Dr. Marvin even let me use his toothbrush.*

I'm taking a vacation. From my problems.

And even though it is "time to go to the beach," I must settle for Gatlinburg this year. I'll mail everyone a bear instead of Kona coffee.


*from the movie What About Bob, which you should all see.

bring on the mediocrity*

For those of you who don't know, I am a grant writer for a nonprofit organization, meaning that I write letters and complete application packages for submission to a variety of public and private sources that have money to give to good causes such as mine.

The funders all have different applications, which all have different standards and rules regarding content, length, deadlines, etc. These grants are competitive, so it is important to carefully follow the instructions. The best writer and instruction-follower wins.

Or so I thought. Today, I participated in a teleconference about becoming a reviewer of federal grant applications. We were listening to an explanation of the reviewing process and how certain categories of the application are worth certain amounts of points. Each application is, in theory, judged by how clearly and completely each category is addressed. But then the presenter told us that grant review teams have been instructed that exceptions can be made when reviewing applications from grant writers who may not be fluent in English.

First, the applications do not ask the grant writer about their fluency in English. So, the reviewer cannot know if the person lacks fluency because they recently arrived in the US or if they failed their first, second, and third grade Language Arts classes in rural Kansas.

Second, let's say they lack fluency because they did, in fact, just arrive in the US. Legally, even. How far can a reviewer bend the standards to allow for the inclusion of this poorly articulated application? (Please note that I am not calling the grant writer an idiot. I am saying that they cannot write clearly in English.) And do the standards vary by how long the writer has lived here, how many ESL classes they have taken, and which country they came from?

Third, I understand that federal applications are tedious and the language can be confusing. The instructions alone can be twenty pages in length. But every year, enough grant writers master the process and receive the award money for their organizations. So it can be done. My first federal application almost killed me. My second one went much more smoothly because I had the experience. I didn't think the rules should be bent to accommodate me back then. I knew I just hadn't grasped the intricacies of the application. And all applicants have access to a live-federal-representative-person who can answer any question about the application.

Fourth, clear communication is essential for an organization receiving, say, $100,000 of the public's money. Federal grants require regular written reports. Is everyone okay with the government being a little hazy on how the money was spent?

Can we bend the rules for applicants whose computer skills are lacking and therefore do not accurately complete a form-field application? What about applicants who submit after the deadline for some reason?

There are standards for a reason. Lots of reasons, really. All applicants for a particular grant should be held to the same technical writing and communication standards. Learning to accomplish those standards is (should be) part of the grant-writing process, no matter what your birth certificate says.


*one of my sister's famous lines.

Where's Waldo?

Okay, so I was all excited about the range of cities represented in the ClustrMap for my blog. Until I realized that many of them are probably my friend Jeremy, just from different cities since he travels so much. Not that Jeremy isn't important. But I was thinking maybe they were NEW important people.

I would love to know who lives in some of these cities if it isn't Jeremy. Clearly, there are lurkers who don't comment. From Portugal, for example. I don't mind, but I am curious.

First visitor from New Zealand wins.

Snacks for Starvers, Stealth Vittles, Stuff in Plain Brown Wrapper That Isn't A Malt Beverage*

On Fridays, Schools Send Home Sacks Stuffed With Food; Feds 'Cannot Do It Alone'
By Roger Thurow
Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2006
TYLER, Texas --

Seven-year-old Cody Lozano and his 9-year-old sister Cherokee hurried into their house on a recent Friday afternoon and emptied their school backpacks. On the kitchen table, next to a family Bible and a pile of bills, each child laid out a box of Special K cereal, a carton of milk, a package of peanut-butter crackers, a cup of fruit cocktail, a bag of animal crackers, a carton of apple juice, a pull-top can of beans and franks and one of rice and beans.It wasn't a weekend homework assignment. It was their weekend breakfast, lunch and dinner.

"Without this food, I don't know what we would do," says their mother, Karen Lozano. In a town where the oil boom once created dozens of millionaires and where azaleas and roses now attract tourists, Ms. Lozano, 41, and her two youngest children sit in a living room beneath a bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling. Family health problems and sporadic work for her husband have reduced their income and increased their expenses, she says.

"Last week it was, 'Do we buy groceries or pay the water bill?' This week, it is groceries or the gas bill," she says. "With the backpacks, I know that at least there's something for the kids to eat."

