Hanging in the Beautiful Environs of Fresno, California

Yep. Eat your heart out. Here I am 4 hours from civilization just chillin' in Fresno, California. I spent the day at our office here in town seeing how the paperless environment works and I'm ready for some downtime. Tomorrow is the underwriter's session and I need a good night's sleep tonight. As usual, I slept just okay last night and need to get caught up on sleep tonight. I'm staying at a new TownePlace Suites hotel in Fresno and it's nice. We went out to dinner at a Mexican Food restaurant tonight (imagine that in Fresno, CA?) and I had a Waborita. That should help with the sleep, eh?

I was contacted by my doctor last week and all of my hard work and sacrifice on diet and extra exercise and even wolfing down Fish Oil pills every morning went to waste as my cholesterol numbers are about the same and my triglycerides are still high. I switched to Zocor from Lovistatin and will meet with my doctor in a week to see about going on a new triglyceride reducing medication. I'm really bummed, but the doctor said that it has more to do with genetics than anything else, so now I'm pissed at Mom and Dad.

David spent last weekend in San Luis Obispo at Cal Poly. He and a team from Cosumnes River College competed in the Architectural competition at Cal Poly. His team had a really nice presentation of a water proof pod where the could live and sleep. Daniel helped them extensively from hauling in the materials to building the finished project. I don't think it was technically in the rules for him to help, but you can't keep those Lierly boys apart. I haven't talked to David since he got back as I left before he came home.

I played golf both Saturday and Sunday in preparation for the Roseville City Amateur next weekend. I had an NCGA two man qualifier on Sunday. Following my earlier good practice round followed by an egg laid in the tournament, I turned the tables this week and shot 43+44=87 on Saturday and paid out the skins to my partners. Sunday, I played good golf and finished with a 41+39=80. It was a tough day as my partner, Steve, showed up with a screaming hangover courtesy of a night and day of drinking and carousing at his niece's wedding in Lake Tahoe on Saturday. He showed up about twenty minutes before we teed off and had a drinkers sweat going and looked like Hell. He played just the same and hit balls out of bounds on both number one and two. I managed a par on number one, but slipped with a double-bogey on 2. Steve shot a 9 and left us with a net 7 on the par five. By all rights our day should have been over, but we "ham and egged" it to a 32 on the front nine, which should have been a 30. We kept it going on the back with my 39 and a 41 for Steve and a 31 for the team. Our 63 was good enough for a tie for second place with two other teams. We had to play it off and one of the teams had left the premises, so they were disqualified. We played number one over and Steve managed another muffed drive that he hit about sixty yards to the right. I smoothed a shot about 260 yards down the middle. One of the guys we were playing is about 24 and he hit a drive that kept climbing and climbing and stopped about sixty yards from the green some 305 yards from the tee. Luckily his touch is the touch of a 24 year old who golfs on weekends and he hit his second shot about 120 yards on a straight skull shot. His Dad had a six, he had a five, Steve had a five and I two putted for a par and the win. Steve and I will move on in the qualifier to Poppy Hills on August 21st. Nice.

Darla continues to do well with her jewelry business and is making a nice living with her business. She is taking a break from her foster care social work as she doesn't have any kids now. She will be up in Paradise at a city event both weekend days of next week, so I will be playing the city championship and batching it.

I'll close with a joke that I heard recently. There was a guy getting prepared to hit a shot on the first tee at his club. As he lined up the shot, a voice came over the loudspeaker, "Will the gentleman on the first tee please move back from the ladies tee to the men's tee." He looked up and could see every eye on him. He went back to lining up his shot and the loudspeaker again boomed, "Sir, you are on the LADIES tee, please move back to the men's tee." Finally the guy cupped his hands and yelled, "Will the asshole on the microphone shut up and let me play my second shot?" Ah, golf, you've got to love it. Be well and stay in the boundaries of our Lord and Savior. Ciao.