A wifeless weekend

Bob's daughter, Stephanie, sent me some more pictures from Reno and I added those along with a picture of one of my underwriters, Pete, and his wife Vicki. We took them out to dinner at Redhawk Casino in Placerville to celebrate a really good month that Pete had in March. Pete is a kick and we had a great time harassing the waiter and waitress and eating some really good food. We ate at Henry's steakhouse in the casino and they had aged beef and great appetizers, salads, sides and wine. We enjoyed it all and then did a bit of gambling and met them back upstairs to listen to some good country music from a local band that was playing.

As I was writing this, Darla sent me a picture of she and her Mom from the event she did up in Paradise. Frances showed up and helped Darla run the booth at one of the local parks in Paradise. Darla was gone last night ansd stayed with her parents. Also, Diane and Bob were in Vegas last week and sent some pictures of Samantha for us. Nice. Jennifer is trying to grow Samantha's bangs out, but they need to be cut. I remember that Jennifer had the same hair as Samantha and it was always a struggle.

You can see the snow still up on the mountains in Reno. It is hanging around a little longer this year and we have another storm blowing in this week. I'm also in the middle of a re roof and right now we have new plywood, gutters and felt paper on the roof. The storm is due in Tuesday and the roofer is hoping to get the inspection signed off and the new shingles up on Monday. The crew has done a great job and cleaned up well after themselves, but the crew that put the felt on Saturday took the scraps and jammed them in my garbage can. Not cool. Hopefully they get done Monday or we will be living with a large garbage bag on our house through Wednesday when the storm is supposed to blow out of here.

I have also signed a contract to have the back patio stained by a landscaping professional. I got tired of doing it every year and now have a warranty that it will last. They plan to be out on Thursday and do the stain and seal.

I played golf yesterday and today in the Roseville City Amateur. I played okay yesterday, but finished poorly, shooting an 85. Today, my tee time was 9:40 AM and I got to the course about 9 AM and checked in and went to breakfast at the grill. Just as my breakfast sandwich arrived, they called me to the tee. Apparently, the time had changed overnight to 9:16 AM. and the genius in the pro shop didn't share that with me. I rushed over to the tee and teed off. We couldn't find my drive in the right rough, that borders the driving range and is choked with driving range balls and I had to take the walk of shame back to the tee and hit another shot. I really wasn't ready to go and was getting hot. I ended up with a 7 on the par 4 and shot 44 on the front side. I called it a day and withdrew from the tournament. I had a splitting headache and my game was not up to my standards and there was plenty I could do back at the house.

I was out last night at Thunder Valley Casino and had gone in order to watch one of our local athletes, Urijah Faber fight in a WEC event. It is mixed martial arts and the event was televised on pay per view. The casino had the fight on their television monitors that are all over the casino. He was pretty soundly defeated, although it was by decision and at 30 his career is likely over. I stayed on for a bit at the casino, lost about $50 and headed home.

I worked on the yard, repaired a sprinkler line, planted some more groundcover around the pool where the Goof-Off that the landscaper used to strip the stain from the concrete leached into the plants. Our groundcover is extremely hardy and I can clip and replant the groundcover to fill in any spots that are a little thin. I also cleaned the pool and added chlorine and brushed it. I also managed to find time to fall asleep for a couple of hours on the couch in the living room. It was about 80 degrees today and a great weekend.

Up soon for us is our trip to Las Vegas in May. Our friends have bailed on us and if Darryl and Cheryl don't end up joining us we may have Mike and Jennifer join us over the weekend if we don't end up with friends as we have a two bedroom condo just off the strip.

Dad and Shirley are off to Europe and another marathon cruise. They left from Florida yesterday and will be on the water until Thursday crossing the Atlantic.

I did get the Modesto office shut down last Thursday. I picked one guy to take the file cabinets. he was waiting for me when I got there, but decided not to take them as they were "bigger than they looked in the pictures". I was planning to do a walk through with the property manager at 11:00 AM, so scrambled and called three people on my list getting voice mail for all of them. When I was calling the fourth, one guy called me back and was there in fifteen minutes. He had a dolly and a Ford Ranger. He jammed all three of them onto the back of his pickup, tied them down and was gone. I did the walk through with the landlord and gave her the keys and fairly danced back to my car and waved goodbye to Modesto as I drove back to the office.

Well, the update is short on content, but big on pictures, so i will call it a night. I hope all is well with you and Spring is taking hold. The warmth of the sun does fabulous things for the psyche. be well. Ciao.

