Hey. I'm back from paradise and wondering how Dad and Shirley ever sold their place in Sun City. The temperatures were 79, 83 and 85 on the three days that I was in Scottsdale. Not too shabby and probably a little warmer than what Dad and Shirley are experiencing in Vancouver. I stayed at the Resort Suites in Scottsdale off Princess Avenue. It is the resort situated right next to the Fairmont Resort and the Fairmont makes anyplace else look like a dive. The Resort Suites was very nice and the rooms were about 900 square foot suites. The Miss Teen Arizona pageant was gearing up and the girls and their parents were checking in and fashion photo shoots were taking place outside my room. These girls are all adorable and it was a pedophile's delight as the 16-18 year olds lounged by the pool and walked around wearing tiaras and sashes all day long.
We started Wednesday night with a 30 minute bus ride out to Cave Creek, Arizona north of Scottsdale and went to a country restaurant and bar where they set us up in the rear yard with horseshoes, volleyball and six large fire pits surrounded by picnic tables. The grub was pulled pork, chicken, cowboy beans, corn on the cob and biscuits. The food was excellent and the music was very good with a rockabilly band with a lead singer who crooned in the Elvis Presley style. It was a fun night.
The underwriter in Modesto, Margaret, contracted tonsilitus from her kids and had to stay home. I caught the six am flight to Phoenix on Wednesday morning and rented an SUV when I arrived. I had a ten am meeting with Scottsdale Insurance and my Colony underwriter was trying to track me down and had three messages on my cell phone by the time I landed. She wanted to invite Anthony from our office to attend the seminar in Margaret's place. I talked to Anthony, he was caught up on his desk and could catch a Wednesday night flight to Phoenix in time to be at the seminar Thursday morning. I cleared it with our VP in San Francisco and Anthony was on a flight by the time we got to the dinner house in Cave Creek.
The trip was fun. They had a casino night on Thursday night and I opened and closed one of the Texas Hold'em tables. It was a lot of fun. We played golf Thursday afternoon and they put me with three complete non-golfers. We managed four over par which was amazing given that we used 17 of my drives and 90% of my other shots. I was playing really well and likely would have won if they'd given me even one golfer to play with. We had a good time and I got to know a couple of my Colony Underwriters better over the five hour course of the golf tournament.
The underwriters from my old firm, Richter Robb were there. That firm did about $36,000,000 in premium when I was with them. We hired away their top two underwriters last year and they finished 2005 with a little over $18,000,000 in writings. I expected to be treated as a pariah, but two of the three underwriters approached me about employment. I'm not looking to hire any more of their underwriters away, but it was funny to see the marketing that they each tried to do with me to sell themselves.
I returned from the sun and fun to a rainy Friday afternoon in Sacramento. I got in about 3:05 PM and was back in the office by 4:30 to clean up my e-mails and voice mails so I could get a fresh start this morning. I worked until about 7:30 PM. Darla had a site meeting with the kids from Adventure Christian Church in preparation for their Mexico trip. I figured that I could get more done at work, even though I was tired and needed to get caught up on sleep.
The Titleist golf tournament scheduled for Saturday was postponed due to inclement weather and rescheduled for April 8th. Darla will be out of town that weekend in Mexico and I plan to play golf both days. I did not play this past weekend, partly because of the weather, but mostly because I pulled a muscle in my back mowing the lawn Saturday afternoon. I reached down to pick up one of the spiny balls that fall from my trees and felt something snap. I have a call in to Harry for a Bowen Therapy appointment. I hope to get in this afternoon. If I stand in front of a mirror, I am listing to the left right now as my spine is out of alignment due to the muscle strain in my back. I was in agony last night and had trouble sleeping. The last time I did this, I had one Bowen session and was good to go after that. I'm done with chiropractors. They did little but lighten my wallet over the years.
