Bad Week is over

 

Wow. They say that bad news travels in groups of 3 and I'm here to say "Uncle" to that. By the way, I acknowledge being a day late again this week. Darla was out of town this weekend and I played three days of golf in the most virulent pollen of the season. I have grass allergies and I was completely drained by the end of the weekend (literally as I went through three handkerchiefs over the weekend). I worked on the deck re staining it on Sunday morning and then played 18 holes of golf in the afternoon. I got home about 6:00 o'clock, took a shower and melted into bed where I slept for about 90 minutes. Darla and I needed to get caught up so I delayed the blog until tonight.

 

Now, on to my terrible week. It started Tuesday morning, when Matt, my Associate Managing Director walked into my office and resigned. He is the 15th largest Producer in the company and will be hard to replace.  To add insult to injury, he is joining Anthony over at Scottish American. I don't begrudge him because his salary will be about 1.5 times what I was paying him and his bonuses will still be in effect, if somewhat smaller than what he got with me. This is the 4th employee under 32 years of age who has left to join this other outfit and I couldn't stop myself. I sent an e-mail to the CEO of this outfit and pointed out that this is the 4th young professional that I have trained and nurtured only to have him swoop in after they are functioning insurance professionals and steal them away. I told him he owes me a finders fee and to let me know when he's be in Sacramento next so I can collect. I told him in the e-mail that I was joking, but told him that in the future if he is looking at more young talent to acquire that Swett and Crawford (a joint competitor) has a nice crop of young insurance professionals and to pilfer them next time. Strangely, the guy didn't respond to me. I let Matt know that I had sent him a letter and to let me know how he responds.

 

I have to say that Matt handled this with maturity and class and said all of the right things. It wasn't me or Harvey or the office in general, it was the culture of the company that turned him to look elsewhere. I think his getting the Fresno job and having to travel the valley pushed him out the door.

 

I have a group of young millenials that work for me and they all got together on Friday at lunch to "talk" about their feelings in the wake of Matt's departure. They were annoyed with me that when I had a sales meeting on Wednesday that my discussion points were all about how we would manage the loss and that I didn't allow anyone an opportunity to express their feelings about the loss of Matt. I have been through this and know that the way to mitigate any loss is to immediately take action and put a plan together to save our renewals and combat the expected competition for his book of business. To spend time "processing" the loss in a group setting is a waste of time and resources and it won't change the outcome. They had their meeting on Friday over pizza(which I bought)  with management absent and supposedly it was cathartic and their attitude is one of "let's move forward." Good, that was my attitude five minutes after he walked out the door.

 

The second bit of discomfort is related to the pictures of exterior water damage on my house. I had a contractor set up to come out and repair all of the damage and repaint the house for $1900. When he started  pulling boards and saw the extent of the water damage and dry rot, he had to figure a change order on pricing. That afternoon, he came back with a bid for an ADDITIONAL $4900. I about spit out my iced tea when I saw the bid. I called him and told him to hold off on the job, that I had to do my due diligence and get competing bids. We had two contractors come out, one felt the price was in line and the other felt he could do it for "around" $5000. When I told our first contractor to come out and pick up his wood and tools, he seemed upset. They stopped by this morning and told Darla they were slow this week and would do the job for $4900. It is about $1200 in materials and $3700 in labor. They have to basically take down about half of the siding on the street side of our house and then repair the interior moisture barrier, reinstall new T 1-11 and then paint. They also have to repair the damage to the bay window by our barbecue and replace trim and paint. We also have a damaged board on the shed and one on the other side of the house by the neighbor that has moisture damage. He is supposed to send me a revised contract tonight. We'll see. My stubbornness saved me almost $2000.

