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.
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