I got an e-mail from Randy showing Chris' new truck, a beast of a Ram Quad cab. It is Cowboy blue and would require a step ladder for me to get into it. I was going to show Daniel the pictures, but Darla said not to. His father is still making him wait to get a car. We did our part and got David the Mustang when he turned sixteen. Daniel is so under his father's thumb that he cannot get a job and can't buy a car until they sell Steve's junker of a Jeep Cherokee. It has 270,000 miles on it and Steve wants $1,000 for it. I told Daniel to buy it and then sell it for $300 and buy a truck. He has $4,000 to put toward a truck, but has to put up with his Svengali father. In the meantime, I've added Daniel to our insurance at $1500 a year. I look forward to both kids hitting 18 and having a say in their own lives. Daniel is not allowed to get a part time job, because it would interfere with Steve's time with him. Frankly, I want the kid to get a job. He watches way too much television and lies around the house doing nothing. When he finally gets up some plans, he looks to us for money. I tell him to go see his Dad or get a job. It is immensely frustrating to me and I don't know how Daniel handles it. He will end up hating his Dad for being so controlling.
We had a guest speaker at church yesterday and he was a dynamic speaker who advocates getting out of our comfort zone and being an evangelist for Christ. He talked about how the vast majority of people live without any purpose...like a feather on the wind. He said that we need to take control of our lives by giving our lives to the Lord and letting him set our path. He called it making ripples and impacting others for Christ. It was convicting stuff. I hope that each of you can make a ripple and impact others. Ciao.
Monday, March 27, 2006
Monday, March 20, 2006
SPRING?
I see that the calendar claims that Spring begins today. Once again, after a relatively dry weekend, the rains are coming back tonight and tomorrow. I'm worried that the Spring might rust if this rain doesn't subside at some point.
This will be a busy week and I'll only spend two days of it here in the office. I have a conference in Scottsdale, Arizona that begins on Wednesday afternoon. It is the kind of conference that I like in that we will have a brief opening session (5:00PM-5:30PM) on Wednesday afternoon, followed by buses that will take us all out to dinner at Buffalo Chip Saloon and Steakhouse. The next day has breakfast at 8:00 AM followed by a trade show with the various underwriting departments and then golf from noon to 5:00PM followed by a catered dinner at the resort and then Casino night with slot machines, blackjack, roulette, craps and Texas Hold'em. The next day breakfast at 8:00AM followed by speakers from 8:30-10:00 AM and meetings with individual underwriters. They offered tickets to the Giants Spring training game in the afternoon, but I wanted to get back home, so I fly out 2:07 PM and arrive back in Sac at 3:05PM. There is a one hour time difference in Phoenix.
I'm traveling with one of the underwriters out of Modesto and we will visit with Emery Jensen, my old boss at Republic Western, who is now the Pacific Region Manager for Scottsdale Insurance. We will meet with Emery and his luietenant, Greg Buckley, who is the Underwriting Manager for our territory. Scott Epstein from our San Francisco office will piggyback that meeting with us. It should be a good trip. The conference is being hosted by Colony Insurance, our third largest carrier. I have yet to visit them and hope to make it over to the office on Friday morning. It will be a busy week, but it should be fun as well.
I did play golf over the weekend and in fact played both Saturday and Sunday. I played Saturday with Boyd and Mel in my regular foursome and then had an old friend from the golf club in town on Saturday. Mark Forbes was our webmaster and works for Sharp Electronics in their computer disk division in Portland. He moved to Washington State in 2004 and we keep in touch mostly through fantasy sports. Randy actually has been in touch with Mark through our football fantasy league. Mark sent me a note and said that he'd like to play golf on Sunday, but that he couldn't get out until 1;30 PM. I got a 1:35 tee time and arranged for two of his other friends (Gary Krohn and Neil Thomas) to play. We about finished in the dark last night, getting off the course at 6:30 in heavy shadows. The last two holes were played in the darkening skies of late twilight. I managed to string together two good rounds of golf over the weekend and shot 42+39 on Saturday followed by 39+42 on Sunday, for a pair of 81s. Sunday was more of a challenge as we had winds of 20-25 MPH blowing and I played with golfers with indexes of 24, 19 and 18. We met up with Greg Wanee and his wife as well as Liz, Lily and Darla afterward and all went to dinner. We had margaritas and toasted Mark's new bride, who was waiting for him in Washington. Mark was in town working on his business, Ventana, an antenna business for CB enthusiasts. She knew that he'd be busy building antennas and then playing golf. We hope to meet her next trip. It was fun and a nice end to the weekend.
