The Boys Are Back!!

You can see that I've added some pictures of my office to the blog. I have (surprise) a golf theme to my office with over 120 logo golf balls displayed as well as pictures of the Princeville golf course in Kauai and Pebble Beach. I have pictures of the 7 th hole at Pebble which is the par three on the bluffs that I parred and the 5th hole at Pebble, which was redesigned by Jack Nicklaus after the last squatter on Pebble Beach finally sold their house and the Pebble Beach company was finally able to straighten out the hole. They used to have to play around the home that was built on the bluff, and when the owner finally sold, the hole was redesigned with the tee box where the home used to sit. I have items from St Andrews and The US Open at both Pebble Beach and Winged Foot from 2006 when my boss went to Mamaroneck , New York and saw the US Open and brought me back some memorabilia. The logo balls are 100% courses that I have played. I always have friends that want to pick up a ball at some course on their travels and give them to me, but I only display balls from courses that I have actually played. I learned that from Dad who used to collect beer cans and only would only display cans of a brew that he actually drank. Luckily, he wasn't picky. Just kidding, Dad.

The weekend was relaxing and I enjoyed watching the Dallas Cowboys dismantle the Chicago Bears last night. it looks like the team has finally turned the corner and much of the credit goes to Wade Phillips, who has instilled a more relaxed "team" approach to football, which for some players is a nice change from the drill sergeant approach of Bill Parcells. NFL football players in 2007 are completely different from players in the seventies and eighties, when Parcells was King of the league. I think the players respected him, but some players were afraid to play on instinct and skill because the Tuna would crack on them so hard if they made a mistake. the Cowboys seem to be playing with a freer and more athletic mindset and so far it is working. Fun stuff for Cowboy fans.

I talked to both Cheryl and dad last night as we prepare for our trip to Texas this weekend for Jesse's wedding. Dad told me that Darryl quit his job at FedEx two weeks ago and is interviewing with a firm out of New York and may be moving to Atlanta, Georgia. I knew that Darryl was frustrated and unhappy at FedEx, but didn't know that he walked away from his job. I guess his boss was tough to work for and Darryl had lost 25 pounds and was working 60 hours a week with his facility short staffed. He decided to quit for his health and because he hated what he was doing. I respect that immensely and know how much courage it took to walk away from a high paying job. Darryl will land squarely on his feet, simply because he always gives 110% to the job, and frankly he is good at what he does.

Things here at work continue to go well. We are up for September and should breeze to the sales award this month. Darla and I took the office's number one agency out to dinner on Friday night. The insurance agency is a husband wife team that concentrates on contractor business and we renewed a $300,000 account with them in August and I wanted to reward them. We had a great dinner at Ruth Chris' steakhouse in Roseville. Both of them are very funny and entertaining and Darla had a blast with them. There was a couple in a booth across from us that couldn't keep their hands off each other. It was completely out of place in a fine dining establishment and even more so because the couple consisted of two males and they were perched in the ultra conservative confines of Republican Placer County. I thought that if the barrister had turned a seltzer bottle on both of them, it would have been appropriate.

I did manage a game of golf this weekend, but one of our players arrived at the course and his electric window wouldn't slide back up. We could hear the motor running, but the window was somehow off the track. The weather was iffy with rain possible and he decided to run the car over to the dealer to get it fixed rather than stay and play. Priorities. Both Boyd and I said that we would have played golf and got the car fixed afterward. I would have run to the store and got some saran wrap and taped the window shut and run to the car dealer after golf. Our tee time was 7:50 and we were off the course by 11:30. Mel decided to take his new BMW over to the dealer and get it fixed. Somehow it wasn't covered under warranty and it cost him $400 to have it repaired.

