congratulations to Sally and Danielle and your husbands on the births of your beautiful sons!

Happy Day

Here is a picture from my west-facing veranda from about a week ago. Fall is a beautiful time of year in Reno!

And this is looking to the south. You can just barely see the foaling barn where we put our garbage so the bears won't get it! Thankfully this year we have had no bear sightings so I think we're in the clear.

I hope you're impressed (LOL!) that I was able to keep my word and post so quickly! I have to say that it's hard to concentrate on work given all that's happened to us as a nation in the past 24 hours, but I am feeling truly happy and exceedingly hopeful!

And just for fun, here is a roll call of the places I've been for work since February's Hawaii post: March=Cleveland and Phoenix, April= Eugene, Charlotte, Columbus and Cincinnati, May= Palm Springs and Toledo, June= San Jose, July= Chicago and Norfolk Virginia, August=Winston-Salem, NC and Los Angeles, September= Honolulu and New Orleans, October= Newark, NJ, New York City and Miami, and November will be Miami, Atlanta area, and Charlotte. Whew!

Happy Election Day!

So I'm going to guess that this will be the bloggingest day of the year, so I thought- what better day to redeem my blog?! Thanks for reading =-)

If you know me- and I hope that if you're reading this that you do know me (that you're not just some random stalker who stumbled upon this page) you know that my heart beats for politics. You probably also know my political leanings, so no need to discuss them, really all I want to say is that this is one of the most exciting days that I can remember in years and I am super excited regardless of the outcome. To you my friends, I want to say thank you for doing your part, thanks for voting this election (especially to you libertarians!)

The main reason I haven't blogged in six months, is that my camera broke and a blog without pictures is pretty boring. The other is my crazy travel schedule. Without looking at all of the travel documents I have collected over the last six months I really can't even tell you all of the places I've been, although Hawaii (again) New York and Miami are in there. I'll do that in my next post...which I promise will come out before six more months have elapsed!

That's all for now. Hope your day is stellar. And to a truly wonderful friend who apparently is reading this blog now ;) thanks for reading and thanks for coming to dinner, I look forward to seeing you again soon!