Post Holiday Menopausal Blues

Sure, make fun of the title. Four days of blissful relaxation and now a return to the mundane, a malaise of uncompleted work and deadlines. I have one of my senior underwriters still out on medical leave and the work is piling up on my desk. Next will be the phone calls, asking where that account is that they sent in way back on Wednesday of last week. The business is received and entered by my receptionist and I'll be lucky to have the application on my desk by the time the calls start coming in.

The holiday was very nice, though low key. We celebrated Thanksgiving with the family last week in Paradise, so the actual holiday was alot of football, some snacks and a dinner of lasagna. I talked to Randy, who was home alone with Chris as Cake had flown to visit Jenny for the holiday. Chris is in the high school football playoffs in Texas and they had won their first round match-up at Texas Stadium last week and had a showdown again at Texas Stadium on Friday after Thanksgiving with the number 5 ranked team in the state. This team sports an offensive lineman who is the number one recruit in the state of Texas, who has signed a letter of intent with the Texas Longhorns. I talked to Randy and to Chris and it was hard to figure who was the most excited with the game coming up. Chris had played the week before and was given DeMarcus Ware's locker to use in the Cowboy's locker room. Pretty heady stuff for a 16 year old. I talked to Chris and Randy again yesterday and Chris' team slaughtered the number 5 ranked team 36-16 and will play in the round of 16 on Friday night at Abilene Christian University in Abilene against a highly ranked team from Lubbock. Randy will take the day off and travel with the team to Abilene for their playoff game. They have to win four more games and they will be champions of the state of Texas. Chris is still a Junior and will be in the starting lineup next year. He plays defensive end and subs for the two defensive end starters, who are both seniors and the one who plays his natural position is all league and heading to Division I football next year. Chris plays special teams and is one of the first players off the bench.

I also talked to Darryl and heard about his Thanksgiving with the family. They had the boys and Janelle and Aaron over. I talked to Dad and Shirley last night and they are suffering through a blizzard that has left over a foot of snow on the ground and had knocked out power to their area. I called at quarter of seven and the power had gone out at 6:15 PM. Shirley got on the phone and had to feel her way up the stairs to the phone in the bedroom. Vancouver has been hit with some early Winter weather as they also had a power failure on Monday of last week that lasted 15 hours. It was 78 degrees and sunny in Texas (Darryl was in shorts putting up his Christmas lights) and it was 20 degrees and snowing in Vancouver. Talk about polar opposites.

We had a good weekend of weather, although I had to endure a two hour frost delay at the golf course on Friday. We had an eight o'clock tee time and were finally allowed on the course at 9:15 AM for a reverse shotgun. I shot 41+41=82 on Friday while Boyd shot 42+36=78. I also played on Saturday and we got off at our tee time of 8:27 AM and I shot 43+43=86. Darla says that I must be bored shooting the same scores day after day. That coming from an athlete who plays several sports and sees the same 7-5 score in softball again and again, but it is a different game every time. Same with golf.

Jennifer and John came over on Friday afternoon and we went out to the Thunder Valley casino in Lincoln. We were going to play some machines for awhile and then have dinner at Samarai Fats, but the restaurant had been closed. They were in the middle of remodel and changing the name to a different restaurant, some Chinese outfit out of San Francisco. John is from Las Vegas and doesn't get too excited about casinos. The one thing he does is plays the Megabucks machine for $20 every time he is in a casino. He played $9 and won a $150 jackpot and called it a night. We ended up going out to a local favorite Italian food restaurant close to the house for dinner. Jennifer and John had both run in the race to Feed the Hungry the day before in Sacramento and were tired. They called it an evening pretty early and left to stay at Diane's house.

Darla and I went to the movies on Saturday night and saw the new Denzel Washington picture "Deja Vu". It is very well acted and a good film, but you have to suspend your beliefs in reality in order to enjoy the film. I'm not much for science fiction films, (I've never seen any of the Star wars films or Star Trek, etc) but Denzel is such a good actor it was very enjoyable and I recommend it.

We sat and watched football yesterday and Darla made some homemade peanut brittle and then fixed a Chinese chicken salad for dinner. It was a very relaxing four days off and we are now back in the throes of a work week.

The pool is moving along slowly. They have the steel structure completed and the electrical and plumbing is in. We are waiting on the city to approve the construction to date so we can gunite later this week. Once the gunite is done, I can relax. The rain over yesterday and today has left the hole a mud hole and we are supposed to have sun the rest of the week. The sky is clearing as I write this and the storm is moving off to the mountains. We received about a 1/4 of an inch of rain out of this last storm, so the ground should dry out pretty quickly. As I've said before, I can't get to the fence until January anyhow, so I'm not too concerned with getting the pool done anytime soon.

I received a call from my old neighbor, Todd, in Galt and his tenants are moving out. We both own rentals side by side in Galt. The fence between our homes is shot (it is sixteen years old) and we have to replace it. He called me I think hoping that I'd take care of getting a contractor out there and tell him what he owes me, but I turned it over to him. He will get a couple of estimates and let me know what I owe. The joy of home ownership. If I didn't have a quarter million dollars in equity in that house, I'd be ticked.

Well, folks, that is another chronicle in the life of Lyon. Be well, enjoy your families and thank the Lord above for the many blessings in your life. Ciao.