Cody and Cherokee are members of the Backpack Club at Douglas Elementary School. Every Friday during the school year, just before the final bell, they and 70 schoolmates from low-income families rush into the auditorium and wait in line for backpacks filled with food. In the past year, thousands of other children have begun forming similar Friday afternoon lines in schools across 30 states, from big cities like Chicago, to postcard places like Sonoma County, Calif., to rural hamlets surrounded by corn and wheat fields like Hawkeye, Iowa.

On their shoulders, the children carry the backpacks as well as the weight of America's hunger paradox: want amid plenty. The backpacks are an emergency fix to a problem that has defied solution, despite a rising economy and tens of billions of dollars of government spending on nutrition programs, including food stamps, school lunch and aid to mothers and young children.

The war on poverty has ebbed, flowed and changed direction in the four decades since Lyndon Johnson launched it in 1964, and in the decade since Bill Clinton signed a bill that he said would "end welfare as we know it." With little appetite in Washington for costly new government-administered efforts to address poverty, all sorts of small-scale efforts are springing up: some privately funded, entrepreneurial efforts, others government-funded experiments. None are sufficiently large to cure poverty, nor do they pretend to such an ambitious goal. Instead, they are attempts to make life better for those who live in poverty or to test new approaches to a very old problem.

The fraction of Americans living below the official poverty line fell significantly during the booming economy of the 1990s. Then it turned up in the recession of 2001 and an ensuing recovery that lifted the fortunes of the best-off Americans more than it did those at the bottom. Alternatives to the official measure show much the same pattern.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says government surveys show that 11.9% of U.S. households -- 13.5 million in all -- were uncertain they could afford to feed their families at some point during the year in 2004. About a third of those, or 4.4 million households in all, said that at least one household member went hungry at least some time during the year because the family couldn't afford enough food.

At the same time, the economy has been growing in many regions around the country. Tyler, Texas, for example, with its oil, retail and medical-services base, has hummed along with the entire state recently. Yet the USDA report also shows Texas has become the hungriest state in the country. In the 2002-2004 period, 16.4% of Texas households were food insecure, up from 13.9% in 1999-2001.

"There is a rising tide, but it's not one that lifts all the boats," says Ray Perryman of the Perryman Group, an economic-analysis firm that tracks the Texas economy. "Some sink along the way."

A recent survey by America's Second Harvest, a network of more than 200 food banks across the nation, indicates that those relying on pantries and emergency kitchens include a large number of working families who aren't making enough to make ends meet, particularly with high heating and gas prices and medical bills. Mr. Perryman says the adults in such families generally don't have the education or skills demanded by high-tech jobs being created.

"Hunger is a hidden issue, particularly in Tyler, where unemployment is low and there's a lot of economic activity," says Robert Bush, executive director of the East Texas Food Bank. "But every day, we touch people who have to make hard choices about food: pay medical bills or buy food, repair car or buy food."

The Second Harvest survey also paints a portrait of the hungry at odds with common stereotypes: Only 12% of those served by the nation's food banks are homeless; 93% are American citizens; 40% are white; nearly half live in rural or suburban areas; and, more than one-third of the hungry households have at least one working adult. In these households, the survey found, parents are often working nights and over the weekends, meaning children sometimes must fend for themselves at mealtimes.

And there are a lot of those children. Second Harvest estimates that of the 25 million people served at its network of food pantries and feeding centers last year, nine million were children.

The federal government appropriates about $12 billion annually for child nutrition programs, meant to provide a safety net, says a spokeswoman for the USDA. But when gaps develop, efforts of community groups and food banks are welcome, she says. "We cannot do it alone."

For decades, Washington has funded free and reduced-price lunches and breakfasts in schools. In the last school year, 17.5 million children received free or reduced-price lunch and 7.7 million participated in the breakfast program.

In more recent years, the government began supporting after-school snack and dinner programs as well as summer feeding centers, which are essentially day camps for hungry children with recreational activities scheduled around lunch."

As a nation, we figured that should take care of the problem," says Lisa DeYoung, Second Harvest's director of programs. "But it doesn't. There are gaps in the system." Like the weekends."

On Friday at lunch, I see a kind of panic in some children that I didn't see before. They eat as much as they can," says Kim Matthews, youth-services coordinator in the Chapel Hill, Texas, school district. "Then on Monday at breakfast, they not only eat the food on their tray, but the food on the trays of the five kids next to them."