 

The third piece of trouble came Wednesday night. I worked late with Pete to hammer out the new teams, put together letters to the agencies, make calls to the larger agencies and to make sure we had our ducks in a row. Pete left about 5:30 and I stayed on until almost 7:30 to get everything squared away. I got to my car, started it up and couldn't get it into gear. There is a linkage between the brake pedal and the shifter and it had broken. I called Darla and told her not to expect me home for awhile. I then went on the internet (God bless the internet btw) and found how to override the shifter lock on a 2006 Chrysler 300. I also found that this is a huge problem and one that Chrysler has refused to plan a recall for. Strangely, they do have a recall for the same parts on a floor shifter. Mine is a console shifter. It took me about twenty minutes to remove the console housing and get to the override mechanism and I was able to drive the car home. Chrysler couldn't get me in until Friday and then it cost me $308 for a new shifter mechanism. The tech gave me a 10% discount because I had already removed the housing.

 

It was a quiet weekend. I played golf Friday afternoon to prepare for my tournament on Saturday. I shot 86 with a 44+42. Saturday was the event and my partner had flaked on me and I had Frieda as a partner. Our handicaps are more than eight strokes differential so we both had to take an extra 10% off our indexes. I got 11 strokes and she had 20. We went out and shot a 67, one stroke out of the money. We would have shot 65 with those extra strokes and been one shot out of a playoff. I shot 43+43=86. Frieda had 97. The guys listened to my tale of woe about being a bachelor while we enjoyed free beer and fries from one of the guys who had his first hole in one.

 

When I got home, I had to prep the back yard for the staining  by moving the furniture and spraying off the deck after trimming some of the plants back. I went inside and saw that I'd missed three calls and a text from John Parola. He and Camille took pity on me and invited me over for barbecued filet mignon, twice baked potatoes, green beans, mushrooms and salad. I was stuffed when I left their house and I think I ate better that night than Darla, who was in Tulare for a jewelry gig with Silpada at a girl's basketball tournament. I think they ate at a Cool Hand Luke's', which isn't bad actually.

 

I was up early Sunday and put my back through the ringer by spending three hours on my hands and knees hand staining the pressed concrete. I finished about noon, showered and headed to the golf course. I hooked up with Paul and we played from the blue tees ( I play whites in tournament play) and finally got it going with a 42+40=82. I took a cart because I was exhausted and as I already said, fell asleep when I got home.

 

Jennifer, Sam and McKenny are back in Washington DC and West Virginia, visiting his family and the home office of their company. Sam is on Spring Break this week and will enjoy all of the history and construction in the area. I added a couple of pictures from Jennifer's Facebook feed.

 

Well, that's it for this week. I think my string of bad luck has run out. We just found out about the reduced bid for the repairs today and I have a couple of young college grads in on Wednesday for interviews. I'm out "Sports Marketing" tomorrow morning, so it's all good. Hope you are all well. Ciao

A Day Late....I had some technical difficulties last night.

It was a rough night last night as I was working on some handicapping for the club and started it about 4:30. There are 35 teams in the event and I had to figure 90% of indexes and check the Tournament handicaps and then adjust if the teams had more than an 8 stroke differential. I was doing other things as I worked, but the printer failed on me and I had to try to do the checks by going back and forth between Excel workbooks and reports. When I finished, the computer burped and knocked me out of the Excel program and didn't save my work. I was devastated. Darla was great and worked with me after a nice dinner of stuffed bell peppers and I was able to finish the job in about an hour, but I was mentally exhausted and decided to wait until tonight to update the blog.

 

The weekend was eventful with poker Friday night, golf Saturday and dinner out Saturday night. The picture above is of our night out in the courtyard of a restaurant in Old Sacramento with a nice fireplace and a singer playing outside.

 

Poker almost didn't happen. I had an agent invite me to a Kings game, but it turns out that he was offering me the tickets. Darla had plans to meet with Freida for dinner while I played poker, so off I went. I lost all of my quarters last time and had a four game losing streak going. I had little patience for another beating. When I got there I went on a prolonged losing streak and was quickly down $50. We stopped for dinner. and I went on a nice run through the rest of the night winning $110 from there on out to walk away up $60. Steve lost for one of the few times recently.

