Hello again. It is President's Day here stateside, but here at the helm of the good ship U-Haul, we get but 7 days off a year and none between New Year's Day and Memorial Day. Darla, who has finally emerged from the warmth and safety of the down comforter on our bed and is showering at 9:50 a.m. on a Monday, is enjoying her fourth day off of the year thus far. Social workers may be under-appreciated and somewhat underpaid, but they know how to work the system.

The weekend was as good as ever. I played golf on Saturday, the second leg of a two-day tournament qualifier that sends four of our club's golfers to Spyglass in Monterey. I played steady, solid golf, but made the ignominious error of allowing myself to be talked into teaming up with a high-handicap golfer. I was swayed by his argument that he is allowed a stroke on 17 of the 18 holes. Unfortunately, my partner is a 23-handicap who would have needed to have played six strokes under his handicap to break even in this tournament. He, in fact, played spectacularly awful and shot a horrendous 11 strokes per round average above his handicap and left me befuddled and bemused. I shot 83 on the first day and a stellar 38-41=79 on Saturday. All for naught. Any hole that I had a net bogey on, our best ball score was a net bogey as my partner was building snowmen (8's) around the proximity of the course. I learned a hard lesson, and as the handicap chairman, I had to sign and attest the scores of the four golfers who are going on the paid holiday to the Pebble Beach area in April. Drat. I will keep myself in the company of real golfers in upcoming tournaments and qualifiers. I've already signed up to play in the two-man team competition with a 4 handicapper in the club and dropped my one time partner like a bad smell. He wasn't a partner, he was human freight and my back needs a chiropractor after this tournament. If you think I'm being hard on my partner, well, I am. He stunk up the course. He shot rounds of 102 and 110. Live and learn.

We had our new sectional sofa delivered on Wednesday. That delivery left us with our old eight-by-eight foot sectional sitting in the garage. I had called a couple of haulers to see if they could pick it up and deliver it to one of the thrift stores (American Cancer Society, etc.), but got no takers for the job. Most of them haul trash and clippings, etc to the dump and wanted to charge me $75 to haul it to the dump. The furniture has some life in it and having a social worker wife, having it hauled to the dump would not fly. I finally got Deseret Industries to agree to pick it up this last Friday, Valentine's Day. The dispatcher told me that they would be here between 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. I had to do some registered mail for my job on Friday and left at eight o'clock to get it done and come back for the vigil at home waiting for the truck to arrive. As is my wont, I had waited until D-Day to get Darla a Valentine's Day card and left the Post Office and ran over to the store to pick up a card, arriving back home at 8:45. As I drove up, I could see a bright green sign on my front door handle and was completely dismayed to see that the Deseret truck had arrived at 8:40 a.m. to pick up our furniture. I ran into my office and called the dispatcher to see if the truck could turn around and come back. She called back five minutes later to say that he was too far out of the area. I had a Valentine's Day card for my wife and a sectional sofa taking up residence in her parking space in the garage. I could see her being somewhat unhappy with me. The dispatcher called back fifteen minutes later and said that they were low on current donations and that the general manager had approved the truck driver rerouting back to Roseville to collect our donation. I was saved and some needy family will reap the benefit of Darla's hard work re-upholstering the sofa. And I was able to clear a space for Darla's car in the garage. Oh, Happy Day.

David's basketball team suffered a narrow overtime loss on Friday night at Natomas. The Natomas team is quite good (in spite of their record), having beat Rocklin, the team that beat us earlier this year and were able to come back from six points down in the fourth quarter to tie the game in regulation. We took the lead in overtime only to lose it on two fast-break baskets and lose the game on a questionable call by the officials. They were up by two with 2.2 seconds remaining and missed a second free throw. We immediately called time out and the clock operator let 2 seconds run off the clock. We had told the officials that we wanted a timeout immediately if we rebounded the miss. The officials refused to put more time on the clock and we lost the game. It was their second bad call in the game. At the end of regulation, there were five seconds left, when Natomas tried to inbound the ball under our basket, and their player threw the ball the length of the court and their player grabbed it out of bounds. The clock operator allowed three seconds to run off the clock and the official ruled that the ball was touched inbounds and then the player stepped out. Clearly the player had stepped out of bounds and then touched the ball. Not only was the time allowed to run off the clock, but we had to inbounds the ball at their end of the court instead of under our own basket. It was frustrating for the guys and especially for the fans, who let the officials have it. David's team plays Rocklin for the league title on Friday night. If we lose, we take second. If we win, we share the title with Rocklin. It should be a GREAT game.

Jennifer has finished her school in Arizona and is back in Georgia at Fort Gordon in Augusta. She finished second in her class in Arizona and continues to excel at her chosen field. Jennifer really struggled with school and decisions as she approached eighteen, but has really found her place in the military. She continues to excel at PT, at her chosen field of electronics, and in life. I'm very proud of her.

Darla and I are off to Chico today. I have an inspection to do and she will join me for lunch at one of my favorite restaurants in Chico, The Italian Cottage. I may have to work, but working out of the house, I choose the tasks. It should be a good drive and I'm on expense account so it's all good.

Hope you are all well. Keep the Lord in your life and the Lord will keep watch over you. Ciao.