The Blog is going to Mexico

 

A good holiday weekend is in the books. We hosted Thanksgiving this year and had the whole gang over for turkey. Everyone was due to arrive at 1 PM, so I planned my morning accordingly, sleeping in until about 9 AM and then starting on the monumental task of cleaning up the leaves from both the front yard and the backyard. The pool has been clogged with leaves this year as our neighbor's volunteer tree has grown to about 25 feet and even though I cut back the tree so that it is a flat side from my fence straight up, the leaves fall and blow into my yard and into the pool. I spent a good three hours cleaning the leaves, the pool, the spa and side yard. I walked out front and saw Darla's parents car about ten after noon and they were early. Earl was suffering from shooting pains in his head and wanted to get here early to see if he could sleep it off. I thought I was in trouble, but cut my work short and took a shower and visited with Frances and Darla until the boys got here.

 

We fic=xed a 15 pound turkey that was toast by the end o the evening. We did a good job over dinner (which we ate at 1:30) and then the boys and us polished off what was left with turkey sandwiches about 8:00 PM after everyone had left. We had a good visit and spent a portion of the evening after everyone else had left planning some of our Mexico trip in terms of when the gang were going to PV, when we would have Sam swim with the dolphins, as I'd promised her, and then planning a trip to Yelapa and Majahuitas on Wednesday by boat. We were waiting to talk to Jennifer to see if Sam could go with us. John was aware of the dolphin swim, but we wanted to see if he'd allow us to take her on a catamaran trip to the two areas above. Majahuitas is a fishing village that is only accessible by boat and there are no roads in town. Darla and I took the trip last May when we took our solo trip to Mexico and had a great time. The activities include kayaking, snorkeling and a hike up to a mountain waterfall in Majahuitas.

 

We talke dto Jennifer Friday night and she texted the information to John, who responded that there were a bunch of "old suspicious God fearing people" going on the trip and we would watch her closely. I guess he was talking about us or he thinks dad and Shirley are going with us on the trip. My only concern is that we have to meet at the marina in Nuevo Vallarta at 7:30 AM and I'm not convinced that Sam can handle getting up that early and being in a good mood. I think she'd have a blast and hopefully she will be prepared for the trip.

 

I'm going to call Dad tonight and see if he and Shirley want to go along on the trip. It is a 7 hour tour and includes lunch. I'm paying the kid's way on this trip and it is their Christmas present this year. The kids will f=go into PV on Monday, we will take Sam to swim with the dolphins on Tuesday and the Catamaran trip will be on Wednesday. I will stay back with Samantha on Monday. Darla wants to go with the boys on their first trip to Puerto Vallarta and show them some of the sights. I'd like to go, but it will be a fun day to hand=g with Samantha and let her enjoy the Kid's Adventure portion of the park. We will also buy the food for the condo and buy two of the Meal plans to share with the group. It is going to be blast.

 

Friday I joined the retired group out at Diamond oaks and there were 16 players. They did a blind draw for partners and we each put in $5 and the winner took home $40, second place was $30 and third got their money back $10. It was two man partners and Rico and I won. He shot 70 for a net 72 and I shot 83 for a net 67. We won with a 139 and second place was 141. I think the guys are glad I'm not retired yet. It was a great day, but it started out late as our weather has been cold and clear of late and we had a two hour frost delay as overnight temperatures were 30 degrees.

 

We decided with the boys to go up to Apple Hill on Saturday. Apple Hill is up in Placerville (Hangtown) and about a 50 minute drive from our house. We met Don and Alicia up there as they wanted t leave later than us. We wanted to miss some of the crowd and the boys had a roast cooking at their Dad's and wanted to be home around 4 PM.  We went to 3 orchards and ended up at High Hill for our last stop, which includes a lake, a pony sweep and a Fudge Factory. We had a great visit, but it was "nose running" cold up there with a slight breeze and I was definitely ready to leave when we finally got out of there. The boys bought pies and apples and we got some jams and fudge. We leave on Saturday and neither of us need a big apple pie sitting here tempting us. Saying goodbye to Becky and Daniel was fun as we told them we'll see them next week in Mexico. They get in 4 hours before us and plan to have lunch at the airport and then have access to the airport lounge through one of their credit cards. I told them they could head over tot he resort, but they don't want to go without us. I understand.

