Excellent weather in Northern California

An interesting assortment of pictures. Samantha dressed up as Astrid from "How to Train Your Dragon". I had to look up the photo from the movie and it is a great representation of the character. I guess Samantha loved it. Unfortunately, she was ill overnight after Halloween. She didn't have too much candy, she just got a case of the flu at a bad time. Darla said that she could sort of tell from the picture that Sam wasn't herself (she wasn't smiling).

The picture of Barrack Hussein simply points out how clueless BHO is. He wants to add a Secretary of Business to his Cabinet, which probably more or less would come as quite a surprise to his Commerce Secretary. By this time next week the campaigns will be over, the mind numbing commercials will be mothballed and hopefully Mitt Romney is transitioning for his move to the White House in January. My hope comes from the closeness of the polls showing a virtual dead heat between Romney and Obama. That hope springs from the fact that the polls are skewed to mirror the last election and the turnout that the election had. The groundswell of Hope and Change brought out the Democrats and young people in droves. The complete and total disappointment of the electorate with the economy and with BHO's job performance will more than likely significantly lower the turnout. Some of those voters are actually part of the undecided and will likely choose not to vote for BHO. Whether or not they vote for Romney is immaterial as each of those voters that fires BHO will make Romney our next President of the United States. We only have  few days to wait and see.

This has been an unprecedented year for the Presidential Debates. That first debate that BHO whiffed on was a game changer and the swell of support that came in behind Romney will sweep him into the White House. That debate will be part of high school civics classes from here on out because of the fact that it legitimized  a candidate that was so far behind and convinced so many Undecided voters that Romney could be a real Commander in Chief. Everything that Obama has done since has reeked of desperation and the two almost unwatchable debates that followed had little to no effect on the groundswell that was built on that first debate. I sure hope that Romney follows through with a win, because I can't imagine another four years with the spending and Big Government that has been the the hallmark of his Presidency. I hate to see what Wall Street and the economy will do if BHO gets another four years to further bankrupt this country.

The fourth picture is of a lighthouse on Lake Erie in Pennsylvania during Hurricane Sandy. Even with all of the pain and suffering, death and destruction that Sandy wrought, it did bring some unbelievable pictures. The power of a tropical storm is something that is almost too hard to believe. The fact that this storm came onshore and ran into a low pressure system and turned into a killer super storm.

The weather here has been in the 80's every day with overnight lows in the mid 50's. It is supposed to change by the end of the week and our daily highs will drop into the upper 50's.

Darla, the boys and I will be off to Hawaii a week from tomorrow. We leave on Sunday night and will stay at a Park and Fly hotel in San Francisco within a mile of the airport. We will stay on the big island in Kailua Kona and spend a week visiting the beaches and volcanoes of the area.  The average temperature in Kona right now is a high in the mid eighties and lows in the 70's. Not too shabby.  I'll have a blog entry next week, but the following week will be late.

I played Power Hour on Saturday at Diamond Oaks. We teed off at 7:48 AM. I shot a 42+43=85. I'm still struggling with my driver. It is off and on and I'm mixing in my 3 iron on shorter holes. We play our turkey shoot tournament on Saturday.

We finished October at work with a 17% increase in profits over October of 2011. I am lucky to have such a great, hard working staff. We have been adding employees and we still have record increases due to the efficiencies that we have built into the processes at work. Pete and I interviewed a recent college graduate this week. She graduated in December and is working for the local Fox television affiliate. I am looking at her as a replacement typist for the woman who fired herself last month. It has been a fun run with the office over the last couple of years and with the young people I have working for me, I see even bigger things in our future.

I am working on setting up a Holiday Open House for our office this year. I have the help of our marketing department in San Francisco who are working on the invitations and name tags and my assistant, Shawna, who is working on just about everything else. We will put on the dog for our agents in early December. I plan to serve hors de oevres from a local upscale Chinese restaurant and beer, sodas, water and wines.

Darla is busy with her Silpada business. She is trying to get an incentive paid by year end that will help her pay off some of her credit card bills that she has used to build her inventory. She is also working to get another one of her girls up to a Star leader. Once she has three Star leaders, she will promote up to a Manager level. I won't bet against her. We are off to Oahu and Waikiki Beach in January on Silpada. She even kicked me out of the house today and I had to run over to the local casino to kill two hours. It is all worth it though. Next up in 2014 is Portugal!!

Well, that's it for this week. I will add a quick note next week before we leave for San Francisco. We had a sermon on Saturday night about Gratitude. A UC Davis professor did a survey on success and the common denominator that was found in successful people was gratitude for the little things in life and saying thank you to those that you meet along the way. Ben Stein said: "I cannot tell you anything that, in a few minutes, will tell you how to be rich. But I can tell you how to feel rich, which is far better, let me tell you firsthand, than being rich. Be grateful - it is the only totally reliable get rich quick scheme." So be grateful for what you have. Ciao.