Busy Sports Weekend

This was a weekend filled with sporting events. Darla and I hosted our friends, Dave and Missy, at the Sacramento Kings vs. Los Angeles Clippers game at Arco Arena on Friday night. We went to dinner beforehand and had a good time in spite of the abhorrent play of Sacramento's NBA entry.

Saturday I played golf in the Eclectic Final. This is the last golf tournament of the year and the final tournament that is eligible for the year long contest for best score on every hole. We track each player's best score on every hole and use that final scorecard as a final tournament. So, in essence, it is two golf tournaments in one. I was able to improve my personal best 65 to 63 with birdies on two of the par threes. Unfortunately, I also missed a five foot putt for birdie on the only par five that I hadn't birdied during the year. My best ended up 30+33=63 for a net 53. I took first low net in my flight on the overall and with a 42+38=80 in that day's tournament, I took third low net for the day. I was frustrated with my 42 on the front because I thought I was striking the ball really well and I was able to go birdie, par, birdie on the start of the back nine. In fact I was two under on the back with four holes to play and finished bogey-bogey-bogey-bogey for the 38. it could have been better, but I was pleased. I will finish the year at a 9.3 index and plan to stay single digits for the next twenty years or so.

Saturday night we were invited to my assistant's house for her mother's 80th birthday celebration. Dinda lives in a 7000 sq foot mansion on Fair Oaks Boulevard in Carmichael and I hadn't seen it yet. It is a larger version of her 3500 sq ft house in Carmichael that her daughter and son-in-law bought from her. It is really the same floor plan with two extra bedrooms and larger everything. The one main difference is a second smaller kitchen upstairs. Dinda is Filipino and has a huge extended family. There were probably 100 people at the party and about 75% were family. They did karaoke with the sons and daughters singing Paul Anka's hit "Diana" to their Mom, but changing the words to "Our Mother". I don't know that they really thought it out particularly deeply as there is a stanza that goes "We're so young and you're so old.." Darla and I laughed when they sang that. They also had a ballroom dance instructor who danced with her Mother as ballroom dancing is one of their loves. Then each of the boys and each of the daughter's husbands cut in and danced with her as well. It was well done. The grand kids all sang "We are the world" to her and one granddaughter did a hula dance and another played guitar. One son and daughter-in-law sang a Fillipino love song to her. I think it was "Sapagkat Ikaw ay Akim", but it might have been "Sapagkat Kami ay Tao Lamang", the two are very similar (that is sarcasm for anyone who doesn't know me). We will all gather on Friday night at Dinda's house for our Staff Christmas party.

Sunday, I met up with Pete from my office and six other guys for a limousine ride into San Francisco for the 49er-Viking NFL game. The 49ers are so bad, they are virtually unwatchable. It was 27-0 at the half and 27-7 by the end of the third quarter. We had great seats with Dan and I sitting in a lower box five rows from the field on the 30 yard line. After the third quarter we decided to head back to the limo where it was warm and we had food and drink, so four of us headed back and caught up with the limo driver. The other four were in two different sections of the stadium and they stayed until the end of the game. Two of the four got lost and we didn't end up leaving the stadium until almost six o'clock. The two that got lost actually got separated from each other as well and only one had a cell phone. We sat in the car and played phone tag with these inebriates and finally got everyone in the car. It took us three hours to travel the 100 miles home because of two accidents on the freeway. At one point, one of the drunk guys jumped out of the limo and ran into a Shell station to get some chewing tobacco and we were about three blocks away by the time he caught back up with us. The problem is he didn't tell anyone he was going, he suddenly jumped out of the limo and was gone! On top of that, he had taken his shoes off and was in stocking feet in downtown SF. What a boob. This is the same guy that wore a Vikings sweatshirt to Candlestick Park (Monster Park for the ad age) and was surprised that he got punched in the head by an angry Niner fan. When he told me the story, I was just surprised that their was a Niner fan who still gives a damn. That is one pathetic football team. So that was my weekend of sports and fun.

Last week, I hosted two of our Vice-Presidents from home office in for an audit of our USF files (USF is the Kaufman owned Insurance company that we place business with). Ken and Ken both visited our San Francisco branch Monday and Tuesday and then drove up to Sacramento for Wednesday-Friday. They arrived about 11:30 on Wednesday morning and I could tell that our Underwriting VP, Ken, wasn't feeling too well. He was carrying a large white cotton towel and was spitting into it every few minutes. I asked him what was wrong and he said that he had a piece of meat lodged in his throat from dinner the night before. I told him to go to the doctor and we called an Urgent Care facility. They directed him to the Emergency room of the hospital and he drove himself over. They finally got him into a procedure at 5:30, where they numbed his throat with a spray, gave him a general anesthesia and used a tube to push the meat down into his stomach. Well, lo and behold, they managed to rupture his esophagus in the procedure and Ken was stuck in the hospital from Wednesday until this morning when they finally released him. The tear is beginning to heal itself and he has to stay on soft foods for the next ten days and then have a specialist look at him again and do a barium test to make sure there is no more leakage. Unbelievable. His wife in Detroit was frantic and called me to see if I could sit with him Thursday and Friday. Apparently, this is the second time this has happened to him (cut your food into bite sized pieces and then chew 32 times before swallowing!). I told her that I had a branch to run, but that I would get over there both days at lunchtime. I talked to his doctor and he said that this is very common, especially with men between the ages of 35-55. There are men found dead in restaurant restrooms every day because they are too proud to admit that they are choking and pass out in the bathroom and die of asphyxiation. Gail, my underwriter who lives near the hospital, is driving him to the airport as I write this. Our audit went well and we now write over $3,000,000 with USF which puts us at number three in terms of volume with USF.

Well, that is it. I told Jennifer I'd have pictures of Darla and I learning to ballroom dance, but they decided not to do the dance lessons and just opened it up to dancing. You don't want to see a picture of me dancing. It is Elaine Benes all over again. Ciao.