Memorable Memorial Day

The weather has cooled off dramatically and we actually had rain on Saturday. After a spate of record high temperatures, we are now experiencing some record low high temperatures with Stockton hitting a high of just 63 degrees on Monday and Sacramento at 66 degrees. Roseville hung in there with temps in the 70s over the weekend, but we are more used to HOT weather over the Memorial Day weekend than colder weather.

I had to work the Jazz Festival yesterday, so the cooler weather was actually welcome. I worked for the beverage services group which is headed up by Pete's Mom and we did the teardown of all of the bars in Old Sacramento yesterday afternoon. As the venues closed down, we were there with golf cars to pick up the unopened hard liquor and return it to the warehouse. My shift was 12 to six, but when I got there, was told to return at 2:00 PM. A phone call would have been nice as I was already downtown, so I cooled my heels and listened to some Jazz. There was a band from New Orleans playing Cajun jazz that was excellent as well as a band called High Street that played mostly zydeco music with a Latin beat. My back is sore today from hauling cases of booze and mix around all day yesterday. I did score a couple of bottles of Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey and some Red Bull that I brought home. We could only store unopened bottles of booze and most of the venues were pouring out the leftovers. I thought that was a huge waste and took some home. I also brought some limes and celery. They had two cases of limes leftover and a case of celery for the bloody mary drinkers. It was fun to help out (volunteer) and both Darla and I will volunteer next year.

We talked to Jennifer and John last night and tried out Darla's new laptop on the Skype. Her laptop has a built in webcam and microphone so Samantha could see and hear us as well last night. It was nice. Samantha is getting so big and curious. Jennifer's Mom bought Samantha a new walker and she is working that new ride hard. She was jumping up and down and Jennifer had her standing up. She is soooo cute and we have to get out to Vegas soon. Our short term is pretty busy with Mexico next month and Almanor in July, but we will definitely be in Vegas in August.

I played in the Memorial golf tournament on Sunday at Diamond Oaks. I had one of those "could have been great" rounds and shot 43+38=81 with four birdies. I finished out of the money, but won $60 in skin money with all of my birdies. I improved my Eclectic score from 71 to 66. The Eclectic is the year long tournament that takes your "best" score on every hole throughout the year and combines it for an 18 hole score. Boyd and Bob lead the scoring with 64s, so I'm very happy with my nine strokes to be sitting with a "net" 57 this early in the year.

I have a busy golf schedule next week with a marketing golf game on Friday at Rancho Murietta, golf at Cherry Island Saturday, the Insurance Brokers golf tournament Monday at Sierra View Country Club, my league golf on Thursday (we have a bye this week), and then two days of golf at Wolf Run and Old Greenwood up in Reno Friday and Saturday of next week in an agent outing. Fun stuff ahead. I played with one of my inspection company vendors and Mel and Boyd at Apple Mountain up in Camino, California on Wednesday of last week. Camino is in the Sierra foothills above Placerville and almost up to Pollock Pines off Highway 50 That is a tough track in a hilly venue of Sierra pine trees. The guy from Portland was out for his fourth game of the year and shot 112. I birdied the second hole on my way to an 84. Boyd shot 80 and Mel had 94. I really enjoyed the golf course, but would approach some holes differently when I play it again.

I took advantage of the cooler weather this weekend to fertilize the lawn. The heat of last week had stressed portions of the lawn and I'd been hitting those with extra water. After a nice cool weekend, the grass looks stronger and more healthy. It will be a hot Summer ahead and I'm trying to prepare the turf to weather that storm.

Darla and I are both on diets as we prepare for our trip to Nuevo Vallarta June 20-27th. We met with Bob and Vicki, Neil and Lilly and Rick and Jan on Friday night at Cabo's in Rocklin for our final Mexican dinner in preparation for our trip. We are using both of our weeks together and getting two two bedroom condos for the group. We are all looking forward to the trip. Bob and Vicki have never been to Mexico and are in for a treat. We will play golf at the resort which is still undergoing a major renovation by the Nicklaus Company as well as Vista Vallarta (the Nicklaus and Weiskopf courses) and Marina Vallarta (designed by Joe Finger) while we are there. Our goal is to play golf in the morning with the afternoons to sightsee or just lay about by the pool with a cold drink and a good book.

