Memories Linger

A mix of pictures from Almanor and some from Randy's families' visit with Jennifer. I had some of Samantha with them, but couldn't find them. Thank you, Randy, for including Jennifer and Michael in your dinner out. There is no bigger sign of affection that you can do for me than love my family and I appreciate it. I know Jennifer had a blast seeing you and her cousins. Samantha had a great time at the Venetian pool after she warmed up to you guys. She's a doll, eh?

Darla is still fighting the heat in Kansas City. I just talked to her and besides giving me too much information about the bodily effects of her roommate, she said that the temperature at 11:00 PM was 110 degrees. It is stifling hot in and around that whole part of the country and I am happy that our temperatures are relatively mild. Dallas has been having record heat with a month of days over 100 degrees already. We, on the other hand, have had about four days over 100 degrees. This weekend is in the mid nineties, the pool is about 88 degrees, and life is good. Darla will tour the Silpada factory tomorrow and their flight home is at 4:30 local time and after a change of planes in Denver (that luggage robbing capital of the world), will arrive in Sacramento at 7:30. They went out to eat at a barbecue place in KC today that was recommended by Don, Alicia's husband and I guess they stood in line for a better part of an hour to get into this place. She said the food was incredible. They also went over and saw a Harley exhibit that I think was part of the convention and her friend, Missy, wanted to get pictures of the bikes. Anyhow, she is back home tomorrow night and that is why I'm working on the blog tonight.

I slept in this morning until 9 AM and then after cooking a nice breakfast, spent an hour and a half detailing the 300. I got horrible water spots on it at the lake. The sprinklers run off of ground water out of the lake and it is dirty and left big rings on my car after it sat baking in the sun. I'll park my car across the street from the cabin next year and keep it away from the sprinklers. I used some rubbing compound and worked up quite a lather in the garage buffing out the spots. I then put another coat of Maguire's wax over that as the rubbing compound takes off everything above the paint.

The boys kept my car home on Thursday and put in a replacement EGR valve. The valve was $49 at NAPA auto parts and the shop wanted $380 for the installation and part. I offered the boys $75 each to do the work and they had it knocked out in about 2 1/2 hours. I bought a Chrysler 300 shop manual and they went to town on the job. I had one problem in that the "idiot" light on the dash was still on and when I Googled how to turn it off they said that it should go out automatically. What they didn't say was that it takes about 15 miles of driving for the computer to realize that the repair has been made. The shops have a scanner that can reset the code so it's out when you get the car back. One good thing that I found out about in all of this and will save me $90 next time the light comes on. I can do a "key dance" turning the ignition quickly from ACC to ON and back again about three times and the repair code will pop up on my dashboard. I have a list of the codes in the Chilton manual and at least will know what part is having problems. I only have 50,000 miles on the Chrysler, so I don't expect a lot of idiot lights going on for awhile anyhow.

I did pull a bonehead move when I took Darla's car to work Thursday. I was about five miles from home and turned from one main road to another and heard a clanking sound like I hit something on the road. I couldn't figure out what it was and looked back and saw debris on the road. I didn't see it when I turned. When I got to work I looked for my leftover pizza that I brought with me for lunch and it was gone. It then dawned on me that I had put it on the top f the truck when I retrieved my gym bag from my car. The sound I heard was the plate sliding off the roof and hitting the ground. When I drove home that night I could see the pizza and Saran wrap smashed by countless tires and the plate was ground into white powder. I'll say this for the city of Roseville, they had it completely cleaned up by the time I went to work on Friday. I was amazed that it stayed on the roof for so long, but the Explorer has luggage racks that blocked the plate from moving. It also likely blocked the view of the plate from other drivers as the Explorer rides high.

The boys took their Mom's car into the Transmission shop on Friday and when I got home Friday night I asked David where the truck was. He said, "still at the shop." They'd brought it in at ten and the guy said he couldn't find anything wrong with it. "So you just left it there?" He said, "Yeah, well the guy has to fix it." I tried to call the shop, but they were already closed. Darla will be without a car on Monday and I'll be talking to the owner Monday morning. David told him that it was revving high and slipping gears, which isn't true. Our problem is that the gear shift is really hard to shift from Reverse to Drive as the definition of the Neutral position is almost non-existent. They need to tighten the gear selector and have the transmission seat better in each position.

I swam for awhile this afternoon and even had a nap on the pool (all that hard work detailing the car, you know). I left the house at 3:50 and went to the golf course and played a round of golf. All of the guys were busy and I wanted a practice round. I got a cart, round of golf and a burger dinner for $26.10. The special starts at 5:00 PM, but I get an hour early twilight time and 10% off the $29 fee. I played the back nine first as their was a group of beginners teeing off on 1. I shot 40+39=79 to continue my solid play coming off of vacation. I finished my round in three hours and ten minutes. Hopefully I didn't blow my wad today as a 79 would give me a net 65 in the tournament tomorrow. We tee off at 10:30.

Work is going well and Peter is having his best month ever. I'm ahead of last year and we are already close to $200,000 in income and it is just the 23rd. We have a week left to book premiums and things are great. The move is getting closer. They are negotiating on lease space in Roseville (2 locations) and Folsom (1 location) as well as a potential purchase of a building in Gold River, not far from our current digs. It dawned on me when I got back from vacation that I had to completely pack up the file room in preparation for the move as we are paperless now and the new site will not have a file room. I ordered 500 boxes from our records storage group and set up to have David and Daniel come in starting Monday to load up the boxes and do an inventory of what files and boxes are going to storage. David told me Thursday that he has been called back to work for the rest of the Summer at Hallston Engineering, so I have Daniel coming in and he will work with Renee's son, Michael, who will be a sophomore at UCLA in the Fall.

Well, that is the news that is fit to print for this week. I will be back with another epistle next weekend. I hope you are all well and enjoying the Summer. I watched the Canadian Open from Vancouver today and it was 68 degrees and Sunny in Vancouver. as the announcer said, it was Chamber of Commerce weather. I'm sure if I talk to Dad he will say it was 90 degrees. It seems Surrey runs 20 degrees warmer than Vancouver proper.