Yep. Rain has come to the valley. The Pineapple Express rode into town on Wednesday and we have had 5 days of off again, on again rain with most of the accumulation coming right over the weekend and washing out any plans I had for golf. We really need the rain, but we need it Monday thru Friday only. The weather has been so beautiful that we have trees in bloom and the rain will cause some of those trees to lose their buds and hopefully go back into a winter snooze before budding once again this Spring. To further complicate the process, the forecast is back to dry and temperatures back in the 70's by next weekend. Along with this storm came snow that has plagued Portland this weekend and over a foot of snow up in the Sierra. This late season storm won't do much to soften the blow of the drought here, but we have enjoyed the 2 and a half inches of rain we received. I had to cancel a trip to Darkhorse in Auburn that we were going up to play on Saturday. It was windy and raining and we smartly opted for a spot on the couch watching the Pebble Beach.
I have watched about an hour of the Olympics so far and it just can't hold my interest. I avoided the Opening Ceremony like the plague as it such an overhyped and mindless display of excess. I admit I watched the ceremonies from Vancouver, but was wholly unimpressed with the gaudy over production of a simple amateur sporting event. The Soviet Union is a repressionistic regime that does not believe in human rights and I wanted nothing to do with it. Some of their qualities I kind of like in that they provide access to health care, adequate nutrition and both basic education and employment. It is the tyrannical style of government that I dislike. When government provides all of these things, the citizens become wholly dependent on the government and are vulnerable. This is what Obama is doing to the United States right now. Interesting that there was a HOAX that came out that the man responsible for the Olympic Ring mishap was found dead one day after the Opening ceremonies. The story was that his body was found badly mangled with multiple stab wounds, but the officials say they don't expect foul play. The fact that people believed it says something about the country that they are in.
You see pictures above of Darla from her Christian Women's conference this weekend. She was there Friday and Saturday and stayed overnight Friday. They did a Sister Act bit where they all started out in the audience and stood up singing and went to the stage where they donned robes and sang several songs. Darla was in her element there.
She is off now at her monthly Silpada team meeting at a restaurant in Granite Bay. I woke up this morning with a stiff back and suffered through church before returning and spending most of my day in a recliner. I did get out and drained water from the pool for a second time today as it was running dangerously close to the top of the tile. I also handled the chemicals in the spa and swept up some of the overflowing bark from the flowerbed in front of the pool. It was quite a gully washer that we had and of course I had a couple of clogged downspouts. I had gutter guards installed over the gutters when I had the roof redone on the house a couple of years ago, but with so many trees surrounding my property even the small leaves and debris that hit the roof end up in the gutters and a big rain will carry all of that to the downspouts and clog the opening. We had a couple of spots where the water was careening over the top of the gutters, but it was too windy and wet to get out and fix the problem. That will be a task for next weekend in the 70 degree sunshine.
We continue on our study of the ten commandments at church, a series that Pastor Rick calls Love Carved in Stone. He quoted Robert Fulghum, the author of "All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten". The author listed 11 things and these are things we should all know and follow as adults:
1. Share everything.
2. Play Fair
2. Don't hit people
4. Put things back where you found them
5. Clean up your OWN mess
6. Don't take things that aren't yours
7.Say you're SORRY when you hurt someone.
8. Wash your hands before you eat
9. Flush
10. Live a balanced life with both hard work and play mixed in
11. Take a nap every afternoon
Now, if we just followed these rules, the world would be a better place.
I had an interesting week of work. One of my rising stars came to me on Wednesday and told me that he had been approached by Anthony (my ex employee) and they offered him twice his salary to come to work for them. He gave me his letter of resignation. I immediately got on the horn with Harvey and we began to formulate a plan to keep him. Frankly, there are probably five employees in my office that I would do this for and he is one of them. We worked out the details and presented it to him as a take it or leave it counter offer. I told him that I needed a commitment from him to stay and that we would not get into a bidding war to keep him. He agreed and we shook hands on it. Anthony's company came back with an offer at 3 times his salary, but true to his word he stayed. There is no guarantee that we will keep him long term, but it just goes to show you that when you have a successful business your competition will go after you and try to steal your success. I sat down with my underwriter and told him that when the money gets that crazy, look out. I know this company had five years to pay back their venture capitalists and they are two years into this now with not much to show besides a tremendously high overhead and no profit. My guess is that they are trying to land people to bring in premium and then will sell the company to someone like my boss who would then offer the employees a reasonable salary in a "take or leave it" fashion. I didn't need the stress this week, but it was great to be able to tweak Anthony after all of the grief he has caused me.
I really want to pick up the phone and let Anthony have it, but Harvey told me to wait. At some point Anthony is going to need my recommendation and he isn't going to get it. He never finished college and when he was in school studied IT and not business. He doesn't understand the concept of tact, loyalty or honor as a business person and it will come back to haunt him at some point. In the mean time, stay away from my staff and go out and develop your own talent!
I received my revised budget for 2014 and it is set at $26,750,000. When I took the office over in 2004, we finished the year just under $8,000,000 and lost over $400,000. Last year we wrote $22,700,000 and made a profit of $1,200,000. The increase is 18% and we are coming off a year where we increased premiums by 25%. It is going to be tremendously difficult to reach our budget, but we are game to try. The budget I proposed was $25,300,000 and they like to keep me on my toes. I can't afford to lose staff. The other problem is that I am out of space and the Real Estate division moves really slowly and I have to stay on them. We are negotiating to pick up extra space for extra bodies. I have one spot left in the office. It is one crisis after another. SNAFU.
I hope you are all well. Life is good here in Roseville. Have a great week and I'll be back at this next weekend. Ciao.
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