Indian Summer

It is a staple of Autumn in Sacramento and we love it. Indian Summer is back and the weather the last two days (where I spent part of both days coincidentally on the golf course) have reached the mid-eighties. The temperatures for the rest of this week will be in the mid seventies and I leave Friday morning for San Diego/La Jolla and the majesty of the Torrey Pines South golf course. It has been a tour of outstanding golf venues here in my 50th year of life and I'm not ready for it to end. I also have a tee time at Pasatiempo Golf Course in Santa Cruz next Thursday courtesy of Charles Schwab. Pasatiempo is a Class A golf course and their midweek rounds cost $200 with cart. I'm taking one of my agents and making it a marketing outing. Nice. Hopefully the weather holds.

We got good news last night and that is that Dad and Shirley will meet us in Las Vegas over the Thanksgiving Day holiday. Unfortunately they don't fly in until Saturday, so we'll only get one night with them. They couldn't get into the Polo Towers until Saturday and they are averse to paying for hotels. Jennifer is thrilled and we are planning a pizza and game night for that Saturday at Jennifer and John's house. Jennifer is doing well with the pregnancy although she told Darla she often feels like a turtle when she sleeps on her back and tries to roll over to get out of bed. I've never been pregnant (imagine that) , but Darla has and could relate to the experience and had a good laugh. I know that is hard to imagine, Darla having a good laugh, but try.

Our dog, Buddy, is getting older and spends a tremendous amount of time sleeping and he tends to stretch and hobble when he first gets up from lying down. There is a dog on the golf course who is about the same age as Buddy. He is a black lab and we used to play games with him as we waited to tee off on number 3. He'd bring us his knotted rope and pass it through the fence and we'd throw it and he'd run. Now he sits at the window of his house and slowly looks at us as we call for him. It seems at times that he gives us a little nod, but his spirit is no longer there. It's sad, but I see some of that in Buddy as well. Occasionally he gets excited about something and jumps up and down, but then sleeps for two hours afterward as if it took all of his strength to put out that energy. We still take him on walks every once in a while and he used to pull us and it was struggle for the whole length of the walk. Now he walks right beside us and is anxious to get back home when we are done. I think Darla and I will take him out tonight as we have a night off from life group.

Darla continues to work hard at her Silpada sterling silver business. She has parties all of this month and won't slow down until the first of December. In the mean time, as she has parties, I'm out playing golf. I played Saturday with the RGC board members as we had a Saturday morning breakfast meeting and then golf afterwards. I set up a high -low best ball golf game with 16 players. The split for high handicappers to low was 16 and we ended up with eight teams of high-low golfers and took the net best ball of the team. Everyone threw $5 in the pot and we had $80 which was split $50 to the winning team, $20 to second and $10 to third. The winning teams both shot 62 and we had to go to a card playoff to determine the winner. They both had the same score on the back nine and it came down to the last six holes to determine the winner. My team shot 65. I shot 40+42=82 which is right on my handicap. Sunday was the Past president's golf tournament and I shot 40+40=80 for a net 70. I had to leave for a meeting at church, but it should be in the money. I have a goal now not to ever have a double bogey. If however, I do have a double I have to manage a birdie to counter the double-bogey. Sunday, after a 40 on the front, I had a birdie on number 10 only to follow that up with a double on 11. It's not suppose to work in the opposite. I then doubled number 13 and covered that with a birdie on number 16, which was our last hole as we started on number 17 in the shotgun start at 7:30. It was a great weekend weather wise and golf wise. Bob shot a 73 yesterday for a net 68, so I was playing in high cotton with my group. Boyd had 78 and Bud shot 77.

The office continues to shine. I was talking to Dad last night and shared with him that momentum is an amazing animal. When it is going bad, it seems impossible to turn it around, but likewise, when it is going good, the momentum seems to carry over from one month to the next. I am often criticized because our expenses in Sacramento are high compared to Modesto (we are their back office and type the policies, handle the accounting, do all the file work and claims activity, etc.). Well, we just had our highest net retained month ever for the Sacramento office in October, bringing in almost $155,000 after expenses. Modesto brought in another $57,000 and we came close to our biggest month ever as a combined profit center. I'm taking the gang out to lunch on Wednesday.

Well work awaits. I've had three underwriters in my office as I was working on this chatting me up, so the salt mine awaits. I'll have tales of La Jolla and Torrey Pines next Monday. Ciao.