Well, it is closing in on work time. So far I only have one casualty of the long weekend as Anthony has called in with a headache. I have a headache every day and come to work. Often the headache appears after I get to work, but that's another story for another time. I hope all are well. Here is to those brave souls who have died for our freedom! Check out Jennifer and Samantha's blog at the link above. Jennifer has updated it with new stories and some new pictures. That's where I stole the piuctures of Jennifer, John and Samantha above. Ciao.

May Birthdays are HOT HOT HOT!

It was a big birthday weekend in the Lyon household as Darla celebrated the 14th anniversary of her 29th birthday and David hit 21. Darla was actually in San Jose on her birthday as she had one of her cousins in town from Idaho so she left Thursday and spent the evening with them and returned on Friday. Darla had asked me about three weeks ago to not buy her a birthday present or a Mother's day gift and just put the money toward a new laptop for her. We have an HP desktop computer and she has a state owned laptop computer that she uses for work. With her jewelry business growing so fast and her work with the foster agency that requires monthly reports, she wanted her own laptop. I told her at the time that her business needed to buy the computer and that I'd already bought her birthday gift. I shut her down pretty quick and she didn't really give it another thought. In reality, we have some friends that work for Hewlett Packard and I had already ordered her a new HP Pavilion dv9700z Entertainment 17 inch laptop with web cam and 2 GB of memory. The laptop has fingerprint sign on, Microsoft office and Vista Windows and is very nice. I surprised her with it on Wednesday night when we got home from dinner with the Home office visitors at Joe's Crab Shack in Old Sacramento. She was completely surprised and here it is Monday and she's already taken the computer on two trips, one to San Jose and one to Lake Tahoe.

Darla got home on Friday and we met Alicia and her boyfriend, Don, at Paul Martin's American Bistro restaurant in Roseville. Alicia and Darla share the same birthday, although five years apart. It was an interesting visit. Don had stopped at the restaurant earlier in the afternoon and dropped off a cake and two sets of roses for Alicia and Darla. Don and Darla have very similar personalities and both are passionate people and the conversation got a bit heated at times as we discussed the state of health care in America. I had to calm both of them down. It was like a tennis match for Alicia and I watching the two of them go at it. I thought we could have gone to the bar and got a drink together and not been missed. Paul martin is the "P" in P.F. Changs and this is a great restaurant with great food.

Saturday was David's 21st and we took him up to Tahoe for his first "legal" drink and a night of gambling. He was working on some online classes and didn't get finished until almost 4:30 and we left from Roseville picking Darla up in El Dorado Hills at a fundraiser for injured horses where Darla was selling her jewelry. We got up to the hotel (Tahoe Beach and Ski resort) about 6:45 and got checked in. David had to go online and submit his tests and then we went out to the Lakeside Inn and Casino for their legendary Prime Rib dinner. We got David signed up for a players card and both he and Darla got t-shirts, dice, a free drink coupon and a coupon for a free dinner because it was their birthday month. We put our name in for dinner and sat in the bar and David had a margarita. Dinner was great and I splurged with a prime rib as well. David opted for the 20 ounce prime rib and we had lettuce wraps and coconut shrimp appetizers. We finished dinner about 9:30 and ended up sitting and playing nickle video poker until about 1:30 AM. Darla and I paid for David's gambling and with dinner, the room, gambling and breakfast, it was about a $250 outing. We held our own gambling for quite awhile, but were cold late. David hit a number of jackpots with four-of-a-kinds and really seemed to enjoy himself. We went out to Heidi's for breakfast Sunday morning and were back and relaxing on the pool by about 1:30 PM Sunday.

The weather did change last week and we hit 102 on Thursday, 100 Friday, 103 Saturday and 100 yesterday. The heat wave has subsided and today is supposed to top out at 95 degrees and it will be back seasonable by about midweek with mid eighties. The early heat wave really shocked the system. You just haven't prepared for the blast furnace heat and it saps you. I played golf on Saturday and it was 92 degrees when we teed off at 8:30. It seemed even warmer as the water from the ground is evaporating up and the humidity on the course is probably 80 percent. By the back nine, it was up to 98 degrees, but the course had dried out and it was more comfortable. I shot 41+41=82 and took $6 in skins from the group.