 

I played golf for the first time in a month and was surprised how good my driving was. I shot 45+44=89 and struggled a little around the greens. We have the NCGA qualifier this week and Steve and I together shot a 64. We played skins and Steve had some carryover from the poker. Boyd conceded me an 18 inch putt and Steve almost went ballistic. He yelled, " was it hanging on the lip? How did you know he wouldn't miss it?" Boyd just stared at him.

 

Darla and I went out to dinner in Old Sacramento and it was a beautiful evening. The streets were packed and it was a bear getting around in there. I finally just pulled up and let them valet park the car. Dinner was great. The restaurant is a farm to fork style, organic and they usually bore me to tears. Actually, this one was quite good and we enjoyed a nice meal. I had the macaroni and cheese started while Darla had a salad. The mac and cheese is a staple and they add different toppings to the dish. On this night, they had a chili topping. The beans were pureed and the base included meat. It was a great flavor and the two really went well together. We shared a calzone for dinner that was made with free range chicken. It was a great night. The artist playing was Quinn Hedges, a local Sacramento artist. We bought one of his cds for $10 on the way out.

 

Sunday, we were up early and off to church, followed by breakfast out at the Original Pancake House. Nice breakfast and a good chance to relax and visit together. We went from there to Home Depot and a big shopping trip. My mower is on it's last legs and I bought a new Toro. I also bought a few new sprinkler heads for the lawn and Darla and I bought three new ceiling fans for the house. The ones we have are dated and look like they've been in the house since 1989 (they have). We bought some with a burnt brass look to replace the ones with a bright gold look. We bought ones for the living and family room and a new one for the kitchen nook which didn't have one before. Charlie will put those in for us next week.

 

I have a guy coming in Wednesday to replace some of the siding on the house where we have wet rot. The area was supposed to be repaired when we had the house painted in 2010, but the carpenter did the exterior repair with spackle and it all fell apart over the years. I was pissed at the house painter because he hired the contractor.  It will cost us $1400 to have three sheets of T-111 replaced and the belly band reinstalled and it all painted. 

 

Tomorrow I have another contractor coming out to aerate the lawn, over seed and then spread topsoil. The days are getting into the upper seventies and low eighties and the lawn is taking off. I have so many roots from the trees across the lawn that I need to build up the base of the lawn on the side yard and this will be a nice start.

 

I did get my bonus and so am hitting up some of the to do list items. Daniel had mentioned to me that Virgin Airlines was now flying in to Dallas and to check it out. There was a 2 for 1 offer to look into. They gave me a voucher for sending out an e-mail about their new service into Love Field to three people. I sent it to my work and two of Darla's e-mails. Darla and I got round trip tickets into Dallas Love Field in April for $292.00. We will rent a car and drive over to Randy's Thursday night.

 

Last night was a hassle with the computer and printer issues. That followed Saturday night where I tried to update my iphone and it ended up getting stripped of all of it's data. I went to update to the 8.1 OS and the computer wouldn't recognize my phone. I finally got it to go and had to leave it updating overnight. I was dreading Sunday morning, but the update got done and I even had Quinn Hedges album in my play list when it was complete.

 

I got a call in the middle of redoing the handicaps from Steve telling me one of his best friends from high school lost his son over the weekend and the memorial service is next Saturday. He is pulling out of the qualifier. I contacted Pamas and he had a conflict. I called and talked to Freida today and she will play on my team next Saturday. I will lose an extra stroke from my adjusted handicap and have to play as an 11. Freida, however, will have 20 strokes to help the cause.

 

Well, that is it for this week. I hope all is well with each of you. We actually got a little rain overnight and it is two weeks in a row. Unfortunately, it is just showers and not real rain, but..beggars and all. Ciao.



Vegas and Family time

 

That was a long time for us to be away from home. We had asked David to stay and house sit, but he is such a creature of habit, that he would just come by at night and hang out for a while and then go back to his house. The house survived, but then we didn't have Neil and Lilly watching it.

