Late June = HEAT in Roseville, CA!

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The Heat is on in Roseville. We had 101 degrees yesterday and 103 degrees today. The pool temperature is up to 85 degrees and Darla and I spent a god portion of the weekend submerged in the pool reading and sleeping. It was nice and we had been looking forward to the warmer temperatures after a very mild Spring. We got it in Spades this weekend. I fixed barbecued pork spareribs over the weekend and Darla made our first potato salad of the season. We also have iced tea in the house again. Yep, it's Summer!

I was hoping to have pictures of Miss Samantha and Jennifer this weekend, but their planned trip fell through due to some scheduling conflicts with John. We are all off to Almanor the weekend after next and are hoping that they can come and join us. I think Sam would have enjoyed the pool. Jennifer said she was looking at some pictures of our trip to Vegas the other day and Samantha pointed at our picture and said , "We need to see Papa and Grandma!" Yes you do, Sammy! Instead, I added a picture of the palm garden in bloom above the pool and the gazebo in place after the boys got it put up.

We were at church this morning after missing the last couple of Sundays and it feels like home. The pastor had a sermon on the "Biggest Mess up in the Bible: Lott." His message was about how you can lose everything you love by living a life absent of God. Lot lived in Sodom and didn't realize that the sexual immorality around him was wrong. He took two angels into his home and when the townsmen appeared at his door and told Lott to hand over the two men so they could have sex with them, he instead offered his two virgin daughters in their place. The angels ended up destroying the city and all it's inhabitants and let Lott and his family go free, but his wife turned back to Sodom and was turned into a pillar of salt. Pastor told a descriptive story of how a Sunday School teacher was attempting to tell his young class about the vagaries of sin. He took four mason jars and added alcohol to one, burning cigarettes to another, pure chocolate to another and rich soil to the fourth. He then added worms to the jars. As he went back to the jars and opened them, the worms in the alcohol were dead, the worms in the cigarettes were burned and dead and the worms in the pure chocolate were also dead. The only worms left alive were the ones in the rich, clean soil. He asked the class what the moral of the experiment was. A young boy raised his hand and said, "if you drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes and eat chocolate, you won't get worms." Somehow he missed the lesson.

Darla is making phone calls to her clients about a retirement party for the 2010 line of jewelry that is being phased out. Her retirement party is Tuesday night and I have to make myself scarce. I plan to entice Matt in the office out for a game of golf at the local course near our office. Hopefully, he doesn't have plans or a softball game that night.

I have a new employee starting tomorrow, the replacement for Toni-Anne. Tuesday I will interview a young lady who is flying up from Torrance for an opportunity to join Anthony's team. She has experience with one of our competitors and is dying to get back to NorCal. She moved down to SoCal with a boyfriend and they have since split and all her friends and family are here. Hopefully it works out. Anthony and I have interviewed about a dozen candidates and with the 10 I interviewed for Peter, I'm getting drained. Anthony has two others that are on his list if this doesn't work out, but he said, "I have a good feeling about this, Ken". We'll see.

I played two games of golf this last week and I'm getting in a rut scorewise. I shot 42+42=84 on Friday and 42+43=85 on Saturday in the Diamond tournament. I'm hitting the driver pretty well, but having trouble putting my approach shots close to the pin and giving myself birdie chances. I had no birdies Friday and drained about a sixty foot putt for birdie on 16 on Saturday or would have shot even higher.

June has been an anomaly at work as our numbers are down. We wrote $185,000 in June last year and are sitting at $160,000 as of c.o.b. on Friday. I know I picked up a new $22,000 account on Friday that has yet to be booked, but the total is earned income, not premium. We are actually ahead of last year in premium already. I think we will get there. It seems the guys really turn it on at the end of a month.

Well, that's it for this week. We have the long weekend next week and I'll get to the blog at some point over the July 4th weekend. The following week we leave for Almanor. I hope you are all well and ready for SUMMER! Ciao.

Lots of golf tournament, not much golf for me, though!