Saturday night we hosted one of our friends from church, Marilyn, and her husband, Dennis for dinner. Marilyn has been going to church for thirty years and Dennis has not. We have been praying for him for years and decided to invite them both to dinner. We had never met Dennis as he is a non-church goer. He is a golfer and we are both about 12 handicappers. We had a great time. Dennis is the president of his golf club, Peach Tree Country Club in Linda, California. I will play with him some weekday up at his club. It is one of the jewels of the area, a 6400 yard track in Linda that was formed in 1965 by a group of peach farmers in Marysville. It has grown to 455 members, but the initiation is only $1000 and the dues $265 a month. We saw Marilyn at church on Sunday and she said that Dennis had a great time and wants to invite us over. He was surprised that we didn't give him the "bum's rush" about going to church. It was his biggest fear when Marilyn told him that they were going to some friends from church. I will encourage him to come to church eventually, but want to get to know him, play some golf and become friends first.
Jackson Sonyanga, the African minister from a church in Kampala, Uganda was back speaking at our church yesterday. Jackson brought some video and news about the 21 orphanage homes that have been built thanks to the support of Adventure Chrisitian church. AIDS is still an epidemic in Uganda and there are tens of thousands of orphans due to the epidemic. The homes are all clustered together in a park area and called Adventure Village. There are about twelve children in each home and they are separated boys and girls. It was amazing to see the work that is being done a world away because of our friendship with Jackson. He gave another very convicting sermon on evangelism. He talked about the new converts to Christianity in Uganda and how they go door-to-door preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and how here in America we isolate the new Christians and don't let them get involved until they have been properly indoctrinated into the body. He always brings a "slap you upside the head" message with him from Uganda when he visits and it was great to see him. Rick will be back from his sabattical on Easter Sunday and we are all anxious to see his return. He wanted to come back sooner, but the Elders made him take his full four months off and wouldn't let him return.
Darla and I went to see a movie Friday night. We've been so busy the past few weeks that we needed a date night and went to see the new movie "Failure to Launch" It was hilarious and Terry Bradshaw steals the show. Darla has four jewelry shows over the next week and our time together is limited, especially with me leaving town.
Well, that is the news that is fit to share with you all. I hope you are all well. You will never stand so tall as when you kneel to PRAY. Take care. Ciao.
This will be a busy week and I'll only spend two days of it here in the office. I have a conference in Scottsdale, Arizona that begins on Wednesday afternoon. It is the kind of conference that I like in that we will have a brief opening session (5:00PM-5:30PM) on Wednesday afternoon, followed by buses that will take us all out to dinner at Buffalo Chip Saloon and Steakhouse. The next day has breakfast at 8:00 AM followed by a trade show with the various underwriting departments and then golf from noon to 5:00PM followed by a catered dinner at the resort and then Casino night with slot machines, blackjack, roulette, craps and Texas Hold'em. The next day breakfast at 8:00AM followed by speakers from 8:30-10:00 AM and meetings with individual underwriters. They offered tickets to the Giants Spring training game in the afternoon, but I wanted to get back home, so I fly out 2:07 PM and arrive back in Sac at 3:05PM. There is a one hour time difference in Phoenix.
I'm traveling with one of the underwriters out of Modesto and we will visit with Emery Jensen, my old boss at Republic Western, who is now the Pacific Region Manager for Scottsdale Insurance. We will meet with Emery and his luietenant, Greg Buckley, who is the Underwriting Manager for our territory. Scott Epstein from our San Francisco office will piggyback that meeting with us. It should be a good trip. The conference is being hosted by Colony Insurance, our third largest carrier. I have yet to visit them and hope to make it over to the office on Friday morning. It will be a busy week, but it should be fun as well.