 

We drove home this morning, leaving Las Vegas at 5 AM and arriving back home here at 2 PM. I took the first shift of driving, stopping after 4 hours for breakfast in Tehachapi and then driving on to Bakersfield, where we gassed up and I turned the wheel over to Darla. She drove the last 4 hours or so to Roseville.

 

I got a text at breakfast that one of Pete's assistants gave her two weeks notice today. She came to us from Collier's, a real estate appraisal firm. She was an appraiser, but had taken insurance classes in college and wanted to give it a try. She is the young lady whose heel gave out when she was leaving the interview and she hit the ground. I called her Grace when she first started with us. She has been offered a promotion at her old firm at a significant increase in salary and she couldn't pass it up. It was one of those deals where she was basically doing the work of her superior and things went down hill after she left. She has been with me about 9 months and the handwriting was on the wall at her old firm. Pete is upset, but it will all work out. I will likely replace her with a new assistant for Matt and bill that salary to the Fresno branch, thus saving myself an assistant's salary on my financials.

 

We had a grand time with Samantha and Jennifer, McKenny, David, Daniel and Becky. Darla and I drove over to Vegas on Wednesday last week from Phoenix, leaving about 8:00 AM and arriving in Las Vegas about 1PM. We tried out a new casino in North Las Vegas called Aliente. It was a shot in the dark, but had good reviews and is located about ten minutes from Jennifer's house off the 215 Freeway. We were very impressed with the 5 year old casino, from the rooms that feature marble showers and high end furniture and fixtures to the 5 restaurants on site (coffee shop, buffet, Mexican, Italian and a steakhouse). The casino also has a food court with DQ, Rubio's, Johnny Rockets, Nathans, Panda Express and a sub shop. They also have a movie theater that came in handy for us when we watched Sam.

 

Darla and I stopped at the store and bought dinner fixings and breakfast food for Jennifer and McKenny. We had tacos the first night and I invited them over to the casino for dinner on my birthday Thursday. Darla and I were there to help pick up Sam from school on Thursday and then brought her back to the casino for some pool Jennifer and McKenny joined us for dinner at 5:30 as the Italian restaurant featured 50% pasta and pizza on Thursdays. We each ordered a pizza, which we thought were personal size, but they were mediums. Darla opted to try a slice of mine and had French onion soup. Jen bought me a card that said what a great Dad I was because I raised such a great daughter. It had a pin in it that read "My Daughter is #1!" and she had me wear it (you can see a picture of the three of us above..Sam, Jenn and I ). We went over to the DQ for dessert and Sam had her first Blizzard. The only downside to the evening is that Harvey called me in the middle of dessert and I had to spend about a half hour going over salaries in my office with him. Oh well.

 

Darla and I played video poker on Wednesday and Thursday night and had a good time, but I was cold as ice the first night. She kept us afloat, but I had a rough night on Wednesday. I bounced back on Thursday night, but we ended up giving some money away to the casino to make up for the $55 rooms.

 

Friday, the boys flew in and we had a dinner of leftover pizza with Jennifer ands McKenny before I headed off to the airport to pick them up. They were due in at 8:30 and called me at about that time to say they took the wrong tram and were at Terminal D. Nice, but Vegas has Terminals 1, 2 and 3. Daniel called back and they were at Terminal 3. I drove in and waited and got chased away by the security guards. I called Daniel and they were at the departures downstairs. I told him to walk upstairs and meet me. We finally hooked up and made the 30 minute drive back to North Las Vegas. Sam had the boys on the trampoline and jumping along with a light below the trampoline. Darla and I were tired after being at the pool again with Sam after school and were ready for bed.