 

The last picture of Jennifer, McKenny and Samantha was taken on their Thanksgiving trip to Southern California with her Mom and her husband. They flew into Las Vegas to meet Jennifer and then drove to Santa Ana on Thursday in a rented SUV. Diane and Bob flew back to Dallas out of Los Angeles and the kids drove the SUV home.

I have our annual Holiday party at the office on Thursday night. We have75 agents RSVP'd already and look forward to hosting our clients and saying thank you for all of their business and support over the last year.

 

Well, it will be a couple of weeks before my next epistle, but it will include photos and highlights from our vacation. we really look forward to some holiday cheer with everyone in Puerto Vallarta. Here's hoping David trims that beard, but I'm not holding my breath. I hope you are all well, had a great Thanksgiving and remembered to thank God who makes everything in our lives possible. Be well. Ciao.

Thanksgiving Week Ahead

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The pictures are from the Carrier event we went to in San Francisco last Tuesday. It was held at the Hotel Vitale on Mission Street, which is about a block from the hotel that we stay at when we go every Summer. The picture of the Bay Bridge is the same view that we had during our last stay. This hotel is closer to the Ferry Building, which is the clock tower in the background. The event was held on a terrace on the 5th floor and it was incredible. First of all, the weather was about 65 degrees and, as the temperature dropped, the portable heaters kicked in and kept the venue warm. The bottom picture is of our group and the San Francisco office. Harvey is in the center of the picture in the tie. The tall guy next to him is Rich, who is number two in the company in production. You can also see Pete next to me in his arm sling. The funny thing is that the guy on the left in the third picture down is in a full cast. He is the husband of one of the VPs for our carrier and he had a table saw accident where a piece of wood flew off and hit him in the left hand and broke three bones. He has pins in his hand and a cast over all of that. He and Pete were thick as thieves at the event. Partly because they are both hunters and fishermen I guess, but also fellow accident victims.

 

Speaking of Pete, he left for his family vacation to Cabo San Lucas on Thursday. He set up a trip with his extended family and ten of them were flying together to Cabo from Sacramento. He and Vicki went to check in for their flights the day before and found out that Alaska had changed their first flight from Sac to Los Angeles from 6:30 AM to 7:30 AM and it didn't leave them enough time to change planes for Cabo out of Los Angeles. International rules require you to arrive at least 105 minutes before your flight. The change had them arrive 90 minutes before. He was furious, but had bought his tickets through Expedia and was frustrated trying to work with the two companies. Alaska told them that they could fly in on the 4PM flight and they would put them up in the hotel in Los Angeles overnight. He couldn't get everyone on his list to agree, so ended up booking a limo bus from Sac to San Francisco Thursday morning and catching a direct flight from there. It cost him $500 and they still have the return to worry about. Ouch. Hopefully, they are having a good time. Vicki posted some pictures of their year old granddaughter relaxing on the beach today.

 

We will be in Nuevo Vallarta in two weeks. Dad and Shirley arrive a day after us on the Sunday and will be there for two weeks. We talked to the boys and to Jennifer and McKenny about either planning to turn their cell phones off while we are there or getting a Mexico plan. I actually like not having the phone on. I can keep up with e-mail and anything else I need on the computer, but don't need a phone. McKenny said he has international calling, but I told him to check in with his carrier as that only applies to calls from the United States.

 

McKenny, by the way, is back in Las Vegas and will be home until we get back from Mexico. He may spend a week in Colorado when they get back, but hen will be in Vegas through the end of the year. I guess Diane and her husband will be in Vegas on Tuesday and they will stay two days before all driving to Southern California on Thursday. They are renting a big SUV. Sam will go along and they will enjoy Thanksgiving together. Diane will fly back from Los Angeles and Jennifer and McKenny will drive back to Vegas.

 

 I think we will plan to celebrate Samantha's birthday in Mexico. Probably on the Friday before we leave. We won't be able to see her on her birthday, but will all be together, so it makes sense. It should be fun.

 

I will have the usual skeleton crew at work this week, but even Connie, who is working with me on Wendy's book while she is on maternity leave will be off this week. It has been busy for me and about to get busier. It is good for me to get my hand back in the mix on underwriting. A lot has changed since I handled a territory myself. The numbers look good this month and we hope to at least beat our numbers from last year.

