The holiday season kicked off for us Saturday night with the Roseville Golf Club Christmas Party. We again held the proceeedings at the Sunrise Golf Club and Denise and her staff proceeded over a great dinner of Prime Rib, chicken and all of the side dishes. I was installed as the new President of RGC and was happy to pass on the duties as VP to Rick, my new Vice President. I was in charge of the Christmas party and all of the gifts and making sure that everyone had a good time. Darla and I bought roses for each of the wives and had at least one present for each member of the club. We had rounds of golf, car washes, dinner certificates, pottery Barn gift certificates, Home Depot certificates, several golf clubs and bags, several golf lessons, several gift baskets and about seven gift packages of booze (Crown Royal, Cutty Sark, 1800 tequila, Cabo Wabo Tequila, Michael Collins Irish Whiskey, E&J Brandy and Bailey's Irish Cream). We also had several hats and shirts from different courses in Hawaii, San Diego, pebble Beach and Carmel that one of the members rounded up during the year. I won a Torrey Pines hat and shirt, which luckily are different from the hat and shirt that I bought while I was there. It was a good time and the mantle has been passed. We have a meeting in two weeks where we will have both the outgoing and incoming board present for a celebration of another good year of golf for the club. There are about two dozen people who routinely help run the club and there will only be three new members on the 12 person board, with a new webmaster and two new board members, including my friend, Bob, who is taking over Rick's unexpired term as a member-at-large as Rick steps up to the Vice President duty.
I did play golf on both Tuesday of last week at Auburn Country Club and again on Saturday in the final Diamond Tournament of the year. I didn't play inspired golf either day and managed an 84 at both courses. I actually played well on the front side at Diamond with a 40, but had both a double bogey and a quadruple bogey on the back for a 44. The quad was a seven on a par three as I hooked my drive out of bounds left and then hit my third shot (second drive) dead right into a tree. It was frustrating, but I've played really well lately and was due for a couple of rounds that brought me back to earth. The round at Auburn CC was fun, but the ground up there is so hard and frozen that it is hard to keep the ball on the green if you hit right into it.
Darla is doing really well with her jewelry business and now has a team of 17 representatives that are out selling sterling silver jewelry. We will be in the air to Hawaii in January courtesy of her business and spend 5 days in Maui soaking up the sun. She has been very busy the last month and is just starting to slow down. I think she has about four more parties in December and then will slow down into January.
Work continues to go well and we were up about 12% in November and hope to finish the year strong. The staff is doing well and we all dressed up in Christmas colors last week and Darla came in to take pictures for our staff Holiday card. This is the second year that we took a picture and had a holiday card made up. In the past, we had the stiff corporate card, but decided to personalize it last year as so many of our agents know the underwriters personally but have never seen the rest of the staff. Darla took the regular staged picture of us all standing and smiling, but then asked us to throw our hands in the air and look like we were having a good time. That is the picture that we used as shown below:
We have done very well this year, but we are poised for a breakout year in 2008 with Steve taking over a new territory and the rest of the underwriters focusing on our top twenty five agents to give even better service and grow our books even larger and more profitably. I am focused on trying to add another underwriter in 2008 with a book of business that can come in and help us to grow our premium book even larger. Now that I am the Branch manager, I'm focused even more on the bottom line and my focus is growing the book and reducing expenses. We will go paperless in 2008 and every piece of paper that comes into our office will be scanned and then shredded. We will go live on Cinco De Mayo and with what I have heard from other managers who have made the switch, I will likely be drinking that day.
I didn't get a chance to talk to Dad or Jennifer over the weekend, but they were supposed to get together for dinner on Friday night and Dad and Shirley flew home on Saturday. The weather remained seasonal for them in Vegas as the temperatures were in the 50's and 60's with cold overnight temps. Shirley was hoping to get in some pool time, but it was just too cold.
We will have the staff Christmas party a week from Friday at my assistant's new 6000 square foot home in Fair Oaks. We will have both a turkey and a ham and will do our annual gift exchange where we draw numbers, open a gift and then the next person can either open another gift or "steal" the one from the first person. A gift can be stolen three times, so it is usually good to get a number around 16-20 as you get a good look at the booty and can sometimes make the final steal on that bottle of Patrone or the nice throw blanket. it is a lot of fun and a chance for everyone to let their hair down and have fun. I will be buying the booze and food and also buying dinner certificates for each of the staff as a present from me.
Well, work awaits, so I am off to the salt mines. Be good to each other. Ciao.
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