 

Saturday, we were up and over to the house by ten and fixed a big breakfast of bacon and eggs with toast for everyone. Jennifer, Darla and Becky handled most of the chow, but I made toast. Darla and I took Sam with us and headed back to the casino for an afternoon at the pool with the 84 degree heat. The kids joined us later and we had a cabana for Becky, who is a light skinned redhead. We stayed at the pool about four hours and swam and talked and relaxed. Sam stayed with us as we were off to Maggianno's for dinner and then Jennifer and her brothers were going out on the town afterwards. On the way back to Jennifer's, Becky looked down and her diamond solitaire was missing from her ring. Two of the four prongs on the ring had broken off and the diamond fell on the floor of the car. They got to Jennifer's and were able to find the stone. Dan and Becky are convinced it was the alt water in the pool that caused the ring to break. I think the prongs had a stress fracture in them and the salt water caused the crack to spread and the prongs to break. Daniel looked up on the internet and found a site that talked about gold decomposing in salt water. Perhaps, but how do you explain the Spanish doubloons that were found on shipwrecks hundreds of years later in perfect condition? Or the number of people who swim in the ocean with gold rings and such and never have a problem. They should hold the jeweler accountable and have him replace the setting.

 

Maggiano's was typically FUN and we had the all you can eat with appetizers and dessert. Jennifer and McKenny sprang for a nice bottle of Malbec and it was a fun night. The old guitar player came around and Sam had him sing "Over the rainbow". It was great. We were seated at 8 PM and got out of there at 10 PM. The kids headed down to Fremont Street and Darla and I took Sam home to the casino for a sleepover.

 

We woke Sam up at 10 AM on Sunday and told her we had a surprise for her. She was sleepy until she heard surprise, then she was saying, "I'm awake, I'm awake!" We took her to breakfast and then to the noon showing of the new Disney film, "Cinderella." I was pleasantly surprised with how good the show was. it is live action (not animation) and had several actors I'd never heard of, but had Cate Blanchett as the step-mother, who is so cruel to Ella and names her Cinderella after she sleeps by the fire to stay warm after being banished to the attic and gets soot on her face. Sam really enjoyed the movie, the popcorn, the Icee and her Thin Mints. We had a great time with her and it is a special memory for the three of us together.

 

The kids were out late on Saturday and slept late on Sunday, finally getting up about the time we were heading to the movie. They all went out for brunch and then went to the Mob Museum in Vegas. David had seen it off Fremont street and wanted to go. They joined up with us about 4 at the pool. Sam made a little friend who was 7, in first grade and lived in Vegas. We asked why she was at the hotel and she said their house has "rats". Oh, the innocence of children. They played together at the pool for hours and it was pulling teeth to finally get her to leave as we had dinner at her house and then she had school on Monday. She had some homework to finish up and had a project to complete. David helped her with her assignment and David and Daniel both worked with her on the project, which was a Leprechaun Trap. Sam designed a trap with a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, an Irish Flag and the sticky side of a lint roller on the ground to trap the leprechaun. She also had a toilet roll made into a telescope to watch the Leprechaun as he got stuck in the trap. It was very well designed.

By the way, Sam is NOT wearing glasses now, but her Mom wears glasses and Sam wants to be like Mom, so Jennifer found her a set of plain glass glasses with no magnification that look like Mom's and she wears them everywhere. It's a stage, I guess.

 

It is late, I'm tired from driving and being up at 4:30 this morning, so I will bring this to a close. Thank you to Jennifer and McKenny for being such GREAT hosts (they even had Ginger Ale and Canadian Mist for me). We all had fun and it was a Great Family gathering. We love each of you. Ciao.

Scottsdale Trip

 

Just a quick update to the blog so there will be plenty of room for pictures from our family trip to Las Vegas. We drove Thursday night from Roseville. I left work about 4:30 and got a few hours of sleep, finally getting up at about 8:30 and sitting in the spa for about ten minutes and then sleeping for another hour before we were up and at them by 10:30 and on the road by 11. I stopped in Santa Nella about 1:00 AM and had a hamburger as I hadn't eaten dinner. I drove through the night and got us through Los Angeles about 6 AM. I stopped for gas at Calmesa outside of the turnoff to Palm Springs and had Darla take the wheel for the rest of the drive to Phoenix. We got into the outskirts of Phoenix about 10 AM and stopped for breakfast. We wanted to check into the apartment before we were off to pick up Pete and Vicki from the airport. What I forgot about was the time change and it dawned on me as we finished breakfast at about 10:45. It was actually 11:45 and we had to pick them up at 1 PM.

