Indian Summer

After the oddity of our rain soaked Labor Day last weekend, the temperatures have once again returned to just over 100 degrees. It is the afternoon of the first Sunday of NFL games and I am back in from about 90 minutes out on the pool. The pool temperatures are at 82 degrees and it is tremendously comfortable in the pool right now.

Our party on Labor Day turned into dice and cards for the guys and jewelry and a gabfest for the ladies. The guys played 3-13 and Greedy and enjoyed some fellowship and the ladies visited for awhile before one of them asked Darla about her jewelry and it turned into a Silpada party. It did continue to rain off and on all afternoon and I ended up making shish ke bobs in a drizzling rain. It was a fun afternoon and a nice end to the unofficial end of Summer. You could have fooled me as it was roasting today.

Darla had a good friend pass away this Summer and she found out about it on Facebook. That is a horrible way to find out. She had another friend who she found out died by having a Christmas card returned stamped "Deceased". She had a feeling that he had passed away. He was 64, but in ill health with complications from Parkinson's disease. Jim was there for Darla when she went through her divorce and had stayed close to her through the years and they kept up via phone calls. It turns out that he had contracted an infection, went into the hospital, and died. He was divorced and lived alone and his former law secretary tried to inform all of his friends and invite them t the ceremony, but could not find her number or address in his effects. Darla had been trying to contact him and reached out to a mutual friend and she gave her the bad news that Darla got last night.

It will be a busy golf week for me this week. I will play Yocha De He, the Troon course in Brooks on Monday, I'll be in Redding Tuesday for a Golf day for the Shasta County insurance agents and brokers, and I'll be off Thursday to play in an NCGA qualifier. I qualified to play in that earlier this Summer. 12 winners from this regional event will go on to Monterey in October and play at Spyglass Hill. At least I can't complain that I'm rusty when I play on Thursday. I'll be ready.

I did play Saturday during Power Hour, the $35 with cart first hour of tee times at Woodcreek. They gave us several $35 coupons when we checked in and let us know that the greens had been punched on the previous Monday and Tuesday. I struggled early in the round, but got my footing late and shot a nice 41+38=79. Anytime I can break 80, I'm happy. I was especially happy to shoot 79 on sanded and aerated greens.

Darla went with David to his Mud Run on Saturday in Marysville. His company, Hallsten, signed up a team to have some Team Building and David joined in. They dressed up as superheroes and slipped and slid thru the mud and foam and had a great time. Darla stayed out of the way and stayed relatively clean, but enjoyed the fun from a safe distance.

Darla and I joined Neil and Lilly at Thunder Valley casino's outside amphitheater on Thursday night for the Sammy Haggar concert. By the way, I had mentioned that Darryl had an album "The smoker you get, the player you drink" in the last blog update and identified it as Sammy Haggar, but realized later that it was Joe Walsh and his band  The Barnstormers who produced that album. Haggar was with Montrose, Chickenfoot, Van Halen and the Wabos. He had reps from each of those bands with Mike Anthony of Van Halen as the most recognizable. The band Rival Sons opened the show and played about 45 minutes. Sammy came on at 8 o'clock and played for two solid hours. He had band members from his old bands coming and going onstage, including two drummers, but he never left the stage. It was quite a retrospective of his 40 years in show business. Sammy made a comment early on that was a bit off color, but spoke volumes about his show. He asked who had never been to a Sammy Haggar concert. He then said, "Well, folks you may show up as a virgin, but you'll leave a whore!" At one point, Guy Fieri came out on stage (they are big buddies) and handed him a big gun that he shot streamers into the air over the crowd. Our seats were right up front (front row) and it was a great way to see the show.

Work is going great. I took the staff to lunch on Tuesday and we had a new employee start who will be management trainee. I had the air conditioning unit in the server room go out and the temperature in there was over 80 degrees. I alerted the management of the office complex on Wednesday and they waited until Friday to let me know that they were not responsible for private ac units that are not part of the building HVAC systems. So what, it still needs to be fixed. It got left over the weekend and we had temperatures of over 100 degrees this weekend. The unit will be fine as long as the office environment stays under 100 degrees and it did. I will only be there for about an hour tomorrow morning before I leave, so will have to leave that to Shawna to follow up on. I will also be gone Tuesday in Redding, so it better get fixed soon.

Well, that is short and sweet. Darla went to church this morning with both David and Daniel. We had gone last night and it is the same sermon and service today, but it was a chance for her to spend time with her boys, so she took it. We have a guest Pastor, General Jerry Boykin, who led the Delta force during the Blackhawk down incident. He was also the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence operations under President George W Bush, he was involved in the hunt for Pablo Escobar in Columbia and also involved in the rescue operation in Iran in 1980. He will be speaking at a Men's Breakfast at William Jessup university next Saturday and we bought tickets for the boys to attend. Daniel will be here all week for a family wedding. I have golf on Saturday in our annual Invitational. I hope you all have a great week and continue to appreciate all that the Lord has provided for us. Ciao.