I shot 43+39=82 to Boyd's 39+35=74, but we broke even on skins as I get 11 strokes to his 4. He beat me 1 up on the front and I beat him 1 up on the back with a tie on the overall. We decided to play match play in honor of the Club Championship just completed. My second place finish was worth $75 and I'm still smarting from the defeat. Next year. My only golf goal met this year was getting to single digits in my handicap. I should drop to an 8 after this month''s play. My scores over the last three weeks are 76, 79, 79, 79, 80, 80, 82, 82, 84. I also had an 85 at Whitney Oaks, but the slope is so much higher there. I will play Whitney again tomorrow with my friend, Bob.

Bob and Vicki had a huge scare last week with their daughter, Stephanie. Stephanie is 25 and lives in LA. She went in for a routine ob gyn appointment and they found some problem with her pap smear. They ordered some test, concerned about cervical cancer. They took some sections and had them analyzed and it was a false alarm. The relief is palpable and I offered to take Bob golfing to celebrate. I got a $24 deal with cart at Whitney Oaks and look forward to playing with Bob.

Our life group on Mondays is going well and we are just starting to study the weekly sermon more in depth. We are working on the book of Hebrews, which is heady stuff. Darla has only made it to one meeting and will have to miss again tonight as she has a meeting with her foster agency that she works with.

Well, folks, that is it for this week. The blog will be a day late next week as we will be in Austin, Texas for the wedding. I look forward to seeing the family and especially to seeing Jennifer and her unborn daughter, Samantha Paige. It will be nice to spend some time together. She will fly from Austin back to Sacramento where she will spend a week with all of us, culminating in her baby shower on Saturday , the 6th of October. Ciao.

Beautiful Weather!

This is the time of year when it is so nice to be a resident of Northern California. Our daytime highs are in the mid eighties with light breezes and overnight lows are dipping into the fifties for really great sleeping weather. The temperatures drop pretty fast when the sun goes down and it is really pleasant to sit with the windows open and a nice cool air seeps into the house and makes life worth living.

Darla and I were in the Monterey Bay area Thursday and Friday. She drove down with me on Thursday morning and I played in the Monterey Bay Insurance Agents golf outing. I sponsored a hole for $275 and got an entry into the tournament. The shotgun tournament started at 1:30 PM at Salinas Golf and Country Club and we had run a MapQuest for directions. Unfortunately, and I find this fairly often, the directions given were incorrect and we got stuck in the middle of Salinas hopefully lost. I was not handling the faux paux very well and finally we stopped at a small bank and the manager there got me directions to the course. I arrived at 1:10 PM and gobbled down a cold hamburger (they had a barbecue that was hot and fresh at 12 PM). I played with two guys from the Monterey bay area and one from San Ramon. My putter was on fire and we shot a 61, which won second place and a $50 Visa gift card. Darla had joined me for dinner at the course and the $50 gift card made it in to her purse and I haven't seen it since.

We stayed at the Centrella Inn, a bed and breakfast in Pacific Grove. The picture above was taken with my cell phone as we forgot our camera at home. I also took a cellphone picture of a family of deer that invaded my golf game at Pacific Grove Golf Links. Darla and I stayed in the upstairs bedroom on the corner of the house with bay windows that look over the street. It was a relatively small room with a big claw foot tub and shower, Victorian antiques, a nice queen bed, a beautiful old armoire and, best of all, no television. We slept in on Friday, cleaned up and went down for the breakfast. It was very nice with fresh fruit, cereals, pastries and a choice of blueberry waffles, oatmeal or an apple sausage and mushroom quiche that was out of this world. The inn was built in 1889 and has 23 rooms, including five cottages that can be rented individually. It was very nice and we will stay there again. The inn is two blocks off the ocean and within a block of the shopping district.

Darla and I took a drive down to the beach, stopped and watched three guys fishing for eel and watched one haul one in and then wrestle it into a catch bin. I heard them say they were going to have pan fried eel strips for dinner. It would take five or six of the Budweiser's they were drinking to get me to eat eel. There were two local inebriates on the beach and the local constables showed up and hauled the 270 pound black guy off to the clink, leaving his friend behind. Luckily the guy agreed to go to jail, because he was bigger than the three cops put together. We took a drive down to Cannery Row and shopped the outlet mall there where I got a few new golf shirts at Izod, a hat and some shorts and a new pair of dark blue khakis from Van Huesen. Darla had shopped the day before as I was golfing and refrained from spending any more money.

