Oh man it’s good to be home. Nothing like a hard week of hard meetings and in heels no less, something I truly don’t do too much of anymore (the heels part). Good week, glad to be out of the traffic in L.A. Anyone who would put up with that consistently needs to have their head examined. 20 miles takes 2 hours and it doesn’t seem to matter what time of the day or night, just the same. Glad to be home and enjoying my family.

Been in LA since Monday and just working away. Meeting after meeting. It’s going well and return Friday. The good news is I like my partners and road trips like this is where you get to know one’s partners. If you’ve got to be living out of rented rooms and rented cars it’s nice to be hanging with people whose company you enjoy.

Well it’s a new week and I’m off to a start by being at the airport headed out for the week. There have been entire years of my life where Monday morning meant heading to the airport. Off to LA to work for the week. Hate missing Caesars Main Event on Thursday but work calls. Played at Caesars on Friday, 94 entrants and I was 13th. Had a stupid hand which crippled me, new table, my two pair made on the river gives him a straight. Foolish me for not figuring out he had raised under the gun with Q 10 off, called my bet on the J high flop (I had AJ), the K on the turn scared us both and the ace on the river was a dream card for him. Stupid hand but poker is full of them.

Decided it would be easier to just copy what I FINALLY got from the Department of Agriculture. At least someone is taking me seriously. The school itself isn’t mean spirited on this subject, just absolutely clueless. It simply isn’t on their radar screen.

Dear Ms. Todd,

I apologize for the delay in responding to your e-mail. Our contacts at the Nevada Department of Agriculture (NDOA) have been helping to gather information on your concerns. Specifically, Charles Moses, Environmental Programs Coordinator at NDOA has made contact with the Clark County School district to inquire about pesticide applications at Staton School. The Department ensures that pest control applicators are in compliance with state and federal pesticide regulations.

First, my condolences to you for your terrible loss. Your concern for your twins is understandable, and I want to give you some information that I hope will help you work with your school to ensure that pest management is performed with the least risk to the school community. You may have already heard from a representative from the Operations Department of the Clark County school district, but here is information gathered by Mr. Moses from the school district regarding pest control in general, as well as specific visits for November and December, 2010:

Pest control operations do not take place in the daytime or when children are present in classrooms (application when children are present is prohibited by the labeling). When there is a pest complaint, it is referred to the operations department and the pest control operator will visit the school in the evening to conduct pest control work. The product used inside (ants are usually the target pest) is Demand CS, EPA registration number 100-1066. The pest control operator will visit each classroom where complaints were received and the school administrators (in this case Staton Elementary) will send out notification to all parents that the school is scheduled to have a pest control operator visit the school and pesticides may be applied. The notice that is sent out does not specify that the pest control operations take place in the evening/after hours, so the person that Mr. Moses spoke with said that he is going to fix the notification to state this. Pest control records indicate that the pest control operator visited the school on the following dates but it is not known if pesticides were applied on each of the dates – this information can be retrieved, but the applicator was on vacation when Mr. Moses obtained this information.

December 1: all classrooms with room numbers in the 70’s were visited;
November 1: portable classroom (room 22) was visited;
November 17, room 58 was visited;
November 30, room 71 was visited;
November 22, room 77 was visited.
I also wanted to let you know that Assemblyman Paul Paizley is planning to sponsor a bill to reduce pesticide use at schools in Nevada. If you’d like to offer your support to this effort, you may contact him at:

paizley@asm.state.nv.us; phone number is 775-684-8821; fax is 702-361-7472.

I hope that this is helpful to you. If you have further questions, you may contact me at the number below, or you may contact Charles Moses at (775)353-3716, or at: cmoses@agri.state.nv.us

Sincerely,
Mary Grisier

_________________________________________
Mary Grisier, Pesticides Program
US Environmental Protection Agency, Region IX
Communities & Ecosystems Division
75 Hawthorne Street (CED-5)
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415)947-4213

Visit http://www.epa.gov/pesticides

From: NLTODD@aol.com
To: Mary Grisier/R9/USEPA/US@EPA
Date: 01/12/2011 10:32 AM
Subject: Pesticides in NV Public Schools

——————————————————————————–

Dear Ms. Grisier, I need some help please. I am the mother of 8 year old twins who are attending the public schools in Las Vegas, Clark Count, NV. (Staton Elementary).

Five years ago I lost my older son, their brother, to pesticide exposure at school which resulted in leukemia from benzine. I am, as you can imagine, very sensitive to this issue.

The public school system in Clark County takes the position of spraying WHILE THE CHILDREN are in school and even in the classroom itself. I keep my children home on those days.

I have talked to the principal about spraying when school is out or at least at 5 p.m. and they tell me I’m the only person who even questions their policy.

I really need some help on the guidelines. I know the pesticides aren’t organic but I need to get an idea of what I can do to try to get the School Board to try to take a safer route for children.

Do you have any ideas to guide me. Thanks so much.

Woke up Sunday morning prepared to play their Sunday event. Well actually had planned on still playing the bigger event but as anyone who plays this game knows, KK can’t beat K5. Ha. Such a funny game sometimes. Anyhow, a closer review shows the Sunday event is a limit event and I’d rather play on the highway than to play a limit event. I packed up and headed home, there’s two little guys real happy to see me there. Been a long four days and I broke even. Better than most players but not what I had hoped for.

Today is a spray day at school so my saga continues. As I got no relief from the school itself, I emailed the Department of Agriculture, Pesticide Division regarding the situation at Staton Elementary School. Lo and behold my phone rang last week and it was the head of the Pesticide Division for the Public School system in Las Vegas. What a nice caring man who assured me, on a stack of Bibles that pesticides are never, ever sprayed during the school hours. He stated they are under a federal mandate to only spray after hours and after every single person is gone from the school. This is completely contrary to what the school has told me but quite frankly, I don’t think this issue is on the radar of the school system at all.

Thanks JuJu for the tip and the links, I got some action and some peace in my soul on the issue.

This is such an interesting place; bad players, fights at the tables and insults. Got bumped out of the daily tournament so went to play a satellite. Got down four handed and re raised a guy who came in the pot firing. He looks at me and says “I thought you would be the easiest mark at the table.” I say “I’ve made a lot of money off men who thought like that”. Once I take him out I’m facing two guys at the other end of the table, buds, and charmers (not). One wants to chop. I say “no thanks not three handed, this is only an $80 dollar satellite guys, there’s no money in it and we’re just going to go get in another one, let’s play it out.” The guy gets mad and says “we’re not going to give you one little penny lady” and I retort “lucky for you I don’t care about your pennies.” It was a pleasure taking them both out and walking away with the $800. I noticed they waited to see where I was sitting before they grabbed a card for the next satellite table. Fine with me.

As I’ve always said, I never, ever pick a fight, but if you want to start one with me you better be prepared to go the distance.