A good weekend in the books

It was about golf and relaxing this weekend. I got a chance to try out my new clubs and they are a work in progress right now. I think I actually played better with Darryl's second set. My problem right now is gauging distance. The new X-R 18 irons are about 10-15 yards longer than my R7 irons. The one club that is absolutely perfect so far is the Callaway X 3 iron. I'm nutting that about 215 off the fairway. The driver is probably too stiff for me, but I've hit some really good drives (and a few I'd like to forget). The Callaway FT-9 has an extra stiff shaft and a 8.5 degree face. When I hit it, I'm about 240-250 in the fairway, but I have a tendency to overswing and get a slice., something I didn't worry about with my Ft-iQ.

I went out with Matt and Darren yesterday and played Woodcreek. I was consistently inconsistent and flying some greens with iron shots and shot 44+44=88. Matt shot 75 and was ready for our two man scramble today. We each had to get 5 drives in and I figured that with my inconsistency, Matt would carry us. He hits the ball about 25-30 yards longer than me and was hitting the ball well. Funny, I hit more fairways than him today and we ended up using nine of his drives and nine of mine. It was a 7:30 shotgun, wet and cold (although it was 79 degrees today) at the start and the grass was covered in dew. We shot a par on our starting hole 17 and then Matt hit a 285 yard drive on the 440 yard number one handicap hole 18. We managed to both mess up our approach shot and left a par putt of 20 feet that we both missed. We settled down on the front side and shot a 34 with seven pars and two birdies. The back nine was fun as we had birdies on four of the first 5 holes and ended up with a 33 on the back for 67 gross and 60 net with our combined 7 strokes. Matt is a 4 and I get 11 and we get the average of our two scores which was rounded down for some unknown reason. We ended up taking $5 from Boyd and his partner and winning $45 in the tournament. Matt got signed up for the club at our renewal rate and has the rest of this year and all of next year to play the tournaments. He is an excellent golfer and will be right there with Bob Pando for a shot at the club championship in the coming years.

I got home from golf on Saturday and was exhausted. I talked to Darla for a bit and laid down on the couch and was soon fast asleep. The doorbell rang at 5:30 and Darla got up from her spot on the bed (she doesn't like to nap on the couch, which likely has more to do with my snoring than the relative comfort of the sofa). It was one of our neighbors letting us know that I had a flat tire on my car in the driveway. I had left it out to wash it. The 300 has low profile tires and I probably wouldn't have noticed it, put it in the garage and had to get the tire changed at 6;30 this morning before golf. Thank God they came by. I'd like to think I'd have noticed it when I washed it though. I ended up having AAA come out and change the tire. I then washed my car and Darla's Explorer. I moved my clubs into the Explorer and Darla agreed to take the 300 in to Firestone today after church. It turns out it was a bad air stem and they were able to change that out and put the tire back on my car for less than $25. Darla walked across the street from the Firestone and had breakfast at the Waffle House this morning while they were fixing the tire. I got home again today, watched the Dallas game and fell asleep again on the couch. I'm turning into Gramp Lyon. At least that's what Samantha calls me.

Darla and I are off to Monterey next weekend. I decided to go to work Friday morning as it is month end closing and work a 1/2 day. Darla and I will take a slow drive down to Monterey and have dinner likely on the wharf as our hotel sits at the foot of the wharf in Monterey. We play Poppy Hills on Saturday and Old Del Monte on Sunday. The blog will be late next week as I work on it around the Monday Night football game.

I had mentioned in an earlier blog entry that we had toured the facility at Darryl's work in Longmont, Colorado. I was impressed with the scope of the operation and Darryl is the number three man at this massive facility. There is a facility President, A VP and Darryl as the Operations manager. He has the warehouse report to him as well as receiving, shipping and the terminal operations. We walked through the refrigeration storage areas, the freezer, as well as the main warehouse full of ice cream, candy, cigarettes, dry goods and all types of food, tobacco and candy. It was very impressive and I was impressed with Darryl's respect that he had from everyone as we walked through the terminal and warehouses. They were having some sort of problem with cigarettes on the day we walked through. The cigarettes have to be stamped with a tax stamp from the state where they will be sold and corporate had made some error, so the shipment was late and they had about twenty people standing around waiting for work. They were relaxed until they saw Darryl and they all got busy. It was great.

After we left Denver, Darryl ended up with pneumonia. His guests were both sick when they were there, but he ended up flat on his back for a week sick as a dog. I haven't talked to him, but got an e-mail addressing his illness from him. He was hacking and wheezing and couldn't keep any food down. Tough stuff.

Work is going very well for me and I think we are getting into a rhythm with the Modesto office. I have never been busier than I am now at work as I handle a big portion of the Modesto agents and I QA every file coming out of Modesto. I still have to split up some of the agents to other underwriters, but the office will stay open until December 31st, so I have time before I need to do that. Our office is having another great month and it is fun to ride this wave. I had a young underwriter from a competitor contact me last week and I will meet him for lunch next Tuesday. He's interested in exploring the possibilities at Burns and Wilcox.

I leave for the Manager's meeting in Michigan a week from Wednesday. I fly out at 9 AM and fly through Dallas to Michigan, arriving at 6:30 PM. It is a long day of travel and the limo will pick me up at the airport and take me straight to the restaurant where all of the managers will meet for dinner. I stay until Saturday afternoon and fly back Saturday night. It is a grueling few days and I end up exhausted. Thankfully I am back for only a week and then I'm off to Mexico with Darla, dad and Shirley, Darryl and Cheryl and Neil and Lilly. It will be a blast to get back to the sun and fun of Nuevo Vallarta.

I do have one other leftover from the Denver visit and it feels a little like piling on what with Darryl's recent bout of pneumonia, but hey! We played Wii bowling in Darryl's basement while we were there. it was fun and competitive and we had a lot of laughs, but my 53 year old brother ended up pulling a muscle in his butt on the second game and had me in tears laughing as he hobbled around trying to play fake bowling. It is a new low in sports injuries, a pulled butt muscle in Wii bowling.

With that I will bid you all adieu and, until next week, keep traveling on the Lord's path and HE will direct your footsteps. Be well. Ciao.