Jennifer is Back in California

Yep. Jennifer starts her new job tomorrow. Samantha is back in Vegas for now and Jennifer is keeping her apartment there until she can get to court  and get her moved to California. Her job is in Pleasanton (that's the office), but she is in charge of facilities from the Bay Area to the Oregon border. The facilities are T Mobile infrastructure and Jen will be working for an Independent Contractor that has a contract for the facilities with Ericcson Electric, which holds the contract to build and service these facilities. Jennifer is a Construction  Manager and will manage the team of electricians that are working at the sites. I asked her if she'll be rolling up her sleeves and doing some of the work herself. Her contract only allows her to supervise the electricians and not do any of the physical work herself. It is a really good job and her new boyfriend, McKenny, helped her arrange the job. He now works directly for Ericcson and did work for the Independent Contractor that Jennifer works for. She hopes to get on full time with Ericcson in the near future. In the meantime, this job is a very high paying position that will allow her to provide for her and Samantha.

Jennifer and McKenny drove up on Saturday afternoon to drop off her two cats, who will be here until they get moved into a house. Right now they are looking in Santa Rosa, although they are staying at an extended stay hotel in Pleasanton for the interim. Darla and I took them out to dinner at Ginger's, a Hawaiian style cafe in Roseville. McKenny got right into the theme as he ordered loco moco, a Hawaiian breakfast delicacy made from rice, beef patties, two eggs and brown gravy. There is also Spam loco moco, that he was smart enough to avoid. McKenny lived in Hawaii for two years and even drives a car that still has Hawaii plates. he seems like a really nice guy and Jennifer is rather taken with him. They drove home after dinner.

Jennifer will come and spend Christmas with us as Samantha will stay with Jon and they are visiting his family in Southern California. Jennifer had Samantha over Thanksgiving this year. She will work in the Bay Area this week and drive up on Friday and stay through Christmas. Samantha's birthday is this Friday and Jennifer won't see her until the weekend before New Years.

It is back to a series of rain and storms. I played golf yesterday afternoon after being pushed out of the house for one of Darla's Silpada parties. We teed off at noon right behind Dave and Wes, our old neighbors from Padgett Way. Missy, the wife and Mom was at my house with Darla handling the party. I played with Pamas and Paul and shot a 42+43=85. The rain came in on the back side and was pretty steady by the time we finished up. It was nice to get out and stretch my legs and the price was right. $35 at Morgan Creek Country Club with a cart and range balls thrown in. I had a bowl of their three meat soup before I teed off and it helped to warm up my bones.

Thursday night was the annual sale and Christmas party for the Diamond Oaks pro shop. I went over and bought some golf gloves and another pair of golf shoes. For that purchase I received three tickets for the drawing and promptly won a new Burton Signature Cart Golf bag. I have a brand new Ping bag and so I put the bag on Craigslist Friday night. The bag lists for $159 on the Burton website, but I found it online for $89.95. I priced it at $50 and had someone text me almost immediately to ask me to hold it for him. He came by Saturday morning and bought it for his father for $50. A good deal for him and for me.

I also bought a new flat screen TV for the master bedroom with the money I got from the Wade Cable award. We don't watch much television in the room, but I do tape Headlines on Monday nights on the Tonight Show. Darla always complained that the 20 inch TV we had was way too small, so I bought a 32" HDTV for the room. I can see sitting in there more often and watching TV before we go to sleep.

The company had us adhere to a corporate gift for our agents this Holiday season and would not pay for each branch to purchase individual gifts. What they ended up with was branded popcorn tins with caramel popcorn. I would have appreciated the three type popcorn tins, but they were not an option. The issue is that the tins are $24 each and I could buy similar popcorn at Costco for $16. The second problem is that it was ordered so late that we will not even receive it until tomorrow. One of my underwriters was bemoaning that fact this week, asking if she should sing the Little Drummer Boy ("I have no gifts to bring, pahrump a pum-pum-rump-a-pum-pum.") We will be running around this week delivering the booty to our agents.

Darla has her Christmas party for her Silpada gals on Tuesday night and I have again been banished from my own home. I will ride this one out at the casino in Lincoln. Thursday is my Christmas lunch for the office. We will go to Sammy Hagar's Island Bar and Grill in Roseville. That is our friends and us from the Golf Club at Sammy's on Friday night in the picture above. We will enjoy lunch and have our annual gift exchange, where we pick numbers and then pick wrapped gifts off of the table and they can be stolen by the next person or they can pick another off the table. I have $45 per employee to buy gift cards. I end up buying most of them from Costco where I can get two $50 gift cards for $80. I'll get about 6 different cards and have four of each to choose from and they will also be able to steal the gift cards. It makes for a lot of fun and can test some people's patience.

It was Shirley's birthday this weekend and we have Samantha's and Janelle's coming up this week. After the tragedy in Connecticut this week, it makes us appreciate our friends and family even more. There will likely be a rush to want to institute gun controls nationwide again, especially with the deaths of so many innocent children. The problem with that (and you can't get liberals to understand this), but criminals don't buy their guns from gun shops, they buy them out of trunks of cars with the serial numbers filed off. If the public would just look at countries that have armed citizens, they will see that criminal activity is almost non existent. The reason that criminal activity is rampant with firearms in this country is that the criminal rarely have to worry that their victims will fight back.

The above says it all. Well, that is it for this week. Have a relaxed and safe week this week as we all prepare to celebrate the birth of the Baby Jesus, our Saviour and Redeemer. Ciao.