A good and relaxing Summer is in full swing. This weekend was made up of poker, golf, church and hanging out with the love of my life. It was a good week of work and I was able to make some headway on setting up our continuation plan following my retirement. I have Wendy in my office nominated to join the next KAMP class. Kamp is Kaufman Accelerated Management Program and is designed for the future leaders of our company. Wendy is 29, has a degree from UC Davis and an MBA from Sacramento State University. She has shown the ability and desire to be a leader in my office. She has helped set up several "lunch and learn" sessions in my office with the Underwriting assistants. She has also worked on a college intern program for my office and meets weekly with my Operations Manager to work on ideas for training and employee development. If she is chosen for the program I hope to promote her to a Management position whereby she will work on sales development in the office and set goals for each of the teams and be the resource in my office for each of the employees to look to for their own individual development within the company. I am comfortable with her as the heir apparent in my office.
You can see some pictures of Jennifer, McKenny and Samantha above. Jennifer has been home all Summer with Sam and they have had an awesome time together. All good things must end and Jennifer has taken a new job working with Cox Communications and starts work on Monday. Sam is not thrilled with the new development, but will get over it. We have a family vacation planned in August (in Lake Tahoe) and that new job will throw a kink into the machinery. Jennifer now hopes to come Thursday to Sunday and be there when David, Daniel and Becky are there. McKenny has stepped up and will be there all week with Sam so that her vacation doesn't get cut short. Unfortunately, we have a four bedroom condo all week and there will likely only be four of us there most of the week. We do plan to have Junior come over from Graeagle and Darla's parents there for part of the time. One way or the other we will have a fun week and enjoy our time with everyone while they are there.
Daniel and Becky are moving from Pasadena to San Jose this weekend and David is down there helping them with the move. They will come up to the Tahoe condo on the last weekend of our stay. We will be there August 6th thru the 13th. Hopefully they get settled in. I think Becky starts her new internship in early August.
Shirley is setting up a family reunion in Mexico for her 80th birthday in 2018. Dad sent us some information and Sherry found a 15 room private villa in Puerto Vallarta that comes with a chef and our own pool and media room, bars, etc. It looks very nice. I talked to Jennifer and she is ready to leave next week. The boys sort of view it right now as pie in the sky as it is so far away. David could be married by then, who knows. If that is the case, I'm guessing the plot plan showing David in with Chris would likely have to change. Heck, Chris could be married by then. It is a ways off yet for people in their 20's. Same situation with Sherry and Cam's kids.
Friday night was poker and I took a pretty good beat down from my buddies. I got there at 7 PM, won the first of my six pots at 8 PM and ended up losing about $55. It would have been worse, but I won one of the larger pots late in the night that brought me back from about $80 down. We played at Carl's house. Carl and Danelle were friends of ours when the boys were in school and David and Adam were both quarterbacks on their high school teams. Carl and Danelle split up and divorced about 8 years ago. Carl told me on Friday night that they have been dating and plan to get re-married this Fall. He has his house up for sale and she is selling hers and they are buying a house together in the country with acreage. I'm fine with that as long as Danelle allows poker about twice a year. He seems happy and was not a good single guy. He needs to turn his damn a/c on when we are playing poker in July though.
Saturday was golf at Cherry Island, one of the tougher tracks in town and one I enjoy and play well on. Paul came out along with Bryan and Trey. They are all single digit handicappers and played the blue tees. I played the white as it is 6100 yards and plenty long for this graybeard. I shot 42+39=81. Bryan had 79 and Paul shot 84. Trey struggled to an 88. We had a great time and I found a Groupon for $65 for two with carts and range balls. Groupon had a 20% off day last week, so we got the golf for $52, or $26 a player. Excellent for that track.
I am taking a day off on Tuesday and playing in our weekday Roseville Golf Club tournament. I try to play in one or two of the weekly tournaments a year. There are four weekday tournaments through the Summer months. I'll play with Boyd and Andy on Tuesday and I'm looking forward to it. I will also be recruiting for volunteers for the Junior tournament at Del Paso CC August 1 to 4. We are still in need of volunteers and I will at least fill in the volunteers for my scoring and fore caddie positions. I'm responsible for those positions. The tournament will have 156 junior golfers from all over the United States. The top 4 golfers from each state's championship event automatically qualify and all of them cannot attend as it costs a fair amount of money to fly in for six days and play golf. It will be an event and one where my vacation the next week will be well deserved as I'll be at the course every day Saturday thru Thursday and there at 6 AM Monday thru Friday and staying until the evening.
Darla and I watched movies last night and did the whole popcorn and snuggling thing. We watched an older movie with Kevin Spacey called the Shipping News. We gave it a B. It was a fun night. We were up late this morning and missed early service. I was watching the Senior Open and enjoying a slice of egg pie that Darla whipped up and we decided to head to late service late. It started at 10:30 an we got there at 10:45. We missed the singing, but got the full sermon, which was good. I stopped and got my haircut on the way home and then we relaxed on the pool this afternoon. I did get out and do some trimming of the hedges and bushes and Darla fed the palms, but it was a nice relaxing end to our weekend.
The pastor did talk about Tony Dungy, the NFL coach and commentator now on ESPN. Tony has a young son, Jordan, who has a rare genetic disorder that affects only one in 125,000 children. Jordan cannot feel pain and is completely fearless. Pain is one of the first lessons that children learn. If something is hot they stay away from it or if it is sharp, they feel the pain of a sliced hand. Jordan feels none of that and was caught by his Mom at the age of six pulling a hot pan of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven and eating them. He had third degree burns on his hands, and blisters and swelling on his lips, tongue and throat. The pastor talked about Fear as a blessing in our lives if we can learn to conquer it, but at the same time learn from it. Jordan would walk outside into the snow in his diaper and roll around in it not feeling the cold. Tony and his wife had had to watch Jordan closely his whole life, because he would fall over and hit his face on the ground and the only way they knew something happened is when his face would swell up. Jordan is an adult now and unfortunately in a wheelchair because he broke both legs in an accident. No pain, though. Amazing story.
Well, that is it for now. I will be back at the keyboard next weekend. I hope all are well. We will be in touch with Dad and Shirley either tonight or tomorrow. Ciao.
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