Busy week ahead

It will be a busy week, but most of the activities will involve sports and marketing. First off, this is the week of the NAPSLO (National Association of Professional Surplus Lines Offices)conference in San Francisco. ALL of the Surplus Lines Companies and wholesalers will be in attendance and all of the brass from Burns and Wilcox will be in town to attend. We will entertain our chief Underwriting Vice President, David Price, an Englishman by birth and a former member of the Lloyds Syndicate in London, today along with Wayne Bates, Vice president and head of our internal market, Special Risk Division (SRD). Wayne is also an Englishman by birth. They will be in the office about 10 AM for some one on one time with me and an office meeting. Tomorrow I will play in a charity golf tournament with one of my agency's, Albano Dale, and Mel Padeirnos, Cora's husband. Cora is an assistant in my office and Mel belongs to the golf club. The agency paid $3,500 to be a minor sponsor of the tournament and I was lucky enough to be invited. Wednesday, I will go to the San Francisco Giant's game against the San Diego Padres and see the return of Barry Bonds in person. We have been invited by Dan Carroll, an agent with one of our local agencies and a friend who I worked with back at Deans and Homer in the 90's. His agency has season tickets at Pac Bell park behind the Giants dugout on the third base side. Great seats, about five rows up from the field. Thursday, I will likely be in San Francisco for some of the peripheral parties and soirees surrounding NAPSLO. I was not invited to the convention which cost $2,500, but they would like me to go to a few of the company functions that are put on by our carriers. I will take Pete Morrison, my newest underwriter, with me. I've also been invited to attend the third San Francisco Niner game. I would normally be genuinely disinterested in a Niner game, but they happen to be playing Dallas and I can't say no to an agent. Right? I look forward to that game.

The weather here in Sacramento has turned cool and we just about froze at Daniel's football game on Friday night. Luckily I had on jeans, but had to take Darla's sweatshirt and sat chattering in the unseasonably cool night air. We have dropped from 100 degrees to highs in the low eighties and upper seventies with overnight lows in the fifties. It is about sixty five degrees as I write this and a high blue sky. It will be chamber of commerce weather for the home office personnel when they arrive.

Daniel is starting on the special teams this year and is a backup on the OL. He did NOT get a rep in the game this week, although made a nice stop on a punt return where the returner broke the wedge and Daniel knocked him sideways as he tried to juke around him. The team won the game 29-14 and again start the season 1-0. We have a new coach and a new grind it out style of offense. It is a ball control, four running back, one receiver offense and it worked well. We had two runners rush for over 100 yards and five interceptions by the defense to seal the victory. It is still not division games, but it was a win over a Division I school and a nice start to the season. I hope Daniel gets a few plays in the upcoming games. He's used to going both ways fulltime and now he's cooling his heels on the sideline watching the Seniors play. Tough transition.

The Club Championship was this weekend and I knew I had pulled a tough first round opponent with Larry Walker. Larry is a decent golfer and I can play with him, but he is one of the most deliberate and slow golfers in our club. First of all, he is 6'7" tall and gets down on the ground to line up putts from both sides of the line. Then he takes at least five to six practice swings before finally pulling the trigger. He drives me nuts. Our match went right down to the final hole, where he hit a dead skull drive left into the trees that somehow managed to land in the tenth fairway. From there he hit a perfect seven wood to about six feet to seal the victory. That ball by all rights should have fallen straight down into the trees, but it didn't. I walked off feeling like,e I let one slip away. So my annual golf goals came up with a goose egg. I did not get into single digits on my index, I missed the Rose Cup team and I did not win my flight in the Club Championship. Oh, well, I'm learning to deal with disappointment. I shot 84 to Larry's 83, but more importantly lost the match 1 down. Next on my golf agenda is our trip to Monterey on September 29th - October 2nd.

I haven't shared much about David's basketball situation. He was approached by the coach of William Jessup University in the neighboring town of Rocklin about playing for him on a partial scholarship. William Jessup is a Christian college that was located in San Jose and moved to Rocklin last year. The coach at William Jessup had heard about David through one of our youth leaders and asked him to come and play with his players to do a chemistry test. David has played with them two or three times and has met with the coach. IF he decides to join the team, he will get about an 85% scholarship and be able to get his Undergraduate studies done at William Jessup. The Jessup family attends our church, Adventure Christian, and Bryce Jessup spoke at our church this past Sunday. He is the chancellor at William Jessup and his granddaughter is pushing David to go to William Jessup. We'll see. David has really second guessed his decision to put his ball playing days behind him and is intrigued with the offer.

We finally got the quote on our tile job at home and will start the job in the next couple of weeks. Darla is still looking at granite slabs for the kitchen counters and we have another quote coming. She wants to get away from tile on the counters completely. She's tired of fighting with the grout problems. The price was comparable to what Florian, the unlicensed Romanian liar, wanted to charge us. The total is maybe $700 higher, but that's peanuts. I did find out that although Brian, the tile contractor, is licensed, he did not carry liability insurance. I told him that he was nuts and had put his business and, indeed, his house in jeopardy. I set him up with my number one agent and they got him an annual quote of $1,600. Hopefully he jumps all over that.

Well, that is the news to the minute. The staff is beginning to straggle in and I have to get to work. Ciao.