I just got back from spending my late morning and early afternoon marshaling a junior golf tournament. Initial impressions: 1. These guys are good. There was a junior golfer aged 12 that shot a 68 today. The low round was a 67 shot by a 17 year old who plays high school golf for Clovis West High School in the Fresno area. 2. These kids need to bone up on the rules. I spent most of my day at the par three 12th hole and had about 15 rules decisions. The water hazard is a yellow lateral hazard and the kids were completely confused on where and when to drop. I had one kid that had a ball that came to rest on the grass above the water but within the hazard line. He almost picked the ball up to play a drop, but one of his competitors said, "Ask the marshal." I said, what do you need? He said, "I don't know what to do." I said, "What are you asking me?" He said, "Oh yeah... for a ruling." I told him he could play the ball where it laid, but he couldn't ground his club. He yelled, "Oh, yeah, I remember!" Wow. I also had many of the kids that landed in the water and just teed up again from the tee box. It is an option, but they could have come up to where the ball last crossed the hazard and dropped within two club lengths of the hazard no closer to the hole. One girl did a "Tin Cup" and put three balls in the water before finally dropping one in the greenside bunker. She took a 7 on the hole. It's hard to Marshal because your tendency is to help them even if they don't ask for help, which isn't what we do. The younger kids have scorekeepers, nice folks who just want to help, but they give the kids all sorts of bogus advice. I watched one help a kid mark his ball and then take a club length relief from his opponents line and when she put it back used just a clubhead length. I stopped the kid from putting and asked him if he remembered how to remark his ball and he did. The scorer was ticked, but you don't want to help the kids by having them cheat. If he had putted it and moved to the next hole, it would have been a two stroke penalty. I had a good time today, but I'm exhausted.

Yesterday we spent the day at the US Open at Pebble Beach. One of my agents called me on Friday afternoon and asked if I'd be interested in tickets to the US Open's final round on Sunday. I was. He has a 7 year old son and his wife didn't think the son would enjoy spending the day at Pebble with his Dad. Apparently, she was under the impression that Sunday was Kid's Day. Hey, more of the good stuff for us. Darla was a trooper and agreed to join me for Saturday night in Salinas and Sunday at the golf course in Pebble Beach. My agent was getting the tickets from one of his companies (a quasi competitor of mine) and he set up for me to meet the marketing rep in Roseville and pick up the $150 tickets from him on the ruse that the agent and I were going to the event together. He called me at work this morning and asked if he enjoyed himself, where we setup, which groups we watched, etc. I think he was anticipating a call from the marketing rep and wanted his cover story. Darla and I stayed at the Salinas Valley Inn, a Best Western property and enjoyed our time away together. We ate breakfast at the Black Bear Inn, a favorite restaurant in the Carmel area and the first restaurant that Samantha ever went to as a baby, when we visited Vegas after she was born. The transportation was well thought out with buses leaving the Fort Ord military camp where we parked and making the fifteen minute run to the course. The transportation was shorter than at Torrey Pines when the parking venue was the San Diego sports complex, a thirty minute drive away.

Darla and I wandered the resort a bit and checked out the 18th and 17th, sitting in the stands at 17 and watching the golfers try to hit the toughest hole on the course, a 220 yard par three to a ridiculously small green. We then watched at number four, the short par four and number 6, the short par five where a 2 was recorded Sunday. We walked over to number 14 and watched the groups try to navigate the small undulating green on that par five and finally settled in the sun on the stands at number 15, a downhill par four where we watched about twenty groups move through. At one point a small plane flew over carrying a banner that read: "Tiger: Are you my Daddy?" Funny stuff. We finally gave up about five thirty with Tiger and Phil's groups still two groups behind and the crush of humanity weighing on us. We walked to the merchandise shops and bought some souvenirs ( a shirt, balls, hat and towel) and listened to the final four holes on ESPN radio. It was a great event and I'm glad we went. We got home about ten last night exhausted and somehow better for the experience.

Darla managed to somehow blow a circuit in our room on Saturday morning by plugging in a blow dryer. All of the lights went out when I was "deep in thought" in the bathroom. We had to call the front desk and have them trip the breaker for us. Nice.

Jennifer is coming to visit this weekend and bringing young Samantha along. We look forward to seeing them, but don't know when they will arrive. She is still working out the logistics with John. We hope to have the jet ski up and running and take it out over the weekend. I charged the battery over the weekend and want the boys to see if they can get it going or if we have to take it into the Yamaha dealer.

