Vegas Bound

Darla and I are off Tuesday to Las Vegas to see Jennifer, Michael and Miss Samantha. This is the deal that we got. $403 after taxes for 3 nights in a 600 sq ft suite at the Rio, two flights to and from Vegas and a rental car. Actually the rental car comes courtesy of AA Advantage air miles that were set to expire on 9/30. I was able to book a Hyundai Sonata for the three days that we will be in Vegas. We leave Tuesday afternoon and return on Friday night. We are looking forward to getting away and celebrating Jennifer's Birthday...today by the way...Happy Birthday Jennifer!! Darla and I will take the gang out to Maggiano's on the strip on Thursday night. We will have Samantha spend the night with us on Tuesday night and then take her to breakfast at the Black Bear Diner, sort of "our place" with her and the first restaurant she ever went to as a baby. It will be a fun trip and we will return next week with a passel of photos.

I talked to Darryl this week and he hasn't got his flights arranged yet, he had hoped to have that done this weekend. He has paid for his golf and it is non refundable, so he is coming. I haven't been able to book a house for our trip yet, all of the owners want a three night minimum, but it is the slow season and I hope to swoop in the last week and get a deal on a two or three bedroom place. I went ahead and booked a two bedroom suite at the Howard Johnson's in Pacific Grove to hedge my bets. It is about a block from the beach and one of the newer hotels in Pacific Grove. Almost all of the rental services have told me to wait until October 1st and check back with them as the owners will deal if they don't have a week booked out and it will be a slam dunk. I'm not willing to bet our golf trip on that, so booked the HoJo's and we can cancel that if we end up booking one of the cottages.

I took a road trip with Neil, Boyd, and Pamas this Saturday up to the foothills community of Valley Springs and La Contenta Golf Course. It is a challenging and memorable track with a lot of hills and twists and turns. So many golf courses are forgettable with one hole that looks like the next and it is nice to play a unique track like La Contenta. It also appealed to my cheap side as I was able to book a foursome with cart for $100. I put into play the new Exotics driver that I bought on EBay and so far the reviews are very good. I'm hitting it a bit lower and longer with more carry once it hits the ground. Pamas played in the finals of our Club Championship scratch flight for the second year in a row and I was routinely bombing my drives past him. I shot a very encouraging 39+39=78 on the course and feel like my game is really peaking right now. Funny how fast it can change. Boyd and Pamas both shot stellar 74s and Neil shot 88. It was a nice ride up with the guys and we had a lot of laughs on the 75 minute ride up and back. I really enjoy the road trips for golf and even enjoy more being able to come home mid afternoon and sink into the pool in the back yard. The pool temperature is 85 degrees and we did hit 100 degrees yesterday and today for the first time since early July.

Darla had Silpada events yesterday and today and did well at both of them. She was up and out of the house at 6:30 this morning and I slept in until 8:30 (Such decadence!). We did make it to church last night and then out to Cha Cha's Mexican restaurant for margaritas and dinner. I fixed myself a nice egg, ham and potato burrito for breakfast and then went out to wash and wax the car. When I had used the rubbing compound last time on the water spots, it left rings in the paint as I had used a circular motion when applying the rubbing compound. You are supposed to use a back and forth motion, so I stripped the wax and treated the surface again with the rubbing compound and then re-waxed the car again. It looks much better, but not perfect. I will add another coat of wax in the next week or so.

Darla just said that the boys and Becky are coming over to swim. Daniel and Becky fixed us Chinese food on Monday night and we had won ton soup, fried rice, sweet and sour chicken and teriyaki pork. It was a nice change. It's alot of work to make the Chinese food and Darla usually only does it for bigger groups than just the two of us. I've been eating good all week.

David just got here and I heard a huge splash in the pool and it was him leaping in and cooling off. He comes over about three times a week after work and relaxes in the pool after a hard day. He has enjoyed being back at the architecture firm in Sacramento and doing his Cad work with them. He has also enjoyed the extra do-re-me as well.

I put my Callaway 460 Big Bertha up for auction on eBay and paired it with a Callaway X 3 wood that I bought and quickly changed out for an Exotics 3 wood (thus the move to the Exotics driver). I guess I am committed to the Exotics driver now, but the extra distance is paramount if I'm going to get back into single digits. My handicap will drop back to an 11 on September 1st due to my recent hot streak.

We get back from Vegas late Saturday night and I have a tournament at the club on Saturday. Bob is coming in from San Jose and it will be good to see him again.

Our nephew, Lucas, ended up with a breathing problem last week and spent two nights in the hospital. He was having trouble breathing and they told Alicia to bring him into the hospital. They had to open his airway and wait for the constriction to pass. They aren't sure exactly what happened, but he is back to all boy and feeling fine again, so Praise God.

