A couple of fun pictures of Miss Samantha from her Mommy (taken from her Facebook). I call them Sammy the Birdwatcher. I don't know what she was doing, but it seemed to fit. The other picture is of the guys from BW. From the left, my Underwriting Manager Pete, my management Trainee Matt, my Rainmaker and Top Producer Anthony and myself. We played in an Enterprise Rents golf tournament on Thursday and came in tied for third with a 63 in a scramble format. It was a good team building event for us and we saw quite a few agents in attendance as well.
I took the staff out to lunch in Roseville at the Spaghetti Factory on Friday (for our Budget Busting in August) and then we toured the proposed new building and office suite in Roseville afterward. There are still a few grumblers and one or two that boycotted going with us, but I figure that the more transparent that I am in the process, the smoother it will go. I have the Real Estate Division Manager in the office on Friday from corporate and he will tour the facility and hopefully get the lease signed and then the TIB buildout can begin. We have to be out of our current space by December 10 and the clock is ticking.
Today was week 2 of the NFL season and I'm proud to say that I sat and watched the games on my DirecTV season pass and it cost me nada. I got on the phone with one of their "Retention Agents" on Monday and threatened to quit the service. He looked up my account and saw that I have been a customer since 1999 and that I have been an NFL Season Ticket subscriber for ten years. He initially offered me $20 a month off the $59 monthly cost and I told him "no sale". He then asked me what I wanted and I told him I sit and watch TV commercials with Deion Sanders dressed like a fairy offering the service FREE to new subscribers and I could swear he was flipping me off during each commercial. The agent ended up refunding $99 to me, giving me the service FREE for this year and giving me three months of HBO at no cost. I had to laugh as I will now be on the phone with them every year and at least get the service for a discounted price.
It was a little tougher to sit in the house and watch the games today because it was 95 degrees in Roseville. I turned off the games about noon, went out and washed the 300 and then spent an hour and a half dozing on a chaise lounge on the pool. I taped the Niner-Dallas game and came in and watched that on a delayed basis after my nap. I couldn't believe the bad luck with injuries Dallas had in the game, from Dez Bryant sitting out to Felix Jones popping a shoulder and Tony Romo cracking a rib. Tony sat out the third quarter and we fell behind by ten points. He donned a flack jacket and played the fourth quarter and lead Dallas to a furious comeback finally winning the game 27-24 in overtime. He threw for over 350 yards and two touchdowns in three quarters of work. Alex Smith on the other hand threw for less than 200 yards in the entire game. The Niners will not give up on this guy, who has been their QB for 7 years and is a joke in the league now. He was chosen as the first overall player taken in the 2005 draft. That same draft produced Aaron Rodgers, the reigning Super Bowl MVP QB of the Green Bay Packers (and a local NorCal kid), not to mention DeMarcus Ware and Marcus Spears of the Cowboys who combined for four sacks on Smith in this game of the six Dallas had. Other players chosen after Smith are Vincent Jackson of the Chargers, Roddy White of the Falcons and in the third round, the Niners best pick of that draft, Frank Gore. Alex Smith was a bad draft choice and the owners of the Niners are loathe to accept that fact. The rest of the league already knows it as not one other team showed any interest in Smith in the off season when he was an unrestricted free agent. For some reason this guy hangs on like a bad smell in San Francisco and it is doing nothing but tarnishing the memory of Joe Montana and Jerry Rice who played a LONG time ago. The Niners were last participants in the playoffs in 2002 when Daniel was 10 years old and David was 12. It was nice to pull out the win so I didn't have to listen to the boys crow about a frankly, mediocre NFL team.
I took a road trip to Nicolaus, California on Saturday with Boyd, Paul and Darren. We played at River Oaks Golf Club, an 18 hole track sitting right next to the River north of Sacramento. I played well on the front with a 40, but fell apart on the back with a 45 for 85. It is a challenging, but fair course and my driver was a bit balky on the back side as I struggled to keep the ball in play. Next week I will play in the Diamond Tournament over at Diamond Oaks. I will try to get out to the driving range this week and work the kinks out of my driver as I am pulling the ball left right now and it is frustrating.
We are quick approaching our trip to Lake Tahoe with Dad and Shirley and will be there in two weeks with Neil and Lilly as well. I look forward to getting away and relaxing in the cool mountain air. Neil had a recurrence of symptoms from his COPD this last week and was having trouble breathing again. I hope the high altitude doesn't adversely affect him.
Boyd's wife, Jo Robertson, is a novelist and has had her first two books published. I bought her first one on the IPad and I Books. It is The Watcher, by Jo Robertson and is very good in the Stuart Woods, John LesCroart mode. I have bought books authored by friends before and suffered through them, but Jo is very talented and surrounded by other authors who have helped her mold her writing into a very entertaining novel. Her second book is The Avenger, which I will buy online and read after I finish The Watcher.
Well, not a lot going on this week, so this is short, but I will be back at the keyboard next weekend and then bring tales and pictures of our trip to Lake Tahoe the week after that. Two weeks after that I will spend a golf weekend with Darryl in Pebble Beach. Not too shabby, eh? Be well. Ciao.
No comments:
Post a Comment