 

Harvey was in the office on Thursday and interviewed two candidates for an open position. It turns out that one of the ladies that I really liked is the sister of Dana, who used to work for me and left with Anthony five years ago. She mentioned it to Harvey, but not to me and that was enough to spoil her for me. We ended up hiring a young man who works for one of our agents now. He will start the Monday after Thanksgiving.

 

Darla was away all weekend at an event in Auburn, the Mandarin Festival. She has a great weekend with over $2k in sales. I played golf in our final event on Saturday. I was 2 points behind for the Player of the Year, so played in the second group. I had a pedestrian round of golf and shot 42+44=86. I will finish third in the POY, but a good showing this year. I was also tied for net in the year long Eclectic competition with a 48. I didn't pick up any strokes, but my index is up to a 15, so now have a net 47. The final is based on our December 15th GHIN handicap, so we will see where I end up.

 

I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving, even those of you up in Canada that refuse to follow the proper Thanksgiving where there is NFL football on television. We will host this year and Becky and Dan will be in town as well. I will again assume my position in front of the keyboard next Sunday for my last blog entry before the trip to Mexico. Be well. Ciao.

More rain and California Cheers!

Yep, that is my good looking daughter. She was over the moon happy this week over buying Sam's plane ticket to Nuevo Vallarta. She ended up getting the last ticket on the flight and that is a God thing. It turns out that Daniel and Becky were holding off buying their tickets because of some free companion ticket they had and they couldn't get on the same flight as us. They're leaving four hours before us and will cool their jets in the Puerto Vallarta airport for about three hours before we get there. It will be their first visit to Mexico and they will get a good look at the airport before we get there. We Face Booked with Jennifer and Sam last night and they are both so excited about our trip. What was touching to me was that Jennifer somehow didn't know that Dad and Shirley were coming as well and she was so excited! She kept saying to Samantha, "Won't it be fun to see GGPa and GGMa? I'm sure we've mentioned it before, but with her job situation and John's initial reluctance to let Sam come, that note got lost in the shuffle. We were sure that it was a dead issue until his Mom heard about it and told him to wise up. It was a great opportunity for Sam to see another country and she is sure we will keep Sam safe. John not only changed his tune, but met Jennifer at the Post Office to get Sam her Visa. A nice benefit is that they are now free to bring Sam to Vancouver and that will be my next goal, to set up a trip to Surrey to see Dad and Shirley with Jennifer, McKinney and Sam.

The Sunday night game just started and each game had a moment of silence for the victims in France. During the silence, someone blurted out "Isis Sucks!". It seemed appropriate to me. I can't wait to get a patriot back in the White House instead of the loons in charge now. These morons want to bring in 65,000 refugees from Syria without any vetting whatsoever. I am so tired of pandering to people of the Muslim faith. Yes, terrorists and Muslims are mutually exclusive, but all Isis are Muslims. I don't want this country bringing terrorists in because we don't want to offend anyone. Take whatever money Hillary and Obama want to spend on bringing Syrian refugees to the US and spend it on Veterans Affairs.

It was a good week of work this week and we did host a Continuing Education class for our retail agents. The insurance industry has a requirement that licensed agents get 24 hours of continuing education within every two years. We had one of our carriers come in and host two three hour classes on Thursday. We supplied the room, the breakfast and the drinks. Our carrier supplied the speaker, the courses and the lunch. It was well attended and great to see the agents. Our carrier hosted us for dinner on Thursday night at McCormick Schmick's. Pete still cannot drive because of his arm injury and came into the office with one of my other underwriters. He decided to enjoy dinner with us and then Uber home.

We all met for drinks beforehand in the bar and I picked up the tab for that. Dinner was awesome and there were 11 of us, including 8 from my office and our two underwriters and the VP speaker from the carrier. Pete was having problems with his phone and couldn't get the Uber app to load. It is one of the problems with Uber, you can only order a car on your phone. He asked me to borrow my phone and I don't have the app. He asked why not. I told him I don't drink to excess when I'm out and can drive myself. He finally got Sean, our underwriter to order an Uber car on his phone. They were coming in 5 minutes, so I walked out with Pete and got his gear from my car. I drove around closer to the front door as it was after 8 and the parking was less crowded. I pulled up in front, found a spot and a silver Audi pulled up to the front of the restaurant. Pete grabbed his stuff and headed to the car. I said my goodbyes as he was putting his stuff in the back seat of the car and headed back into the restaurant and our group.