We went out to a house party at Darren and Marissa's last night. I had thought it was just the golf guys getting together, but when we got there he had all of his neighbor's over for a barbecue. We got there a little late as Darla didn't wake me from my slumber on the pool until 4:45 and the party started at 5:00 PM. Their neighbors seemed nice enough, but it was like we had crashed a neighborhood watch meeting. Bob and Vicki showed up about 5:45 and we sat outside while the neighbors all visited inside. We tried a few times to mix with the group, but it just didn't jell. It was an odd mixture of people and Darren even mentioned that there was a division in the groups. Vicki had been in Southern California for two weeks helping her daughter who had just given birth and we wanted to get caught up. Darren and Marissa have a beautiful home that was once owned by the Christian artist, Lincoln Brewster. Lincoln played bass guitar in Journey with Steve Perry and is now the music pastor at our old church, Bayside in Granite Bay.

Well, this is a little short, but it is payday and I have to do payroll to make sure the troops get paid. It is a relief to have the visitors from Home Office gone and the office back to normal. I hope all is well in your world. I will get a few pictures uploaded tonight. Take care. Ciao.

The Heat is On!

Yep, Spring has Sprung and Summer isn't far behind. We actually had a very comfortable weekend with highs in the mid-eighties and nice cool nights, BUT all of that will change toward the end of the work week when the high is expected to creep up over 100 degrees. In fact, 100 is supposed to hit on Thursday, which is the night of my golf league. I very well could go from the course home to my pool. The pool was up to 76 degrees this weekend and Darla was on the pool in an air mattress yesterday getting some sun.

Mother's day was a nice relaxing day. I coaxed David into hosting his Mom to a Mother's day lunch at Chevys. I n fact i called him Saturday night and told hime that he was taking his Mom to breakfast the next day. He did me one better and bought her lunch. We met at church and the two of them headed off to lunch in Rocklin at the new Chevys there. I headed home chopped up some potatoes, some onion, some turkey bacon and had it all nicely frying on the stove, when I realized that we were out of eggs. I enjoyed a breakfast of potatoes and turkey bacon with toast and no eggs. A little weird, but it works. I set out to the back yard to cut back some of the ground cover around the pool. It is so healthy that it keeps growing up the fence line and onto the raised flowerbeds above the pool. I took my hedge trimmer and cut it back along the border of the patio and the pool edging and went about cleaning up all of the trimmings. Darla and David made it back home and soon Darla and I were relaxing by the pool with a cold drink and our books, while I slowly nodded off to sleep. Darla woke me up with a start and I looked up to see an 8" rat sitting on the raised flowerbed. His tail was about 7 inches long and he scampered into the bushes before I could react. We let the cats out to see if they could raise him, but no luck. When I went out to barbecue dinner, he had fallen into the pool and was lying dead on the steps. Hopefully he doesn't have a whole family back there. I was going to call Clark to come out and set up some traps, but he committed rodent suicide before I had the chance. David took pictures of him in the pool, but I even I have standards high enough not to publish that picture in my blog. Well, not yet anyhow.

We had a fun weekend with a dinner and poker on Saturday night at one of my friend's' houses. He lives about four blocks from us and is the cousin of my two man best ball partner. We will go to Poppy Hills together with the wives in August. His cousin, John, is a master barbecue chef and his wife, Camille, is the sauce master. They prepared tri tip and chicken breasts. The sauce recipe that Camille prepares from scratch was "stolen" by her brother and he markets it commercially and is in both Costco stores and Wal Mart. I was really looking forward to going off my diet and enjoying some tri tip. I did, but the sauce on the chicken is so good that I could have passed on the tri tip. The chicken was moist and tender and delicious. John puts the marinated chicken breast on the barbecue and turns the meat every three minutes to keep it moist and on the third turn dunks it again in marinade and then turns it once more. The meat is cooked on high over charcoal for twelve minutes and is to die for. We all brought bottles of wine and the wine connoisseurs sniffed and tasted and rolled the wine on their tongues. i enjoyed the Armida Cabernet Sauvignon and the Stewards Private reserve Merlot. We also had a Greg Norman Cabernet that was very nice.

