Too much fun this weekend with John and Camille at the River Cats game here in Sacramento. This is the first year that the River Cats have the AAA affiliation with the World Champion San Francisco Giants. There is an electricity in the stadium that was missing in prior years. The A's were the prior affiliation and although we are equally as close to Oakland, this is a Giant's town. We got together Saturday afternoon and they picked us up in their new Chrysler 300 and we drove in to Sacramento and had dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory, which is housed in the original Sacramento Train Depot and decked out in antiques and rich mahogany wood. They have the requisite streetcar in the restaurant which serves as extra seating for the restaurant and it is one of the streetcars that ran in Sacramento back in the '20's. Dinner was fantastic and they had a "strognochi" special, which was a combination of Italian potato dumplings and beef stroganoff.
From there we headed over to the game. I bought season tickets for the company this year and we use the seats for customers during the week and for families on the weekend. I'm using the tickets to thank the staff for their hard work and also allowing the Underwriters to take their agents to dinner and a game during the work week. There are 50 home games and I bought an 18 game package that includes both weekday games and weekends. We have four seats behind home plate about 22 rows up from the field. John and Camille had a great time and I really enjoyed our time together. Darla and Camille talked non stop and John and I were sitting on the outside seats with them in the middle. We should have sat next to each other because he and I really enjoyed the baseball. I saw my receptionist, Valerie, at the game. She works as a vendor at the game, selling kettle corn and water and we bought some popcorn from her and visited for a few minutes.
Our season tickets include access to the Solon Club, which is a private seating area upstairs in the shade with it's own concessions, televisions and a bar. John and I walked up to check it out before the game started and walked down quickly when we saw that the Giants were getting pounded by the Padres. I think having the tickets will be a win for me this year, especially giving how hard everyone has been working since Matt left. The game went into extra innings tied 2-2 and we finally left at 11:30 after the 14th inning. The two teams went 11 innings without scoring and then the Salt Lake Bees scored 3 runs in the top of the 16th and the River Cats scored 4 in the bottom of the 16th to win 6-5. It was about 12:45 when the game finally ended. I was very impressed with the pitchers that the Giants have. Good young arms and it has been a staple of the Giants' organization for years.
Speaking of work, we have our CEO, Alan, in the office tomorrow. I had another shoe drop this week as Alison, who was on Matt's team, also gave her notice and left for Scottish American. That now makes five employees under the age of 31 that have left to join this outfit in the last three years. I am really getting tired of recruiting and training this talent, only to see them leave for more money and a different "work culture". It will be a topic of conversation between Alan and I during his visit. Alan has not been to my office since the renovation and build out was completed late last year. Unfortunately, we now have a bunch of empty offices and desks now that I have lost Jennifer, Matt, Connie, Ajay and now Alison, since the beginning of the year. Ajay went to our Reno office. Connie left to join a professional liability company in downtown Sacramento. Jennifer left to go back into real estate at a huge premium in salary over what I was paying her. Alison and Matt have left to join Andy, Anthony and Dana at Scottish American. It is almost too much.
Alan and Harvey will arrive about 10:30 tomorrow and we have lunch with one of our retailers at 12:30, followed by an office meeting, a real estate meeting, a meeting with all of the managers and then a mixer at 5:30 with the Underwriters over at Fat's Restaurant. We have to drop his rental car off in Roseville at 8 PM and then he flies out on Net Jets to Fresno at 8;30 PM. It will be a LONG day.
I did play golf today in the Master's tournament and after taking last weekend off, struggled to get my footing, shooting 44 on the front before having things click in and shooting 41 on the back side for 85. I birdied both 11 and 13 and won $36 in skins. Darla was in paradise visiting her Mom after her knee surgery on Monday so I stayed on and helped with the scoring and the skin payouts. I got home about 5 PM. cleaned out the trunk of my car and then vacuumed it out and put a protectant on the dash, inside door panels and seats. I finished the job with some tire shine for the tires. Alan will have his own car, but I have to drive him to the airport after we drop off his rental.
Frances did have her knee replacement on Monday, although it was almost called off because of a power outage in Paradise. They had her prepped and ready for surgery, when the lights went out. Luckily power was restored fairly quickly and she was able to get her surgery done and not have to have it postponed. She was in the hospital until Wednesday and back home after that. Darla fixed a big casserole dish of lasagna and brought it up with her today. They went to lunch together and both Alicia and Darla were able to go up and cheer her up.
You can see the pictures of the siding that got done on Thursday. They worked on the rear of the house on Wednesday and I came home after lunch (I had lunch with an agent about 5 minutes from the house). I noticed that they had replaced the 1x6 trim around the bay window in the rear of the house, but had damaged some of the 1x10 pieces as well when they pulled the framing off. I shot them a note that I need the damaged 1x10 replaced as well. I guess I offended him as he sent a note that night, saying the job wasn't complete and he never said it was complete. Darla met with them ion Thursday and explained that I'm a little OCD about things and to take me with a grain of salt. They came down on their price to get the job and I wanted to make sure they weren't cutting corners.
They were supposed to come out on Friday to finish the bay window and then paint the siding, but called away on an insurance job in Marysville so they will be back on Monday to finish up. I had wanted to inspect he job before paying them and had arranged to get off early on Friday. I will have no time to look at the house tomorrow with my boss in town, so I'll have to trust Darla to inspect the job and then give them their final do-re-mi. Hopefully it looks good. The siding work they did in putting up the new T-111 looks excellent.
Earl looked at the damage while he was here for Easter and wants me to lower my sprinklers that are on the bushes. The sprinklers are on tall risers that spray over the top of the bushes and the wind pushed the spray back on the siding. We had the belly band where the water would sit and drip behind the belly band and that is where we had the water damage. I will lower the sprinklers so that they spray at the base of the plants and that should solve our problems. That advice comes from an itinerant farmer, so will trust his judgment on the topic.
Darla and I talked to Jennifer this week and they had a great time in DC and west Virginia, visiting their home office and McKenny's parents and Grandparents. Sam had a particularly good time with McKenny's nieces and the farm that his grandparent's live on. Sam was sad when they finally had to fly home. Jennifer said that Sam has been really emotional lately, crying over movies and even crying when there were two birds playing in the yard and one flew away leaving the other one by itself. I'm sure it's a phase she is going through. I miss that little girl.
David finally moved out of his dad's house this weekend. He has lived with his father since he got back from SLO and he has really been able to bank a lot of his paycheck. He had an opportunity to move into a house in mid town Sacramento and rent a room and he jumped at it. We are thrilled for him, because his social life was pretty serious impacted by living with a 59 year old man. The mid town area of Sacramento is pretty well made up of young professionals as they want to live and work downtown and enjoy the restaurants, bars and social life. Very proud of him.
That's the news for this week. I'll let you know how things go with the boss this week. I hope you all have a great week and keep the Lord in your life. You won't have things go smoother, but you will have someone to take the burden off of you. Praise God for that. Ciao.
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