About five minutes later Pete came back into the restaurant and got Sean's attention. I hopped up to see what was going on. He wanted to know the make of the car coming to get him. The guy in the Audi was pulling up to pick someone up when Pete opened his rear door and started loading his stuff into the back. The guy asked if he could help him. It wasn't the Uber driver and now I have a new story to tell on Pete. He has a titanium brace on his arm and I had introduced him at the CE class and told the group that there was a pop quiz. Pete had injured his arm either: A. Playing Australian Rules Football or B. He fell over a curb. I told them to engage him at the break to get the scoop.

The guys all got together Friday night for poker and I begged off. I had forgotten that it was Friday night and was exhausted. I was out late Thursday night and wanted to spend time with my wife. Steve kind of gave me a bad time about my commitment level and I told him that I wasn't a retired guy that looked forward to poker all month long. If it was convenient, I loved to see the guys and socialize, but I'd been in Detroit the week before and wanted to spend some time with my bride. Geesh.

We played the Turkey Shoot golf tournament on Saturday. I hadn't played or practiced in two weeks, so was a little rusty. I shot 44+42=86 for a net 72 which gave me second place in my flight. I had four realistic birdie opportunities (within a 20 foot putt for birdie) and I didn't convert even one of them and actually three putted on two of those for bogey. It wasn't my best round of golf, but it was a beautiful day and great to be out there with friends.

I got home after golf and spent the day cleaning the pool, the spa, and doing the yard work. I cleaned up all the leaves and put them in neat piles on the street. I vacuumed up the leaves in the back yard and on the side yard. And...then the rain and wind came in today and the leaves are scattered all over the front yad again. There are leaves in the pool and all over the backyard. Oh well, it looked nice for about an hour or two.

I have a cocktail party with another carrier on Tuesday night and Pete, my Operations Manager and I will attend. It is at the Americano Restaurant inside the Hotel Vitale on Mission Street in San Francisco. The event is 4:30 -7:30 and we will likely leave Sacramento about 2:30 on Tuesday. I hope to be home by 9:30.

I am back in production as one of my underwriters is out on Maternity Leave. She was due on December 1st, but had some complications. She ended up in the hospital on November 1st and just got out on Friday. They did a C section and she gave birth last Tuesday morning. The baby underwent surgery on Tuesday for a tumor on her back and they also removed her appendix. She is obviously undersized, but is doing well. They expect her out of the hospital sometime this week. I an re-learning a lot of our systems and have undergone a few "Train the Vice President" sessions with some of my underwriters. Her book of business is very fluid and busy and I am exhausted trying to do her job and mine. I look forward to seeing her back in the New Year.

Well, this is it for this week. We will be in Mexico in three weeks time. In the meantime, we have Thanksgiving dead ahead and some work yet to do. Have a great week and I'll jump back on this next week. Ciao.

2015 Detroit Leadership Meeting is in the rear view mirror

Yep, back after the marathon that is our annual leadership meeting in Detroit. I left on Tuesday morning and flew through Dallas, stopping for lunch in Dallas before flying on to Detroit and arriving at 5:30 in Detroit, after leaving Sacramento at 7:00 AM. There were a group of female firefighters that were on my flight from Dallas to Detroit. I was impressed with their dedication, but there was one woman that had to be close to 280 pounds. She was loud and obnoxious and when the flight attendant asked her to buckle her seat belt, she told her it wouldn't reach around her. When they brought her an extender, she sad, "Hey, those are for fat people." Really? She took it and stuffed it in her front seat pocket and shoved the loose belt buckle up between her waist and the armrest. I was a little concerned as she was ahead of me and I didn't want her hurtling around in the bulkhead in the event of an emergency.

