Back to the grindstone after another glorious Northern California weekend. We had bright blue skies and temps in the upper eighties and low nineties all weekend. I even ventured out to the golf course for a round of golf for the first time since Independence Day. Two months without golf and without boring readers of my blog about golf. I'll fill in the blanks on my Saturday round later in this epistle.

More importantly, high school football was in full swing on Friday and we had mixed results this week. Woodcreek hosted Division 1 powerhouse Folsom, Jennifer's alma mater, on Friday night. Folsom is in a brand new school with a state of the art synthetic turfed stadium. Intel Corporation is a neighbor of the school and contributed the $1,000,000 to build the stadium and we played there last year. This year, Folsom had to come to Roseville and slum with the locals on our grass field and metal bleachers. Daniel's team took one on the chin 17-7 as our quarterback threw three interceptions. Daniel again had a solid game, even sacking the Folsom quaterback for a ten yard loss. Daniel caught him as he tried to scramble and wrapped both arms around his back and drove him into the turf. Daniel then rolled him over on top of him like a rag doll. I asked Daniel what he was doing and he said as he was piling him into the ground, he thought he might get a personal foul so he rolled him over on top of him so it looked like he was trying to hold up. The quarterback got up shaking his head and wobbled to the sidelines. Daniel played on both sides of the ball and made some nice plays. He was up against an offensive lineman who was actually bigger than Dan and had some trouble. He wasn't staying low enough and the lineman kept getting lower than Daniel and flipping him onto the ground. I could see Daniel getting frustrated and on one play where the lineman tried the submarine, Daniel jumped up and pile drove him into the ground. The OL stayed pretty well upright after that move.

David's game was pretty tight early on and David again struggled with throwing the ball too high early on. He missed his tight end who was wide open in the end zone on their first drive. The ball floated over his head. We ended up scoring with our tailback running it in, but a trend is setting in. After starting 0-5 in the last game, he was 0-4 in this game before finishing 6 of 13 for 77 yards. We won the game 23-0 and the guys were sky high after the game. David's best passes came when he was forced out of the pocket and he had to throw on the run. Adam cannot throw when he's moving and this is one of David's strengths. David can't wait for this Friday when we play the number five ranked team in the area, Del Oro. He is convinced they can win that game, which is nuts, but if you don't believe in yourself, you've already lost the game. It should be interesting. We capped the scoring in Friday's game with 4 minutes left in the 4th period with a fake punt that went for a touchdown. This is the first time in four years that Woodcreek has won back-to-back games, so it is a big deal at school.

One of the television stations in Sacramento has a Friday night High School football show and our cheerleaders will be featured this week. The station will also be at our game filming, so it should be a big night.

Darla and I will leave next Saturday morning for Monterey. Our golf club is having a two-day event where we will play Laguna Seca Golf Course in Monterey on Saturday and Poppy Hills in Pebble Beach on Sunday. I signed up only for the Sunday tournament because of football. The games don't end until ten and it's a three hour drive to Monterey. We'll take a leisurely drive on Saturday, have dinner with the gang Saturday night and then I'll play golf on Sunday. We'll stay over Sunday night and then drive back on Monday. I'll see agents Monday morning while Darla sleeps in. We are staying at the Hyatt located on the Del Monte Golf Course in Monterey this year.

Golf. It is a four letter word, but it was so nice to be back out in the fresh air playing golf on Saturday morning. I shot 42-46=88, which is not great, but given the fact that I've been incapacitated for two months, I was happy with the effort and the result. I tweaked my back on the fifth hole during my drive and actually birdied the hole with an approach shot that landed a foot from the cup. I was very sore from then on and really felt some stabs of pain during the back side. Afterward, I had lunch with our President, Harry. He is a Bowen Therapy practitioner and he urged me to come in and see him on Tuesday. Bowen Therapy involves a muscle relaxation technique. The theory is that the muscles on either side of the spine cause the spine to pop out of joint and by relaxing the muscles and causing blood to flow to those muscles, the muscles will relax and the spine will naturally realign itself. It sounds plausible and I'm willing to try anything at this point. He assures me that I'll feel better than I have in months after the treatment. He is giving me the first session for free, but wants me to see him at least twice and his fee is $50 per hour. A session takes one hour to loosen and relax the muscles. I'll reserve judgement on this and let you know next week how it goes.

I was sore as can be yesterday afer using muscles that I hadn't used in months. I was hobbling around and spent most of the day on the couch with NFL football to keep me occupied. I have the NFL package, which is great as I was able to watch the end of the Saints-Rams overtime thriller rather than the start of a 34-0 Niner loss to the Seahawks.

We made it to church yesterday and the pastor gave us a state of the church message. Our church has been highly successful with the nicest new building in the area and weekly attendance near 2000. This has been a tough year for our pastor, Rick, in that he has lost several staff members to other churches. He takes the defections very personally and even considered resigning when one of the staff members left because of conflict with him. He said that God is 'pruning" the church and helping to plant new churches in the area. The toughest loss was our worship leaders, a husband and wife team that decided to plant a new church. Rick told us the story of a man marooned on a deserted island. He started a fire and fanned signals to a ship about a year after being marooned. The ship saw the smoke and sent a rescue boat to the island. While the stranded man was boarding the ship, the captain asked him where the others were. The man said that he was the only one on the island. The captain said that when he had checked his telescope, he saw three huts on the island. The man said that was easily explained. The first hut was his house and the second was his church. The captain asked what the third hut was for. The man replied, "That was the church that I used to attend." His point was that churches often have turnover and the conflict is good for the church as it helps to keep their focus on the real church, who are the members.

Jennifer has not only made it to Kuwait, but she has updated her blog a couple of times and I urge you to check it out. A link to her blog is at the bottom of this page. Her address is:

Spec. Jennifer Lyon
385th SC CO
Kuwait City , Kuwait
APO - AE 09889

Jennifer would like any kind of bath and beauty products, including good shampoos and conditioners, books, cds, DVDs and magazines. And I know that she'd like any kind of homemade cookies, etc. She said the shampoos and body lotions available at the PX are terrible and the desert sand and sun is hard on a woman's body. So if you can find it in your heart to help out a soldier, she and I would appreciate it. There is nothing quite as nice as a package from home.

I hope all is well with each of you. Be careful out there. Ciao.