It turns out that once she ate some contaminated food at a national restaurant chain (she would not say which) and got food poisoning. Really bad food poisoning, so bad it damaged her kidneys. I’m not sure if the food was not cooked properly, or had fecal microorganisms, or what, but it must have been really bad.

Anyway, she had this terrible case of food poisoning. So bad that she lost most of the functioning of her kidneys, or was it her liver, I don’t remember. Anyway, she found a lawyer to represent her against the restaurant chain in a lawsuit. Her food poisoning lawyer must have been a great litigator, because she received a “seven-figure settlement.” (That means over $1 million, in case you are doing the calculations.)

So now you see why we were scared of her? We chewed our fingernails when she ate in the dining room…would she catch an E. coli or a strep or a staph or a norovirus or something and sic her food poisoning lawyer on us?

The kitchen staff was all smiles when I told them she had checked out.

He said that the speakers included Suzy Orman, Gen. Colin Powell, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Robert Schuller and Zig Ziglar.

He mentioned that General Powell is a comedian (who would have known!) and that Ziglar is now ailing due to a fall at his home.

The thing that surprised this guest was that so many people bought the ‘how and when to use covered calls to beat the stock market’ package that was for sale by Phil Towne. All the experts say that you can’t time the market, but he said that (literally) thousands of people lined up to pay $100 each for the covered-calls course (plus $600/year subscription to a necessary additional service, plus potential upsells).

He said that there was also a presentation about how to protect your assets against lawsuits, but that he already knew all that stuff from the Asset-Protection-Trust.us website.

Anyway, our guest paid less than $10 to go to the motivational seminar and said it was well worth it.

The first is BoomerHotties.com. It is like HotOrNot.com, except for photos of hot baby boomers. Mainly women, but I guess they could have photos of boomer guys, too. In this case, Boomer means Baby Boomer and Hotties means…hot. Some of them look pretty hot, some definitely not.

The other site is AspartameLawsuit.org, which is for folks who have used aspartame artificial sweetener and plan to join an aspartame class-action lawsuit against the manufacturer. They believe, perhaps justifiably, that aspartame causes disease and they need to have a class-action lawsuit to receive compensation or some other benefit.

She said that she is not sure who the father is, it could be one of three guys. (Like the play Mama Mia.) She plans to have DNA testing done right after the baby is born, to learn who the true dad is so she can get child support from him. The DNA testing is admissible in court, so she should have a good legal case. I may not be sure of the ethics, but she certainly has it all planned out to get financial child support for her new baby.

She has even planned it farther, because she plans to purchase economical baby supplies online. She has a store selected for her stroller, crib, diapers, baby toys and bedding.

For better or worse, she is certainly a planner.

They told me that everybody needs a legal will prepared by a lawyer, even single people with no dependents. They said that folks with larger estates need trusts like asset protection trusts and bypass trusts, which are legal devices to protect assets from the taxman and lawsuits by greedy persons.

I asked about wills that you can get for almost free, online. Being attorneys, they all said “Not a good idea!”

When I get into the high-income bracket, I will definitely investigate legal trusts. In the meantime, I think I will have ramen noodles for supper.

He said he is a tort lawyer or plaintiff’s attorney, who files class action lawsuits against big corporations. He said his firm is working on a class-action Ambien lawsuit, against the company that makes that sleeping pill. I do not know if it’s true or not, but he said that Ambien can cause sleep disturbances, including sleep driving.

Sleep driving?? He said that some people, after they have taken Ambien and gone to bed, can get up and drive their cars around while they are asleep. It’s like sleepwalking, but a lot more dangerous for everyone involved…and people have been in bad sleep-driving auto accidents after taking Ambien and not even known it.

He said his company is working on a class-action lawsuit, and he hopes they win because there will be a lot of money involved. He hopes to receive enough money that he will have to set up a bypass trust to prevent the IRS from getting most of his estate.

We wished him well. Now, I better go write down some of those lawyer jokes he told before I forget them!

Oh, before I forget, I’m sure that Ambien is a legal trademark of its manufacturer.