While some backpack-carriers say they jealously guard their food -- one boy says he hides it under his bed -- others say they share it with their families. At Annie Sims Elementary School in Mt. Pleasant, Texas, a 10-year-old named Low said he shared his milk with his grandmother, his crackers with an aunt and his Apple Jacks cereal with his older sister. Seven-year-old Leonard asked the school counselor for an extra jar of peanut butter for his mother.

The Arkansas Rice Depot, a food bank, started stuffing backpacks with food in 1995. A school nurse at Martin Luther King Elementary School in Little Rock told the food bank she was seeing a growing number of children with dizziness and stomachaches -- not from illness, but from hunger. The group sent food to the school, which sent it home with some students. When children carrying food reported they were being teased for being poor, the Depot put the food in backpacks that look like the ones most students use to lug books and supplies.

The teasing stopped, and the food bank took the backpack idea to schools around the state. As word spread, food banks and schools in other states began designing take-home meal packs for the neediest students. Kids are chosen for the backpack program by teachers and school counselors, nurses and social workers based on knowledge of the family backgrounds and the behavior of the children in the classroom. This year, Second Harvest says at least 70 food banks are distributing backpacks -- tens of thousands of them in an average week. Those numbers are expected to multiply next school year as Second Harvest rolls out the program across its nationwide network.

The backpacks are for the most part filled with child-friendly food: nutritious, easy to open and nothing requiring stove-top cooking. Empty backpacks are returned by students and refilled for the next week. The food in each backpack costs between $2 and $3, and, once filled, each weighs seven to 10 pounds.

"It's heavy," said a fifth-grader named Jocelyn as she hoisted her backpack at Jewett Elementary School in the Waterloo, Iowa, school system. "But it's a good heavy."

Funding for backpack programs -- to reimburse food banks that usually have to buy child-specific food -- has mostly come from local businesses, churches and community organizations such as the United Way in Waterloo and the Junior League, a women's group, in Tyler. In 2003, Hasbro Inc., the Pawtucket, R.I.-based toy and game maker, supported pilot programs in eight rural areas. Since then, it has donated more than $700,000 to help 36 programs get started. A few corporations, such as Beam Global Spirits & Wine Inc., based in Deerfield, Ill., are funding programs in counties where they have operations.

The pitch for support often takes donors by surprise. By the time Peggy Berry of the East Texas Food Bank finished her appeal to the Junior League in Tyler last year, many in the audience were in tears, according to several people who were there. "I had no idea that the city I lived in had such needs," says Stacy Panfil-Parsley, a Junior League member and a gymnastics coach. Now she volunteers to deliver backpack food to the schools.

On a spring day, the farmers of Iowa were preparing their fields for planting. At the food pantry in Waterloo, here in the nation's breadbasket, a line formed for food assistance. Families stream in for help at the rate of 1,100 a month. Five years ago, it was 500 a month. Throughout the 16-county area of northeast Iowa, 35,700 people a year are served by the food bank. Forty percent are children.

At Lowell Elementary School in Waterloo, three children explain why they are waiting for their backpacks. Third-grader Shaquia says her mother cleans buildings and "doesn't have enough money at home for food." Fifth-grader Ashley says her parents both work at a bakery and are now facing added expenses after a house fire. Jonathan, another fifth-grader, says his mother works the overnight shift at a hotel and often isn't home in time for breakfast.

LaTina Roby, the single mother of another backpack child, says she lost her job at a fast-food restaurant after she got sick. "A lot of times, the backpack gets us through the weekend," she says. "The milk is the best. Milk is expensive." Children are given milk in cartons that don't need refrigeration.

Students at Jewett Elementary School in the Waterloo, Iowa, district carry backpacks filled with food.

Across town, at Jewett Elementary, another mom, Michelle Morehouse, prepares 25 backpacks. The blue sacks are stuffed with four cups of applesauce, a can of spaghetti and meatballs, a can of beef stew, a jar of creamy peanut butter, two vanilla puddings, three cartons of strawberry milk, a box of reduced-sugar Cocoa Puffs and a pack of Scooby Doo baked graham-cracker sticks.

"I don't normally buy these kinds of things," says Ms. Morehouse, whose fifth-grade son Jacob brings a backpack home. Her husband is an hourly worker at a metal-fabrication plant. After paying the bills, she says she has about $75 a week left to buy groceries for her family of four at a discount supermarket and, once a month, at a meat locker.