A Warm weekend in RENO

It was a great and relaxing weekend away. Darla has been working so much with Silpada and her Arco Arena gig, that it was nice to have a weekend with each other. My friend, John set up a nice hotel suite for us at the Silver Legacy. Reno has improved in that the El Dorado, Silver Legacy and Circus Circus casinos are combined together and you don't have to go outside to go between the casinos. The weather was borderline Hot with 77 degrees on Saturday and 81 degrees yesterday. The temperature feels even warmer because you are in the high altitude.

We got up to the casino about 6:30 on Friday night and hooked up with Bob and Debbie for dinner. It was Bob's 59th birthday and we celebrated by going out to dinner at the Steakhouse at Circus Circus. We had originally made a reservation at Sterling's in the Silver Legacy, but switched out when we found out that they charge about $45 for your steak and everything else is ala carte. The Steakhouse at CC is very nice, upscale and they serve you your salads at the table adding whatever you want to the salad. Bob had a Caesar salad and they prepared that table side with anchovies and the whole shooting match. Circus Circus has a fixed price menu and Bob and I both had the Steakhouse burger. Sounds kind of boring, but the burger is served on a huge Kaiser roll and is made from ground New York steak and filet mignon. It truly was a steak burger and you don't ruin the flavor with ketchup and mustard. A little steak sauce and salt and pepper was perfect. The fixed price menu is $18 and includes appetizers, main dish and a dessert. We all left stuffed. The casino was crowded as Tony Bennett was playing in the showroom and a bowling convention was in town. I fit right in with my gray hair.

Golf Saturday was a little rough for me as Darla and I stayed up until 2 AM gambling the night before and I was awake at 6:30 AM and couldn't get back to sleep. those free drinks from the night before were playing with my nerves and I four putted the first hole for a double bogey. I did birdie number two and ended up with $36 in skin money. That, unfortunately, was the highlight of the weekend. I struggled both days shooting 94 on Saturday and 92 on Sunday.

I was a little down in the dumps when we got back on Saturday and paced the room a bit. Darla was down getting a pedicure at the spa with Debbie and I showered and was relaxing looking out the picture window, when I looked down and saw police cars, yellow tape and a body under a tarp. Some poor schmuck ended it all with a swan dive off the ten story El Dorado parking garage. I watched as the coroner came and inspected the body, took photos and hauled him away. By six o'clock, the maintenance crew had scrubbed and power washed the lot and all signs of the trauma were washed away. We found out later when Darla went back to the spa Sunday to get a toenail touched up that the manicurist was in the garage right before the guy jumped. He was arguing with his girlfriend, cussing and ranting. His body was a good fifteen feet from the edge of the building, so he definitely jumped. It was a little freaky and I had to go meet people and drink some good red wine. It just wasn't right.

We did meet Steve and Brenda who came over to see the excitement of the suicide in our room as they were across the hall and looked out over Virginia Street. We had a bottle of wine with them along with Bob and Debbie and Bob and Vicki and then walked over to John and Camille's suite at the El Dorado. John knows the GM at the El Dorado and he fixed them up with a great suite. A hot tub was in one corner, a couch and love seat in the other and a pedestal with a pop-up 40 inch television at the foot of the bed. You push a button and it rises from the pedestal ala Jay Leno on the Tonight Show. We had more wine and appetizers with John and the whole gang and then walked four blocks over to the Old Santa Fe Basque restaurant on Lake Street directly behind Harrah's.

The Old Santa Fe is great and also has a fixed price menu. $19 for chicken, $22 for New York steak and $24 for rib eye. Darla and I both had the rib eye and they served lamb stew, steak soup, bread, green salad, beans, french fries, beef tongue, wine and our main course followed by ice cream for dessert. The party was alot of fun and we had 20 for dinner. You can see the pictures above. They also serve Pecan Punch, which is a house specialty and made of pecan liqueur, a Toscana liqueur, a splash of soda and a floater of brandy on the top. Gasoline flavored Pecan brandy, I'd call it, but it kind of grows on you. We hung with the gang for awhile afterwards and then made our way off to the poker machines. I'd say we lost about $150 over the weekend, but didn't pay for our room, so it was a wash.

Darla and I have invited John and Camille to join us in Las Vegas in May and they are trying to work their schedules out to do it. Hopefully we can make that happen, but we will be there with or without friends. Jennifer hosted her Mom and her husband and her step brother who turned 21 on Saturday night at midnight. We talked to Jennifer last night and she sounded tired.

