Good to have the wife home again

No pictures this week, but we will make up for that next week after Darla and I return from Canada. I thought we might have a problem crossing the border after Canada made a mess of the early hockey game against the US of A, but due to some odd "double elimination if you are the host country" rule or something, they allowed them back into medal contention and they won the game today, so the border should be open to Americans. The Olympic hockey game with NHL players is about as much fun as NHL hockey, which doesn't hit the Richter scale in the United States (although we win the Stanley Cup every year). I'm not excited about the Olympic basketball with NBA players either. I think the reason the USA win over Russia in 1980 was so exciting was because the gold was brought home by amateur hockey players playing for the love of the sport. Now NHL players don't make NFL or NBA money, because (let's face it), they are hockey players, but let's let the Olympics stand alone as a bastion of amateur sports. I watched very little of the Olympics because you never knew when something was going to be on and I wasn't going to suffer through curling and the biathlon to try and see Lyndsey Vonn or Apollo Ohno. I didn't see any of the hockey because I can't see myself dedicating two hours to a soccer game on ice. 2-1 is an exciting game or so they tell me. I am usually asleep after twenty minutes of watching people smack into each other and toss the puck behind the net 20 times. I will probably watch the closing ceremonies tonight or maybe an hour of it. I'm proud that Vancouver was able to host the games and got a lot of good press that will likely help their tourism and economy going forward, but the opening and closing ceremonies are so forced and overblown in the Olympics. What was that deal with Eskimos dancing around with spears and head dresses? I know they had their Ford Escort parked in the parking lot and live in the suburbs like the rest of Canadians. Your heritage is all well and good, but you don't live like that anymore, so move on.

It is great to have Darla back home ( I needed some wash done). She was gone from Saturday until Wednesday night and I was sure happy to see her home. I went out marketing Tuesday with Peter in my office and told him that I'd been golfing, did some yard work, worked out and about the only thing I hadn't done was run to the casino. Well, Tuesday night I took $100 and went out to Thunder Valley in Lincoln (about 15 minutes from the house). I had one of those unbelievable stretches where I hit two Royal Flushes on the video poker Double Double game in an hour. The chances of hitting one Royal are 10,000 to 1. My first one hit with two quarters in and I was dealt the 10, queen, king and ace of diamonds with the jack of hearts. I discarded the jack of hearts and hit a jack of diamonds for $115. On the second Royal, I was playing three quarters and saved a jack of spades and had the 10, queen, king and ace of spades come up for $280. If I'd had five quarters in it would have paid $1,000. I also would have likely lost all my money and went home before hitting even one Royal if I was playing $1.25 a hand. I did get out of there after 90 minutes with $480.

Darla got free tickets to see Bill Engvall, the country comedian and part of the Blue Collar Comedy tour with Larry "the Cable Guy" and Jeff Foxworthy. She works for the Maloofs and received four tickets to the show. We went Saturday night with Bob and Debbie Hand and had a great time. We had dinner beforehand at El Azteca, the neighborhood Mexican food joint in the shopping center up the street. I enjoyed the company and the concert.

I played golf Saturday while Darla had one of her jewelry shows at the house. I played at ten and her show was scheduled to be over by 3:30 and that's when I could come home. It was raining Saturday morning, but the forecast was for the rain to move out by about 11 AM and the sun to come out in the afternoon. I actually had an 8:40 tee time, but we were the only cars in the lot save for the workers. We got a couple of baskets of range balls and headed into the covered shed where the pros give lessons. We were trying to hit the flags on the driving range as the rain pelted down and we waited for a break in the weather. Matt from the office was there as were two guys from the club, Pamas and Paul. The rain finally started letting up about ten and we teed off as the only players on the course. There were a few that followed shortly after us and by the time we finished at 2 PM in bright sunshine the parking lot was half full and they were waiting in line to tee off.

It was pretty wet on the course and we had to dodge some large puddles in the fairway as it had been raining most of the week. One of the holes was almost an island hole as the creek had overflowed it's bank. We also had a hole on the front side that was completely covered in water as the main creek had overrun it's banks and covered the course. Paul hit a brand new Pro V1 into the water and had to leave it because it was about three foot deep across the fairway. I was determined to get the round in as Darla's party was in full swing and I couldn't go home. Also, I had a qualifying event today with Bob Pando for an NCGA tournament. They had opened the 7th green after six months and had also cross cut the greens this past week and I wanted to see how they were rolling. I shot 42+41=83 and took $15 from my friends in a round robin format that we played.