The boys went over and saw their nephew, Lucas, last week and I added some pictures for the blog. He seems to be doing well. Both Alicia and Don are home right now, Alicia on maternity leave and Don between work gigs.

I did make it out to the golf course on Saturday before we left for Salinas and put a pretty good round together. I shot 42+39=81 and would have been happier if I hadn't double bogeyed the last hole. I stood on the tee and announced to my playing partners that I needed just a bogey to hit 80 and a par to shoot 79. Well, all great plans come asunder. I was hitting the ball really well and hitting my new driver long and straight. I will play with a couple of agents on Friday and I hope to be swimming in our pool with young Miss Samantha on the weekend.

David and Daniel are home and currently jobless, which is sort of a microcosm of the economy. They are both looking for jobs and if anyone has one, call either of them. We could use the income. They were able to get our backyard gazebo assembled and the tables and chairs moved out into the back yard for pool season. It was 94 degrees today and I think they made good use of the pool as well.

I have hired for one of the open positions in my office and hope to have an offer soon for the other opening. We will have Pete's new assistant start next Monday and she will have two weeks to train with Toni-Anne before she leaves for Switzerland.

Well, short and sweet, but I didn't get home until 8:00 PM after helping with the scoring at the tournament and then doing cleanup. Darla and Daniel took a walk and are exchanging "the Book of Eli" for another Blu Ray disc. By the way, have I mentioned how great it is to have a whole house fan? The temperatures drop rapidly in the Sacramento area after the sun goes down. We open the windows and turn on the whole house fan and drop the inside temperatures fifteen degrees in fifteen minutes. Awesome. I'll write more next week. Ciao!

US OPEN

We got home about 10 PM tonight. I'll update the blog tomorrow.

A Quick Post before Dinner

A couple more pictures of Alicia and Lucas. I thought it only fair as she had the 20 hour labor shots in the blog last week.

Jennifer sent the picture of Sam to me on her phone. I didn't get the back story on this, but I can imagine this is them getting to the pool at the YMCA and Samantha making a beeline for the pool. It is incredibly cute and shows Samantha's personality. I also like her little Crocs and. of course, her water wings. With the temps in Vegas the last few days, I'd be running to the pool as well.

We had some HOT and WINDY weather the past three days with 90 degrees Friday and Saturday and the winds dying down a bit today and 95 degrees. I just came in from outside. I did a bit of reading on the pool, a bit of sleeping and then tended to some new wildflowers that I planted on Saturday adding some topsoil to the planting bed on the side of the house. I also built a small rock garden next to the shed, trimmed a few of the palms and bushes and then sprayed everything down for the work week. The house and grounds look so nice with the fresh paint, deck stain and the new roof.

We talked to Dad and Shirley last night. They were on a plane this morning, flying to Seattle and then changing planes for a flight on Icelandic Airlines to Racovich, Iceland. They will be in Iceland for ten days and then finally back home for the Summer. Dad was saying that he hadn't even put any fertilizer down on the lawn yet and finally got to that this week. I'm guessing he'll have a thatch of lawn to tend to when he gets back. It has been extremely rainy in Vancouver this Spring. I always have to remind myself that Summer doesn't officially start until June 20th. When the heat starts to rise, it is Summer. I guess Memorial Day is the unofficial start of Summer. When I was a kid, it was the last day of school that signaled the start of another Summer vacation. Dad also told us that Randy has decided on a Canadian vacation for his 50th birthday and we will all convene in Surrey the weekend of August 13th-15th. I will start to look for flights to Seattle for the Wednesday or Thursday of that week. David leaves for Rome on August 12th, so we will not leave until after that.

Dad had sent me a groping of pictures showing him trying on a size 28 suit coat on their recent cruise and I couldn't figure out why he was wearing such a small suit. It turns out that he took his suit into the cleaners to have it cleaned for the cruise and they delivered him a small Chinaman's suit when he went back to pick it up. Dad didn't realize it until they were on the cruise and opened the jacket. He had to buy some pants in Potugal to get through the cruise. Only Dad. Come to think of it "small Chinaman is an oxymoron.