I did play golf over the weekend and in fact played both Saturday and Sunday. I played Saturday with Boyd and Mel in my regular foursome and then had an old friend from the golf club in town on Saturday. Mark Forbes was our webmaster and works for Sharp Electronics in their computer disk division in Portland. He moved to Washington State in 2004 and we keep in touch mostly through fantasy sports. Randy actually has been in touch with Mark through our football fantasy league. Mark sent me a note and said that he'd like to play golf on Sunday, but that he couldn't get out until 1;30 PM. I got a 1:35 tee time and arranged for two of his other friends (Gary Krohn and Neil Thomas) to play. We about finished in the dark last night, getting off the course at 6:30 in heavy shadows. The last two holes were played in the darkening skies of late twilight. I managed to string together two good rounds of golf over the weekend and shot 42+39 on Saturday followed by 39+42 on Sunday, for a pair of 81s. Sunday was more of a challenge as we had winds of 20-25 MPH blowing and I played with golfers with indexes of 24, 19 and 18. We met up with Greg Wanee and his wife as well as Liz, Lily and Darla afterward and all went to dinner. We had margaritas and toasted Mark's new bride, who was waiting for him in Washington. Mark was in town working on his business, Ventana, an antenna business for CB enthusiasts. She knew that he'd be busy building antennas and then playing golf. We hope to meet her next trip. It was fun and a nice end to the weekend.
Saturday night we hosted one of our friends from church, Marilyn, and her husband, Dennis for dinner. Marilyn has been going to church for thirty years and Dennis has not. We have been praying for him for years and decided to invite them both to dinner. We had never met Dennis as he is a non-church goer. He is a golfer and we are both about 12 handicappers. We had a great time. Dennis is the president of his golf club, Peach Tree Country Club in Linda, California. I will play with him some weekday up at his club. It is one of the jewels of the area, a 6400 yard track in Linda that was formed in 1965 by a group of peach farmers in Marysville. It has grown to 455 members, but the initiation is only $1000 and the dues $265 a month. We saw Marilyn at church on Sunday and she said that Dennis had a great time and wants to invite us over. He was surprised that we didn't give him the "bum's rush" about going to church. It was his biggest fear when Marilyn told him that they were going to some friends from church. I will encourage him to come to church eventually, but want to get to know him, play some golf and become friends first.
Jackson Sonyanga, the African minister from a church in Kampala, Uganda was back speaking at our church yesterday. Jackson brought some video and news about the 21 orphanage homes that have been built thanks to the support of Adventure Chrisitian church. AIDS is still an epidemic in Uganda and there are tens of thousands of orphans due to the epidemic. The homes are all clustered together in a park area and called Adventure Village. There are about twelve children in each home and they are separated boys and girls. It was amazing to see the work that is being done a world away because of our friendship with Jackson. He gave another very convicting sermon on evangelism. He talked about the new converts to Christianity in Uganda and how they go door-to-door preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and how here in America we isolate the new Christians and don't let them get involved until they have been properly indoctrinated into the body. He always brings a "slap you upside the head" message with him from Uganda when he visits and it was great to see him. Rick will be back from his sabattical on Easter Sunday and we are all anxious to see his return. He wanted to come back sooner, but the Elders made him take his full four months off and wouldn't let him return.
Darla and I went to see a movie Friday night. We've been so busy the past few weeks that we needed a date night and went to see the new movie "Failure to Launch" It was hilarious and Terry Bradshaw steals the show. Darla has four jewelry shows over the next week and our time together is limited, especially with me leaving town.
Well, that is the news that is fit to share with you all. I hope you are all well. You will never stand so tall as when you kneel to PRAY. Take care. Ciao.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Monterey was a Beach
I decided to update the blog this afternoon, as I had today off and I know what my desk and e-mails will look like tomorrow. I'll save myself some self-induced stress and update this now.