From the course, I went to get a late lunch and afterward it was still only 2:45, so I stopped at the gym for a workout. The mistake I made was getting on the recumbent Lifecycle and pedaling for thirty minutes on a hill climb. My legs were sore from trudging through the wet course and I began to cramp up in both calves after thirty minutes. It started in my right calf and as I reached to massage that, my left calf started cramping. I was tottering around like a new born calf, jumping from one foot to the other to keep my weight off the cramping calves. I finally just dropped to the ground and let the cramps pass, but not before two or three people ran over to see if I was okay. I think they saw my gray hair and thought I was having a heart attack or something.

When I finally got home at three-thirty, the party was still going strong and I decided to take advantage of the clear skies and lack of rain and wash my car. One of Darla's friends has a daughter who is developmentally delayed. She is probably 15, but has the mental ability of a six year old. She came out and wanted to help me wash the car and clean my clubs and golf cart. I gave her a sponge and I used the wash mitt to clean one side of the car, while she was on the other. I heard a scratching sound and went over to investigate and she'd pulled the tire brush out of the bucket and was brushing the side of my car! I washed my side, went around and washed her side and then sprayed the car off. She saw me with the hose and wanted to spray. I let her spray the car after I'd completely cleaned off the soap. She wanted to continue to spray the hose and I wanted to dry the car. I suggested that she could help me dry the car, but she wanted no part of that. I let her spray the grass and the mail box, the sidewalk, driveway and road, while I dried the car. I told her to make sure she didn't spray the car. Just as I'd finished drying the whole car, she turned the hose as she turned to say something to me and drenched the car AGAIN. I turned off the hose and she quickly lost interest and went back in the house.
She is a nice young girl and I asked her Mom if I could pay her for helping me. Mom said, "Only if she really helped." I gave her $5.00 but what I didn't tell her Mom was that I would have paid her $10 NOT to help.

Today was the NCGA event and Bob and I were both flat early on, in fact we posted an even par 36 for the front nine. Bob missed a 2 foot birdie putt on number three and I followed that up by missing a 3 foot birdie putt on 9. I shot 43 on the front and just felt out of sorts. Golf is a strange game and just as quickly as it went south, I absolutely couldn't miss on the back nine. I birdied 10 and 14 en route to a 36 on the back nine and a total of 79 for the round. Bob continued to struggle which is not like him and finished with an 80 and our team score was a middling 67. The best score when I left was 63 and there were three 64s , a few 65s and a 66 ahead of us. Bob did call me tonight and tell me that we won $30 in skins for my net eagle on 10.

Our CEO is in San Francisco tomorrow and I am meeting three of my underwriters at the office at 7 AM tomorrow and driving into the office. The San Francisco team has a nine o'clock scheduled meeting with him and we will be in meetings after 10:00 AM, but Harvey wants us there by 9 AM, so we will be. We had another record setting month in February, closing the month at $165,000 in net income, which surpassed our previous February of $134,000, which is a 23% increase. We are up over 25% in net revenue for the year and 2009 was our biggest year ever. I have a 6:30 golf meeting back in Sacramento which I may or may not make, depending on when we get out of the city.

Well, again, Darla and I will be in Vancouver next weekend and I will try to get a blog entry in before the following weekend, so keep an eye out after the 10th. Be well. Ciao,

Just a Bachelor Weekend

We made it to Trinitas on Friday and perhaps not at all too soon. The local neighbors are making life really difficult for Mike Nemee and his home grown golf club. In fact, they have filed suit against him in Calaveras County and the County supervisors are considering shutting him down. He built his course without filing any plans with the county or arranging any permits for a public facility. Boyd and Bob had to stop and ask directions as they simply "googled" the address and got lost (I got the directions off the website). One of the locals told them that playing "that course" is in violation of the law.

The golf course itself is incredible, but the greens are "stupid fast" where a ball dropped on the green in many spots will completely roll off the green. The course has a 141 slope for a reason and the reason is the greens. There is not a flat green in the bunch and they are all razor fast. I shot 88, Boyd, 80, Bob 87 and Neil suffered through a 106. We were all in agreement that the venue is incredible, you don't see a house or hear a car the entire time you are on the golf course and it is a relaxing and enjoyable day of golf. The course continues to fly under the radar and they have tee times set up starting at 9 AM and they run every half hour. When you tee off the group in front of you is three or four holes away. The fairways are Bent turf Bermuda so the fairways are brown this time of year as you can tell by the pictures above. By the way, I brought our little Nikon Coolpix camera, after charging the batteries and when I pulled it out to use it, the memory card wasn't in it. I took the above pictures with my i phone. Mike's wife still makes the sandwiches which are delivered by the head pro when you are on the tenth hole. The course itself is still not commercially viable as the first hole is about a mile from the pro shop, which is attached to the Nemee home and shares a bathroom with their oldest son. We got there early and hit a shag bag full of balls off the 12 tee onto the 12th fairway, which had been collected by the time we came around and played that hole. The pro shop for whatever reason was built next to the 12th tee box. The parking is a small space bulldozed out around olive trees and the 18 holes, although flowing well do not come back to the clubhouse. The pro came out and delivered our sandwiches, which included a pickle, chips, soda and a candy bar. It was a fun experience, but we all agreed that it is a fun novelty, but not a course we would want to play on a routine basis.

