Super Sunday

The game has just ended. A couple of observations. Jim Harbaugh is so tightly wound, he may have a coronary on the sideline. The Niners had a tremendous comeback, but they never lead in the game and with a defense as cocky as theirs, they averaged giving up 30 points a game in the playoffs. Frankly, I'm not impressed. Another observation, if they can make it to two more Super Bowls, they'll be tied with Dallas at 8. I have a number of Niner friends that had given up on the team in the third quarter. Not cool. They are all acting like they hung in there, but I have Facebook account and can count the negative comments from these guys on their own team. Frankly, I didn't have a dog in the fight and was pleased to win $150 in pool money, all in the first half. I had 4 Ravens and 9 Niners for the Final with 11 seconds remaining  with the score 34-29 Ravens, when the Ravens gave up an intentional safety. A smart football move, but it cost me $125. Final score 34-31.

The commercials were generally lame, including the Budweiser commercial with the foal. Not impressed. The old folks breaking out of the retirement home to have a rage was kind of funny, but why was it in Spanish? Apparently Taco Bell wanted to reach Obama's voter base or something. The halftime show was excellent and Alicia Keys was so good at the National Anthem. Wow.

Again, the game was good and could have gone either way. If Alex Smith had been the QB, they wouldn't have been in the Super Bowl to begin with, but they definitely wouldn't have come back. It wouldn't have been good for me to be around Niner fans during the game, so Darla and I hung out together today and we had fried cheese, potato skins, chips and pizza. Now, back to the diet. I wanted my friends who are Niner fans to enjoy the game. There is a silver lining for them and it is this Kaepernick kid. He is the real deal, but the pistol formation causes him to take a lot of unnecessary shots. Even when he hands the ball off, he gets blasted by a defender, which is legal, especially if he is carrying out the fake well enough. Guys like RG3 and Vick are small, but this kid is 6'6" and 245 pounds. He'll be able to take the pounding for awhile, but concussions ended Steve Young's career early.It's only a matter of time. I watched the Phoenix Open from Scottsdale up until about 2:45 and then Darla and I went in the spa for about twenty minutes before watching the game.

I played golf on Saturday and it started out really cold and cloudy. The day started out wrong when I pinched my left ring finger in my golf cart when I was setting it up. You can see the damage in the picture above. I put on my Facebook that I was looking more and more like my Dad every day and he responded with something about his middle finger. My finger is swollen and really sore because the tissue can only swell so much under the nail, which causes pressure. I was really affected by it early in the round and shot 44 on the front side. I finally worked it out to take my ring finger on my left hand off the grip of the club and shot a 39 on the back side. Hopefully, my hand heals quickly because I have two marketing golf outings (sports marketing) on Wednesday and Friday and then play golf with Boyd, Darren and Matt on Saturday. The following weekend I will drive down to Napa with Neil and Boyd and we will play golf with Bob who moved to San Jose last year.

On March 3rd Neil has set up golf with three foursomes at Silverado in Napa. After that, eight of us will drive up to Healdsburg and spend the night at a resort at Windsor Country Club and play the course on Monday. I enjoy the golf trips with the guys. It is always fun. Of course, April is Jenny's wedding.Fun times ahead. Darla is off to Las Vegas in February and Kansas City in both April and May with Silpada.

You can see pictures of Darla and I out to dinner on Saturday night. We went to church and then to dinner at Suede Blue, a new restaurant in Roseville. We went to celebrate Darla's big bonus with Silpada. They had an incentive that ran for six months and Darla hit the top of the incentive and will receive $15,000 which she will use to pay off some of the credit card bills she has racked up with her business. I'm very proud of her.

My office again had a stellar month in January. We were up 15% from 2011 to 2012 and I was hoping to come in with about a 10% increase this year. We finished the month on Thursday up 26% and were number three out of 47 offices in the US and Canada for growth. I turn 56 in a month and I am absolutely riding this wave at the moment. I turn another producer loose in February and I'm hoping he can help us continue on our growth plane. Ajay is 23 years old and a graduate of UC Berkeley in Business Administration. he is of Indian descent and he plans to go after some of the over 1000 Indian insurance Agents in California. Agents from India are notoriously loyal to working with other Indian business people. Ajay will play that card and become the wholesaler of choice to those agents. I've told him to work with our companies to put together some hospitality insurance programs because many Indian businessmen own hotels and restaurants, including Ajay's own father, who is an innkeeper out of state. Good times ahead.

Well, it is a short blog entry this week, but the Super Bowl ended late due to the power outage at the Superdome. I hope everyone is doing well. Jennifer will be back in Vegas this week and beginning the process of trying to get Samantha to join her here in California. Pray for what is best for Samantha in this situation. Ciao.