Canada comes to California

We are in the midst of a weeklong storm with wind, rain and cold dominating our outlook. The AT&T Pebble Beach National pro-Am was delayed today as a strong storm swept through Northern California. We haven't had quite as much rain as Monterey, but there are downed tree limbs, leaves and debris scattered all over the area and a moderate rain has been falling all day. Darla and I literally got blown from our car into church this morning as the gusts were at 35 MPH.

We are glad that we made it to church as there is a good sermon series this month on Habakkuk, an obscure book of the Old Testament, but a book about trusting in the Lord in hard times. Pretty apropos to the times we are living in right now. We also had a guest worship leader in Dennis Agajanian. He is a country western Christian artist who has toured for twenty years with The Billy Graham Crusades and currently is a featured artist on Franklin Grahams crusades. He is about 6'5" and 255 pounds and wears a crude black cowboy hat and dresses all in black. He welcomed us to church this morning and said, "in case anyone is confused, this is NOT a gathering of Saints, but a hospital for sinners." He also toured with Johnny Cash, which came as no surprise. He was tremendously entertaining and is about the biggest musician I've seen since Aaron Neville, who also happens now to be a Christian artist. Church was relatively light this morning and Pastor Rick mentioned that we have all been praying for rain and as soon as it gets here, people stay at home instead of coming out to thank the Lord for the rain. He's right.

I need you all to pray for Jennifer and Samantha and for John. John is suing Jennifer for custody of Samantha. It isn't clear what his intentions are, but he has thrown Jennifer into a real tailspin. Suffice it to say that John has thrown out some pretty damning accusations and it is now Jennifer's turn to answer those. My only advice to her is to not engage John in a battle of "He said, She said", but to make sure she puts the best interests of Samantha first. That is what the judge will do and what he will respond best to. In my opinion, it is almost always the best thing to have both the mother and father involved in a child's life. There are exceptions, but this one hasn't risen to that level. Just pray for the situation and hope that cooler heads prevail.

I have been experiencing some back problems lately that I haven't seen in years. I wake up every morning kinked and sore and it takes a couple of hours to work my back straight again. I tend to list to the right when I wake up. I've been to see Jane twice in the last week and she tells me that the problem is playing golf in cold and wet conditions. I asked her what I could do about that and she just stared at me like I was a halfwit. I am trying to dress more warmly and if it is really cold, I take a cart and try to keep my back stretched out. I played Monday in a Cha-cha-cha at Brookside in bitter cold and could barely walk the next day. I'd just seen Jane on the Thursday before. I went in again and she gave me another treatment. I did get out in cold, wet conditions on Saturday and play the Trilogy course at Rio Vista. I got my new R7 draw irons, but with the wet and wind didn't get a good representative idea of what the irons can do. It was blowing about 25 miles an hour and I had one hole that I hit a six iron into the wind from 165 yards and came up short in the front bunker. I usually hit my 7 iron 165 yards. I shot 44+42=86 on a tough course, but had an 86 five of my last 7 golf outings. My index jumped to 8.7 this month and is headed back to close to ten next month. Boyd had a really good round, shooting 39+37=76 and Bob shot 40+40=80. Darren had a bit more trouble and was complaining about the wind on his way to 45+48=93. Darla is out of town next weekend on a Silpada junket to San Diego and I have golf planned both Saturday and Sunday.

Work is going along well. We had a good month in January, ahead of last year, but below the budget. February has been a slow start, but is picking up steam. One of the problems we are having and the company is dealing with is audits for contractors whose work has ground to a near halt in this economy. Oftentimes the audits work out to $20,000 or more and they have had to lay off staff and have no jobs in the bank. They can't afford to pay the audits and are more worried about putting bread on the table than paying for insurance that happened last year. These audits are going unpaid and to direct collections and my underwriters are seeing this phantom income come back off of their numbers at an alarming rate. That happened in February and we actually started the month in a hole. I am anxious to see the economy turn around sooner than later.

I tried to get reservations for our condo in Mexico, but found out that they only take reservations six months in advance, so I will have to get the two condos set up in early May for our November trip to Mexico. I was a little surprised that they only book six months out, but that is the rule. I'd like to plan a little further in advance than that.

For those who just watch network television, you don't know what you are missing. Try watching "Diners , Dives and Drive-ins" on the Food network or "Worst Job" on the Discovery network. There was a fascinating series this week on CNBC called "House of Cards", a look at the mortgage meltdown in America and how greed in the loan industry and mortgage backed securities dealers like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the house of cards to fall. Good television that really puts most reality tv shows to shame.

By the way, Jennifer identified the black guy in the picture last week as her sister's fiance. She is the shorty in the middle of the picture.

Well, this is short this week, but it is all rain, wind and cold here. Nothing to see here, folks. I hope you are all well and regularly taking advantage of your own "hospital for sinners". Be well. Ciao.