The title of this gnome refers to Darla being off in Chicago. She flew out on Saturday and returns Wednesday night. She was able to get a direct flight on Southwest and her conference started today. I haven't heard from her tonight, but the conference will run until about 10:00 PM Central time, so she should be checking in soon. I'm not a good bachelor as time runs away from me and I ended up eating dinner at nine o'clock or falling asleep on the couch and waking up at midnight to go to bed (like I did last night). I enjoy the routine of marriage and the companionship.

I ended up not playing golf yesterday as most of the guys had other commitments and we had a tournament today. I did go to one of the nursery stores and picked up a dozen multi packs of annuals and spent the day clearing out some dead groundcover that died in the snow that we had this Winter. I then replanted the yellow, pink, white, red and purple flowers in the flowerbeds around the pool. I also trimmed back a couple of the bushes and cleaned the pool. I was out there from noon until 4:30 and then came in and watched golf and relaxed. I also had a teleconference with my boss from about 10:30 until 11:30 as we had a number of issues to go over and he was out of the office Tuesday-Thursday and I was out Friday.

We had a threatened storm all weekend that all but fizzled out. I felt a couple of raindrops yesterday, but Auburn 15 minutes east of us had a 1/4 inch of rain. Today was supposed to be wet all day and I thought the golf tournament at Wildhawk golf course in Sacramento would be rained out. The Doppler radar showed the storm coming in about three this afternoon and we actually made it through 15 holes before the skies opened up and we were toting umbrellas and trying to stay dry and keep our grips from getting wet. It was cold and windy most of the day, but the rain just made it miserable. I played really well on the front with a 39, but went six over par the last four holes to shoot 44 on the back for 83, which is right on my handicap. Boyd shot 75, Matt shot 77 and Neil had a really efficient 83, which won him $51 in his flight. I was proud of Neil, whose game has really improved since he retired from work. He doesn't hit the ball very long off the tee, but he is consistent and will see his handicap (which is currently 15) come down over time. He had three birdie putts and missed them all, but was consistent all day for his net 68.

It is supposed to rain all week and I have a busy week at work. Tuesday, Peter and I will travel together and visit some of our agents in the Lodi, Manteca area. Wednesday I have a company in town from North Carolina and I have dinner with them, after which I have to run to the airport to pick up Darla and one of her fellow Silpada consultants. This ladies' husband drove them to the airport Saturday morning and I will pick them up. I also have to meet a representative from our shredding company to deliver some 90 gallon bins to the office in Modesto, where I will fill them and they will haul them back to their facility to be shred. These are policies and underwriting files that contain personal information. I also have to get the furniture and equipment photographed for Craigslist, where I will give away desks, filing cabinets, cubicles and whatnot to anyone willing to haul it away. I also have to meet someone from Ikon, who will pick up the fax, scanner, copier and transport it to my office. Next Monday, our CEO will be in San Francisco and I will be there for meetings along with three of my underwriters. Harvey is bringing in several of our carriers on Monday for meetings with Burns and Wilcox.

I am officially a geek now as I researched on the internet how to convert Flip video files to MP 4 files. I downloaded a converter off the internet, converted the files and uploaded the video to my i phone. What I haven't figured out yet is how to get the video on my blog. That will be next.

Well, I need to eat some dinner. It is 8:43 PM, Darla just called. I hope you have a great week. be well. Ciao.

Oops, wrong website

Sorry about that, I sent you off to some shipping website for overseas container traffic. I made the fix on the blog, but the website for Trinitas Golf is www.trinitasgolf.com. Click on the link to the "Trinitas Story". Dad, you'll get a kick out of this guy. I'll write about him next week after we meet him and play his masterpiece.

68 and Sunny in Norcal

If you watched the AT&T Pebble Beach golf this weekend you got to see why I love living in Northern California. I like the change in seasons and enjoy the fall colors and the resiliency of Spring (Winter can be a bummer, but that's me). This weekend everything dried out, the sun came back in all of its warmth and glory and we had a simply splendid weekend. Darla worked today after church and I had the day to myself (Valentine's day no less).