Well, I will be back at the keyboard next Sunday and I will bring you tales of Vegas and lots of pictures. Have a great week and God Bless. Ciao.

2011: A Good Golf Year

Well, after all of my concerns about my decaying golf game. I won my flight this year in the Club Championship and pocketed $140 in first place money. I am usually right at my lowest handicap of the year coming into the Club Championship and end up playing against golfers that are just a notch ahead of my ability. This year I was the golfer in my flight that was just a notch better than my fellow competitors. I beat my three opponents by a total of 5+3, 4+3 and 5+3 today. I shot 83, 81 and 83 and was NEVER behind in any of my matches. That fact alone allowed me to relax and just play golf. I was ahead by 4, 5 and 4 after nine holes in each of my matches and had my opponents on the ropes, having to play flawless golf to beat me. I'm extremely happy and this is annually one of my goals in my golf "to do" list every year. I want to qualify for an NCGA tournament, make the Rose Cup team and win my flight in the Club Championship.

This year I couldn't play in the Rose Cup as it conflicts with Monterey, I came in second in one of the qualifiers, I had a hole in one and I won my flight in the Club Championship. I think that qualifies as a good year, eh?

My friend, Phamas, the FBI man, made it to the Club Championship finals but lost today 6+5. Boyd and Matt were both out in the first round, but my poker buddy Steve won his flight today and we shared a drink over lunch after the matches this afternoon.

I am hitting the ball very well off the tee and hopefully won't screw that up. I just bought a Tour Edge "Exotics" XCG 3 driver on EBay for $80. I was watching a few auctions and noticed that this one didn't have any bids and made the minimum bid at the last minute and won the club. I have hit this club at a Demo day and loved it, but that is range golf, so we'll see. I am playing La Contenta Golf Course up in Valley Springs next Saturday and will bring both of my drivers and try it out during the round. It is newer technology than my Callaway Big Bertha that is technology about five years old and I want to gain even more distance and try to hit drives up with Darryl. What was fun about my last two matches is that I was out-driving my opponents by 50 - 75 yards and it is a huge advantage to try to attack a green with an eight iron in your hand instead of a hybrid.

My boss will be in town on Wednesday and we will take a tour of the Roseville office space. He hasn't seen it and my CEO wants him to sign off on the location before we move forward with the build out. He just got back from the owner's meeting at the Broadmoor in Colorado with Scottsdale Insurance with Alan. Alan agreed during the meetings to allow Anthony to come out to Detroit during the Manager's meeting in October. Anthony is one of the top producers in the company and has not visited Home Office. He will speak to the management trainees, do some socializing and dinners with them, visit all of our Home Office underwriters and managers and be able to sit with me at the annual awards dinner on the Friday night of the Manager's meeting. It will be nice to have him there and Anthony more likely than not will be running this branch after I retire. Pete and I are essentially the same age and Anthony is in his mid thirties.

Darla and I leave for Vegas a week from Tuesday and we are looking forward to seeing Jennifer and Samantha. Jennifer turns 31 next Sunday. Amazing, isn't it? We will see Samantha and hopefully have her spend the night with us on Tuesday night. Jennifer now works on Wednesdays and has Thursday and Friday off.

I had an e-mail sent to me last week and I think it is important enough to add to the blog. Not that I let my political bent show at all:

"Salary of a RETIRED US President $180,000 for LIFE
Salary of a member of the House/Senate $174,000 for LIFE
Salary of the Speaker of the House $223,500 for LIFE
Salary of the Majority/Minority Leaders $193,400 for LIFE
Salary of an Average Teacher $40,065
Salary of a Soldier deployed in Afghanistan $38,000

Do you happen to see where the cuts should be made to help
with our budget deficit and debt ceiling?"

I don't care what your party affiliation is, this is obscene. Nancy Pelosi made $193,400 and her face looks like that? What is the matter with that woman? When did public service become a wealth building exercise? When they started voting for their own salaries, benefits, private health care, private retirement accounts (opting out of social security by the way), etc. This needs to be fixed and we need to find a way to get young people involved in government again. Term limits help, but you get $174,000 a year for life if you serve one term in Congress? Anthony Weiner will make $174,000 a year for life? It is a disgrace and better yet, a damn shame. Career politicians are the slimiest of life forms.

Well, this is short, but there is a Dallas Cowboy game on the tube that I am taping and I want to sit and enjoy the game with a rum and Coke. I hope all is well in your slice of the world. Have a great week. Ciao.