We took a chance and loaded up the SUV, the boys, some food (I said we brought the boys), and Darla and I drove through a steady drenching of rain the 3 hours from Roseville to Monterey. We had periods of sun, some light drizzle and some heavy squalls that put the Explorers' windshield wipers to the test. Darla really needs new blades and I need to get out and find some replacement blades for her car. Daniel decided to join us as he couldn't get a ride from the poker game back home on Friday night and I think he didn't want to miss the food and fun.
It actually snowed in Monterey on Friday night and it seemed that our trip would be one of ducking the rain and trying to stay dry. We had a two-bedroom hotel room and it was certainly servicable if not a luxury suite. The name of the hotel is Quality..it used to be the Quality Inn, but now is known simply as Quality. I suppose quality is subjective, but we had three queen-sized beds in a resort town and only paid $108 a night, so Quality it was. Darla and I awoke Saturday morning and there was a partly cloudy sky and sun streaming through the blinds. We got up and readied for our day and kicked the kids out of bed. We were at the Black Bear Diner in Carmel by nine o'clock and enjoying a hot breakfast. The hotel offered a continental breakfast that left much to be desired. There was coffee, some sort of watered down Tang and muffins cut into razor thin slices and some generic white and brown bread for toasting. I managed to drink some of the coffee while waiting for Daniel and David to shower and get on to our day. I knew I'd be buying breakfast, because if I'd brought those two six-footers in to the breakfast room for a "continental breakfast", there would have been some yelling and gnashing of teeth.
The weather ended up being nice enough that we were able to take a whale watching cruise out of the wharf in Monterey. I had looked into it before we left and it was to be $25 per ticket with a discount. The weather was so iffy, that the tour operator had lowered the price of the cruise to $19.95 and we jumped on it. It was certainly colder on the water, but the boys absolutely loved the trip. We saw a humpback whale and several gray whales as well as several schools of dolphin, including a school of white dolphin. The waves were at their peak about 18 feet and the little boat was thrashed about in the sea. There were about four or five passengers that got sick and Darla and I both had our moments on the trip where we thought we'd lose it. We both hung on and endured the trip.
We ran into an old friend from Stockton, Tai Famusili, a guy I played softball with and formerly a boyfriend of Darla's best friend, Joni Minear. Tai was there with his fiance, and his daughter as well as a group of singles from Quail Lakes Baptist Church. They were there for the day and had brought the church bus which we saw in the parking lot when we left. Their group also took a whale watching tour, but it was a different company.
We went out to dinner in Carmel and tried to eat at our favorite restaurant, The Pasta House on Fifth Street, but alas, it had closed and was looking for a new tenant. We just ate there in October when I played Poppy Hills. We switched gears and headed over to the Forge in the Forest Restaurant, which is also one of our favorites. We had a large meal of French Onion soup and steak sandwiches and steak fajitas. It was a fun evening. We ended up back in the hotel room watching one of David's buddies from high school, Ike Okoye, who is a forward on Wyoming's basketball team. He started for a while during the season, but was relegated to the bench during the conference tournament. He got in the game late in the first half, had three rebounds and made two shots for four points to give Wyoming a one point halftime lead. They ended up losing in overtime and Ike never saw the floor again (perhaps a correlation?)
We went in to the Cannery Row area on Sunday and a heavy squall came through and dropped rain and hail on the area while we ate breakfast. It had passed on and the sun was out by the time we finished up and headed to the shops. The boys both wanted to get an Aqua massage and it was 2 for 1 before noon, so they pooled their money and got a 15 minute aqua massage each. The massage takes place in a chamber where a heavy black curtain lays over your back and the water beats against you. I took pictures of the boys in the massage chambers.
We drove home, stopping for a picnic lunch at the Casa De Fruta Complex outside of Hollister. It was a great weekend and the weather really held on for us. It was raining by the time we got back to Sacramento. This week calls for rain from Tuesday to Friday.