In its report issued last year, the USDA said the typical U.S. household spends $40 per person each week for food.

Ms. Morehouse says she lost her job as an assistant manager at a gas-station convenience store in March. "Before then, I said, 'We don't need a backpack, give it to someone else'," she says. "Now it's a big help."

In east Texas, where the high price of oil is reinvigorating old fields, Steven Young, a music teacher at Douglas Elementary, played a classical-music CD as the Backpack Club kids jostled in line. "It calms them down," he says.

Cody and Cherokee Lozano patiently waited their turn. "I used to run into school on Mondays, I was so hungry," Cody said. Now he runs home on Fridays with his backpack.

At home, their mother ticked off the bills: Gas, $117. Water, $110 every two months. Rent, $300 a month. "How do they expect the average Joe to pay the bills and still eat?" she says.

Ms. Lozano once worked as a nurse but stopped to care for her children. Her seventh-grader suffers from a joint and bone ailment, she says, and Cody has epilepsy. She hopes to start classes at the local junior college to gain work as a specialized nurse.

Her husband and older son are construction workers, making as much as $13 an hour. But work can be sporadic and health problems also limit their earnings, she says. The family tries to set aside at least $50 a week for groceries, she says.

"We may be eating stuff you don't really want to eat all the time," she says. "The kids eat a lot of fried egg sandwiches. They hate beans. They're good, but not if you eat them every day."

The family cat saunters through the living room. Cody looks at his mom and asks, "Do we have tuna for him?"

She laughs. "He doesn't get tuna. We don't get tuna. If he wants to eat, he's got to catch a rat."

*Cole, Scott, and Janet's suggestions for what to call this program. We have now opened sites in two rural Tennessee counties - simply called "The Backpack Program."

he called the hospital, her sister's house, and the place that does her hair*

I can hardly wait for the day it becomes illegal for Tennesseans to use a cell phone while driving. Everyone thinks they can talk and drive just fine. Well, 95% of everyone is wrong. You cannot drive and talk at the same time, primarily because you are already driving and eating, applying makeup, changing a cd, writing a note, reading the paper, reading a billboard, and smacking a kid in the backseat. The combination of said activities causes you to stray over the white lines of your lane, run red lights, drive slowly, cut people off, and generally screw up the flow of traffic. Unless your phone call is regarding a missing child, a burning building, or national security, it can wait the thirty minutes until you arrive in your parking spot at work or home. And when I honk at your car for consistently driving halfway in your lane and halfway in mine, do not give me a nasty look and yell obscenities. That is rude and ridiculous. And dangerous - remember that people have been shot for that.

I hate being the person on the other end of the line when you call me from the road. You aren't paying attention to what I am saying, or what you are saying, for that matter. Trust me, you aren't. You are paying attention to where you are headed and who you are meeting there instead of what I might need to tell you or need from you during the conversation.

I am not saying that I never ever ever talk on the phone while driving. But I know that I am less aware of other drivers when I do and I am not engaged in the conversation anyway. So I shouldn't. From now on, I am going to restrict my calls from the road to matters of missing children, burning buildings, or national security.


* "phones are ringing" by martina mcbride

nevermind about facts and logic

I have learned a thing or two lately about driving and insurance companies. You, too, should learn this information and adjust your driving habits accordingly. Or just make sure you don't collide with a driver who shares your insurance company.

Among the things I have learned, as taught by State Farm:
1. Police officers do not interpret the law at the scene of a car accident. The officer was not there to witness the accident, so he is rendered incapable of interpreting the law.
2. The finding of innocence on the police report can be wholly ignored by the insurance company because, after all, the officer who wrote it up doesn't interpret the law.
3. State Farm, though also not present at the scene, does interpret the law.
4. Any time you are making a left turn, other drivers are relieved of their responsibility to follow the laws regarding right-of-way.

And now, the long version:
I was involved in a car accident a month ago. No injuries to either party, for which I am thankful. I was on a main road (two lanes each direction with a turning lane). I had stopped in the turning lane, with my blinker on, about to turn left into a parking lot. While I waited for the rush-hour volume of oncoming traffic to clear, I had plently of time to look around and I noticed another vehicle sitting in a parking lot to my left at the next driveway ahead of the one I was turning into. When my oncoming traffic cleared and I saw that the other driver did not pull out (even though the traffic cleared past her car before it cleared past mine), I made my left turn. Once my car was perpendicular across both lanes of the road, the other driver pulled out towards me. I saw her soon enough for me to come to a complete stop, but we still collided. So, her front driver's corner hit my front passenger's corner.