I had one of those "oops" moments at work today. I wore khaki pants and brought a leftover barbecued chicken breast for lunch. We have cheap Wal Mart silverware in our kitchen at work and the knife I was using broke in half, flew up in the air and landed right on my crotch covered in barbecue sauce. Nice. Luckily, I have the waterproofed pants by Docker and the sauce wiped right up. I was using a wet napkin and it didn't even dampen the pants at all.

Darla and I did sign our contract to have the roof redone next week. They are putting on a charcoal colored composition tile. I have also had a company out to clean the tile and back splash on the pool and have set up to have another contractor come out and do the staining of the deck surrounding the pool. He agreed to do it for $1,300 and my cost with just materials and sealant would be close to $700. He is also giving me a 4 year warranty against peeling or fading, which is worth it . What I want is to have the work done and forget about it instead of having to worry about it every swim season.

Work is going strong. Darla and I will take my number two underwriter and his wife to dinner at Henry's Steakhouse in the new RedHawk casino in Placerville on Friday night. I personally will be celebrating the close of the Modesto office and the success that Pete has been having so far this year. He has made a strong case as a superior underwriter this year and deserves recognition.

I had over 50 calls on the free furniture out of Modesto and settled on a start up company and a guy with a big enough truck to haul the stuff. I got rid of everything except three lateral file cabinets that I have to pass off this week. I will then do a walk through of the offices with the property manager and wave goodbye to Modesto. The one guy with the startup showed up first without any help. I set him straight that I would not be moving furniture that day. He walked across the street and hired two Hispanic gentlemen to help him move. He loaded up his Dodge Ram and drove over to his shop where another guy would help him unload. When he got back, his two helpers were busy moving equipment for the other guy. Ray was furious and started yelling. I told him to calm down and he apologized after getting an agreement to have the other guy chip in part of the $15 per hour he was paying his guys. I let them take everything and told them that the only thing I needed was a desk chair for my Modesto employee who works out of her house. I put it in the corner, propped my briefcase and laptop on it and when I finally took a break and went to the bathroom, the guy with the big truck had set my stuff on the floor and was gone with the chair. I would think in the scope of things that would be pretty bad karma to steal a chair from a guy who is giving you free office furniture, but what the hey.

Well, dinner is being called and I'm hungry. I had blood drawn this morning after a 12 hour fast and I'm a little low right now. I hope you are all well. Be good to each other and Dad and Shirley: "Bon Voyage." We'll call you Wednesday night. Ciao.