Speaking of the end of school, the boys both finished their quarter at Cal poly on Friday and are heading back home tonight. David has to clean out his apartment as he won't be back in the fall. Daniel will keep his apartment over the Summer and be back in August. I'm hoping that both boys can find work this Summer.

My work continues to be a source of extreme fulfillment. We finished May with record results and June looks solid. I am interviewing for two positions and have one young lady meeting with Harvey this week at which time I hope to make an offer. She is a replacement for Toni-Anne who is moving to Switzerland with her husband. He is already there and she has to arrive by July 15th as a condition of his work visa. The young lady who is interviewing for the position is 24 years old and spent the last 5 years in England going to school at the University of Redding. She started out as a foreign exchange student and dropped out of the program after two week sand registered at the school full time. She currently works for her Dad's insurance agency in Roseville and will be a great addition to our team. I have several more interviews this week as we are promoting Matt to an underwriter position and bringing in a new assistant for Anthony's team. It is an exciting time at work and we have to stay ahead of staffing to keep the ball rolling.

I played golf three times this week. My team shot a15 under par 57 at the insurance tournament on Monday and took THIRD place in the tournament. We won $50 gift cards to California Pizza Kitchen and Darla and I met Bob and Vicki there for dinner on Friday night. Wednesday, all of my frustrations lifted in my golf game and I shot a 39+40=79 at the very difficult, hilly and tree laden Apple Mountain Resort up in Camino, CA. The ball was jumping off the face of my club. I had two birdies and no double bogeys in the round and it was fun. Reality however, came in the form of a 40 MPH gusting windstorm on Saturday as our golf club made the trek up to the Lincoln Hills course in Lincoln and played the Hills Course. The course is designed with nine holes going away from the clubhouse and nine returning to the clubhouse. The win was at our back on the front side and directly in our face on the back. I shot 39+46=85 for a round that was the "tale of two nines". The wind was brutal and it was nearly impossible to reach even short par fours into the wind. I did birdie the number one handicap 465 yard uphill par four with a second shot that was on the lip of the cup. I prefer to remember the front nine and ignore the back.

I did get a new driver, a Callaway 460 Big Bertha which I put in the bag for the first time on Saturday. I'm hitting it really well and will sell my Callaway FT iq on e-bay. that club, more than any other helped to improve my driving statistics and made it possible to upgrade to a club that allows me to work the ball more. I would highly recommend the Callaway FTiz to anyone looking to improve their driving accuracy. Don't mind me, I'm just working on my e-bay ad.

Finally, I bought a new blu-ray DVD player last week on Amazon. I got the Panasonic
DMP-BD 65 Blu Ray player. I'm looking forward to getting a better experience out of my Samsung HD big screen DLP. The player even has an upscale feature for non blu ray discs that has them play with almost HD quality. I look forward to checking it out this week. I suppose it is my Father's day gift to myself.

Well, that's it for this week. I wish Dad and Shirley Godspeed on their journey trough Iceland, hopefully they packed gloves and coats for their Nordic adventure. Everyone have a great week. Ciao.

It's NOT Vegas, but the Heat is On in Sacramento

The pictures above are young Lucas Alexander and of the River Cruise we took with Colony Insurance on Thursday night. The picture of the boys is Peter, Anthony and myself. The white ramp behind us is the one that David designed when he was working for Hallsten. My assistant, Cora, is in the red and white top and her niece, Toni-Anne is in the red and white top. Connie is Gail's assistant and Gail was missing the shindig with some medical issues. The next to last picture also includes Cindy and Terri. Cindy is Renee's assistant and Terri is Pete's second assistant. The bottom picture shows Renee on the right. Initially only the underwriters were invited on the dinner cruise, but I asked our underwriter to include the assistants as well. I am very big on TEAM and the assistants are as much responsible for our success with Colony as the underwriters. It helps that we are on track to write over $4,000,000 in business with Colony this year, by far their biggest agent in California. The assistants in particular enjoyed the three hour cruise, the dinner and the open bar. It was a very nice perk for us and the only problem was that spouses weren't invited.