I took the day off today and played golf with Boyd, Dave and a friend of Boyd's. It was cold and the course was wet and I managed a 44+41=85. I told Dave that he jinxes me on the front side. Luckily, he's busy next Saturday when we play. Perhaps I'll break 80.
I set up our trip to Puerto Vallarta today and we'll be in PV from Saturday, August 26th to Saturday September 2nd. We'll celebrate Jennifer's birthday with or without her in Puerto Vallarta. We bought our timeshare in PV back in 2001 and haven't been back since. I'm ready to start taking a vacation to Mexico one year and Hawaii the next. It was the idea when we bought them and I'm ready to get on that train.
Well, that's it for this week. Hope you are ALL well and living in the footsteps of our Saviour. Ciao.
We took a chance and loaded up the SUV, the boys, some food (I said we brought the boys), and Darla and I drove through a steady drenching of rain the 3 hours from Roseville to Monterey. We had periods of sun, some light drizzle and some heavy squalls that put the Explorers' windshield wipers to the test. Darla really needs new blades and I need to get out and find some replacement blades for her car. Daniel decided to join us as he couldn't get a ride from the poker game back home on Friday night and I think he didn't want to miss the food and fun.
It actually snowed in Monterey on Friday night and it seemed that our trip would be one of ducking the rain and trying to stay dry. We had a two-bedroom hotel room and it was certainly servicable if not a luxury suite. The name of the hotel is Quality..it used to be the Quality Inn, but now is known simply as Quality. I suppose quality is subjective, but we had three queen-sized beds in a resort town and only paid $108 a night, so Quality it was. Darla and I awoke Saturday morning and there was a partly cloudy sky and sun streaming through the blinds. We got up and readied for our day and kicked the kids out of bed. We were at the Black Bear Diner in Carmel by nine o'clock and enjoying a hot breakfast. The hotel offered a continental breakfast that left much to be desired. There was coffee, some sort of watered down Tang and muffins cut into razor thin slices and some generic white and brown bread for toasting. I managed to drink some of the coffee while waiting for Daniel and David to shower and get on to our day. I knew I'd be buying breakfast, because if I'd brought those two six-footers in to the breakfast room for a "continental breakfast", there would have been some yelling and gnashing of teeth.
The weather ended up being nice enough that we were able to take a whale watching cruise out of the wharf in Monterey. I had looked into it before we left and it was to be $25 per ticket with a discount. The weather was so iffy, that the tour operator had lowered the price of the cruise to $19.95 and we jumped on it. It was certainly colder on the water, but the boys absolutely loved the trip. We saw a humpback whale and several gray whales as well as several schools of dolphin, including a school of white dolphin. The waves were at their peak about 18 feet and the little boat was thrashed about in the sea. There were about four or five passengers that got sick and Darla and I both had our moments on the trip where we thought we'd lose it. We both hung on and endured the trip.
We ran into an old friend from Stockton, Tai Famusili, a guy I played softball with and formerly a boyfriend of Darla's best friend, Joni Minear. Tai was there with his fiance, and his daughter as well as a group of singles from Quail Lakes Baptist Church. They were there for the day and had brought the church bus which we saw in the parking lot when we left. Their group also took a whale watching tour, but it was a different company.
We went out to dinner in Carmel and tried to eat at our favorite restaurant, The Pasta House on Fifth Street, but alas, it had closed and was looking for a new tenant. We just ate there in October when I played Poppy Hills. We switched gears and headed over to the Forge in the Forest Restaurant, which is also one of our favorites. We had a large meal of French Onion soup and steak sandwiches and steak fajitas. It was a fun evening. We ended up back in the hotel room watching one of David's buddies from high school, Ike Okoye, who is a forward on Wyoming's basketball team. He started for a while during the season, but was relegated to the bench during the conference tournament. He got in the game late in the first half, had three rebounds and made two shots for four points to give Wyoming a one point halftime lead. They ended up losing in overtime and Ike never saw the floor again (perhaps a correlation?)
