Sunday, April 03, 2016

Great Weekend





 
It was a busy week and a great weekend. I had one of the corporate Vice Presidents, Michael,  in this week and he worked with my younger staff members to help them drill down on which of their agencies are truly a good partner and which are just spinning our wheels. He ran various reports and showed me some great interactive reports based on zip codes, hit ratios and bind to quote ratios. He went on three agency calls while he was here and we capped the week off with a game of golf, what I call "Sports Marketing". I had tickets to the River Cats exhibition game against the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday night. Darla was supposed to go with me, but she ended up with a meeting with her foster care agency and I brought Michael. The River Cats are the Giants AAA affiliate and this is the first year that we have had a game between the two. The Giants won 8-4 and it was fun. Mike and I left after the fifth inning to go and get some dinner and the Giants were leading 6-2 at the time. You can see that the Giants brought their 2010, 2012 and 2014 World Series trophies with them to the game and had them on display.
 
The other pictures are of the house. We have had several solar power companies come out to the house and all of them want me to trim the large Coast Oak in the front of the house. That tree offers shade to the house and the front lawn and I won't do it. My electricity bills run about $200 a month and that includes sewer, garbage and water. Darla and I don't run the air conditioner much during the Summer. We'll have it on during the day, but it cools down at night and we end up with the whole house fan on and all of the doors and windows open about the time the sun sets. I added lawn seed and topsoil to the yard and also put some red mulch bark in the tree wells and around the planter in the front of the house. I changed out several of the sprinkler heads and Darla planted plants in pots and around the backyard. It was a busy day today.
 
We started with church this morning and then went to Home Depot to buy the mulch and lawn soil and Darla loaded up on plants. We then stopped at Ace because I had a $10 off gift card from the Ace Rewards and we bought the sprinkler parts, grass seed, potting soil and granule chlorine. I got home and the granular chlorine was actually chlorine tablets that were mis-packaged. I'll return that tomorrow. I mowed the lawn, cleaned up the ever present spiky balls that fall from the liquid amber trees on the side of the house, and then took care of the chores listed above.
 
This past week was great with Michael. I've known him for the 14 years that I have been with the company. He I a 29 year employee and was the manager of the Phoenix office until he was replaced by one of the "thirty-somethings" that are all the rage in the company right now. Our company, like so many others in this industry, is made up of an aging population of producers and managers and we decided about five years ago to start training the next generation. The biggest issue we have is turn over. The Me generation is not very patient in waiting for their opportunities and some of our more senior managers have been pushed out of their jobs to make way for the future. Michael was moved to a corporate position and is in training now. He has a guaranteed salary and bonus structure and at 68, has about two years left. His position is great. He basically doesn't have a boss and makes his own schedule.
 
I had dinner with him every night that he was here. Darla has started her diet, so it worked out well for me. We played golf on Thursday with Gail in my office and Ron, the Marketing Manager for our largest agency. Ron is also in my golf club and he and I will team up this year in the twilight league.
Michael had to rent a set of left clubs, so we played at Woodcreek, which had a nice set of Adams Speedline clubs in a left hand set. Something clicked for me on Thursday and I shot 38+40=78. Mike had a nice 80 with the rental set and Ron struggled, but finished birdie-par-birdie on the day. I had to run Mike to the airport after lunch and then headed home.
 
Friday, I was caught off guard when my main personal lines Underwriters walked in to my office after lunch and resigned effective immediately. She has been with me for 14 years and had worked in commercial lines for a time. She was frustrated with the lack of advancement and took another position. Hey, it is situation normal (SNAFU). I will be busy this week out visiting her agents and taking our newer underwriter out to meet them.  Harvey will be in on Tuesday to meet with several Underwriting Assistant candidates. We will see each other at some point, but I will have a busy week of calls.
 
Saturday was our Masters tournament at the club and I was able to carry over the momentum I had Thursday and shot a 42+41=83 in the tournament and tied for first low net in my flight. I also won $36 in skin money mostly on the strength of a par on the 448 yard par 4 number one handicap finishing hole.
 
Next week, I have a tee time at Johnny Miller's Napa golf course, Silverado on Sunday. There are 12 of us traveling down and I am bringing Gary, one of my agents from Folsom, as my guest on the outing. The blog may be late next week as I likely won't be home before 8 o'clock or so as we tee off at 11 AM.
 
Next Monday, demolition starts on our master bathroom and the process begins. We will spend next Saturday clearing out our things from the bathroom and taking things off the walls. It will be a long three weeks of waiting, but the result should be well worth the inconvenience.
 
Well, that is it for this week. I will get to the keyboard at some point next week, perhaps Monday night. I hope all are well. Ciao.

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