I mention the heat and we warmed up into the low 90's this weekend and the pool heated up to over 82 degrees and Darla and I were swimming for the first time this year. I played golf today in the 93 degree heat and it was nice to get back home and submerge in the pool. I just got out about twenty minutes ago and Darla is napping on our bed after spending the day in the sun. Jennifer sent me a text on Friday that showed the forecast for Vegas as 106 degrees, 107 degrees, 108 degrees and 108 degrees for Friday - Tuesday. Now THAT is HEAT!! I have finally had a chance to use our attic fan this year and it is awesome. In the early evening, when it is cooler outside than in the house, we turn on the attic fan for fifteen minutes and you can feel the cool air being drawn into the house. Very nice.

Darla and I had a day together on Saturday and we re screened the screen doors and Darla sanded and painted the screen frames and the slider door jams with a black metallic paint. It looks really nice and adds to the newness seen around our house. She was concerned with over spray getting onto the newly painted house, but she did a great job.

Alicia had her baby on Wednesday, an 8 lb, 1 oz 21 inch long little boy named Lucas Alexander Hochenadal. God bless him. Alicia actually stopped contractions on Tuesday night after getting the epidural and then started contractions again in the early morning hours of Wednesday. Lucas was born at 5:15 AM and finally got out of the hospital on Saturday after being jaundiced and requiring some special blue lights to get him well. He was turned in the birth canal and his forehead hit her pubic bone and he was born with a bit of a conehead and with a large red welt on his forehead. Darla and I went to see him on Friday night. Don and Alicia were in a maternity room, but Alicia was considered a "boarder" as she had been officially released Friday morning. Alicia still had a bed and Lucas was in a bassinet in the room. I'm sure they were thrilled to get back home as this all started on Tuesday.

Darla and I spent a good part of Saturday on the pool as we relaxed and read our books. It was so nice after all of the stress and mess we have put up with on both the roofing job and the paint job. I ended up spending $500 on 20 hours of work that the handyman did. The only problem I had is that part of the repairs were built into the bid I got from the painter. I asked him about it and was pretty steamed when he told me that the repairs were over his head and he had to call in a handyman (and that's my problem how?). IF there is a next time, I will use my own handyman and make the painter live up to the terms of the contract. He is a friend of Darla's via one of her Silpada gals (her husband) and I didn't want to make too big of a stink. I think this job was bigger than he thought, it took him longer and used more paint than he had anticipated and he was cutting his losses at my expense. Too bad, because the job he did is excellent.

I have golf tomorrow at Lincoln Hills Golf Course with the IBA Golf tournament that I am the golf chairman of and then have one of my underwriters in from Burlington Insurance who is taking some of us golfing on Wednesday at Apple Mountain Resort in Placerville.

I played today and continued the confounding good nine, bad nine trend that I've been in lately. I shot 40 on the front side and ran out of gas on the back with a 44 that included a 6 on a par three were I hooked the ball out of bounds. Bob continued his stellar play, following his 71 last week with a 73 today. He is on my team tomorrow and I look forward to having him drive the team.

Well, that is it for this week. I hope you are all well and living La Vida Cristo. Ciao.

More house pictures

Unbelievably, Jeff worked all day today with a crew of 3 and still hasn't finished the house. They have several areas of trim to get to in the front of the house and several areas of the base paint that need to be touched up. The trim at the very highest point of the house needs a second coat as it is white trim paint covering the cobalt blue from before. The job is spectacular. At this point, I think he'll finish sometime before Summer. That gives him three more weeks, I think I'm safe. The handyman waited for me to get his check today. He was across the street watching the kids play baseball when I got home at 6:30 PM. Luckily, I didn't go over and wait at the hospital with Darla (more on that below). He put in 20 hours of repairing dry rot on the house. I had several areas of belly board and siding that were soft, including an area at the base of the chimney that should have had flashing covering it. The handyman, Dave, put in a trim board all the way around the base of the chimney and also had to replace one of the trim edges up the whole side of the chimney. He charges $25 an hour and was here for three days, so we got our money's worth. He fixed all of the problems areas around the whole house. As soon as they finish, the house will look brand new. Well, sort of like a 60 year old woman with a face lift, but you get the picture.

Oh... Darla is at the hospital in Folsom with her sister. She has been in labor about 12 hours now (Darla's sister that is) and the last guess was she'd have the baby by about 9:00 tonight. I hope you are all well. Ciao.