 

The meeting was really pretty good this year, although I was probably a bit more quiet than normal. We are down just over a million in premium and about $350,000 in income this year. I was content to take my lumps this year and try to learn from some of the offices that are doing better than I am. My goal and pledge is that this will be a one year anomaly.  I had so many people approach me and want to talk about Matt and how we are doing without him. He was beloved in the company and a hard guy to replace. I told anyone who asked that no, I haven't replaced him, but have back filled his position with two younger employees and we are doing okay. We finished October with a record revenue and income month and I feel that we are close to being on track. Of course, headaches abound. Wendy, who stepped up as a producer when Matt left, is out on maternity leave and has some complications with her pregnancy and is in the hospital now. She is due in early December, but they are ready to induce her delivery and get the baby into surgery. She won an Outstanding Service award at the meeting and was thrilled when I texted her a screenshot of her award.

 

I was able to get Pete taken care of at the meeting as I discussed his situation with our CEO and I think we're locked in with him for awhile. It is one less headache for me and allows us some stability going forward. I'm excited about the future and I plan to hire a young man who interned for us this past Summer. He graduates from the University of Arizona in December and I hope to plug him in next year. I see some of the same things in him as I saw in Matt: determination, ability, attention to detail  and speed. He is still working for me about 12 hours a week remotely and I hope to lock that down by December. I talked to our Director of Compensation to make sure we won't have a problem getting him a good starting salary as I'm currently paying him $12.50 an hour.

 

I've added a few screenshots from our network app from the meeting. You can see the gang that were waiting at the airport for our flights out on Saturday. There were actually about 10 more people there, but they were at a different bar. I flew home through Phoenix and had a late dinner at Bog's Big Breakfast in the Sky Harbor Airport. It is one of the best airport restaurants that I have eaten at. They specialize in breakfast and the portions are large and delicious. I had eggs, bacon and potatoes and they included two huge slabs of marble rye toast on the side.

 

It is always difficult to fly East and have early meetings. I got into the hotel at7 :00PM and ended up hosting a group of six employees for dinner, including folks from Arkansas, Denver, Kansas City and Cleveland. I happened to head down for dinner and ended up the highest ranking person in the group and bought the dinner as a VP.

 

You can see the picture of Alan and his family on the screenshot above. His son, Danny was promoted to Senior Vice President and named to the board of directors for the family owned company. His daughter, Jody, was named a Corporate Vice President and is the Director of Canada. They are both very good at what they do and are both lawyers, Jodi having practiced for seven years in Toronto before joining the family business.

 

It is raining here and Darla fixed a nice tri tip roast, mashed potatoes and gravy that we ate while watching the Dallas game. They just lost AGAIN and are unofficially out of the playoffs. I feel for Tony Romo as he doesn't get any younger, but tonight's loss was firmly on the defense. They couldn't stop anyone when it mattered. The offense played their first complete game since Tony was hurt and it meant nothing. When the overtime coin toss came up Eagles, I had a bad feeling. Oh well, it's just football.

 

No golf as I was exhausted after the trip. I had a good night's sleep, but still slept out on the couch for about two hours today. Darla put away my suits and shirts as I slept. I have to do the handicapping for the Turkey Shoot next weekend. We have 90 players signed up so it's a bit of a PIA. I may work on it tomorrow.

 

I don't think I have added Sam's soccer picture before, but if I have, so be it. Very cute. Jennifer has all of their passports taken care of and will buy Sam's plane ticket next week. Looking forward to all of the fun in Mexico with the kids and Dad and Shirley. It will be fun. I rode the last leg of my flight lat night with a couple who live in Grass Valley who were returning from Cabo. There excitement about their trip, go t me fired up. Now that the Leadership conference is over, I can start looking forward to the trip. I think Darla and I will have Sam swim with the dolphins at the Vallarta Adventures compound down the street from the resort. It will be great and only about four weeks until we leave.

 

I have a Continuing Education seminar that my office is hosting on Thursday. This is the third straight that Markel has hosted and we have bought the lunch and provided the venue and the retail agents. Markel has a guy who has been in the business for 40 years and he is hilarious. We have our agents calling us to see when the next event is. We also have our annual Holiday Open House on December 3rd. We have our Water Remediation contractors lining up to host our open bar every year. Their customers are the retail agents and they will do anything to get in front of them. I look forward to those two events before we fly off to Puerto Vallarta on December 5th.

 

Well, I'm tired and ready to watch some TV with Darla, so I will bring this to a close. I hope you are all well, living in the footsteps of our LORD and living a life you desire. Be well. Ciao.