 

We got through Phoenix and over to Scottsdale and the corporate apartment and unloaded our bags and then were off to the Phoenix airport about 20 minutes away. We picked them up and they were ready for lunch. WE were ready for naps, so we dropped us off at the apartment, they unloaded their bags and then took the Explorer out to lunch and the grocery store. Darla and I got into our swim suits and headed to the pool in the 84 degree heat. I slept like a lizard in the sun and Darla found a nice spot next to the pool in the shade on an outdoor sofa.

 

We met up after a good two hour nap at the apartment and dressed for dinner. We decided to try the Italian Grotto in the downtown Scottsdale area and jumped on a golf cart (Trips for Tips) and they drove us over to the restaurant. The food and ambiance were incredible and the restaurant has been in business for over 40 years. From there we wandered the tourist district and stopped and bought a few Giants items, hats and shirts for our trip to the Giant game at Scottsdale Stadium on Sunday. We walked down and scoped out a couple of the restaurants where we had meetings Monday and Tuesday. We then took the golf cart back to the apartment and the driver, a 23 year old gal, took us on a tour of the downtown area on the way home.

 

Saturday we were up for a light breakfast and then off to Phoenix. The girls wanted to see the downtown area and the sports facilities. It is a vibrant downtown and the sports stadiums are at the core of the renaissance. We wandered through a downtown garden and then the girls did some shopping and Pete and I went over and checked out the stadium tour info at chase Field. The last tour was at noon and we would be tight on making it, so decided to sit in the TGI Friday restaurant that opens up into the stadium. We had drinks and appetizers, knowing that we had a 4:30 reservation at Don and Charlies in Scottsdale, AZ. We got back and I got another nap in at the pool before showering and heading over to the sports bar. We got there and found out that the San Francisco Giant's organization had an event scheduled in the private room. We finished dinner and had a drink out on the patio and watched as Larry Baer, Charles Johnson and the rest of the owners showed up one by one. Dave Dravecky was there as were several other retired Giants. We left before they all arrived, but it was nice to see them all there.

 

Sunday we had a big breakfast and then headed over to the ballpark about noon for the game. It was HOT at the Stadium and the World Champion Giants were ice cold. We left in the 6th inning when the score was 8-0 Arizona and the final was 12-2.We headed back to the apartment, changed into our swin suits, grabbed a few cold drinks and I was off to my third straight nap. Sunday night we had London Broil grilled on the gas barbecue at the apartment and then had to run Vicki to the airport in the early evening.

 

Monday, Pete and I had breakfast across the street with a potential carrier partner and then drove out to the Scottsdale business district and met for a meeting with Scottsdale Insurance. It was a tough meeting as we've had some issues with the underwriters at the company. We write $4.5 million with them, so it is key that we get this fixed. The underwriter was out on vacation as her kids were on Spring Break, but she and her Manager will be in Roseville next Wednesday to work out our issues and get back to writing business. From there Pete and I headed back to the apartment and I managed a fourth straight nap by the pool, before getting a shower and heading over to meet another carrier for drinks and appetizers at the Tortilla Factory in downtown Scottsdale. Darla joined us and I think enjoyed herself. We are doing very well with Markel and were up 80% with them last year. We had margaritas and apps. On the way home we stopped at the Fashion Mall and I picked up a $50 thank you gift card for the marketing secretary, Judy, who had set up our stay in the 1200 square foot three bedroom two bath apartment. Both Darla and Pete wanted dinner, even though we had eaten nachos and appetizers. We stopped and Darla had a soup, I had half a chicken salad sandwich and Pete had salmon for dinner.

 

Today, we were up and off to the business district again and had breakfast with IFG Insurance and had a great visit with them. From there we were off to the downtown area of Scottsdale across the street from the corporate apartment and lunch with Colony. Judy was thrilled with her gift and we had a great lunch with the VP of Underwriting and our Underwriter. We were done by one and back to the apartment and my fifth straight nap by the pool. I could get used to this.