Darla had been rather upset with me on my last trip to Monterey when I'd left her several times as she was shopping and wandered farther along the shops and she had to hunt for me. She sort of let me have it and let me know that she felt that I was disrespectful for not staying with her or letting her know where I was. She had several articles of clothes and had gone in to the dressing rooms when I noticed the time and knew that our meter was running out. I was torn between feeding the meter and letting her know where I was. Luckily, I sprinted out to the truck just in time to meet the meter reader who was prepared to write me a ticket. I asked him if I was too late as time had run out on the meter and he said, "Do you have a quarter?" I produced the quarter and fed the meter and he said, "It looks like you have time left. Have a nice day." I shook his hand and thanked him. When I got back to the store, Darla was standing with her hands on her hips and a look of exasperation on her face. I quickly explained the situation and she was mollified to know we saved a $50 ticket.

From there we headed back the coast to Pacific Grove and had lunch at the Fishwife restaurant. I drove up the coast to Big Sur and we went into Carmel Highlands and saw the Tickle Pink Inn and the Highlands Inn, along with the spectacular view of the ocean from the cliffs that define Carmel Highlands. I dropped Darla at 5:oo PM at her hostesses' house where she put on a Silpada party. From there I headed back to Pacific Grove Golf Links to hit balls next to the ocean. They wanted $9 for a large bucket of balls and only $20 to play the course on a super twilight rate. I opted to play the course and played the inland front nine with two balls, shooting 40 and 39 on the par 35 nine holes. The course is immaculate and known as the poor man's Pebble Beach.

I also played the final weekend of the Club Championship and played our number one player on Saturday. Ben is an 11, but always comes to play in the match play format. He proved a tough opponent as I shot 39 to his 39 on the front and led by only one hole after nine. I played exceptionally on the back and shot 37, closing Ben out on number 15 (5 and 3). Sunday I played my friend, Steve, in the final and had shot 76 on Saturday to his 86. It seemed a mismatch, but that's why we play the match. I shot 40 on the front Sunday to his 39 and he led the match one up after nine. I parred 10 and 11 to his bogeys to move one up and then parred 12 ,13 and 14 to his par, par and bogey to go two up with four to play. At that point the match was over for the guys playing with us. They elected to continue to play out the round and that was a mistake for me. One of the guys was wild off the tee and kept sculling the ball over the green. It began to get under my skin that this guy was getting in the way of our match. I double bogeyed14 and then parred 15 to Steve's bogey-birdie to knot the match all square. I then pulled this other guy aside and asked him to just let us play. He argued that he'd paid his money and wanted to continue. I told him that when we reached the green, that Steve and I would putt and he could wait until we were through. He then took five shots to reach the green and I had to wait for him to hack his way out of the trees and ended up shanking my second shot into the trees and knocking the ball over the green and taking another double bogey to Steve's par and he had me dormie with one hole to play. One of the frustrating things about the match was that I "lipped out" six putts in the course of the round. I will often have one or two lip outs during a round, but the bug was on me yesterday. I landed on the 458 yard par four finishing hole in three and had a 25 foot putt for par and Steve had a 20 foot putt. I hit a perfect putt that rolled slowly toward the hole. I had my putter in the air and was walking toward the cup when the ball did a complete 360 and stopped on the lip of the hole right at the spot that it entered the hole. I conceded the match at that point and told Steve congratulations and that I was going to my car and head home lest I throttle the idiot that got in the way of our match. He was standing off the green waiting to hit his seventh shot onto the par four when we finished putting. He shot 29 over the last four holes to completely interrupt our match. It was my fault for letting him get into my head, but as I said to Steve on the last hole as he hit his sixth shot toward the green, "Doesn't this idiot have pockets in his shorts? Pick the damn ball up." It was a tough loss for me and even harder to know that If I had won even one hole over the last four I would have guaranteed a playoff. Was it a lesson learned? I don't know. I truly feel that I lost to an inferior golfer and that were we to play nine matches more, I'd win eight of them. I finished with an 82 to Steve's 81, but if even half of the lip outs had stayed in, I'd have shot a 79. Frustrating? I'd say so.

