Taking Care of Business

I am not a realtor. I am, however, a potential client. As a client, there are things that I would assume would be obvious to real estate professionals (or any professionals). However, this does not appear to be the case. After a week-long headache, I've compiled this list of things that I took for granted:

1) When a client explains to you that they can't make personal phone calls at work because they teach children (which, despite what you may think, is a full-time job), please respect that. You wouldn't want your child's teacher making personal phone calls during the school day, would you?

2) When the same client requests that you CC' their work email on important communication (because gmail is blocked on school district computers), cc' their work email. When the same client requests that you do it the second and third time, DO IT.

3) Do not constantly use "text-speak" in email (ie: r u 4geting sumthin?). This makes you sound very unprofessional.

4) Get a professional sounding email address, hopefully associated with the office where you work. Email addresses that involve words like "rainbow," "kitty," "unicorn," etc... make potential clients hesitate to take you seriously as a professional.

5) If you are planning on going on vacation and planning to pawn a client off on another realtor, YOU should be the one to tell the client this information. The client should not hear this information from a third-party.

6) If you want to get in touch with your client, call them. If you lost their number, either look it up or get it from the broker. Do not call a mutual friend and ask the mutual friend to call you client and have them call you.

National Geographic Giant Traveling Map

Thanks to Herb T., my school was able to participate in National Geographic's Giant Traveling Map program. We had this giant map for four days and were lucky enough to be able to set it up in the Boys and Girls Club gym. It was an awesome learning experience for our students, as they were able to literally walk all over North America. This photo shows me and and my wonderful colleagues right after we set up the map. Thank you to Herb and National Geographic for giving us this awesome opportunity!

Steve's Urban Hunting Tips, Part 1

Sigh. Honestly, I don't know what he would have done if he'd caught one.

best. birthday weekend. ever.

Started off with this:

Girls Rock Camp Alliance Conference- about 80 women representing over 20 Girls Rock camps worldwide!

I finally got to see this:

And yes, even the cheap seats were fantastic!

Spent time with my long-lost cousin and his awesome girlfriend:

And had a lovely birthday breakfast with some of my favorite people in the world:

Happy birthday to me!

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day 2010:
This was our third Valentine's Day together! We had a brunch with my mom at Sura, our favorite Korean restaurant. We walked it off by doing some fancy shopping at some fancy stores, and then we had a late dinner at Kona Grill. Two fancy meals in one day = lots of leftovers. It was fun to get dressed up and have an evening out on the town. Even though I live here in Vegas, I sometimes forget about all of the "fancy dress-up" things there are to do here.

Valentine's Day 2009:
We had breakfast at Omelet House, after which Steve got incredibly sick and could barely sit up. Then, we went to my school (can't remember why), where Steve assumed the fetal position in my classroom library. Poor Steve; he was in a lot of pain. I should have known better. When I used to work at UNLV, some of my coworkers and I went to lunch at that same location, and we ALL got sick and one of my coworkers had to be hooked up to an IV drip so he could stay dehydrated. Why I thought it was a good idea to go there for breakfast... I'm not sure. Anyway, Steve gave me a beautiful Tiffany necklace which was absolutely perfect. And apparently, I gave him food poisoning. =(

Valentine's Day 2008:
We weren't able to be together this year, but Steve sent flowers to my work, which was AWESOME! I gave Steve one of these filled with fishing gear, along with this lighthearted paper doll book. I was living with Jessica at the time, and we drove from sporting goods store to sporting good store trying to find fishing gear that would fit in the bottle while eating chocolate Skittles.