Here Comes the Sun!

The maiden voyage of the jet ski was Sunday. We met Rob and Cheryl McHone at Folsom Lake and I also had Anthony from my work and his wife, Erin, join us. Anthony is a total techie and he was able to search and destroy the virus on my computer within about an hour. Rob and Cheryl brought their daughter, Jackie and a friend, Sydney. It was packed at the lake and the water was rough, too rough for any wakeboarding or skiing, but perfect for the jet ski. I have a little hitch in my gitalong today as I took one of the waves pretty hard and felt a twinge in my back. I'm hoping this is minor as I am upright and walking like a normal homo sapien, I just have some twinges of pain if I bend down or have to reach for anything. I'm supposed to play in a golf tournament on July 4th so I'm hoping that my back holds up this week. I have a precautionary appointment with Jane Saro, my Bowen Practitioner, at 4PM today.

We had a really good time at the beach and except for a hard start to the jet ski (Anthony figured out that our choke needs to be manually held up when we are starting the ski as it has a tendency to spring back down if we don't hold it). The ski was cranking over but not starting. David finally jumped up on the ski to start it and Anthony held up the choke and it fired right up. We had no problems with it once we put it on the water. Rob and Cheryl had trouble finding us on the beach, though as they traversed the rather large confines of Folsom lake looking for us. We always set up camp in a cove just around the corner from the main beach at Folsom. It is away from the heavy boat traffic and large enough that we can do turns and jumps in the middle of the cove without worrying about traffic. They finally found us after about forty minutes of cell phone directions. Daniel had a ball with both Jackie and Sydney and the three of them ended up going to the Folsom Rodeo last night. Sydney was fairly enamored with David (she just graduated high school this Spring), but David thought she was a nice girl (kiss of death there). Her father is the President of an influential Architecture firm in Sacramento and David likely should try to meet him as that is his interest in life...architecture.

Anthony and Erin enjoyed the outing and really enjoyed the ski. Anthony, Rob and I took a tour of the lake on Rob's new 17' BayLiner and we otherwise relaxed. Rob is pretty intense and got into a conversation with Anthony and Alicia on the pros and cons of socialized medicine. I would have joined in, but I felt a need to shut my eyes for a few minutes and contemplate nothing on a nice 95 degree day in Sacramento. The temperatures are heading up into the Vegas stratosphere this week with 103 forecast for July 4th and 104 and 105 to round out the week. The heat is on in Sacramento. It will be interesting to see how warm the pool gets. We are at 86 degrees now which is comfortable.

Jennifer's friend, Sara Webber, stopped by the house on Sunday as we were getting ready to leave for the beach. Her daughter, Sierra, had a birthday party across the street in the park and Sara came by to say hi. It was great seeing her.

I played golf in Ione this weekend at a tournament at Castle Oaks Golf Club. Boyd was supposed to play with me, but he had a reaction to some bacteria in his system that made it's way to his colon and the colon became inflamed and he had some internal bleeding. Kaiser actually had him in ICU as they pumped antibiotics into his system and treated the swelling. He went into the hospital on Saturday night and didn't get out until Thursday. We are supposed to play in a tournament on Wednesday together and I'll call him today to see how he is doing.

The Castle Oaks tournament was interesting. I took third place with an 83, but the interesting part was how I scored. I started the tournament double bogey, triple bogey and finished the front nine with 42, including a birdie on the 535 yard number one handicap hole. On the back nine, after working so hard to pull my game together, I started bogey-triple bogey and again pulled my game together for a 41 on the back and 12 over 83, net 71. There were some high scores in the tournament with one of our five handicappers shooting a 93. He wasn't much fun to be around after the game. I won $20 in skins and $35 in the tournament and ended up with a nice Antigua logo shirt with Castle Oaks Golf Club on the left sleeve. I was proud of the 83 when I clearly didn't have my A game. I had two double bogeys, two triple bogeys and two birdies during my round. I was all over the map.

Darla worked her hiney off over the last month and qualified for the trip to Lahaina in January. (Hiney for Lahaina?) We will fly into Maui for five days of fun and sun, all paid for by Silpada Designs Jewelry. Darla is a rising star in the company and all food, flight and lodging is paid for by the company. She will get a tax statement with the cost of the trip on it as compensation, but it will still be a fun getaway for us. I will likely play one day of golf while we are there. I'm proud of her. Life sort of stood still for us during that month and she was busy with several parties every week, but it paid off and we are Hawaii bound!! You go, girl!

We have the storage of the jet ski down to a science already as David and Daniel unhooked the ski after I backed it into the side driveway. By the time I parked the Explorer, they already had the ski into the side yard and were setting it into the blocks. I cover it with a tarp to keep the sun off of the ski cover. I'm sure we will have the ski out less this Summer as the boys are busy and with the pool right there, motivation to load up the ski, drop $100 on gas and head to the lake is less pressing when I can just grab a raft, a cold drink and a good book and relax.

Anthony and Erin stayed over for dinner last night and we had barbecued steak and chicken on the patio next to the pool. Anthony and I swam after the ski was put away and he set the computer up for another scan as he was working on the virus. Anthony is such a computer geek that he took a half day of vacation on Friday and stood in line to get one of the new I-Phones. He has it and it is pretty cool. I have a cell phone that I use for phone calls. Novel idea, eh?

DirecTV is coming out this morning to install a new 5 LNB dish and a new HD Tivo recorder. I will now have full HD channels on local TV as well as the HD package that I have (TNT, ESPN, HD movies, HD sports, Discovery and special events). I'm looking forward to watching my local channels in high def.

One of the ladies in the office brought in some Sloughhouse corn this morning and I got six ears of corn for our barbecue on Wednesday. We are having Alicia and Bob and Debbie Hand over for swimming and relaxing. It should be a nice day and if I play golf in the 8 am shotgun tournament, I will be fried and ready for the pool when I get home. Remember, 103 degrees on Wednesday. Well, that is the news to the moment. Stay cool this July 4th. Ciao