I spent the day working on the front yard. I've been wanting to trim some plants and clean up the down dead leaves from among the plants, but it has been too wet and cold until this weekend. I spent three hours cutting back some dead foliage, trimming plants back from the house and to give them more definition next to each other. I completely filled up our "green trash" can and put some of the leftovers in the regular garbage can and still left a pretty good pile of cuttings and branches on the side of the house. I used the blower to blow the cuttings and leaves out from the plants and into a pile on the lawn and transferred them to the can until that was full. It looks good and it was nice to get a little suburn on my face after weeks of rain and cold. I still have the backyard to do, which will be quite a project as I have quite a bit of ground cover that was lost to frost this Winter that I'll have to pull out.

I did get together with the guys on Saturday and took a road trip back to the thriving metropolis of Galt, California and we played the championship course, Dry Creek Ranch. Dry Creek has water in its creek this year, so you know it's been a wet Winter. The course was in pretty good shape, but pretty wet and the fairways hadn't been mowed this week. It turned a 6,600 yard course into a bit of a bear. Matt had a really good game making three birdies on his way to a 77. Boyd shot 78, Bob had 83 and I shot 86. I did have one chip in for birdie that was my lone highlight of the day. I also missed a four foot birdie putt on the front side.

This Friday, Boyd, Bob , Neil and I will try one of the area's newest course, Trinitas. Trinitas grew out of a dream of an olive rancher, who purchased an olive orchard in Valley Springs and saw the potential for a world class golf course. He built an 18 hole course out of nothing but pluck and the charity of golfing friends, who helped him build his dream. His story is told on his website which is http://www.trinitasgolf.com/ . Boyd is one of the posse of our local golf writer for the Sacramento Bee, meaning he reports on the condition of courses that he plays and the results go in the Bee on Wednesdays. Boyd has invited Steve Pajak to join us on Friday. The owners of the course allow a foursome to play for $300 and they provide the range balls which are hit onto the 13th fairway and then he and his wife go and collect the balls before we come around. His wife also fixes sandwiches and sodas for lunch at the turn. It should be a fun and interesting experience.

Darla will be in Chicago next weekend for her management seminar with Silpada. (Chicago in February, whose idea was that?!?). She flies out Saturday morning and I will be playing golf Friday, Saturday and Sunday next week. We have an away tournament at a golf course in Elk Grove Sunday and I'll play Diamond on Saturday after Trinitas on Friday.

We got back from Vegas to a really special deal on flights and went ahead and set up to return to Vegas in May for Darla's birthday. We booked our flights for $39 each way to and from Sacramento. We had so much fun with Samantha on this trip and can't wait to return. Hopefully Jennifer and Michael are both working by the time we go back.

Our computer went out this week. It turns out that the modem was bad and I found that out when I went to call Comcast and found out that the phone was dead as well. We have Comcast phone service too. We got a new modem installed on Saturday and I tried to set up tickets to see the new Valentines Day movie with Darla Saturday night. Unfortunately, I bought the tickets on Fandango where you print out the tickets and go straight to the theater. Our printer was knocked offline because the new modem has a security phrase that wasn't set up with the wireless printer. We ended up out $23.50 and no movie. I was steamed. Not that I'm cheap or anything.

Well, this is short, but Darla just called to say she is on her way home and I bought a couple of Rib Eyes that I am going to grill on the barbecue for my valentine. I've gotta go. Love you all. Ciao.

Vegas, Baby!

The only hard part in doing the blog this week was picking which pictures to add. I love Samantha's blue eyes and like the closeups of her. She is looking more and more like her Mother every day, especially when she gets fussy (Just kidding, Jen). We had an absolute ball in Vegas. The weather was mostly dreary with periods of some pretty heavy rains, but our focus was Samantha and Jennifer and a nice surprise in Michael, who is a great guy. He was very patient as we spent hours cooped up with them in their little apartment watching scores of Samantha's videos (Nemo, A Bug's Life, The Lion King, etc.). We were able to get in the Super Bowl on Sunday and then showed up Monday morning with two new videos for Samantha for Valentine's Day (Alvin and the Chipmunks movie and a medley of Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon videos). Both Michael and Jennifer are electricians and they met on the job at The City Center casino complex on the strip. Michael spent part of Monday working on his computer setting up job ads and networking for work. Both of them are out of work right now and waiting for the next call at their union.