Rainy Sunday

The rain is not such a bad thing as the final round of the Masters was on TV and I enjoyed the show as Phil Mickelson won one for Amy, his wife who is battling breast cancer. Tiger showed up and exhibited some rust from his self imposed exile from the game, but played well, sort of as well as someone would with no real conscience. He proved that he may not be the best golfer right now, but he's still the best swinger. It was entertainment watching him struggle and try to control his notoriously hot temper. The CBS cameras only caught him swearing once and he seemed in control of his emotions most of the time. Phil was sort of lost in the shuffle with the focus on Tiger and he snuck up on the weekend and into control today with a safe and almost boring style of golf. He controlled his urge to go for the throat and only once tried a big gamble and that was on number 13 when he was behind a tree and his ball sitting on pine straw and he still hit a 5 iron 210 yards over the creek and onto the green about eight feet from the hole (he missed the putt).
Darla and I continue to work on the house and spent yesterday after my golf game driving around Roseville and Rocklin looking at roofs that have been done by our choice for a roofing contractor. His bid is less than anyone else's and that made Darla a bit wary. We were able to talk to a couple of the homeowners and get their feedback on the construction work and cleanup and have so far heard good things. I will check the Contractor's State Licensing Board and see if he has had any complaints against him, but I think after our excursion yesterday we are ready to sign a contract. This last big storm of the season (we average an inch of rain in April and go down monthly from there) will remind me of why we need the roof done as shingles from the roof litter my driveway from the strong winds and our gutters leak in about three different sections. This storm is forecast to bring over an inch of rain to the valley itself. We will have a Premium Owens Corning lifetime composition shingle roof put on with ridge vents and upgraded felt and OSB, new gutters and downspouts and gutter guards installed throughout. I have so many trees that shed their leaves annually and I installed plastic gutter guards on the gutters about five years ago that have curled up and split in places. One section of the gutter split when the downspout clogged a few years back and I used a welders glue to put it back together, which has held fine but looks like poop. I should see if I can get someone to come out and blow out the underground tubes that channel the water from the downspouts to the edge of the grass.
I am also getting bids from contractors for the pool deck. I had the boys strip off the old latex stain on the concrete, but rather than do it myself every two years, I'd like to get a professional to color the stamped concrete and seal it so that it lasts. I've had several bids that are all in the $3,000 range and involve stripping the concrete and acid staining the deck followed by a sealer. I have one more guy coming out on Tuesday that swears by the water based staining and he will undoubtedly be much less in cost.
Finally, I had a tile cleaner come out yesterday and inspect the pool. He will come out and take off all of the calcium and stains from the tile and backsplash and I will seal the tile and river rock when he is done. Darla and I are planning for Summer. We will not take a Mexico vacation this year and plan to spend a lot of time on and in the pool this Summer.
Next weekend we will be in Reno for a two day golf event. Darla and I will stay at the Silver Legacy Casino Friday and Saturday night and I will play De-Andrea in Sparks on Saturday and Wolf Run in Reno on Sunday. We have many of our friends joining us on this event. It is Bob Hand's birthday on Friday and we will find nice steakhouse to celebrate his birth. Saturday night we will get a group of about 24 together fro dinner at The Old Santa Fe restaurant in Reno. It is a Basque style restaurant and they bring out wine, soup, salad, bread, pasta, relish trays, more wine, vegetables, mashed potatoes, more wine, french fries, your main course, more wine, dessert, followed by more wine. All for $17.99 a person. I look forward to getting away with Darla. She will shop and do spa activities with the ladies while the guys golf. The blog will be back on Monday night next week as we will be gone and likely get back late Sunday. I will have pictures from our trip and I'm still waiting for pictures from Jennifer.
Tomorrow night I will take Anthony from work and we will go to a dinner with the Sacramento Kings served at their practice facility and then be given lower bowl tickets to the King's final home game of the season. I arranged a group outing this year and this dinner is for the group leaders to thank them for their support this year and I'm sure also to get us to sign up for another group event next year. My group is doing a Sacramento River Cats AAA baseball game in may this year and I'm not in charge of the fundraiser for next year so I doubt that we'll sign up for anything. The free grub and tickets to the game are nice though.
I went out and hit balls on Tuesday night. Woodcreek has $2 Tuesdays and the range balls are half price. While I was there I picked up some new golf shoes on a special size sale in the breezeway. These are $150 Footjoys called "Reel Fits". They had my size for $89 (one pair only). The shoes do not have laces, but a system of plastic laces that hook into a wheel behind the heel. You simply crank the wheel to tighten the shoes and pull the wheel out to loosen the laces. Old Man shoes!! They are great.
I played in our master's tournament on Saturday and shot 42+40=82. Kind of same old, same old with my scoring lately, but I had two birdies and shot a 6, 5, 2, 4 and 3 on the first five holes of the back side for an interesting scorecard. On the par three 12th i put the ball 37 " from the hole and sank the birdie putt ot win closest to the hole. i also won $38 in skins for my two birdies. It keeps me coming back, but I'd sure like to put up a score in the 70's soon. My last score in the 70's, a 79 in February is the only one in my last twenty scores. I range from that 79 to an 87 and most of my scores are between 81 and 84. My index is up to a 10.6 and I will get a 12 on both of the courses that we play up in Reno. I'd like to do some damage up there and maybe win a ournament for a chnge. I took 5th in my flight yesterday out of 22 golfers.
I also hosted poker on Friday night. I've been playing poker for over 25 years, some with the same guys in my group now and although I enjoy the fellowship, I'm starting to tire of some of the games. The guys like to play Texas Hold'em, which for me has been ruined by ESPN who show the WSOP nightly. I prefer to play cards from the cards in my hand and not community cards. I may need to take a break for awhile to get my interest back. Darla fixed Italian sausages with grilled onions and peppers for us Friday night and the guys loved it.
Well, that's it for this week. I hope you are all well. We went to church this morning in the wind, but before the rain started, and heard a sermon on going the full mile for Christ. The story was about Abraham's father who left with the family for Canaan, but stopped halfway on his journey and settled in Haren. A good reminder that we need to sell out to Christ at all times in our life and not be a lukewarm Christian. I hope you are all healthy and happy. Be well. Ciao.

Samantha Pictures

I promised pictures and these are cell phone shots from Jennifer. She will get us shots from her digital camera later in the week. I don't know why the first two pictures are coming out smaller, but I'm not a computer nerd. Look how long her hair is getting. She is lucky she inherited Mom's hair. It's beautiful.