California Dreamin'

We had our annual Summer Picnic this weekend for my office and we had a sparse turnout. We only had four people out of 20 attend from the office and I was ready to call this the last annual picnic, but we have so much fun every year and I've decided that I'm going to offer it to the group and those that want to attend will have a great time and the rest can go about their boring weekends. We had tri tip this year with carmelized onions and skewers of garlic shrimp. We had salads and salsa and a nice selection of desserts. Darla and I got their pretty late as she had (shocking!!) a Silpada party Saturday afternoon. Daniel and Becky joined us this year as Becky is in town doing classes at a local church for the next two weeks. I'm sure they offered these same classes in San Jose, but this is a good excuse for her to see Daniel. They played basketball and volleyball and Darla really had a blast playing volleyball. I played early on, but then some younger guys showed up who were doing jump serves and spiking at the net and I chose to sit on the sidelines and enjoy a cold beverage. I enjoy the game when it is just fun volleyball with other folks who play twice a year, but when it gets serious, I move on to other things. As it was, I had already played 18 holes of golf and it was my second day in a row of golf and I just wanted to sit and relax.

I went to an insurance education seminar on Friday morning at Empire Ranch Golf Club and then we had a nice lunch followed by golf. I went with Matt in my office and one of my agents, Gary, and we went rogue choosing to bypass the scramble format and just play our own ball. This was one of the worst tournaments I have yet played in. The owner of the restoration company is a non golfer and it was run horribly. We had a shotgun start at 1:15 PM, but he had groups of non golfers playing together and it took us three hours to play 11 holes. We finally realized that there were three groups backed up and a huge hole in the course in front of them, so cut around them and ended up playing 16 holes in just over four hours. We didn't turn in a scorecard and I interpolated my score for the round to a 41+43=84, a good score under the circumstances.

Saturday, I played as a marker for Matt in the scratch qualifier. He shot 79 to make it into the field of eight for the Club Championship. It turns out that my 82 would have also qualified 8th in the field and I would have been fodder for the current Club Champion, who is a 2 handicap. I played today in the first round of the tournament. This is our match play club championship and the only time all year that we play match play. Their are pools of eight players in each flight and $300 on the line. $140 to the winner, $80 to second place and $40 each to the third and fourth place finishers. I won my first round match against a guy who was once a 6 handicap and has ballooned up to a 13. I figured I was doomed, but shot a 39+41=80 to beat him 5 and 3. I chipped in for birdie on the first hole and took the first three holes to go three up and was never less than two up the rest of the round. It is nice to be playing some good golf after all of my trials with the game this year. To shoot 84, 82 and 80 on back to back to back days was gratifying. Unfortunately both Matt and Boyd were eliminated today in their matches, both at 4 and 3, so it is just me moving on. Neil is still in the hunt and Steve my poker buddy beat Rick who traveled with us to Mexico three years ago. I hadn't seen Steve since my hole in one in April and he wanted to buy me a beer. I was so dehydrated after the round that I just drank a Sports Drink with lunch. I will be on to the second round Saturday and hopefully the finals on Sunday. More, of course, to follow.

Very happy to report that Darryl will join us in Monterey in November. We will rent a house through homeaway.com, a GREAT service to put renters in touch with owners of rental dwellings in resort areas. I've already booked a home in Zephyr Cove for September when Dad and Shirley are in Lake Tahoe. Also, happy to report that Neil and Lilli will join us on that trip. Neil and Lilli met Dad and Shirley on our trip to Mexico two years ago. Neil will see Dad and Shirley and two weeks later see Darryl in Monterey. He is our brother from another mother.

You can see pictures of all of our dry goods piled up on tables in the house. We had a moth infestation in the kitchen and the guy from Clark! came out this week and sprayed. It gave Darla a good excuse to "thin the herd" in the pantry as it was beginning to look like we were a Mormon family storing up for a famine or something.

9:30 PM

Darla called me to dinner and we ended up watching a captivating episode of 48 hours that was 2 hours long and I realized when it ended that I hadn't finished my blog. I'll wrap this up and get back to the couch.

I am taking Thursday off this week and joining Boyd, Neil and Rick on a road trip to Rio Vista Golf Club up on the delta outside of Lodi and Antioch. Groupon had a $49 for a twosome deal a few months ago and we are taking advantage of it this week.

I have completely quit coffee. I've been on decaf for the better part of three years, but just had my teeth whitened and decided that I prefer white teeth to unleaded coffee. I've been drinking a lot more water, which is great for me.

Daniel finished up his work for me at the office this week. They completely boxed up and catalogued 5 years of files. They used 595 cartons and it took just over three weeks to complete the project. I will move the cartons to our file storage company just prior to our move in December.

As to that, it is like pulling teeth to get information out of our real estate division. I know that the Roseville location on Douglas Boulevard is the leading candidate. It is by far the nicest office building, although the location in Folsom is newer. That location is a lifestyle location and is a four story office building located in a shopping mall area with a movie theater and many restaurants. If we ended up there, it would be a big deviation from the standalone office buildings that the company has now.

