"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." John 1:14

 

 

Sammy's 7th birthday today! She had a nice time at her birthday party yesterday. Jennifer and John got together and had a birthday party for Sam at John's Mother's house in Vegas. They hired a "Mad Scientist" and she entertained the kids. Sam got a white coat from the scientist that was about three sizes too large. Sam had a ball as you can see from the pictures. She had her classmates there and some of the kids from the skating club. They had a pinata and cotton candy and birthday cake and prizes and games and a fun time was had by all. Sam is with her dad this weekend, but will be with us all next week as McKenny and Jennifer leave on Christmas night to drive to Roseville. It will be the three of them and their dog, who will travel to Northern California with them.

 

I had a busy week. Darla had her Christmas gathering on Tuesday night at Fat's restaurant in Roseville. Fat's has a Fat Tuesday special going on with 10 plates offered for $10, including a nice Dim Sum basket with pot stickers, crab wontons, shaomai, and taro dumplings. Good stuff. Darla had each of her girls put $10 in the pot and she bought the dim sum and cocktails.

 

Wednesday I was off to Fresno and the retirement of our Managing Director in the Fresno office. Ceil has been with us for over 25 years and joined BW when we bought out Rathbone, King and Seeley. Matt and I met our Assistant Underwriter in Turlock, Veronica, for lunch at 1 PM. She has been having some concerns about her Underwriting team and wanted a chance to talk to us. We met her at the Olive Garden.

 

From there we drove on to Fresno and arrived at the hotel at 3:30, just as the gang from San Francisco (Harvey, Rich, Angela, Gretchen and Gina) were driving up. We got checked in, cleaned up and were on the road to the San Joaquin Country Club by 4:45PM. Harvey had rented a Mercedes SUV and we all drove over together. They had a bar set up with hosted beer and wine and mixed drinks for sale. I had a Corona and visited with some of the agents, even seeing one of the Managers that I used to work under at The Hartford. I took orders from the gang I was hanging with and stood in a moderately long line to corral the drinks. While I was waiting, Gina cut the line and asked me to get her a water. She stayed in line with me and we visited. When we got to the front of the line she ordered a Moscow Mule which ran $12 and (of course) didn't have any money, so I had to play for her drink after she cut the line to get a water. What's up with that. The picture above is of Ceil and I. She has been a long time supporter of mine as I turned the Sacramento office around. She at one time traveled back and forth from Fresno to help run Sacramento and suggested that they close the branch.

 

Matt in my office is taking over the Fresno branch and will be an Assistant Managing Director handling the branch from Sacramento . I guess it is coming full circle. We met with the staff on Thursday morning and Matt had one on one meetings with the underwriters and Managers in the office. I met with a couple of the staff that were having issues with the change and explained Matt's philosophy and told them to hang in there and give him a chance. I was overall impressed with the staff. I had been in the office four years ago when we moved to a paperless environment. At that time, I was unimpressed with the diversity of the staff. It was mostly 30 and 40 year old women. Since that time the staff has gotten much younger and they have about six employees under thirty. The biggest problem they have is lack of production and especially lack of new business writings. In fact, the entire office has written less new business YTD than Matt himself has.

 

We had to be back in Roseville by 3 PM for our gift exchange and we got a late start as Matt had extended meetings and we finally got on the road at 12:30. Neither of us had eaten since we had the breakfast of eggs and toast at the hotel that morning. The staff was enjoying a Christmas pot luck back in the office. My car still has a broken gas gauge (It costs $800 to have it repaired) and I know how many miles I can go when I'm just driving around town. A road trip is a little different and I can generally get about 400 miles in a tank. The problem is that I had three quarters of a tank when I left. We were running late and I planned to stop in Galt for gas. I just drove through Lodi and was in the fast lane when the gas pedal went flat and i was out of gas. I was able to get over and pull off at the Frontage Road in Acampo and drift to the side of the road. Matt wondered what was going on and I told him we were out of gas. It was about 2:15 and we had a good hour drive ahead of us. I called AAA and they gave me a 60 minute estimate to arrive. We were parked across the street from a trailer park and Matt and I decided to go door to door to see if there was anyone with a gas can we could use. The place was mostly deserted, but we walked to the office and there was a very nice lady manager there that took pity on us and gave us a 5 gallon jug of gas. She refused to take any money from us and kept saying "Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas". We were able to get about two gallons into the tank and took the gas can back to the park. I called AAA and cancelled the call. I was on my "hands free" and was talking to Matt about getting to a gas station to gas up, when I heard, "I'm still here." It was the AAA operator. I said, "then hang up." He said, "I can't hang up on a customer!" I almost said, "Fine, then you can listen to us for the next hour.', but instead hung up and moved on.

 

We got gas and were back to Roseville by about 3:30 for our gift exchange. I checked my messages quickly and was in the lunch room with a leftover breast of chicken and a glass of milk. We had fun at the gift exchange. I ended up with a "side sleeper" pillow and a $50 gift card to McCormick and Schmick's steakhouse. The top picture is of the gang at work.

 

You can see that Darla has been busy buying more furnishings for our bedroom with a painting for above the bed and a large plate with the colors of our room. We got quite a bit accomplished this weekend with all of the boxes cleared out of the garage and both cars washed, vacuumed and safely stored in the garage. I made a dump run and took our old vertical blinds from our room, a cd case, a desk chair and a lot of old clothes, books and papers from the boys' rooms. All of the stuff fit in the back of our Explorer. We also got a couple of stereos left behind by the boys set up in the house, one in our room and the other in Darla's new office. It was a busy weekend and I got two trips to the hot tub in on Saturday and so far one today.

 

We met with a solar electric contractor on Saturday and looked into a system for the house. The terms were fair, nothing down and the system is paid off by the usage of the system. The problem was the cost of the system which runs $37,000. Comparable systems from other contractors run about $28,000. The program is really good, but the cost of the system is prohibitive.

 

Thrilled that Dallas finished the fight today and won the NFC East. I'm sitting with a Canadian Mist and Ginger Ale and watching Seattle beating Arizona. If they go on and win and Dallas beats Washington next week, we could get a bye in the first round of the playoffs. Here's hoping.

 

Well, that's it for now. I will try to get some time to work on this next weekend (probably after Sam goes to bed). Church was wonderful today and we are looking forward to service on Christmas Eve. Let's all remember the reason for the season. Jesus, our Savior, is being celebrated this week. Ciao.