Well, work awaits. Our month is in full swing and we are leading the sales contest for the quarter that ends September 30th. Take care. Ciao.

Hot Days and cool, clear nights..we must be in Sacramento!!

Yep. It is starting to get almost cold overnight. We sleep with the window open on the bedroom and find myself cold in the middle of the night and cuddling up in the blankets a bit more. I drove into the office this morning with the headlights on (that's actually on in the Mustang, not another reference to the cold). That is depressing. I also noticed that it was almost completely dark by 7:45 PM last night. The pool temperature has plunged from a high in the nineties to just over 80 degrees. It is still nice, but I'm sure as the nights stay cool and the daytime temperatures start to drop, the pool will soon be done for the year and we will look forward to Spring again.



Darla took Daniel down to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo this weekend and got him set up in his off campus apartment. They drove down Friday afternoon and stayed in San Luis Obispo Friday and Saturday night. The hotel had problems with the air conditioner in their room and instead of blowing cold air, the heater was on and the room was about 100 degrees when they checked in. The maintenance people came in and "fixed" the unit, installed an industrial sized fan in the room and the gang went out to dinner while the unit cooled down. They got back in the evening and the air conditioner had not been fixed properly and was still blowing hot air. They finally shut off the unit, opened the door and windows and ran the fan. They had trouble sleeping as the walls and floor were so hot and the fan so loud. The hotel dropped their price from $189 a night to $109 to compensate Darla and moved them to a new room on Saturday. It didn't make up for the discomfort, but they all slept well Saturday night in air conditioned comfort. I understand they even had COLOR TV in the room. Wow.



Alicia went down with Darla on the trip as our club had our club championship this weekend. Darla's parents, Earl and Frances, were in San Luis Obispo with their fifth wheel and they all met Saturday afternoon and went to dinner that night.



Sunday was a nightmare at the off campus facility, Mustang Village, as all of the incoming freshmen were checking into the facility. They opened at 8:00 AM and there was a line outside the door at 6:30 AM. Darla and Daniel got there about 8:30 and had an hour and a half wait to get his keys and then it was a nightmare of cars and trucks moving everyone in. She said she was glad I wasn't there and nobody is happier about that than me. Daniel met two of his roommates and one of the guys is about 6'3 and 250 pounds, a clone of Daniel according to Darla. This kid ( I don't know his name) has always been the biggest kid in his school and he was thrilled to meet Daniel. The other roommate is 6'4" and probably played quarterback in high school. The three of them made quite an imposing trio. Their fourth roommate hadn't checked in, but is a surfer type with long blond hair.



