It is another glorious Monday morning in California. The sun is up and bright, the sky is blue and it will hit about 82 degrees today, absolutely perfect early Spring weather here in Northern California.

I haven't had an opportunity to talk to Jennifer in about two weeks. She has been busy and hasn't been able to get a phone call in. I miss talking to her. We missed her call in Vegas as we were in a noisy casino and I didn't hear my cell phone ringing. We had set up for her to call us on Friday night when the family was meeting at PF Changs, but Jennifer overslept that morning and was almost late to work (it would be her Saturday morning as she is 11 hours ahead of us). She finally called on Sunday night (her Monday morning), but I missed the call. I have, however received numerous e-mails from her. She has a new e-mail address with the military that allows her to send and receive e-mail pretty easily. It is a little cumbersome to get into her MSN account.

Her e-mail address is: Jennifer.Lyon@vcmain.hq.c5.army.mil

It looks like Jennifer will be coming back to her base in Georgia on April 15th as planned. She so wants to stay in Iraq and will miss the civilian contractors who are staying until the communications center is complete. Jennifer's mission was to complete the fibre optics cable installation and then they are out of there. Praise God.

My office is moving this week. We had an efficiency expert, Dave Hossler, in our office last week from Home Office and he took me to dinner one night to pick my brain. He is impressed with the success that I've had and wants to know how to pass that on to some of the other underwriters in the office. I very frankly told him that if he could get them to put in 50 hours a week, they would probably miraculously find that they start to write more business. He has closed out a couple of lines of business that we were writing and he let two people go. It is a little bit nerve wracking in here right now as people fear for their jobs. Dave told me that my job is secure and that they want to build around a nucleus of people in this office and that I'm on the top of his list. That was certainly encouraging, but there are more changes to come and the boat will be a little rocky in the coming weeks.

I played poker on Friday night with the Roseville Golf Club group and then I played golf Saturday morning with two of the low handicappers in our club. I started poorly and shot a 46 on the front side. I was a bit embarassed playing with two of our better players, but I pulled my round together on the backside and shot a 36 to win the money and leave the guys shaking their heads over what happened to them. It was fun. The weather was ideal.

I got my car washed and waxed this weekend and the lawn trimmed. There is something powerful about Springtime. It is rebirth and the fresh blooms on all of the trees and bushes. The backyard is awash in fresh growth and the irises and the umbrella tree over the pond are in full bloom. The goldfish are active again and sunning themselves between the plants in the pond. I took out the hedge trimmer and cut back many of the bushes and hedges last night and everything looks so good. Living in California is a dream and I can't imagine ever leaving the Golden State.

The boys are active in their Spring sports. Daniel is playing baseball on his high school freshman team and David is active in track and field, doing high jump, long jump, triple jump and relays. He is staying active in order to train for football. Darla is still playing volleyball on Tuesday nights and she involves her boys whenever she can. Darla says that I'm the only one not involved in a sport. I can't seem to convince her that golfers are athletes. Craig Stadler has ruined it for all of us.

That's it for this week. I will come in Friday morning to pack my desk and then have an 11:00 a.m. tee time at Mather. I will play with Anthony, Gail and Mel. Anthony is the 27 year-old assistant underwriter in the office, Gail is one of the underwriters and Mel is the husband of our policy typist. I leave for Scottsdale on Monday morning for a convention with Scottsdale Insurance. Emery Jensen, my former boss at Republic Western, is one of the managers at Scottsdale Insurance and we will play golf together on Tuesday. The blog will be late next week for those of you paying attention. Ciao.