Late Again, Saheeb

Back to the salt mines after a day working with the nation's youth at the Insurance Brokers of Sacramento youth golf tournament yesterday. I was a Marshall and the going was much easier this time around. I made a few rulings, helped a couple of the girls determine where to drop a ball that was hit into a hazard and settled a dispute in a group where one player kept hitting ahead of another because the other was so slow. I hit him with the "Ready Golf" slogan and reminded the two boys that they were not playing match play. The tournament was held at the newly redesigned Del Paso Country Club, a country club that shut its doors for two years as they redesigned the course, taking it down to bare ground and redoing all of the fairways and greens. It is beautiful, but confusing as the course designer decided not to use tee markers to help give the course a natural look and feel. The problem is that as several holes come together it is nearly impossible to determine which is the next hole. We had one group of fifteen year-olds that played number 13, 14, then played number 8 and we found them looking for hole 16. We informed them that they had played out of order and ferried them over to hole 15 where the group behind them was just getting ready to tee off. We had to insert them back into their position which didn't sit well with either the other players or their parents. They then played the course around to number 7 and then skipped to number 9. It was a shotgun start and there were golfers walking all over the course looking for their starting holes. What a mess.

We finished the tournament about 1:45 with lunch and the awards presented. We then drove out to Rancho Murietta and played the south course. I shot 87, but was tired.

I did play last week at Woodcreek and shot 84 and had one of my better rounds in the second Diamond tournament this weekend, a modified Stableford event with points for par, birdies, eagles and double eagles, zero points for a bogey and negative points for double bogey or higher. I shot 79 and managed 30 points, which gave me low net in my flight and third place in the Stableford scoring. I'll play Castle Oaks this weekend in Ione and we hope to take the jet ski out on Sunday.

The saga continues with my front desk position as my new employee shut down her computer at ten o'clock yesterday morning and walked off the job. She did not talk to anyone or explain herself. We called the service and they couldn't find her and promised to have a replacement on the job this morning. What is going on with young people these days?

Darla and I had a relaxing weekend with time in the pool and just a lot of down time. The Placer County Fair was going on this weekend and we considered going to it, but it seemed a better time to just relax on the pool with a cold drink and a good book. We are getting good at being lazy lately.

Jennifer continues to work in Las Vegas, but is not yet convinced that this job is the job for her. The hot work of pulling wires and cable in attics reaching 140 degrees in Vegas seems perhaps more than she bargained for. She is willing to ride it out and see if more of her work can be in comfortable air conditioned buildings in the future. She was in Anaheim last week at a home electronics expo, but said that it was mostly boring and monotonous. I guess when you have had business trips to Baghdad and Kuwait on your resume, Anaheim is a bit low key.

Darla and I have a week's vacation coming up next month to Lake Almanor. The resort that we have stayed at (remember the cabin where the sink fell off the wall?) has closed and we will stay at a relatively new resort with boat slips and a position close to the marina with the gas station and restaurants right on the water. We will, of course, take our jet ski up to the lake and spend a week relaxing and taking it easy. We had planned on going to Hawaii this year for Daniel's senior trip, but with the cost of the pool and Cal Poly that plan was pushed out of the picture. Darla is still working on winning a trip to Maui in February of 2008 with Silpada. She is close and has parties through Thursday night in an attempt to meet the target.

Our DirecTV went out this weekend followed very quickly by a nasty worm that got embedded into the start up program of our computer.The virus gives a false warning about a virus attack on our computer and directs us to buy their spyware product. The worm is nasty as I can remove it, but it comes back as soon as I reboot my computer because the link is in the startup registry and as soon as it reboots the virus recreates itself in the hard drive.

The picture above is for Jennifer's benefit as I bought a new lounge chair and clock/thermometer for the back yard with the gift card that she bought me for Father's day. Thank you, Jennifer, now we know what time it is when the temperature reaches 100 degrees in Sacramento. At least I can lie down when that happens.

In truth, it has been a mild Spring and a cool start to the Summer as we have reached the century mark only once in the Sacramento area and our weather this week is supposed to cool into the upper eighties later this week and over the weekend. It could stay like this all Summer as far as I'm concerned. The pool is at 86 degrees and is very comfortable. I jumped in and cooled off when I got home from golf last night. What a great way to relax and cool off.

Well, this is short. I'm sorry I was late with the update this week, but I had the junior golf yesterday and I couldn't get to a computer. I was at the course at 7 AM yesterday and didn't get home last night until 8 o'clock. I hope you are all doing exceedingly well. Ciao.