Sitting in the hotel in Pleasanton after a nice dinner out to Gay 90's, a restaurant in downtown Pleasanton. John is in the Bay Area for a job this week and dropped Sam off today with Jennifer. We checked into the Pleasanton Marriott about 2:00 PM today. John dropped Sam off about 2 as well and we waited until tonight to get together with them to give Sam some time with her Mom before we crashed the scene. McKenny, Samantha and Jennifer walked to downtown Pleasanton, a walk of about a mile and we met them down there. We did a little window shopping (see the picture of Jennifer with the eagle head on) and then headed over to the restaurant for dinner. Samantha had spaghetti and we all shared a pizza made of chicken, pesto sauce, artichokes, garlic and feta cheese. It was actually pretty good and I'm more of a marinara and pepperoni guy.
Samantha has picked up an irritating habit of not wanting to be photographed. It actually goes with her desire not to comb her hair, but Darla had to negotiate every picture that we got tonight. We are picking her up tomorrow at noon from her YMCA camp. It is her first day of a week long camp and Jennifer thought it would be smart to have her meet her fellow campers before we picked her up.
The pictures above are of Sam with Jennifer's neighbor's rabbit, who they take for a walk on a leash. A little weird. Sam saw the rabbit and ran upstairs to get her stuffed animal. The neighbors are from New York and apparently see nothing odd about having a rabbit on a leash. The other pictures are from our visit last night. We finally got Sam to pose for a few pictures by bribing her with ice cream. There is a shop in Pleasanton that sells organic ice cream in organic cones. Even Darla could eat the ice cream without guilt and it had little to no impact on her blood sugar level.
We will take Samantha out shopping for a school outfit. She starts Kindergarten on August 26th. Jennifer should be moved back to Las Vegas by the first of September. She has the job offer, acceptance and has passed the background check and drug tests. She is just waiting for a start date.
My crew at work will have their annual barbecue on Saturday. I am buying the hot dogs and hamburgers, but will not join them this year. Jennifer, Samantha and McKenny are coming up to Roseville on Saturday and we will hang out in our pool an then have a nice tri tip barbecue dinner. I could have had them come along to the swim club and hang out, but it isn't really fair to them to have my attention on the staff. I know the gang will have a better time without me. They will be able to relax more and not worry about the boss looking over them.
I have one of our carriers from Arizona coming in on Thursday this week and they will spend the entire day in my office rolling out a new product. Actually it is an enhancement to an existing artisan contractor program. About 60% of what I write in my office is artisan contractor business, so hopefully this will be a big addition to our business. The Assistant Branch Manager from San Francisco will come over and spend the day in my office as well. He is in the top three of underwriters in the country in production and it will be nice to have him here to hopefully rub off on the staff. The following week I will host our monthly budget lunch and we are having one of the local food truck companies come out and feed the staff. One of my underwriters is a big foodie and he suggested Drewski' s for our lunch.
My boss is in Denver this week at an owner's meeting for one of our carriers. This is the meeting where our CEO gets his contingency check and it is usually over ten million dollars. He will be in a good mood this week. I kind of wish he was coming out to see us afterward.
Believe it or not, I took a week off from golf this weekend and Darla and I worked on the raised flowerbed above the pool. We have African daisies in the bed surrounding the sego palms. They are a riot of purple in Spring, but the harsh Summer temperatures brown out the leaves and vines and it always ends up looking dead in Summer. I finally convinced Darla to take out the African daisies and we brought in 24 cubic feet of topsoil and tore out all of the daisies and put in some drought tolerant butterfly plants that bloom purple all summer. It was an expensive change, but one that I thought we needed to do. Darla loves the plants in Spring, but these plants will look nice ten months out of the year and the African daisies look nice for about two months. We will plant some African daisies in the flowerbeds along the front of the house that get a lot more shade. We transplanted a few of the daisies to the front, but I don't think they will make it. We'll see.
Monday Morning
Darla and I were up at 8:30 this morning, showered and went down to enjoy the breakfast buffet that was included with our stay. We are staying at the Pleasanton Marriott on Silpada's dime. Darla won two nights at a Marriott with breakfast and this is one of the nights that we are using. We will head over at noon, meet Jennifer and get Sam and her car seat. We will have lunch and then do a bit of shopping before heading back to the apartment and an afternoon by the pool. I am looking forward to a fun day with my granddaughter.
Dad and Shirley will be in Vegas in late September and invited us to join them. I'd like to go, but with Darla's situation with work, we may have to pass. She will meet with her boss this week and has every intention of giving her notice. It will allow her to concentrate on her Silpada and I know that she will be very successful with that. She was pretty successful part time, she will be the bomb fulltime. The problem with that is that the benefits will shift to me and our income on my check will go down. We will lose her salary and that will eventually be supplanted by Silpada and her social work gig in Sacramento. The issue is the short term and the fact that our bills won't stop. We'll see if we can get away. Right now, we have trips to Tahoe for Neil's birthday the end of this month and a trip to Monterey in October for our annual golf trip and our week vacation in Nuevo Vallarta in December. The issue besides benefits is her retirement that was being partly funded by her firm. All of that will come to a halt as well. It will be a big adjustment, but as Darla says, "perhaps if I quit my job, I'll actually be there to enjoy your retirement with you".
Well, that is it for this week. we will try to sneak a comb through Samantha's hair and the camera out to take a few pictures before we head back home tonight. I hope you all have a great week. Ciao.
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