Spring Fever

 Fun times ahead the next couple of weekends. I will head to Napa next weekend on Sunday and play Silverado on Sunday and Windsor on Monday, a trip set up by Neil Thomas. Silverado is normally $179 to play and they have a $74 deal going on right now, but we needed 12  players. Neil got it set up and we will stay over Sunday night at two condos at Worldmark at the Windsor resort in Healdsburg.

 

The following weekend, Pete and I fly out on Sunday for three days in Scottsdale for Spring Training. This is our second trip for Spring Training. Last year we were supposed to go, but Pete had his heart attack. As it turns out, the two years that we will make it are both years following the Giant's World Series wins. We are staying at the Painted Mountain Resort in Mesa and will play golf there on Tuesday with Scottsdale Insurance. Monday will involve visits with three of our main carriers, lunch and dinner. We were going to play golf Sunday as well, but want to see the Giants play the Milwaukee Brewers and that game is at 1 PM on Sunday. We may end up missing the baseball all together if we get another golf game set up on Sunday. I'd really like to go to the baseball game, but my counterpart in Phoenix wants to play golf and Sunday is my only opening.

 

I had a very nice week at work. I was invited to the Leadership seminar being held at Home Office in April. All of our KAMP employees, including Matt from my office, will be there and selected Vice Presidents from around the company. It turns out that I am the only non Vice President to receive an invitation to the event. I will fly out on Sunday April 20th and fly back on Saturday April 26th. It will be an intense week of training with a motivational group that specializes in leadership dynamics. We will spend Monday thru Thursday at the Henry (it used to be the Ritz Carlton) in Dearborn where we have the Branch Manager's meetings and then head into corporate headquarters in Farmington Hills on Friday. I hope to get promoted to VP this year at the Manager's meeting and this is a good first step in that direction. The KAMP program is our Executive Leadership program and KAMP stands for Kaufman Advanced Management Program. Each of the 12 KAMPs in the company have been tagged as future leaders of the company and many will become Branch managers and Vice Presidents and direct the future of the corporation. There will be six Branch Managers at the event and all of them are Vice Presidents except me. There are 46 branches in the company. I'm pretty stoked about the recognition.

 

I had my cancer pre op appointment on Thursday and I will have the surgery this coming Friday. They will take out the rest of the growth and about a centimeter around the perimeter of the growth. They will then suture up the hole in my head and I will return about three weeks later to have the stitches removed. They will test the outer edges of the scalp removed and if it is cancer free, I'm done. If not, I will return for more surgery. I had the option of having a MOHS surgery, where they take less of the growth and keep testing it for cancer until there is none left. It is a much longer surgery because of the testing element and can last up to five or six hours. I would also have had to wait about 6 weeks to get scheduled and I opted for this. If it had been on my face or neck, I would have opted for the MOHS, but on my scalp, I'm good with this and I want to get it over with.

 

I do have a business dinner on that Friday night (the surgery is 3:15 PM). I asked Harvey, who is Jewish, if I could borrow one of his yamakas that night. I'm afraid I'll have a bandage on my head and don't want to stand out. Harvey had a good laugh over that. The dinner is a crab feed fundraiser for one of our service providers and Pete and I will take the wives to dinner with us.

 

I had the two day NCGA qualifier over Saturday and Sunday. I have really been sore lately and the weather was cold and windy (well it was 62 degrees but felt like 50 degrees with the cold wind). I shot 44+44=88 for two straight days and Steve and I shot a combined 67+68=135 for the two days. The two qualifiers were at 126 and 127 and we finished in the middle of the pack. Steve played really well on Saturday with a 38 on the front side, but he stumbled on the back with a 47 and we finished at 31+36 for 67. We never got in a groove and I had trouble with the driver and holing putts. It seemed like my putts were forever on the lip of the hole and not going in. I'm hoping to loosen up this week as that is two weekends in a row that I have struggled with tightness in my shoulders and neck. Steve said it sounds like arthritis and I'm praying that isn't the case. I felt pretty good to start both days and just tightened up in the cold wind.

 

Darla got home Thursday and I surprised her with a juicer that I bought with my casino winnings. She was planning to go on a 30 day juice fast, but after researching the diet, it is not recommended for diabetics (which she is). Her new plan is to replace two meals a day with vegetable juice. She bought kale, celery, mangoes, tomatoes, apples, beets, cilantro, bananas, pears, oranges, carrots, cabbage, and several green vegetables that I have never seen before. I got her a Cuisinart Juice extractor and it works well. I had juice for breakfast the last two mornings making a juice today with kale, celery, carrots apples, pears and a mango. It was delicious and filling. We will have turkey tacos for dinner tonight, so she is staying on some solid foods. Her motivation for this came from the movie Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, a movie by Joe Cross, an Australian who was 100 pounds overweight at 310 pounds, on steroids and suffering from an autoimmune disease. Joe decides to take his life into his own hands and goes on a 60 day juice only diet and transforms his body. Joe Cross is  a tremendously like able Australian photo journalist and he chronicles his story over those 60 days. His movie has turned into a diet craze and Darla's boss is  now on it. She will do a modified version, but Joe Cross is pretty believable as you follow him on his journey and is now an acolyte for the pro juicer crowd.

 

Jennifer is in Vegas with Sam as I write this. She was supposed to meet with a lawyer to start the process of getting Sam to California. Sam misses her Mommy and is asking to move here with her. Jennifer has a fight ahead of her. She asked John if she could bring her to California for a visit and John didn't respond. I told her to leave that up to her attorney.

 

Well, that is it for this week. I will do a blog update the next two Saturdays as I will be in Napa and Scottsdale the next two weekends on Sunday. I hope you are all doing well. Dad sent me the picture of he and Mom in Civil War outfits and I decided to add it to the blog. For giggles. Also, I'm in the process of reading a book by Eric Blehm about Adam Brown, a Seal Team Six Operator, who died in Afghanistan. He was not involved in the capture of Osama Bin Laden (he died before the raid), but his story is inspiring. His life was spinning out of control and he had a friend whose father was a Seal operative and vouched for Adam in spite of his problems with drugs and the law and the rest is history. He was a unique man and a Christian. I am enjoying it immensely. Ciao.

 

 

A late addition that Jennifer posted on Facebook. She was out bowling with Samantha. Ciao.