Easter 2010

Darla and I have spent this rainy and cold Easter Sunday covered in blankets and reading on the couch. We were up for church early this morning and enjoyed the service which centered around surprises that were seen at the Tomb early on Easter morning. The surprises included that Jesus actually folded up his linens and bandages before leaving the tomb, a lesson for our children who leave their rooms a mess. Even Jesus stopped to clean up after himself. We also talked to Jen, who was on her way home from a trip to Lake Las Vegas and an Easter Egg hunt for Samantha. Samantha didn't get many eggs as the older kids scooped in and cleaned up, but she was able to find a few. Jennifer had hidden eggs (in plain sight) around the apartment this morning when Sam got up, so she had the fun without the competition. They also stood in line and got pictures with the Easter Bunny and Jen has promised to send those on.

Jen mentioned that she has a line on a job with a company that manages and maintains the recording and a/v devices for one of the courthouses in Las Vegas. Jennifer would be in charge of setting up and maintaining all of the devices in the courtroom and be on call daily for any glitches with any of the equipment. One of the main managers of the company will be in town tomorrow and will meet with Jennifer. The one problem is that the job pays barely more than she is making with unemployment and she would have to factor in the cost of child care as well. Hopefully she can negotiate a living wage and get the job. The nice thing is that it is a Monday to Friday job with benefits.

Darla and I are in the process of getting bids on our roof. Of all of the construction trades, the roofing business is the one most rife with fraud and miscreants. One of the guys that I'm dealing with works for a general Contractor who also has a roofing license. The benefit to me, according to him, is that they can paint my house for HALF the cost of the job when the roof is off. I checked his math on that by having one of Darla's Silpada ladies' husband, who is a painting contractor, come out and bid the paint job this weekend and, amazingly, it was the same price as the half price job by the roofer! We have about four more roofers who will come out and give us bids. So far we are looking at prices in the $10,000-$12,000 range which includes full gutters and downspouts and gutter guards over all of the gutters. I hope to get that job started within the next month.

I'm also still struggling with the stamped concrete in the backyard. I need to take a soy based paint stripper to all of the surface and remove the rest of the stain and varnish from the cement and then look at doing the acid staining. I will probably get Darla's Dad to help me with the job as he has experience with concrete and I don't want another mistake like the one I made last year. The best answer is the acid staining which reacts with the chemistry of the concrete and permanently stains the concrete. It won't flake or wear off and the only maintenance I'll have is the sealant.

Work continues strong and we finished March with our best month ever. We finished with a total income of $215,000 in March to break our record of $211,000 from last year. All of my underwriters had good months and we will go out on Tuesday and celebrate with a lunch at the Elephant Bar. I still have the office in Modesto for another month, but finally got rid of all of the files this past week when Pete and I went to Modesto on Thursday and met the shredding service. Matt and I had filled twelve bins the week before, but still had 200 some odd files left over. Pete and I took five more bins and got rid of those files. We also cleared out the remaining empty boxes and odd envelopes and pictures. The only thing left in the office now is furniture and I hope to be in Modesto one day next week to get rid of those via Craigslist.

Friday was Good Friday and although my company has very few holidays during the year, one day we celebrate (as a Jewish owned company by the way) is a half day off on Good Friday. I took Anthony, Pete and Matt golfing at a local military course, Mather Golf Course, on Friday. The course was built for the military, but taken over by the county when Mather AFB was closed ten years ago. It was cold and WINDY on Friday and we had a ball, playing the almost empty course in 2 hours and fifty minutes. I shot 83, Matt had 84 (and wasn't talking about it afterward). Pete shot 90 and Anthony had a 95. The wind was blowing so hard that we had to shape shots from left to right or right to left. When we were downwind, we hit some huge drives, but when the wind was in our face, we had to hit stingers. It was a blast.

I also took Matt, Boyd and Mel to River Oaks Golf Course on Saturday. River Oaks is in the little delta town of Nicolaus and is not a tremendously maintained facility. It is a challenging course and we played it in better conditions than Friday, no wind, but cloudy and cool. I shot 84, Matt 77, Boyd 78 and Mel 95. Next week is our Masters tournament at Diamond Oaks and the following weekend, we'll be in Reno for our two day Reno golf trip with the club. It's ALL GOOD.

Well, not a lot of news this week, just work and golf, but what else is new. Jennifer said that she will be sending us pictures of Sam from this weekend and I will add those when her talk becomes action. I hope you are all feeling renewed in your walk with Jesus and thankful for the sacrifices that HE made for all of us. Ciao.