The guys played poker and I introduced Darren to the group and to poker. As is the norm in our group, Darren could not catch a card and proceeded to lose $110 in about 3 1/2 hours. He finally quit and retired to the couch. The girls were going to go to a movie, but were enjoying their vodka lemonades a little too much and ended up sitting in the kitchen talking and laughing. Darla hauled out her jewelry (by request) and soaked our friends for about $500 in sales. I won about $45 in poker so it was a good night.

Saturday was the final round of our 54 hole individual championship. I was pretty stressed out after a week of meetings and training and needed to relax and play golf by Saturday. I shot 39+41=80 for another net 70 and a three round total of -4. The winner was at -8 and I finished fifth out of 24 golfers in my flight, so was I pleased with my play throughout the tournament. I made a lot of one putts on Saturday and parred the top four holes at Diamond Oaks. I never did manage a birdie on the day, but played solid golf the entire tournament.

I am in the middle of preparing for two golf tournaments on back-to-back Mondays in June. The first tournament is the Sacramento insurance agents' annual tournament on Monday June 2nd. I am on the golf committee and in charge of the signs. We have about 30 sponsors each of which has to have an individual sign (hole sponsor, beverage, closest-to-the-pin, long drive, etc) and then I have to do a 3'x3' sign thanking all of our sponsors. On top of that, I am knee deep in preparing for the annual junior golf tournament that we sponsor at the Roseville Golf Club. The tournament is in memory of one of the junior golfers from Roseville that died in 1967 in a boating accident. He was 17 years old and already a plus golfer (meaning his handicap was lower than a zero) and his father was on the board of the Roseville Men's Club (We changed our name after being sued by an ACLU lawyer in 1991). The tournament has been going now for 41 years helped annually by a donation from the young man's family. So far I have 74 golfers signed up and expect over 100 young people to come out and play golf in our tournament. I am the tournament director and have handled all of the entries, phone calls, marketing, donations, etc. for the tournament. It is the sole biggest job of the President of The Roseville Golf Club and once this is complete, I will be done with about 90% of my responsibilities as the head of our club. The one thing that I am proudest of as President of this club, is establishing a slow play policy and enforcing it. We have purchased clocks for the first tee and the last tee and require each player to record the time they teed off and the time they finished. our slow play policy requires every player to finish in 4 hours and forty minutes or within fifteen minutes of the group in front of them. You never wanted to be in the last group of our tournament because your tee time would be pushed back thirty minutes and it would take a minimum of five hours to finish the round. Since we instituted the slow play rules, not one group has taken 4:40 to play and not one group has finished farther than fifteen minutes behind the group in front of them. I teed off Saturday in the third to last group (out of 20 foursomes) and we started within eight minutes of our tee time and finished the round in 4:15. The rules are working and the players are aware of the two stroke penalty for slow play and don't want to be the first to get whacked.

John and Samantha treated Jennifer to a spa day yesterday and then went out to dinner at some Italian festival in Las Vegas. I didn't talk to her, but Darla did and she was having a great day on her first Mother's day. We also didn't get a chance to call Shirley last night as we were busy with movies. We watched "PS: I Love you. ", a total chick flick, but an entertaining one. We had "27 Dresses" as well, but David refused to watch that.

Well, the gang is arriving and our Home Office trainers will be here shortly, so I have to get prepared for the day. I hope all is well with you, that Mother's Day was a celebration of your Mom, or you, and that God continues to direct your life and be in the center of it. Ciao.

We are officially paperless at work.

We are somehow paperless now and will be trained on the Document management system this week. I have two ladies in from Home Office with another coming in next Monday for a week. We are now paperless and paper files are taboo in my office, but I had to go out last week and get 22 120 page manuals printed for the training this week. It seems a contradiction in terms to print out a manual for a paperless training, but we hang onto what we know and having the manual physically in front of some of the staff will help ease them into the transition. According to Anthony, most of the staff was here over the weekend. I readied myself for this last week and actually took Friday off to mentally prepare for the next two weeks. It will be intense, painful and likely rewarding when it is all said and done. The other offices have transitioned without too much stress, so we will follow in their footsteps.