It just so happens that we were in front of the Honda dealership. So the guys ran out to make sure we are okay. We had to move our cars because mine was blocking both lanes of oncoming traffic during rush hour. One of the Honda employees, bless his soul, took this photo with his camera phone:

Once the police officers arrived, the other driver ranted and raved about how she had pulled completely into my oncoming lane and how I just tried to cut across in front of her to beat her. She neglected to mention to the officer that photos were taken. Up to that point, the officer was not believing me when I said that the other driver was still on the shoulder when she hit me and that she had never entered my lanes. I then insisted that he look at the photos. The officer saw the photos and said, "Ohhhh, hey, look at where the other driver's car is..." The other driver saw them and said, "Well yeah, I'm in the shoulder now because you hit me so hard you slammed me into the shoulder!" The officer scoffed at her theory and he wrote it up as "no contributing action" for me.

Initially, this was smooth sailing because the police report was in my favor. My initial claims rep and her initial claims rep agreed that it was completely her fault for not yielding when entering a main road from a parking lot. They called to inform me that her policy would pay for my damages and deductible. Then they called me right back to say that she was contesting the decision.

We are both State Farm customers and that was a problem. She had the right to contest it, which is fine. So it went to the supervisor level. I got a call from a supervisor who took a twenty minute recorded statement from me. Another supervisor took a statement from her. They conferred. Magically, in one day, the decision was changed to a 50-50 split of responsibility where we pay our own deductibles, our own polices cover our own damages, and both of our rates could go up. My own claims rep sold me out to the other side in a final decision without first telling me that she thought I was at fault.

SF kept urging me to go ahead and get it fixed through my own policy and "work out the details later." Which means, "once your car is fixed, we have no intentions of reversing that paperwork to reflect that you weren't at fault, so go ahead and get it over with so we can stick with this 50-50."

I told the supervisor I wanted to contest her decision. She told me they were consulting with State Farm's defense attorney in anticipation of this going to court. (I had not threatened court, mind you.) Her proper response would have been to let go of the case and send it to her manager, as is State Farm's policy. Instead, after I questioned her about prematurely escalating it to the court level, she said, "Well, I mean, I guess I could run it by my manager, but she would say the same thing."

I called Dad to fill him in, seeing as how I am still insured under our policy in Texas. Upon hearing that the supervisor wasn't following State Farm's own policies and that she was annoyed with me for contesting her decision, Dad went down to his local agent's office. Dad, who doesn't get upset, was upset. Together, they called the supervisor. She then claimed that she had just promised me that her manager would soon call me to follow up and move on with the case promptly. Hmm, not quite what she had told me. Do you have any idea how mad it made me that it took my Dad calling this woman to get it taken care of?

My argument goes like this: As stated in the State of Tennessee Driver's Manual, "when you are entering a main road from a parking lot, driveway, alley, or roadside, you must yield to all cars already on the main road." I was on the main road. She was entering the main road from a parking lot. She failed to yield to me. I came to a complete stop to avoid her and she still hit me. I am not responsible.

The other driver's first theory is that she was fully in my oncoming lane and I slammed her onto the shoulder. Too bad that is not physically possible, considering our point of impact and the final position of our cars. The back end of her car would have slid towards my car if I had hit her front end with enough force to move it completely out of a lane. Please.

And look at the spray of her headlight debris on the road. Every piece of it was projected in the direction her car was traveling and every piece went past my car in that direction. Had I slammed into her, at least some of that glass would have been projected in the direction that my car was moving.

The other driver's second theory is that it was legal for her to be on the shoulder because she can drive on the shoulder while merging into traffic. (Her choice of defense depends on the day, you see.) First, by admitting that she had pulled out onto the shoulder, she is admitting that she failed to yield to me as a car already on the main road. Second, it is not printed anywhere that it is legal to drive on the shoulder while merging onto a road from parking lot (AND you dont "merge" from a parking lot. You turn.) Third, "roadside" is a position from which she must yield to me anyway, according to the Driver's Manual.

