AALS Fall Board Meeting was THE BEST!!!!!!!!

It was an awesome weekend in Dothan with AALS members!

The education was wonderful and the FELLOWSHIP with statewide members was the reward for the weekend! We had many "first timers" AND of course, Vickie and Harriett was there! A meeting without them is not even a good meeting!

Education included Workman's Comp Cases; Introduction to Employment Law in Alabama; Guardianships & Conservatorships (let me add here - very important info); The Automatic Stay in Bankruptcy; The Sweet Green Elixir of Green Cash (wake up and don't be stupid); and, Being an Informed Consumer: Avoid Predatory Lendors and Others After Your Money.

All of the CLE at the Fall meeting was exceptional... do you really know the maximum and minimum caps on compensation - and the diffferences based on pay scales??? What about employment law - do you know the difference in discrimination and harrassment? How about bankruptcy - the in's and out's of bankruptcy is strategic and complicated - many choices and many outcomes. Also, being an informed consumer really explained to us who our predators are - title pawn companies, soliciting credit card companies etc... But, L. D. Holt, explained to us the the Sweet Green Elixir of Cash - WOW... REAL..REALITY.... (I don't want to say to much about this... I really would really like for him to be at the Winter and/or Annual Meeting for everyone else to hear him tell it again... he was definitely "the slick in the shine" this CLE weekend and if you were not at the Fall meeting - you missed some of the best CLE ever!!!!

The door prizes and Chinese auction was exceptional. Baldwin County also performed for us ... it will be posted shortly (sorry, wanted to post this - but will transfer video later).

The conference ended about 3:00 on Saturday - the weather was absolutely perfect for the ride home to five o'clock somewhere!

It was a very much needed weekend for me - my almost 20 year old daughter, Mary Rose, was home from college for the weekend to take care of the horses and my "sweet" jersey cow named "HONEY" so I could get away! I talked to her a couple of times on Friday evening - but when my oldest brother called me during the middle of the first CLE on Saturday morning about the ICE raid in my neighborhood the night before - parent mode kicked into desperate concern when Mary Rose did not answer the phone when I immediately called to check on her (thankfully...she was in the shower). She didn't even know about the ICE raid, even though there were a couple hundred police officers, many on foot searching the woods with flashlights for fleeing hispanics, dozens of police cars, and a few helicoptors swarming the block we live in. She said she had heard a helicoptor and some sirens but thought there was a car accident nearby - which happens often. I use to live in a very nice part of Alabaster on Highway 119, next to a dairy farm - the Publix, Walgreen, NBC Bank, US Post Office, and Regions Bank are just a few blocks from my home now - and it's only a 5 minute walk from my house to STARBUCKS!!! ALSO, let's mention the three small churches within rock throwing distance of my house, and then there is the "blue trailer park" RIGHT across the street from my house. (See the B'ham News article below)

Illegal immigrants taken into custody in Alabaster Saturday, October 25, 2008

Thirty-one illegal immigrants were taken into custody Friday night at an Alabaster business.
The 31 were detained by federal authorities after detectives and agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement searched the business on Elder Drive, which is off Alabama 119, said Alabaster Deputy Police Chief Curtis Rigney.

Rigney refused to identify the business or the type of business. He said he could not say where the people in custody were taken. ICE spokesman Temple Black of New Orleans said further details about the investigation could be available today.

The search warrants were executed as part of a joint ongoing, two-year investigation by ICE and Alabaster. "The focus of this investigation is on companies and individuals that employ illegal immigrants in their work forces," Rigney said.

Rigney said ICE was called in after police started the investigation two years ago.
Malcomb Daniels --