Busy Times at Work

It has been a cool week with some night thunderstorms, evening rain and sun and clouds during the daytime. We had our Big I Golf Day on Monday and had ideal weather. Darla and I were able to finish the signs and although as one person said, "It looks like someone's third grade daughter did these signs", the event went off without a hitch and I took our art project to the cardboard recycling bins across from the Fairgrounds on Monday night after the event. I also went up in the attic this weekend and cleared out any old signs for companies that have gone out of business or were older signs with an old font we no longer use. I was able to make a new inventory of signs and threw out a bunch of worn or tattered signs. Our team ended up shooting 9 under par and the winning team was a group of novice golfers including my underwriter, Pete, who likely used creative accounting to get their score down to 59. I'm not buying it. I've seen two of them play and , frankly, they look like ex football players trying to play golf. Pete left for a week's vacation to Hawaii the day after the tournament, so I haven't had a chance to harass him yet, but I will.

The merger and purchase of our competitor fell through at the last minute and another of our competitors was able to get nine of their employees to accept positions with them. They had hoped that having their talent would give them access to the book of business, but we hired the five best employees and then reached a late agreement with the former firm to purchase the book. We have rights to all of their in force business and to exclusive renewal rights on the business until July of 2010. I was over in their Rancho Cordova office on Tuesday with 5 of my staff and we picked up all of the files. I then was off to Fresno on Friday morning to pick up files from the Fresno office. The delay was because the other firm that hired nine of the employees had hired the Fresno Manager and staff and subleased the same building that the other firm was in...along with the files that now belonged to us. It is a three hour drive to Fresno and I wanted to be sure we could get access to the office. I called the trustee the night before and told him to make sure I could get in the building because I would be there at 9 AM. I borrowed Gail's F-150 King Cab and left at 6:00 AM for Fresno with Ben, my assistant in tow. Sure enough, when we showed up the manager refused to let us in. She got on the phone with her boss and he said we needed paperwork, which I produced as a cover letter from the purchased company's attorneys granting us full access to all files. We tap danced for awhile and I stood my ground, finally getting the trustee on the phone and having him convince the manager to butt out and let us in. It was uncomfortable, but two hours later we had five trucks loaded up and took the files to our Fresno office where we parted them out to Fresno and Sacramento. I had left a padfolio with my business cards and a legal pad and some papers on the receptionists window and when I went to retrieve it, it was gone. I asked the receptionist and she said, "was it the blue padfolio on the windowsill?" When I said, yes, she smiled at me and said she'd never seen it. Nothing that was in there was important, but I did have an invitation from one of the local country clubs to come out and try their course. I brought it to set up golf for Saturday, but Bob and I ended up setting a game at Cherry Island. Keeping my company property was BS on their part. Ben and I finally got out of Fresno at 2:00 PM and were back in Sacramento by 5:00 PM. I dropped him off, gassed up the truck, stopped at Office Depot to return some boxes that we didn't need and then drove up to Gail's house to drop off the truck. She will be bringing the truck to the office tomorrow and we will unload the files and begin processing them. We will have to scan all of the files into Imageright and then begin making calls to the agents. When I get into the office tomorrow the old phone lines from the purchased company will be patched into my phone system and we will begin servicing their files. A lot of work is in the cards for the next while. I will be bringing in kids of staff to handle the scanning project and paying them $10 an hour.

Bob and I did make it out to Cherry yesterday and played golf with two thirty something women who were excellent golfers. I shot 39+42=81 and Bob shot 43+39=82. The ladies were a nine handicap and a ten handicap and said that they had never played golf with any male golfers who were better than them. I think they were more than just friends (not that there's anything wrong with that), but I really enjoyed playing with two women that were very good golfers. It was a treat. At one point, the course comes in contact with a city street on the border of the course and some idiot yelled out, "You bunch of girls!" as he drove by in his beat up pickup truck. One of the women is Irish and she said, "Eh, it looks like they noticed the tits!" I instinctively looked down at my chest and they all got a good laugh out of it.

Darla is anxious to lose her cast as it is time for her to move about without the confines of a plaster boot on her leg. Hopefully, she's learned a lesson, but knowing my wife, I doubt it. She's been in the pool just about every day with saran wrap and a shower boot on her leg since the start of swimming season.

I had a golf tournament today, but woke up with an aching back and an inflamed foot where I stepped on a bee while trimming the ground cover around the pool yesterday. We went to church and then Darla dropped me at the course, where I tried to play, but gave up after nine holes. My back was aching, my foot was pounding and I even have a sore yoke (collar bone). I shot 46 on the front and couldn't make a complete pass through the ball. I called Darla and asked her to pick me up. I sat and watched Tiger play some REAL golf instead.

The pastor talked about the concept of unanswered prayer. Garth Brooks had a famous song about the subject. The pastor's story was about a man who shipwrecked on a deserted island. He prayed every day and night for a ship to rescue him, but none ever came. He finally built a small hut and kept a fire for warmth near the hut. When he was gone one day out foraging and fishing, the winds came up and reignited his campfire which spread to his hut and burned it to the ground. He was mad at God and yelled about the fire and why was God punishing him. He brooded and cursed God, but a ship showed up that same day and rescued him. When he asked how they found him, the ship captain said that they had seen the smoke from his signal fire. God works in mysterious ways.

Well, that is it for this week. I'm off to Scottsdale next Sunday and an underwriting conference. I will try to update this before I leave. I hope you are all well. Do yourself a favor and find a good church to attend. It helps get us through all that is so sad in our world and our economy. Ciao.