 

We ordered a pizza for dinner tonight and I dropped Pete off at the airport. Darla and I are relaxing now and leave for Las Vegas in the morning. I will update this next week after our visit with family. Happy birthday to Chris, Dad and Cheryl. I hop you are all hale and hearty. Be with the Lord. Ciao.

Back from Punta Cana, heading to Spring Training and then Vegas. I'm living my Dad's life!

 

Yep. I am my Dad all of a sudden. We've since added a trip to Randy's place in Texas in late April and a trip to Monterey in early April. I'm enjoying the travel and know that I will enjoy retirement. Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic was incredible. Like so many beautiful tropical destinations, the country is incredibly poor and the scenes of families and workers along the roads leading to the resort is sad. The resort was absolutely wonderful and the all inclusive food and drink was very welcome. Often, you end up with a lot of buffet food and marginal restaurants at an all inclusive. This resort had a Mexican Restaurant, an Asian restaurant, Italian, Mediterranean,  a steakhouse, a restaurant featuring local fare as well as Passion, a high end restaurant that cost an extra $50 per head to enjoy (we passed). We ate most of our lunches at the Mexican restaurant and had dinner at the steakhouse, the wok side of the Asian Restaurant, the Italian, the tepanyaki side of the Asian restaurant and the Mexican restaurant. The food was very good and the rib eye at the steakhouse was incredible. I put on about three pounds and mostly from the booze. I had Jack Daniels, Miami Vice,  Pina Colada, Baileys with Dominican Coffee, Mudslides, margaritas, daiquiris. You name it, I drank it over the six days and five nights that we were on site.

 

You can see a picture of a wonderful sunrise in Atlanta. We had the red eye flight at 11 PM from Sacramento on Thursday night. We arrived in ATL at 6:45 to a gorgeous sunrise. We caught the flight to the Dominican at 8:30 and were in the Dominican by noon. We caught the shuttle from the airport and ran into Suzanne and Kelly who we had dinner with and their picture is above. When we arrived at the resort, they had us arriving on Thursday and charged us for a no show. We argued and they told us to take it up with Silpada. The resort is $490 a night, so it was kind of a big deal.

 

We got checked into our room and sought out the Silpada hospitality tent to question our "no show". The ladies there checked their records and said that we were due in Thursday and we owed the $$. Uh, folks, YOU set up the flights. Darla was seething as she explained that our flight arrived today and we couldn't possibly check in on Thursday when we were on a red eye flight to Atlanta. They said they would look into it and let us know. Strangely, we found out later that Suzanne had the same issue and she flat out refused to pay it. They asked her to put down a credit card as a deposit and she could work it out with Silpada. She gave them a gift card Visa that had $4.00 left on it. She talked to the hospitality folks and they said, "Oh, yeah, we remember you telling us you weren't coming in until Friday." They released the extra charge. WE had e-mail confirmation that we contacted Silpada and told them they made a mistake adding an extra night and they sent us an e-mail telling us to ignore that and it was changed to Friday. It took us until Tuesday to get it resolved. Darla was NOT HAPPY.

 

You can also see a grainy picture of Darla on the sailboat. She took a sailing lesson with one of the staff and Sherry's husband, Matt. I had no interest in getting knocked around in ocean waves on a sailboat. The picture is a blow up of a phone shot. We spent most of our days on the beach. The pools were nice and you had better bar service, but the beach was really soft, white sand and the ocean was a turquoise blue. It was phenomenal. The Dominican is close to Puerto Rico and the beaches and ocean are equally beautiful there.

 

The rest of our trip was mostly uneventful. Silpada had two outings planned and Darla decided to skip both of them. once was a trip into the "real" Dominican with a visit to a local school where we donated shoes to the children. They also went to a tobacco farm, a chocolate farm and a coffee plantation. All fun stuff, but we spent that day in a shaded canopy on the beach with bar service. I think we chose wisely. The other event was a dinner at a resort about 30 minutes from ours with some local music and food. We chose to have a quiet dinner together at the waterside Italian restaurant that night. I had lobster lasagna and Darla had the scallops. Wonderful.