We went in to the Cannery Row area on Sunday and a heavy squall came through and dropped rain and hail on the area while we ate breakfast. It had passed on and the sun was out by the time we finished up and headed to the shops. The boys both wanted to get an Aqua massage and it was 2 for 1 before noon, so they pooled their money and got a 15 minute aqua massage each. The massage takes place in a chamber where a heavy black curtain lays over your back and the water beats against you. I took pictures of the boys in the massage chambers.
We drove home, stopping for a picnic lunch at the Casa De Fruta Complex outside of Hollister. It was a great weekend and the weather really held on for us. It was raining by the time we got back to Sacramento. This week calls for rain from Tuesday to Friday.
I took the day off today and played golf with Boyd, Dave and a friend of Boyd's. It was cold and the course was wet and I managed a 44+41=85. I told Dave that he jinxes me on the front side. Luckily, he's busy next Saturday when we play. Perhaps I'll break 80.
I set up our trip to Puerto Vallarta today and we'll be in PV from Saturday, August 26th to Saturday September 2nd. We'll celebrate Jennifer's birthday with or without her in Puerto Vallarta. We bought our timeshare in PV back in 2001 and haven't been back since. I'm ready to start taking a vacation to Mexico one year and Hawaii the next. It was the idea when we bought them and I'm ready to get on that train.
Well, that's it for this week. Hope you are ALL well and living in the footsteps of our Saviour. Ciao.
Monday, March 06, 2006
Deja Vu all over again
Strange how sometimes a week goes by and nothing really changes. Last week I wrote about having good weather on Saturday and then the rains coming in to wipe it all away. Well, hello rerun as we just had the same weekend again this past one. Jennifer didn't call, but weatherwise it was a redo. Saturday was not as warm as last weekend, but it was clear and some sun came out and made us all smile and think of Spring.
I played golf again on Saturday and actually had a pretty good round. I played golf with Dave Armijo, my old partner who left the club two years ago because of continuing back pain and his new status as a grandparent. He and his wife were traveling to the Bay Area every weekend to see the grandchild and golf became no more than an afterthought in that scenario. Dave and I caught up on old times and I forgot to concentrate on my game and shot 44 on the front side. I woke up on the back and went even par through seven holes before finishing bogey-bogey for a 44+38=82 score. Dave struggled and shot 90, but it was his first game of 2006. I will take next Monday off and will play with Boyd and Dave at Diamond Oaks. Dave and I teed off a half hour before the RGC tournament which runs last weekend and next. I'm going to Monterey next weekend with the family to celebrate my last year of youth as I turn 49 on Sunday.
Darla went to Marin on Friday to visit her friend, Joni, and I had poker Friday night and golf on Saturday. Mix in church on Sunday and it was a perfect weekend. Darla was home midday on Saturday and we relaxed and watched movies on Saturday and Sunday night (Pride and Predjudice and Walk the Line). I would have liked both Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix to have won Oscars for Walk the Line, but at least Reese won. She was excellent as June Carter and I highly recommend the movie.
The rain squall has slowed and it is one of those strange weather patterns, where the storm sits over the city, but the edges of the storm are visible with blue sky and sun showing through. It is but an optical illusion as the forecast is for rain all week long. I have to drive to Modesto tomorrow to interview a candidate for an assistant underwriter position and do a 90-day review on the assistant in the office now. The new position will be in Sacramento and that person will technically work for Modesto, but be housed locally. The ladies in the office there have a candidate who lives in Stockton, but is willing to move to Rancho Cordova for the job.
Work continues to flourish. I'll be in Scottsdale, Arizona in two weeks for an underwriting conference with one of our carriers. We will also have a Burns and Wilcox conference in Dallas, Texas in June. The conference is just for underwriters and not Managers and I'm still somewhere in between. Our Branch Manager conference will be in Detroit in October and I've let it be known that I will NOT return to that conference as anything but a Branch Manager. I will likely send three representative from our office to the conference in Dallas.
