Heat. It is something you can count on in early October in the Sacramento Valley. It is 97 degrees here which is not a surprise, but it is also 90 degrees in San Francisco. We are off next weekend to Carmel, Pacific Grove, Monterey and Solvang. I'll play golf four days out of five with Carmel Valley on Friday, Poppy Hills on Saturday, Pacific Grove on Sunday and Alisal in Solvang on Tuesday. I'm hoping the good weather will hold for the coast areas that we are heading to as well.
Darla and I are both having a tough time reconciling this trip with our new budget and luckily I have three paychecks this month, which is softening the blow a little bit. We built the trip into our budget for this month, but it is quite a cost. I've paid for all of the golf and three out of the four nights in the hotel ahead of time, so we are set up pretty good for the trip, but the meals out will put a small dent in our budget. I'm looking forward to the trip. Rick, who has been struggling with pancreatic cancer and is just finishing up his third round of chemo will be there and plans to play both Saturday and Sunday. He stopped golfing in May and started up again in August. He has lost weight and muscle mass. His current handicap is 12.5, but he has shot rounds ranging from 92 to 100 and played 7 rounds since starting playing again. I worked with my Handicap Committee to calculate a new Medical Exemption handicap of 22.5 for Rick, which will hopefully allow him to enjoy his games down there.
I played golf on Friday in one of my service company's golf tournaments at Timber Creek here in Roseville. I played with Gary, Chad and John, all agents of mine locally. It was a scramble and we played really well, shooting a smooth 56, 16 under par. We birdied 14 holes and eagled one. We didn't even finish in the money. Second place shot 52, 20 under par which seemed unbelievable. The whole dinner crowd booed lustily when they announced the winning score of 49, 23 under par. Somehow this group birdied 13 holes and eagled 5 holes. Safe to say, that no one bought that score. The purple picture above is of Gary, myself and John after they both got a t shirt from one of the vendors. I grabbed one for Darla to wear to bed. The other picture of Elvis and Marilyn is from the course. They had one vendor that was giving free massages and when we got there, Elvis was getting a massage while Marilyn waited for him. The theme of the tournament was American Idols of the past. Elvis and Marilyn were driving around handing out drinks.
I did not play on Saturday as I wanted to get some work done. I've had continuous problems with a neighbors' tree behind us. He had a "volunteer" tree spring up on his side yard and he just let it grow right into the side of his house and up over the fence and into my yard. I've ended up with leaves, buds, and debris of all types landing in my pool. I decided to shave his tree straight up from the fence line and spent about two hours on Saturday with a set of pruning shears and a lopper and pulled down a full 80 gallon garbage can full of trimmings into the trash. you can see the tree above and a shot of it along the tree line. It is half a tree now, but won't cause a huge mess in my pool this Fall.
I've got a busy week ahead before we leave for Carmel. Tuesday is our Big I Day at the Community Center in downtown Sacramento. The companies are all in town for the event and I start with AIG tomorrow morning for breakfast at 8 AM. I have one of our program underwriters, WKFC , in for lunch and then go down to the Community Center to help set up our booth mid afternoon. I'll then meet Markel and one of our professional lines underwriters from Detroit for dinner at PF Chang's at six tomorrow night with Pete and Matt. Tuesday, we are hosting one of the continuing education classes at the event in the morning with our Professional Lines guy (Taras) doing a cyber liability class and Markel doing a class on Professional Lines. Dad will remember that I was dealing with Taras trying to cancel his trip while I was in Canada. He said in a note to me, "I hope this doesn't cause any inconvenience". Well, I called Harvey and blew a gasket as we have over 1000 people coming to the I Day and over 65 signed up for the cyber liability class. Taras had forgot to set up his travel and when he went to set it up a week before, the trip was going to cost him $800 and Alan balked. Harvey stepped up, explaining to all who would listen the harm this would do to the reputation of the company if we cancelled the class and got it back on track. Thank God.
The build out is in full swing and we are now working with a visqueen shield over the work area after they broke out the wall behind Shawna's desk. She had to be moved over about ten feet. On Friday morning we had our furniture vendor in and they were working on moving two more of my employees over from the wall that used to be outside my old office. It is a lot of upheaval, but the final result will be well worth the hassle we are going through now. The work will be completed the week of October 27th and I will have home office IT and real estate folks in that week. That is the week after the Leadership meeting in Detroit.
Darla and I had dinner with friends last night at their house. It was a fun night and the food was great as well as the company. Randy, the host, served me a Barrel Rye with Ginger Ale after dinner which reminded me of Dad and Canada. He served the drinks with Ice Balls. These are solid ice balls about the size of a small rubber ball and slowly melt in your drink unlike ice cubes, which melt rather quickly. Now, I'm on a quest to find the molds for these. Randy had been looking for these for awhile after seeing them in a Food Network show on cocktails and found them at TJ Maxx of all places. I'll check with Amazon.
Darla was at a street fair in Lodi, California today and was up at 4 AM to get to the event by 6 AM to set up. She did well today (almost $1000 in sales) and she got home at 5:30. She is fast asleep on the couch next to me. I have to make hamburgers for dinner soon as I sit and watch the Sunday night game. This isn't near as much fun as it was last week with Dad and Shirley and the Dallas game. Dallas won again today to keep me smiling.
I will likely bring my laptop with me and try to upload some pictures from our trip and get a blog entry in next Sunday night. No guarantees as my bride will have some say in that, but that's my plan as of tonight. I hope you all have a GREAT week and I'll check in again next weekend. Ciao.
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