 

Our trip home was long and stressful. The Atlanta airport was closed due to snow on Tuesday, but reopened on Wednesday. We flew in with no worries, but about 60% of the flight s out of Atlanta were cancelled. Luckily, ours was only delayed and we got home at 11:30 instead of 10 PM. I called Neil, who was going to pick us up and he was out at the outlet malls with Lilly. He didn't answer, but texted me from our house. He was going to pick up our Explorer and drive over to pick us up later. Sherry and Matt offered to drive us home as they had their SUV at the airport. Neil said no problem, but that our house had been vandalized. He said that someone had driven a car over our front lawn and backed into our garage door. After all of the trouble we had with the water damage. that was the last I wanted to hear. I sent him a note asking how bad it was and he said ruts in the lawn and a dented garage door. We called David and asked him to go over and check it out. He did and said he left us a key under the matt. Our cars are parked really close to the garage door and we didn't want to open the garage door. He said, "You'll have to see for yourself."

 

I was pretty upset about the vandalism and it really affected my night. We had forgot my medications prior to the trip and I was off my Prozac. This didn't help. I was pretty testy with Darla until we got home. It turns out that Neil was playing a joke on us. What? Who does that? I'm looking forward to watching his place while he is in Mexico and texting him that his house burned down. Now, that would be hilarious...or not.

 

I've been playing catch-up since I got back. Our month was down again from a year ago and one bad month is an anomaly, two is a trend. I'm sorry to see Ajay leaving, but I will like not having his salary on my books. Harvey also suggested that I designate one of Matt's assistants salary to the Fresno office and I think I'll take him up on that. We need to get back to basics and get out marketing and making sales calls. I need to lead in that area and will be in Scottsdale next week advocating for better service, commissions and turn around from our carriers.

 

I played golf for the first time in almost a month on Saturday and the results were predictable. I really struggled on the front side shooting a 48, but turned it around on the back with a 40 for 88. My index which came out for 3/1 is up to a 13.5 and the highest I've been in about two years. I haven't broken 80 since last Summer. I'm taking the next three weeks off as well as I'll be in Arizona and Vegas. I play in a two man qualifier after that and will try to get out and do some sports marketing between now and then. 

 

Today we had church and then were off to breakfast and the nursery. I picked up a new utility sink on Saturday after golf and a few purple flowering plants for Darla to plant in the front planter. We got home and I went to work on the 60 minute project installing the sink and new faucets that ended up taking me all afternoon. First off, I needed a new drain and strainer. Darla got that and it was the wrong size. She got a two and half inch drain and the unit had a 3.5 inch hole. Back to Home Depot. Next, the bell washer on the faucet line was corroded and off I went to Ace. They didn't have the right one and we tried a cone washer which didn't work. In the meantime I needed some silicone adhesive for the drop in sink and off to Home Depot I went. They didn't have the bell washers and suggested Orchard Supply Hardware in Antelope. I got over there, got the correct washer and the silicone and as soon as I was ready to hook up the waterline, it broke in the middle. I decided to change out the two valves and disconnected them and off to Ace again, now 5:30 PM. I got the new valves, installed those, hooked up the new water lines, seated the sink and was done by 6:15. What a day!

 

The last picture is of the new recessed can lights in our kitchen. We had a large fluorescent fixture that looked like something out of the 80's (it was!) in the center of the ceiling. I bought the can lights and had Charlie install them before we left on vacation. He did a great job. Darla's Dad came over and re textured the ceiling and Darla got that painted this afternoon. The house is coming along.

 

Well, that's it for now. I will get a blog entry in next week, but we will be with Pete and Vicki until Sunday night and Pete will be with us until Tuesday night. Darla and I leave for Vegas on Wednesday. Bear with me as I will get an entry done at some point. I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the new year. Can you believe it's March already? Take good care. Ciao.