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.
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