It is a frantic Monday morning..or at least it appears to be outside my office window as cars scream by on their way to work and school. I've enjoyed a bagel and a cup of coffee and thought I'd update my blog before digging into work.

Darla and I enjoyed a nice quiet weekend with the boys at their Dad's house. We dined on Pizza on Friday night. I played golf on Saturday in our annual Captain 'n Crew event, a scramble format where we combine A, B, C & D players into a team and play a scramble match. Admittedly, it is not my favorite format (I don't like any golf event where an individual score isn't posted at the conclusion of the round). Our team ended up with an A player that I could routinely outdrive, in fact our team used nine of my drives for the match. That isn't a good thing when many of the teams had A players with 2 or 3 handicaps that can hit the ball 300 yards off the tee. I hit it about 275 on a great drive and about 250 on average. We finished with a 67 and the winners all shot 61.

I'm the Vice-President of the golf club this year and my main duties are in writing the newsletter and in setting up and administering the Christmas Party. I'm on the audit committee and the rules committee as well, but the newsletter and Christmas Party are the two biggies. I am moving the Christmas party this year to a vintage Victorian building in the small town of Lincoln, outside of Roseville. The restaurant wants, and we have contracted to bring in, at least $2,500 for the room based on a dinner price of $42. We are charging the members $30 a plate, so we need to have 42 couples attend to make our minimum. If we do, we will be $1008 short of our tab at the restaurant. What I've decided to do, is hold a 50-50 drawing at every tournament. Our first event cleared $122 on the 50-50 drawing and we have 20 events this year plus 4 open meetings to make money. We are off and running. I haven't announced the cost of the dinners and if we do well, I'd like to drop the cost to $25 this year. The restaurant venue is very nice and I want to market this as an elegant night out with your wife or significant other. A chance to get together with your buddies AND make your wife happy all in the same night.

Darla and I went out to dinner on Saturday night. We thought about going to the movie, but decided to spend a quiet night at home. We are getting old or something. The thought of standing in line for the movie and then sitting in an overly cool theater for two hours just doesn't motivate us anymore. We watched the movie "Just Married" on HBO and had a good evening.

Sunday, we went to church and then Darla dragged me over to her friend, Michelle's, house for a two year-old's birthday party. The party started at noon and I dragged my feet at home long enough that the party was winding down at one o'clock when we got there. There were seven screaming toddlers tearing open gifts and throwing toys around. I thought I'd die, but the party quickly broke up after the breaking of a Scooby Doo pinata and the mad scramble for falling candy was over. The harried mothers gathered their over-sugared youngsters and dragged them to the car for a loud drive home. I have never been a huge fan of little kids and can take them in very small doses. Within forty-five minutes of our arrival, the only child left was the birthday girl and she spent her time dragging a balloon around the room and watching it get batted about by the blades of several ceiling fans as her Dad and several other men including myself watched the Green Bay- Philly game on tv.

I talked to Jennifer last night and she is still in a waiting mode with the military and her deployment to Afghanistan. She is pretty disgusted with the whole incident and there is a rumor that they will have to be re-cleared for the mission if it stretches over thirty-days past their initial clearance. She knows that she will be sent to an air base in Texas for further briefing before they leave for Afghanistan. What she doesn't know is when all of this will happen. Last week during the preparedness drill, the Army pulled three of the soldiers off KP and had them back in the barracks preparing to leave. Apparently even the sergeant weren't aware that it was simply a drill. The soldiers aren't happy and feel that they are being toyed with.

That's it for this week. Be good to each other. Hold up the Lord as the example for your lifeand make His way, your way. Ciao.