The pastor had a good story this weekend on how three preachers each handled their take of the weekly offering. The first preacher said that he takes the offering into the field behind his church and draws a three-foot diameter circle in the grass. He then throws the money in the air and whatever lands in the circle he keeps and whatever land outside the circle goes to God. The second preacher said that he does it similarly, but whatever lands in the circle is for God and he keeps whatever lands outside the circle. The third preacher said that he does it differently. He throws the money in the air and whatever God wants, he grabs and whatever lands back on earth the preacher keeps.
We will be off to Monterey next week and the blog will be late. I'll either do it on Tuesday or late Monday afternoon. I look forward to a weekend away with the family. We found a great deal on hotel rooms and will stay in a two-bedroom hotel for $109 a night in Monterey. Hopefully the weather will rain itself out and it will be nice by next weekend. Stay well, keep your eyes on heaven and your feet firmly on the ground. Ciao.
I played golf again on Saturday and actually had a pretty good round. I played golf with Dave Armijo, my old partner who left the club two years ago because of continuing back pain and his new status as a grandparent. He and his wife were traveling to the Bay Area every weekend to see the grandchild and golf became no more than an afterthought in that scenario. Dave and I caught up on old times and I forgot to concentrate on my game and shot 44 on the front side. I woke up on the back and went even par through seven holes before finishing bogey-bogey for a 44+38=82 score. Dave struggled and shot 90, but it was his first game of 2006. I will take next Monday off and will play with Boyd and Dave at Diamond Oaks. Dave and I teed off a half hour before the RGC tournament which runs last weekend and next. I'm going to Monterey next weekend with the family to celebrate my last year of youth as I turn 49 on Sunday.
Darla went to Marin on Friday to visit her friend, Joni, and I had poker Friday night and golf on Saturday. Mix in church on Sunday and it was a perfect weekend. Darla was home midday on Saturday and we relaxed and watched movies on Saturday and Sunday night (Pride and Predjudice and Walk the Line). I would have liked both Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix to have won Oscars for Walk the Line, but at least Reese won. She was excellent as June Carter and I highly recommend the movie.
The rain squall has slowed and it is one of those strange weather patterns, where the storm sits over the city, but the edges of the storm are visible with blue sky and sun showing through. It is but an optical illusion as the forecast is for rain all week long. I have to drive to Modesto tomorrow to interview a candidate for an assistant underwriter position and do a 90-day review on the assistant in the office now. The new position will be in Sacramento and that person will technically work for Modesto, but be housed locally. The ladies in the office there have a candidate who lives in Stockton, but is willing to move to Rancho Cordova for the job.
Work continues to flourish. I'll be in Scottsdale, Arizona in two weeks for an underwriting conference with one of our carriers. We will also have a Burns and Wilcox conference in Dallas, Texas in June. The conference is just for underwriters and not Managers and I'm still somewhere in between. Our Branch Manager conference will be in Detroit in October and I've let it be known that I will NOT return to that conference as anything but a Branch Manager. I will likely send three representative from our office to the conference in Dallas.
The pastor had a good story this weekend on how three preachers each handled their take of the weekly offering. The first preacher said that he takes the offering into the field behind his church and draws a three-foot diameter circle in the grass. He then throws the money in the air and whatever lands in the circle he keeps and whatever land outside the circle goes to God. The second preacher said that he does it similarly, but whatever lands in the circle is for God and he keeps whatever lands outside the circle. The third preacher said that he does it differently. He throws the money in the air and whatever God wants, he grabs and whatever lands back on earth the preacher keeps.
We will be off to Monterey next week and the blog will be late. I'll either do it on Tuesday or late Monday afternoon. I look forward to a weekend away with the family. We found a great deal on hotel rooms and will stay in a two-bedroom hotel for $109 a night in Monterey. Hopefully the weather will rain itself out and it will be nice by next weekend. Stay well, keep your eyes on heaven and your feet firmly on the ground. Ciao.
