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.