A glance at the calendar tells me that Summer begins today. I suppose in some parts of the country you need to look at a calendar to tell the changing of the seasons. Sacramento is one of those areas with very distinct weather in different seasons. It's just that the climate doesn't pay attention to the calendar. It's been in the nineties for the better part of a month here, although we just had our first official day over 100 degrees last week. I talked to Dad last night to pay homage to Father's Day and recognize the fact that without his involvement, I wouldn't be living this life today. He said that the Surrey area had about 94 degrees yesterday and he and Shirley spent the day at a car show locally. The official high temperature for Vancouver was 82 degrees, but like San Francisco, when the city temperature climbs over 80 degrees, you can usually add 10-15 degrees to the cities in the suburbs. That is HOT for the Vancouver area, especially this time of year. I called him at about nine p.m. and talked briefly to Al, as they had their phone on call forwarding, and they were just putting the meat on the barbecue for dinner. I guess appetizers and refreshments ran a bit long at the Nowakowski household.

The boys made it off yesterday morning for their football camp in Oregon. The camp is being held at Southern Oregon University and the boys had to catch their bus yesterday morning at six a.m. David packed up his Mustang and off they went at about five-thirty Sunday morning. At least that's the word according to Darla. I was fast asleep. We picked up David's Mustang later that morning and brought it back to the house. Darla and I will drop it back off at Woodcreek on Thursday morning as they will be returning then. David rightfully didn't want to leave his car at the school for five days. They called last night and made it to camp by shortly after noon and had already been in full pads and done some weight training. They will be doing three-a-days during camp and are thankful for the cooler weather of Oregon.

David will turn around on Friday and Darla will drive him to camp at Stanford. The Oregon camp is a Woodcreek camp with all of the coaching staff there and this is a chance to put their offense and defensive game plans together. David received his wristband of plays in a special meeting with the head coach on Saturday night. They are serious about having David compete for the starting quarterback position for Varsity, although David has told them in no uncertain terms that if he has to choose between quarterback and free safety, that he chooses defense. Apparently, they are okay with him playing both ways this year. We'll see. The Stanford camp is a specialty camp for quarterbacks and receivers and they will work with the Stanford coaching staff on drills and techniques. That camp is four days and cost $440. He will have the opportunity to spend some time with a quality Division I college coaching staff and it should be invaluable in his growth as a football player.

David has already received about a dozen letters from smaller schools in the country about having him play for them. The coaches put several names out for scholarship consideration and David scored well on his SATs and carries close to a 4.0 average, so he is a good catch for a smaller school. David wants to pursue a career as a CAD architect (Computer Assisted Drawing) and will only consider schools that have an Engineering and Architecture curriculum. If he had his choice, he would go to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which is one of the premiere Architecture schools on the West Coast. In fact he and his Dad visited Cal Poly on their vacation and David made a few contacts while he was there and brought back a scad of information. Our friend, Rob McKone, who played college basketball transferred to Cal Poly from Weber State and still has some contacts at the school, so we hope to interest them in David's athletic prowess. David has two things going for him...he is an excellent student and he plays two sports, football and basketball. The smaller schools have less scholarships and prefer their atheletes to play more than one sport. Keep your fingers crossed. A scholarship would save us a bundle.

Golf. Of course I played this weekend. We were supposed to have a tournament at Ancil Hoffman Golf Course, but the course cancelled our tee times when we didn't hit our guaranteed number of players. Several of our golfers dropped out to play in the Buick Scramble qualifier. I snuck out and played on Diamond Oaks early on Saturday and shot a 41+42=83 and finally snuffed the poor start/good finish problem, although I started double bogey-bogey-bogey and then ran off five straight pars. Perhaps I'm refining the poor start pattern even further and continuing the trend in a microcostic manner. I enjoyed the round and hit crisp, straight drives and rolled in some good putts, even chipping in for birdie from off the green on the back side.

The US Open was a delight this weekend. I taped the final round as Darla and I were at the beach on Sunday. I was a bit amused at the infighting between Tiger Woods and his former coach, Butch Harmon. He was critical of Tiger's play and how he is practicing and said that Tiger is in denial on the state of his game. Tiger was not pleased. Butch Harmon comes from a long line of golfers. His brother, Bill, once blew up in a junior tournament and threw his entire set of clubs into the pond. When he got home, he told his father, Claude, what he had done and told him that he was quitting golf and joining the Army. His father thought about that and then asked him why he didn't join the Navy, then at least he could get his clubs back. A great story.

Jennifer has been out on manuevers the last week. She showed up to work on Tuesday and they sent her unit into the field and they had to stay out in tents and set up camp. She expects to stay in the field until she leaves on her vacation June 24th. She got twelve hours off on Saturday to get some rest at her bunk. She called to wish me a Happy Father's Day, but we were at the beach. She said she'd try to call one night this week. I told her to call me at the office.

I kidded last week about Dad's obsession with his lawn, but then mowed my lawn on Thursday night and then again last night. It's growing so fast, I may have to cancel our vacation. J/K.

Hope all are well. God Bless and have a great week.