My SF supervisor conceded to the other side that it is legal for her to merge from the shoulder. The other side could not show me where that is printed, but "it is just legal, okay?" On an interstate, sure, you can drive in the acceleration lane, but you still aren't supposed to drive on the shoulder.

SF said that the accident wouldn't have happened if I hadn't turned left. Well... yeah... and it wouldn't have happened if she hadn't turned right. It seemed that the fact that I was turning left allows the other driver to disregard the law. The Driver's Manual makes no distinction about the direction of travel of either car, only that the entering car must yield to ALL cars already on the main road.

SF also insisted that, because I saw the other driver's car prior to making my turn, I should have yielded to her and waited for her to pull out of the parking lot. Besides the fact that SF's position was contrary to the Driver's Manual, whether or not I saw her vehicle prior to my turning should have no impact on the interpretation of the right-of-way laws. Regardless of how aware or unaware a driver is, the right-of-way laws don't (shouldn't) change. The fact that I did see her car speaks to my awareness of my surroundings. SF acted like I saw her pulling out and decided to beat her. What I said in my recorded statement was that I saw her car stationary in the parking lot and still stationary after oncoming traffic cleared. I asked SF what is the appropriate length of time I am expected to wait to see if another driver chooses to break the law and enter the main roadway without yielding to me. They couldn't answer me, because HELLO, that is ridiculous.

A few days later, I did get the call from the manager on my side. She was professional, patient, kind, and logical. Which is way more than I had gotten from the supervisor on my side. She attempted to get the other side to give, but they wouldn't. She offered to let me speak directly to the supervisor on the other side. I did, and in our first conversation, he was calm. He even offered to review a particular point again and get back to me. Two hours later, he called back ALL RILED UP because he had spoken to his driver to let her know he was going to offer me 70-30 as an improvement over 50-50. The driver was not happy and the supervisor was tired of dealing with it, so he was mr. smarty pants with me and quite condescending. Gritting my teeth, I told him I would consider it.

And while I considered it, I called the TN Dept of Public Safety and asked to speak to someone who could provide further interpretation of a particular driving law - the one about my right of way. I was eventually routed to a State Trooper in the Safety Education Office who agreed to research it for me. He did quite a bit of research and called back to ask questions about why I needed it and what else he could do for me. He faxed me 5 laws that supported my case - 2 that said I was doing what I was supposed to be doing and 3 that said she wasn't doing what she was supposed to be doing. And he sent me the technical version, not the watered-down Driver's Manual version. I wrote up a two-page argument including those laws and the Trooper's name and phone number and sent it to my manager.

So, let's review. The other driver lied about her position on the road by saying she was completely in my oncoming lane. During her statements to the responding police officer, she chose to omit the fact that photographs were taken, knowing that the photographs would expose her lie. Upon seeing the photographs, she then changed her story to accuse me of slamming her vehicle into the shoulder. She continued to withhold the photograph information during her report to her local State Farm agent. She also lied to State Farm, giving the names of two witnesses who, by their own admission, did not witness the accident.

I went to the trouble to follow up with the man who took the photographs on scene, having him email the photographs to me so that I could send them on to State Farm (thanks to a Verizon guy for helping with the technology). I accessed an aerial view of the scene of the accident and sent it to State Farm for context (thanks to Brandon's brilliant suggestion). I did my own research with the Tennessee Driver’s Manual to determine which vehicle should yield right-of-way, consulted a State Trooper on the laws, consulted the Assistant Chief of Police in Goodlettsville (city where it happened), and a Nashville lawyer. Everyone I spoke with advised me that I was not responsible according to the law, but that an insurance company can make decisions that contradict the driving laws because they are only determining fault in the eyes of the insurance company rather than determining guilt or innocence and imposing a fine/jail sentence. And they agreed on the insanity of it all.

After almost 3 full days of silence, I got a call yesterday from someone on the other side asking where I wanted my car repaired. Confused, I told them we hadn't quite settled on whose policy was paying which percentage... then she told me they had just agreed to pay 100% of my damages, deductible, and rental car costs out of the other driver's policy. I'll be giving the repair business to the dealership that was so helpful at the scene. I'll not be choosing State Farm as my insurance company in July when I get my own policy. And I'll not be shopping in the Dillard's shoe department ever again because, in a close encounter last week, I discovered that is where the other driver works.

So, 30 days and 3 migraines later, justice prevailed. It helped that I do persuasive writing for a living.