An Excellent Weekend in the Books

It was GREAT seeing Dad and Shirley this week. They got in about 5:30 PM on Wednesday night and had a nice dinner with us. Daniel is working at K-LOVE, the Christian radio station during their pledge drive, and had to work that night, so he missed dinner. As a matter of fact, you can see Daniel eating dinner in one of the pictures I'm adding to the blog and Dad and David visiting with him. He got home about 9:30 and we played pool and had a great visit. It was nice to have a guest room finally set up where we could have Dad and Shirley spend the night with us. In the past, they have always had a hotel. Dad was wearing sweats when he got in and we had a nice 75 degree day. He was quick to change into shorts and, of course, wash his Cadillac. People who think I'm a bit anal, just need to spend a few minutes with Dad and they see where I get it. We had a nice dinner of barbecued New York steaks and talked about Dad's childhood and mine. Dad and Shirley are off to the Lawrence Welk resort in San Diego for a week of sun and golf and then they head to Vegas for a week. Dad sort of off-handedly invited us to join them in Vegas and left us their numbers in San Diego and Vegas in case we could make it. They were barely on the road to Fresno and a visit with their friends, Ed and Brenda, before I'd decided to go to Vegas and I already had a tee time set up at the Desert Rose golf course for Saturday morning. Work has been unduly stressful lately and I need a break. I'm taking Friday and Monday off and Darla and I will drive down to Vegas. It is about a ten-hour car ride and I'd prefer to fly, but with short notice the cheapest flight we could find was $500 for two of us. it would normally cost $356 with a 21 day reservation. This way, we have wheels and I can bring my golf clubs and some snacks and drinks for the road. Darla and I will drive down on Friday and probably drive halfway back on Sunday night, stopping in Tonapah, Nevada. I opted out of the Roseville City Amateur in order to make the Vegas trip.

The computer and the blogger website is really slow this morning. I hope that I don't spend part of my morning updating the blog to find that I lose it all in cyberspace. I've been trying to upload some photos, so far to no avail.


I finally had some luck in a golf tournament this weekend. I didn't shoot lights out, in fact, I shot a "same old" 43+41=84, but it was a two-man best ball NCGA qualifier and my partner, Steve Matthews (a 14 handicapper) shot a 78 and we managed a team score of 61 to win a spot in the regional qualifier against 22 other clubs for a chance to advance to Poppy Hills in September. We will play in the regional tournament on August 3rd, a Thursday, and hopefully play well enough to qualify to move on to the finals in Pebble Beach. Steve had a heart attack in November and has come back from that episode with an improved golf game. In fact, he and his partner qualified for a two-man event at Spyglass Hills in August. I knew he was playing well and sought him out for this tournament. They took two teams and we had the low score at 61. The other team shot a 63. There was also a Senior division and the two teams that qualified shot 63 and 66. There were a total of 44 teams playing with 4 spots up for grabs. Not bad.

Work continues to be a source of some stress as well as some source of accomplishment. We may hire a new broker for my office today. My candidate is in San Francisco today meeting with Harvey and his brokerage staff. If indeed, it is a good fit, we will bring her aboard and she will open a brokerage unit for this office. My underwriters are all just that. We do both brokerage business and contract (underwriting) business. Most of the big brokerage markets require that we have a full-time broker assigned to them and we have not had access to the brokerage accounts because of that. I made it a priority this year, in my budget, to add a brokerage presence to this office in order to move us up and ahead of the curve. Katherine is a very good broker, but only has about three years of experience on the brokerage side. She would not be a good candidate for San Francisco, but would be a great fit for Sacramento.

I agreed to lead the Life group tonight and we generally follow the scripture from the sermon at church the day before. Well, just my luck, yesterday was Baptism Sunday and there was no message. I will be feverishly looking up scripture on baptism over lunch today to have some material for tonight. Our pastor of senior adults led the offering yesterday and he always has a story infused with dry humor to go along with his prayers. He told the story of a church in the midwest that was struggling financially. The pastor got up and gave an impassioned sermon about the duty of Christians to support their church financially and with their prayers. He stressed that ALL church members had an obligation to give an offering to the church. When the plate was passed, little Johnny reached up and plucked off his clip-on tie and put it in the basket. Later, when his Mom asked him why he'd put his tie in the offering, Johhny said, "I really like that pastor and he said to put our ties and offerings in the collection plate."

All is well in our little corner of the world. The boys are doing well. Daniel has worked it out with his father, that Steve owns the Ford F150 with the camper shell and Daniel can continue to look for a more suitable truck and buy it with the $4000 that his Grandmother has pledged toward a car. In the meantime, Dan is driving that beast. Somehow, he managed to pop a tire this past week when he hit the median of the road when he was driving. Teenage drivers...jeesh.

The blog will be late next week as we will be in Vegas. I likely won't have much to say about our trip as "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas". I hope you are all well and living in the grace and light of our LORD and SAVIOUR. Ciao.