I took Friday off and played golf with several friends, including Darren and Mel. Mel is one of my agents, so I bought lunch afterward. We teed off at 8:00 AM and were done at Woodcreek by noon. I had a Jekyl and Hyde round with 48 on the front and 38 on the back for 86. We had lunch and I had to scoot by 1:30 as I had a 2 PM doctor appointment at Kaiser. I got home freshened up, changed my shoes and raced off to the doctor. I got there right at 2:00 PM and then made a couple of phone calls as I waited. It got to be 2:45 and I still hadn't been called, so approached the receptionist and asked if perhaps they had called my name while I was on the phone. It turns out that my appointment was for 3:30 PM, not 2:00 PM. The 2 PM is for my dentist appointment in two weeks. I asked why she didn't draw my attention to the time when I checked in. She said and I quote, "Well, sir, many older folks come to Kaiser and sort of make a day of it." That's it, I'm dyeing my hair. I did hear an older couple talking and she said to the old guy in a wheelchair, "We'll come back to Kaiser on Tuesday, see the dermatologist, then go to lunch and be back by 2:30 to see your oncologist. Won't that be fun?" The old guy looked at me as he passed with a "kill me now" look on his face.

I was driving home from work on Tuesday and saw an "I'm an idiot!" moment. There was a young kid on the side of the road riding a BMX bike and in his arms was another BMX bike. This is a narrow older road with telephone poles along the side of the road and no sidewalk. You can see it coming. He clipped one of the poles with the bike in his hands. The carried bike went one way, his bike went out from under him and he landed face first on the side of the road. Luckily he didn't get thrown into the road or he might have been killed. I saw him jump up in my rear view mirror, pick up one of the bikes and throw it against a fence. This is the new generation that will lead us into the promise of the future. I was just pleased to see a kid outside riding a bike.

I got home from the doctor on Friday and decided to mow the lawn. Of the few allergies that I have, grasses are my worst. I should mow the lawn with a mask on, but I don't want to look like a guy who should ride the "special " bus, so I don't. While mowing I ingested a piece of flying grass and went into a coughing fit that finally dislodged the grass from my throat. The ten seconds or so that it was in there caused my throat to swell up and I still have a scratchy sound to my voice three days later. Perhaps I should wear a mask and a helmet and just go ahead and admit that I'm a dweeb.

We had the first two rounds of our 54 hole Individual championship on the weekend. I played much better, in fact ended up with a 39+41=80 on Saturday for a net 70 and then followed that with a 41+41=82 for 72 on Sunday. I sit at -2 after two rounds and the leaders are at -6. The conditions were ideal over the weekend with both days in the 80's. The only problem we had is that the greens were aerated on Monday and Tuesday and are bumpy and SLOW. I left about ten putts on the lip over the course of the weekend and could have been right there with the leaders. We will finish up on Saturday of next week.

Darren and his wife, Marissa, joined Darla and I for dinner on Friday night and he decided to treat us to dinner. We went to Benihanas, and after drinks, appetizers, dinner and more drinks, the bill came to almost $300. That boy can eat. We had sushi, shrimp tempura, yellow tail something or rather, onion soup, salad and I even splurged on filet mignon. It was fantastic, but Darla and I decided that we probably can't afford to hang at dinner with them very often.

The junior golf tournament that I will be the tournament director for comes up June 9th. I now have 44 entries and looking to add more. I have 20 volunteers for the day and we have Sysco foods lined up as sponsor for the lunch for the kids. They will provide Italian Sausages and buns. At the end of this tournament my major responsibility as President of the golf club will be done. I will still preside over the meetings and be the figure head, but the club is mostly run by the tournament director and the handicapper. It has been a great year and we will have a really good junior event in June.

I talked to Jennifer and John last night. Samantha was on the Skype and is talkative, rolling over, standing on her feet (with Mom's helping hands) and basically being the princess of the millennium. Jennifer is with the electrical union in Las Vegas and is taking some seminars to be ratified as an Installer. Once she completes the courses, she will be eligible to work on the union jobs in town at a hefty rate of pay. She will also have union benefits. Jennifer and John still have several short sale offers in, but also made an offer on a regular sale home in a golf community north of Las Vegas. They should find out early this week if their offer is accepted.

The picture of the pool shows the flowers that Darla planted in and around my palm garden. She wanted more color and it looks really good.

Well, it is payroll Monday and I have to get to it. The Home Office visitors will be here shortly. We will be off to a Mexican Restaurant for dinner tonight to celebrate "Cinco De Mayo." Be well. Ciao.