 

 

 



Halloween 2015

Fun as always and , as is our custom, Darla and I had a date night Saturday night. Darla is a diabetic and we don't need candy in the house. We went to an early movie and saw "Woodlawn", a Christian film that portrayed a school in Birmingham that went through integration in 1972 and had one of the top athletes in the country play for them. He was a black running back who went on to play in the NFL and was one of the first black superstars to play for The University of Alabama and Bear Bryant. He helped that team win a national championship as a freshman. Great feel good story, but also one that opens your eyes to the pain and suffering that forced busing caused the black community. Birmingham was widely noted as the most segregated city in the country in the late 60's, in no small part due to their Governor, George Wallace, who was a noted and acclaimed racist/segregationist.

From there we drove on to Gingers, a local Hawaiian style restaurant and had burgers for dinner. They had quite a deck party going on with a DJ and dancing. It was unbelievably loud and I chose to eat inside the restaurant rather than blast my ear drums. Darla reminded me that I'm getting old, but with age comes wisdom and I think I made the right call. Dinner was delicious.

We finally had a rain storm roll in early this morning and we've had off again/ on again rain all day. It was fairly light, but has ramped up tonight and we expect heavier rain tonight and tomorrow morning. I put down more grass seed this weekend so the rain is welcome.

You can see pictures of my pirate woman, who dressed up on Friday to go and see one of her foster families and oversee a visit between the natural parents and the kids. Her foster Mom also dressed up and the kids loved it. You can also see the pictures of Sam, who dressed up as Alice in Wonderland and went trick or treating with the boys who live next door. The bottom picture is of those in my office who dressed up this year. We had a baked potato bar this year with cheese, sour cream, avocados, onions, green onions, shallots, chili and whipped butter. It was tremendous. Two of the staff members also set up games and we broke into two teams and did two one-on-one games. The first was holding a tongue depressor between your teeth and then stacking six dice up one on top of the other. The second game was the "candy elevator" where two pencils were taped together and strings tied to each end of the pencils and three skittles being placed on the pencils and the strings being placed behind your ears and you have to raise the candy up to your mouth and then eat the candies. It was a lot of fun and we had a good day.

Saturday was our Monster Golf Event at Woodcreek Golf Club. I played with Steve Matthews who just got a cast off of his right ankle. This was his second golf game in four months and I didn't expect much. It was a two man scramble event and they had long drive and several holes with multiple flags on the greens. I played well, but Steve couldn't hit the ball 200 yards as he can't push off on his foot yet. We had a good time and shot a 69, which wasn't DFL, which is good. In fact there was a husband and wife that played and shot a net 80. Ouch. I had a really good time with Steve and we had a catered lunch afterward. I almost drove the green on the 325 yard 11th hole. It is a dogleg left and you can cut the corner and it is about 290 yards. My drive hit the very top of a tree that guards the front of the green and ended up about 25 yards short. It was fun. I ended up second in my flight at the Past President's event to the guy who won among the Presidents. He was in my flight. I won't play golf again until the week of November 14th, which is our Turkey Shoot.

I leave for the Leadership meeting in Farmington Hills, Michigan on Tuesday morning. We finished October with a record month and just short of our budget goal. We were at $2,850,000 in premium and over $416,000 in income. We beat 2014 by about 8% and that was with one more underwriter and three more employees. I have two openings for staff and have been interviewing left and right for staff. I have found a couple of excellent candidates, but they don't have degrees and my boss is standing firm on hiring only college graduates.

The Leadership meeting is usually a fun affair for me, but we are down in 2015 and well off budget. I look forward to my first VP meeting which is day one of the event. I don't anticipate any awards other than a couple of production awards for Pete. I am proud of my staff for really stepping up this month. It will be a tough go for a couple of months as one of my newer underwriters had to leave a month early for maternity leave. I had hoped that she would be with me until I got back from Mexico, but she had circulation problems and he feet swelled up and her doctor put her on bed rest. Her father in law passed away two weeks ago and her stress kicked in about then.

Well I will check in again next week after my marathon meetings this week. Be well. I hope to talk to Dad and Shirley tonight after dinner. Darla is cooking pot roast with corn bread and the smell is filling the house. Nice. Ciao.