I had to keep myself occupied, so played plenty of golf while Darla was gone. I played Thursday with an agent at Whitney Oaks, which is a penal golf course designed by Johnny Miller. I humbled myself in fighting through that round of golf with a 45+41=86. It was what I needed going in to the qualifier on Saturday at DO. This was my first year playing in the scratch qualifier and I really didn't want to qualify, I just wanted to get in a practice round. I went four over in the first three holes and then relaxed and shot a 42+37=79 and almost qualified as there were 8 qualifiers and the highest score taken was 77. I was moved back into my own flight and flighted as the number 2 golfer in the flight (out of eight). That meant I took on the number 7 golfer, who happens to be my tax accountant and he was coming off three months inactivity with a broken ankle. What I didn't realize is that he still has the cast on his leg and played with crutches and a walking boot. It was a no win for me as he hadn't played a round of golf in three months and I was expected to beat him soundly. I shot 42 on the front to his 45 and was only up one hole ( I had to give him two strokes and we played match play.) He was sinking 25 foot putts like they were tap ins and he had me worried. I settled down after a talk with myself and shot 38 on the back for an 80 and beat him on the 14th hole 5 and 4. He tired on the back side and shot 46 for a 91. He told me thank you for beating him as he was so tired, he couldn't make two more rounds next week. He hobbled around the course and we had to hold his crutches and get his ball out of the cup. The way he played on the front side, it was like playing the Bionic man or something. As it was, I was needled for taking so long to put away a gimp, imagine if I'd lost. So I am on to the second round and play a guy who was in our foursome and also dispatched his opponent 5&4 on the 14th. He shot 42+38=80 as well so it should be a good match on Saturday. Ben is my opponent and he joined the club the same year I did and has been on the board with me. Bob Pando won his match and is in the hunt for the title of Club Champion in the scratch flight. Boyd lost 1 up on the final hole. Steve Matthews is in my flight and alive for the title. If we both win our matches on Saturday, we will play for the title on Sunday.



My webmaster quit on me last week. I have changed the By Laws of the club to eliminate salaries and make all compensation green fees only. I strongly believe that a volunteer club should not be paying it's board members a salary for their volunteer work. I reworked the By Laws to require the Board members to be at a fixed number of tournaments each year and the club will pay their green fees for those tournaments. The net savings to the club is about $600 a year and the board members who were not salaried will be given a Rose Card that gets them two free rounds of golf and a 10% savings on green fees and food in the restaurant. The webmaster was not at the board meetings where I discussed my proposal and it was agreed to by the board. He went off at the meeting where the proposal was brought before the board for a formal vote. He was particularly upset with me for not calling him to tell him about the By Law change and springing it on him at the meeting. He chewed me out during the meeting to the point that several board members attacked him for missing so many meetings. The proposal passed 13-0, but it didn't stop him from grabbing me in the parking lot and continuing to harangue me. I finally shut him down and went home. He sent the board a message the next day stepping down at the end of the year.



I immediately sent an e-mail to the club soliciting volunteers to work the web next year. I have three great candidates, including the current webmaster for the Department of Justice in Sacramento. I will interview each of them, but will likely pick him. The current webmaster will train him for the rest of the year and the new webmaster will take over in 2008. He will get six green fees during the year as compensation for his work on the board (a $240 stipend).



This week, I will be up in Redding tomorrow for the Shasta I Day golf event. Back in the office Wednesday and then off Thursday and Friday in Monterey for the Monterey Bay Insurance Agents Golf Event. Next weekend is two days of golf in the finals of the club championship. I will be traversing the state this week and will see a good number of our agents in these two events. Darla will go to Monterey with me and we are staying at a nice bed and breakfast in Pacific Grove Thursday night. The Victorian mansion was built in 1889 and we will be staying in one of the Victorian rooms with feather beds and antiques. It will be a blast. The website is http://www.centrellainn.com/.



We start our new Life Group tonight with Bob and Vicki Pando. It will be a mostly social gathering tonight as we get to know the new members of our group and set some guidelines for our group going forward. It will be nice to get back into the Word and being part of a life group after the break this Summer. It's also nice to have football back. I hope you are all well. Jennifer is fat and happy. Check out her blog at the link to the right of this entry. Dad and Shirley should be getting back from their trip this week and we look forward to seeing the family in Austin at the end of this month. Ciao.

End of Summer...Not quite yet!

We spent part of the weekend up at Bullard's Bar, a reservoir above Marysville and outside of Grass Valley. The lakes in our area, including Folsom Lake have released so much water that they are now 5 MPH only lakes and only fishing boats are allowed to dock at the lake. You can see by the picture of a brooding David that even Bullard's Bar is lower than normal as the water line on the dam indicates. The lake was really nice and even has a waterfall about 4 miles up the lake that adds a bit of serenity to the scene. I took the jet ski up to the waterfall and checked it out after some boaters on the lake told us about it. Bullard's Bar has boat camping and is a nice spot to relax. We found a nice flat spot on the shore and set up for the day with Earl's boat and our jet ski.