We stayed at the Courtyard down the street from Jen and Mike on Rainbow Boulevard, about a mile away. We flew in from San Francisco on Friday night at midnight and Jennifer picked us up. I was thrilled to see my daughter back among those with natural haircolors. Her peacock style fit her, but I like her hair color and she is letting it go back to her natural color. We relaxed at Jen's home on Saturday and then took the gang to dinner at the Olive Garden. We had a gift card and wanted to treat them and there was one just down the street. Well used to be. It was closed and we ended up driving down past the strip and into central Vegas for dinner. Luckily the food was really good and they put us in a back room where Sam could walk around after we ate. We found out that little Sammy is a hound for ice cream as Darla bought some sugar free ice cream for her and she loved it. She is no longer taking naps and stayed up with us until after 9:00 PM on Saturday. We hung around until about ten and watched a video that we had brought with us about a honeymoon hiking trip in Kauai that saw many familiar sights for us. The movie was about a set of killers that stalk newly marrieds.

Jennifer loaned us her car while we were in Vegas and we were able to drive back and forth from the hotel. We gassed it up for her as she was driving us to and from the airport and out to dinner. Darla did a grocery shopping with Jen and bought some items for the Super Bowl gig. Mike fixed some jumbo shrimp with a special homemade dipping sauce that was great and then Jennifer and Mike fixed salad, pot roast and potatoes for dinner on Sunday night after the game. Darla and I won three parts of our two Super Bowl pools for $100 in winnings. That was a nice bonus. David actually won $25 as we put the kids names doewn in the ten squares that we buy. I won the halftime pot of $50 in my work pool.

Darla and I snuck out to Texas Station later Sunday night and played some nickle poker, doing well and needing to quit within the first hour or so, but staying three hours and finally losing $50. We had a good time, but got back to the hotel at 2 AM. In fact, they shoved our bill under the door as we were getting ready for bed. We decided to sleep in the next morning, but nobody told the maid who BANGED on our door at 8 AM. I told her to "piss off" and that we were still sleeping. She is not of American descent (or so the politically correct would say) and came back at 9:15 and BANGED on the door again. By then we were getting up, but we were peeved. Darla called the front desk and told the manager that it was a major disruption to have someone at our door at 8:00 AM. The manager politely explained that the maid's work hours are 7 AM to 3 PM and because they checked us out she had no way of telling that we were in the room. Really, so it was our fault that we didn't have the DND sign on the door? I suppose they don't get alot of people that stay out late in Vegas. We plan to take up the issue with Courtyard corporate because the manager was a complete idiot that had no idea that we didn't call the front desk to listen to his lame excuses.

I had kept Samantha entertained at dinner on Saturday night by playing some cartoons on my i Phone for her. It was Mickey Mouse. On Sunday after dinner she brought my i phone to me and asked me to play Mickey Mouse, she's a smart kid. We were able to Skype with Dad and Shirley, but the system was overloaded and dropped us about five times. We finally got frustrated with the system and called them on the phone and talked for about fifteen minutes. They were able to see Samantha for the first time and visit a little bit, but she wasn't in the mood to yack much and ended up running back and forth bringing her stuffed animals to show Grampa and Shirley.

Monday was a day to relax and take it easy in the late morning and early afternoon. We all ate our leftovers from the Olive Garden and then piled in the car to have Mike and Jennifer show us the City Center where they had both worked for the last year and a half. We took a tour of the casino, the shops, had an ice cream with Miss Samantha and looked at all of the water features. The wall of water turned ut to be a nice backdrop for pictures, but Miss Samantha was getting a little cranky by then and we only got a couple of good pictures.

We had a great trip and saved money by flying out of SF ($99 flights vs. $240 in Sacramento). We came home lat elast night and today I had a Southwest e-mail in my in box that offers flights to Vegas at $39 each way out of Sacramento. We have to book by Thursday and travel by May 20th. I think we will likely be back in Vegas for Darla's birthday on May 13-17th. Hopefully, Dad and Shirley can join us and finally meet Miss Samantha in person.

Work has started the year exremely strong. I just got the financials yesterday and we increased our profit year over year by 350% from $23,000 to $85,000. $33,000 of that is profit sharing from one of my companies, but it is a huge start to 2010. Even without the profit sharing money we were up 226%. We are over budget already and had the biggest monthly growth year over year of all of the branches in the company. Anthony in my office was number three in new business writings for the entire company in January. February is a tough month, but we are looking on track with last year through the first week.

Well, you know more pictures will follow from our trip and I have some video I will work on tomorrow night. Until then, be good to each other and keep living the dream of eternal life. Ciao.