Well, that is it for another week. Do a small nicety for someone in your life this week, just to tell them they are important to you. Be well. Ciao.

Perfect August Weather

The weather continues to shine in NorCal with a high today near 90 degrees after an overnight low of 57 degrees. Darla and I sat watching the Movie Unknown on Blu Ray last night and had all of the windows opened and the fans going and it was so nice and relaxing. I see Dallas has 107 degrees to 110 degrees for the next five days, Vegas 104 to 106 degrees, Phoenix 112-115 degrees. We will be 92-95 degrees over the next five days. Surrey shows at 73 to 76 degrees, a great place to be if you like it cooler.

The pictures above were taken with different effects on Darla's I Pad. She doesn't like the result, but I like the two of Samantha in a kaleidoscope and Samantha and Jennifer with the middle mirror images. It's just fun and the girls loved it. Things are good with Jennifer and Samantha as well as Jennifer and Michael. They went through a rough patch and almost split up, but they are together and working hard on their relationship. Jennifer turns 31 later this month. God, I'm old. I have four people who work for me that are younger than Jennifer.

My golf game has been in the crapper lately and with the exception of a two game stretch right after vacation, I have been falling down the stairs and feeling every bump when I hit. It culminated this last week when Pete in my office (on occasional golfer who was teeing it up for the 4th time this year) beat me 86-87 on Friday. Now, Pete had a career round, but it just shows the state of my game. I shot 46+41 to his 42+44. Pete generally shoots in the mid nineties, but was sinking long putts and even chipped in for birdie. Even Anthony had a birdie and Matt had 2 in his round of 80. When Anthony putted his in for a 4 on a par 5, he said, "Raise your hand if you haven't had a birdie. I used to like that guy. I had a tournament on Saturday and continued my sloppy play with a 47 on the front side and I almost walked off the course. My drives were all over the place and I was stubbing chips and sculling pitches. I three putted on number 9 for a double bogey six and almost walked to the car and left, but decided to soldier on. I decided to slow everything down and concentrate on technique, and low and behold I shot seven pars, a bogey and a birdie for 36 and a round of 83. I was thrilled with how I finished, but left a lot on the table with my 11 over front side. I'll see if i can carry that over to next week which is the start of our Club Championship.

It is looking like Darryl may come out and go to Monterey with Darla and I and the golf group. Neil has been pushing for Darryl to come out and he was looking at flights this week. I found a nice 1600 square foot home in Carmel overlooking the water that rents for $225 a night. It is a 2 bedroom, 2 bath home with a nice big kitchen, a wraparound deck two queen sized beds in the bedrooms and a nice location five minutes from the main street in Carmel. It would cost each of us at least $129 a night to stay in a hotel in Carmel and this will give us more room to relax. We can even have some people over after dinner on Saturday night if we want. Darryl hasn't quite committed yet, but I will call him tonight to see if he has worked out his flights. Hopefully it works out, but Cheryl will have to stay behind as she is working at some Halloween store in Colorado during that period. Our outing in October 15 and 16.

Work continues in a positive fashion and we added another $75,000 to our profit for the year in July. The Branch Manager's meeting comes up October 26-29 this year and one of my management trainees, Andy, will be in a three week class during that period at home office and will be part of the meetings. Also, I have set up for Anthony to come in and speak to the trainees about his success and how he managed to go from taking a very small book of business and building it to one of the largest in the company. He will be involved on the periphery of the Manager's meeting and will come to the awards banquet on Friday night and this time accept his own awards for production, new business and the like.

We leave for Vegas in three weeks from Tuesday. Jennifer now has Thursdays and Fridays off and she and Michael at least share one day off as his schedule is Fridays and Saturdays off. Darla and i fly in Tuesday night and will spend the day at the pool with Samantha on Wednesday while Mom works and then spend the Thursday and Friday with her and Samantha and Michael on Friday. I look forward to the trip.

So, busy times ahead for us with Vegas, Monterey, my Detroit trip in October and our vacation to Puerto Vallarta in November.

We will have our Summer picnic with my work group on Saturday. It is a smaller turnout this year and Darla and I are providing tri tip for the ones who are attending. Renee in the office will make caramelized onions to go with the meal and we will have appetizers, lots of beer and wine and desserts. We'll also play volleyball and basketball. The boys are joining us this year. Daniel is a contract employee and will be there for his second week starting tomorrow and David is just good at volleyball, basketball and eating tri tip, so it will all work out. I will take the gang out to lunch on Thursday to celebrate our budget busting from July. We will go to the Elephant Bar.

Well, that is it for now. I hope to talk to Darryl as well as Dad and Shirley tonight. I hope all is well with each of you and you are living a Godly life. Be well. Ciao.