The outing was not without it's problems as we once again put the ski into the water without the drain plugs being put back in. We were driving from the dock out to the middle of the lake when I noticed Darla and Daniel riding low on the ski. I told them to pull it over to the shore and check the plugs. Sure enough, they were out and the hull was already up to about ten inches of water. David and Daniel were able to wrestle the ski up the bank far enough to let the hull drain and Darla bailed water out. The electrical never got submerged so we dodged a bullet and the ski ran great all afternoon.

I played two games of golf this past week, one on Thursday before our fantasy football draft for the golf club. I shot 40+41= 81 on Thursday and then shot 42+41 on Saturday in the Labor Day tournament. I had three birdies on the backside to go with two double bogeys and walked away out of the money in the tournament, but with $36 on skin money. More importantly, I improved my year long eclectic score to 67, down from 70 with the birdies. The eclectic is a tournament whereby we keep the best scores on each hole throughout the year and then use that score as a final tournament at the end of the year. Right now, with my 9.9 index, I have a net 56 in the tournament. I won it last year with a net 55 in my flight, so have a little work to do yet.

I was in Modesto on Friday and interviewed for a new Underwriting Assistant. I took the gang out to lunch afterward and Darla asked me to stop by her Aunt's house to pick up some jewelry that was sent there accidentally. She also asked that I stop by and see her Grandfather, Andy and his wife Liz, who live in an independent living facility up the street from her Aunt Tracy. I called Andy to ask if it was okay to come by and visit. His hearing is not what it used to be (he is 87 after all) and he couldn't figure out who I was, but finally said, "if you know where I live, come on over". We had a nice visit and I think they appreciated the company.

I have set up my trip to Torrey Pines in November. Darla won't go with me as she is so low on vacation time. I will bring my friend, Mel Padeirnos, along with Boyd and one of Boyd's friends. We fly to San Diego at 8:15 AM on November 9th, play Torrey Pines that afternoon at 12:40 PM, stay overnight and play a course in Carlsbad Saturday morning and fly home Saturday night at 6:00 PM. It is a quick turnaround, but should be a blast. The US Open is being played at Torrey Pines in 2008 and we wanted to have a go at the course before that. It will be more fun to watch the Open next year remembering having played the course. So, this year, I've played Pebble Beach, the 2009 President's Cup venue (Harding Park) and will play the 2008 US Open venue at Torrey Pines in November. It's all good.

I had a waterline break at the house last week. I was relaxing at the house on Monday talking to a friend on the phone, when some neighbors knocked on the front door. A sprinkler valve had worked loose from the inlet and I had a geyser spraying all over the front of the house and filling the front planter with about 8 inches of water. I shut the water down and ended up fixing the break on Friday afternoon. I had to hand water the lawn all week until I got it fixed.

We have once again set a new record at work for production in August and wrote $1,393,605 with $211,909 in earned income for the month. We were up almost 19% in earned income for the month. I will take the gang out to a rib restaurant up in El Dorado tomorrow. We also have Cora, Mel's wife, starting back with us this week in our personal lines department so we will have several events to celebrate tomorrow.

Darla is taking Daniel down to Cal Poly on the weekend to get him set up in his new apartment. They leave Friday afternoon and Darla will be back on Sunday night. I play in the club championship on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday is scratch qualifying and I am in the scratch qualifier for the first time this year, but it is more a chance to practice for the championship that starts on Sunday. If I make the scratch flight, I will quickly go down to defeat at the hands of some 3 handicapper like Boyd or a 5 like Bob Pando. it will be a good experience and give me some stellar competition to prepare for the championship.

Daniel is coming by my office today and we will have lunch together. I am buying him a haircut with my Hawaiian barber who gives the best head and neck massage as part of his service.

Well, that is the news that is fit to blog to the moment. Have a good week. Ciao.