Italia Sneak Peak

Italy was amazing. Simply amazing. I'm still processing, pondering, laundrying, cleaning and sleeping, but here are the highlights:

Lots of gelato eating....

Duomo seeing......
Pasta and wine eating.......
Ancient ruin seeing.....
Historical places viewing.....
Surreal moments......
Wine drinking......
And wishing to go back......

The Day before....

.....you can recognize a campaign staffer by the drinks on their desk. This should signify how the next 36 hours is going to go for me. For those worried about my caffeine intake, I have now added a water bottle to the mix.

Have you seen a campaign staffer?

#3. Their pockets or purses jingle with the delightful sound of an advil/tylenol/excedrin bottle, seeing as the headache that has persisted the last week has still not gone away.

#4. To repeat an earlier point, they always have two phones in their hands. This morning at the doctors office I was chided and made fun of by my doc for sitting on the examination table with both phones in hand.

#5. You see them leaving restaurants with mass quantities of food in their hands. Actually in this case you are probably witnessing some poor, unpaid intern running around doing the bidding of his bosses.

7....er...6 days

In honor of the election taking place in seven days and completely consuming the lives of campaign staffers all across America, including mine, I will be posting every day various ways you can identify an overworked, underpaid campaign staffer. This is important for you to recognize as they are likely running on little sleep, caffeine, last weeks pizza from the fridge and they could snap at any moment.

{Disclaimer: at this point, I realize that it’s 6 days away from the election. I meant to post this yesterday but got distracted by, well, everything. Take your pick of things that distract you, I was probably distracted by it. Off the top of my head, yesterday I dealt with a screaming cursing man who didn't like my candidate, a high school kid who hung up on said man, an internet outage, a sweet older lady who couldn't figure out how to make a call, and a deluge of Vietnamese callers who could not understand what I was asking and vice versa. Today I've dealt with the killer mosquitos in my apartment, my car being five months past the registration date (thank you for pointing that out officer), a tire that needs to be changed on my car, a tire that needs to be changed on our other car and I still have to find time to do laundry and throw things in a suitcase for Italy. By the way}

#1. You know you’ve seen a campaign staffer when you spot someone running down the aisles of the grocery store, grabbing boxed foods that can be eaten on the go and are juggling two cell phones – on one they are talking and the other they are emailing. Most likely in this scenario they are on a conference call with the candidate and trying to sound like they are in the office, so do your best to avoid them.

#2. You know you’ve encountered a campaign staffer when you ask them a simple question and as they answer your question their voice slowly starts to rise and they get really passionate about their answer. If that’s the case, it’s simply because they are used to defending the every move of their boss.

More to come…..

A Letter to Sears

Dear Sears,

Last week you had a fantastic sale on New Balance Tennis Shoes. Seeing that my husband needed a new pair of tennis shoes, as his current ones were given to him by my Father three years ago and who knows how many years my Father wore them, I decided to buy him a pair. Looking at my busy schedule as a campaign worker leading up to the election in November, I decided to buy the shoes from Sears.com. Even more exciting, I found a 20% off coupon code that included free shipping. I was so excited about the great deal I was getting without ever having to leave my couch!

After some difficulty ordering the shoes from the website, I finally entered my credit card information and purchased a snazzy new pair of tennis shoes on a Monday evening. Much to my surprise, a package from UPS arrived in the mail the very next Thursday! Could it be that my order was processed, shipped and received in just 4 short days? Amazing!

But then I opened the box and this is what I found:

One shoe. The left shoe, to be specific.

Really, Sears? I was not aware that I needed to specify in my order that I wanted the left AND right shoe included in my order.

Slightly frustrated, I picked up my cell phone to call the number listed on the "invoice." I put this in quotes because it was not really an invoice at all, but an email printed off with my order information. But I digress.

I called the 1-800 number listed on the "invoice." I spoke with a nice girl on the other end, but I ran into some problems. Mainly, every time I asked her a question she put me on hold for around 4 minutes and then came back with the answer. I was not asking hard questions, mainly ones such as: "Hi, I ordered a pair of shoes and only one came in the mail. What do I need to do to get my second shoe?" Like I said, not a hard question. Oh, also she kept apologizing that I only receive one "piece of shoe." One piece of shoe? Really?

After about 25 minutes of playing this fun little ask-a-question-get-put-on-hold game, I asked to speak to a supervisor. I was put on hold for 5 minutes and then the "supervisor" picked up the phone. I put it in quotes because I am 99% positive that it was the same girl I had just spoken to, she was just using a different name. But since I cannot prove that, I'll move on.

The supervisor told me my only option was to send the shoes back to Sears and then she could place a new order for two shoes. The catch was that my debit card would be charged for the second pair of shoes and I would not get my money back from the original shoe purchased for up to 15 business days. That was unacceptable to me. I can understand this process if I made a mistake and ordered the wrong item, but you only sent me one shoe! She assured me the money would be refunded to my card, but how could I trust that? I trusted you to send me two shoes!

The only remedy I could find was to go into a Sears store and exchange the shoes. Seeing that I had to work this past Saturday, my sweet husband went into the store to make the exchange. It took him six associates, three trips across the store, several phone calls to Sears.com from the associates in the store and an hour to make the return. An hour later, he finally walked out with two shoes, albeit in a wide not regular but at that point we didn't care, he was just glad to have two shoes. Or pieces of shoe, as the 1-800 girl would have said.

Last night he decided to try out his new pair of shoes on our evening walk. He pulled them out of the box and was about to put them on. Then he noticed something. The associates at Sears forgot to take the anti theft device off his shoes.

Really Sears?

So let's recap. In an effort to save time, I ordered shoes from Sears.com. My order came to me short one shoe. I then spent 30 minutes on the phone trying to figure out how to get the other shoe. My husband spent over an hour in a Sears store trying to return the shoes. Then we got home and realized that the anti theft device was still on the shoe. In my desire to save time and order off the internet, I have now cost myself over 2 hours.

So now I will have to go back to Sears to get them to take the anti theft device off my husbands shoe.

The only positive thing in the midst of this is that all my friends have gotten a really good laugh out of this situation. I cannot count the number of times I have pulled out my phone to show them a picture of the single "piece of shoe" that came in the mail.

So I guess, thank you for a good laugh?

Sincerely,

Laura Murray

Finally a paycheck!!

So I got a new job last week and then realized that since I had to keep it on the DL for so long, I forgot to tell people about it once I was finally allowed to! Starting Monday, I will be working in conjunction with the Bill Flores for Congress campaign and Victory Texas to get Bill Flores and other conservative candidates into office. I am really excited about the possibilites that extend before me with this campaign. It'll be hard work - don't expect to see much of me between Labor Day and the elections - but I am very excited. When I look at my "political heroes" and the people I look up to, they all got their start working on campaigns so I recognize the fact that I will learn tons and gain great experience in the next few months.

I'll write more later, but for now I am going to sleep off the effects of my root canal this morning.

Colorado Sneak Peak

I just got back from six great days in Colorado with my sister and two of her friends. I am currently too tired to even process thoughts about it, except for the fact that we saw everything and had a great time. We saw Breckenridge, Evergreen, Idaho Springs, Loveland Pass, Mt. Evans, Echo Lake, Castle Rock, Sedalia and Colorado Springs. I headed to collapse into bed, but I just wanted to share two of my favorite pics from the trip.

MaryClaire and I at Echo Lake. Funny story: we actually have a picture in this exact same spot from when we were 10 and 2!