Porkchop the Schoolmaster

Hurricane deployment number 1 in the books!

Probably the cutest place I saw the entire 11 days. 
Cute park in Sebring, FL.
Not pictures, 3 cop cards and some drug lords.

I survived, and will never move to Florida. Moving on.

I cannot thank the plethora of people who took care of my boys while I was away. I believe this was the longest I have ever been away from Hampton. He of course seemed unbothered.

Hampton got to play Schoolmaster while I was gone and he was SUCH a good boy. 

He was a lesson horse for a really fabulous teenager. She was very deserving of the ride
and I was more than happy to offer it.

My barn friends traded some rides on him and I am so thankful they kept his muscles moving. The more movement the better for Hamp. Even though he lives outside 24/7, he still sometimes gets stiff when he has more than 2 days off in a row. #oldman

And a very deserving teenager took a lesson on him. It made my heart burst when I got video of her doing tempis with him! I'm not sure she has done them before! And there goes Hampton just the perfect schoolmaster. Somehow this 2 year old random gelding I bought in 2009 is now giving FEI level lessons to a young rider. I'm not sure how this all happened. *sniffle*

Unfortunately, Hampton is back to suffering lameness on his left front. I'm not sure if his neurectomy is no longer effective, or an abscess? Or what? It's very disheartening. It's almost a year to the day since his nerve surgery. Not going to go to dark places just yet as I have not even consulted a vet yet about it, and the girls DID find a stick wedged in his frog and some seepage of goop so will hold off on being depressed until we can figure out what exactly is going on. Horses, man.

Anyway I am very happy to be home and catching up on blogs, sleep, Buckley demands, eating actual meals, laundry and usual orders of business. Whew.

90 degree turn: Part 2

Somehow, in a series of events, networking, good luck, good friends, persistent friends, and successful interviews I was hired on as a property adjuster in August 2022. Changing careers at 42 took some rather large balls, but nothing changes if nothing changes.

How much do I know about insurance? Minimal.

How much do I know about adjusting? Absolutely nothing.

But this company was willing to take a chance on this jaded journalist, and train me.

Blog gets old media of Hamp today.
I am in desperate need of updated photos.

This job means a flexible schedule, holidays and weekends off *cough* SHOWS, work from home and work out in the field and endless learning opportunities. Plus there is quite a bit of room for advancement just within the company, not to mention the field of insurance. 

My mother was worried that "people will hate me" since insurance adjusters are often met with resentment from clients, and sometimes you are meeting people at the worst times in their lives. I had to remind her that I was certainly NOT liked as a journalist either. Refer back to 2016 and on thank you. And so far I have only run into kind and professional people on site. Plus, I get to do cool things like climb on roofs.

This my hooman.

As of Wednesday, I now have my KY adjuster license!

And one month into the job I am already getting deployed to Florida for hurricane claims. It will probably be about 10 days. Talk about being thrown to the wolves. It should teach me a lot though. Bring it on.

90 degree turn: Part 1

I DID NOT DO THIS. lol

In a wild turn of events, I quit my job in August.

I had been designing, photo editing, copy editing, writing and basically nose-deep in newspapers for almost 20 years. It was my first job out of college and print journalism was all I knew.

I designed pages, sorted through photos, read stories and worked with other journalists (sometimes until 2 am) to produce pages featuring major historic events including

• 5 presidential elections
• Hurricane Katrina
• Virginia Tech shooting
• Stock market crash/housing market crisis of 2008
• Osama Bin Laden killed
• Hurricane Sandy
• Death of Pope John Paul
• Death of Ronald Reagan
• Sandy Hook shooting
• Boston Marathon Bombing
• Sam Sex Marriage legalized (one of my favorite nights as a journalist)
• Brett Kavanaugh confirmed to SCOTUS
• The COVID-19 pandemic
• Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington DC
• Couple of impeachments of Trump
• Overturn of Roe v. Wade
• Covid -19 vaccines
• Haiti earthquake
• Two Triple Crown winners
• Multiple Olympics
• Jerry Sandusky/Penn State
• Larry Nassar/USA Gymnastics

When I was furloughed in 2009, I bought this thing.

... plus hundreds of local events, deaths, murders, you name it for newspapers including Detroit Free Press, Indianapolis Star, Louisville Courier Journal, Lansing State Journal, Muncie Star Press, Lafayette Journal & Courier and more.

It was not an insignificant career.

It was a career where I saw both the best and the worst of humanity.

A career where the president of the united states challenged the free press in ways it had not been challenged. I saw journalism change dramatically with the internet and social media. People no longer got their news and facts from trained, unbiased journalists. Instead they got it from Facebook or some website and then blamed the "liberal media" if they saw news they didn't agree with. I heard things like that even from my own family. 

I didn't do this either lol. FFS

I scarified a lot for a career I enjoyed. I worked nights and weekends for years. Sometimes we would not put the paper to bed until 2 am. I never made much money, but I made things work. I was good at my job.

But layoffs and furloughs started to wear on everyone. I barely worked part time the summer of 2020 because of furloughs thanks to Covid. I knew something had to change. 

So I started to sort of poke around for other jobs and careers I could possibly get into.

Nothing really went very far. Until the summer of 2022.