Spring is Here, Time to Stain the Deck

It is that time of year, baseball, sunshine, golf (for some lucky folks) and time to get the backyard ready for Summer. I have used a stain concentrate made by Smiths  on the deck  for years and the results were generally good. You end up mixing the concentrate 1:4 with ionized water. I decided to change it up this year as the results last year were poor. I bought 3 gallons of Behr Cement Stain which has a coverage of 400 square feet per gallon. I thought the color I picked was a darker brown, but we ended up with a really nice "terra cotta" color. I power washed the concrete after moving all of the plants and furniture off of the deck. The power washing strips the old sealant and cleans the surface. I then used Prep & Etch, a product that helps open the pores of the cement for better adhesion of the stain. I let all of that dry and then got to work on the stain. Darla was off to an event and I worked about 6 hours on the stain. Darla had asked me to be kind to my back and to use a sprayer. I've used them in the past and prefer the hand painting, but "happy wife, happy life." The airless sprayer (hand pump) seemed to give me poor coverage and I was using my 3rd gallon of stain and only about 50% done. I ran out at about the 60% mark and Darla came home about then. I sent her out to get more stain and told her to get me three gallons. She decided to get 4 gallons to be safe. I did some cutting round the edges of the pool and the house while I waited.

 

The first Home Depot (in Antelope) only had one gallon of the tint base and he made up the gallon. She dropped that off and headed to the other Roseville store and I set to work. The wait had dried up the stain in the sprayer nozzle and I had to take it apart and clean it. I kept trying to get it working, but there was a clog in the nozzle that was not coming loose. I finally gave up and resorted to hand staining the deck. That one gallon finished the other 40% of the patio! I put on a second coat today on about 70% of the deck, but stopped about 4:30 as the sun was on the portion of the deck I had to finish and I thought going to get a biopsy on my basil cell carcinoma tomorrow and showing up with a sunburn was probably not a good idea. It was about 85 degrees today. I still have a little bit in the gallon I used today and 2 more gallons. I should end up with most of two gallons left when I'm done. Darla said for me to take the extra gallon back for a refund, but it is a mixed product. By the way, my back is a little sore tonight.

 

You can see the new hot tub cover in the photos above. The old one was saturated with water and weighs about 150 pounds. I decided to have a hauling service come and pick that up along with some chairs, building materials, old patio umbrellas, pool toys and assorted junk that accumulates when you've lived in the same house for 19 years. We got back from church at 10 this morning and I began building a large pile of detritus on the driveway for the guy to pick up. I had called 1-800-Got Junk?, but they wanted $400 for a truckload. I could rent a truck and haul it myself for about $120 including the dump fee. I found a guy in the Christian Yellow Pages that would do it for $150 and set up the gig. The side yard was overwhelmed with old pool equipment, building supplies (the extra baseboards from our remodel), as well as closet doors from when we had a bookcase built into Darla's office, and a couple of doors from the garage shelving units. All of that went bye-bye and the side yard is so nice and neat. I have shelving units on the fence and those are now mostly empty save for some pool equipment and supplies and a small amount of firewood and kindling. I find myself walking out there just to see how nice and neat it looks. Purging is a good thing unless you are bulimic.

 

We had one of our first ball games at the River Cats this year on Tuesday.  Burns and Wilcox has season tickets. I invited Phil and Carmen. Phil is one of Pete's agents and has become a good friend of mine. Darla set he and Carmen up about 7 months ago and they are still together. We had a nice lunch at the ballpark and watched the hometown team win 11-1. One of the SF Giants is rehabbing an injury with the AAA club and he hit a grand slam in the game. It was a nice afternoon.

 

I took the staff out this week to celebrate the windfall that we received in March and put us over budget through three months. We went to the Macaroni Grill and had a great team building lunch. You can see the picture above.

 

Darla and I will be leaving for Maine in two weeks. This is the annual conference with the Insurance Group that I am the Vice Chairman for. We will fly out to York Harbor through Boston on the Tuesday the 16th which is Darla's birthday and stay with the group for the conference until Thursday night. We then move to a bed and breakfast in Kennebunk Port, Maine which is the home town of the Presidential retreat of Bush Senior. Darla and I will travel the coast on Friday and Saturday seeing the sights and visiting the local lighthouses as we travel with my friend, Jeff and his wife Linda. Jeff is the Chairman of the group and brought me in as a board member two years ago. We will stay in a hotel on Saturday night as we fly out fairly early on Sunday. Last year we visited Washington, DC. I look forward to the trip and some time away with Darla for her birthday week. The only downside is that David turns 30 the same week, but as I told Darla, he won't be hanging out with us anyway. We will all get together this coming weekend to celebrate the birthdays. Darla's sister Alicia shares a birthday with her.

 

Work is going well and the numbers are trending up. We will be hosting a Continuing Education seminar next Tuesday and then a Customer Appreciation party that night. It will have a sports theme and we are encouraging our agents to wear their favorite sports gear. We will have a hosted bar put on by a restoration company that partners with us on these events to get close to the agency plant. I also have a windshield replacement company, Safelight, that will host a nacho bar. We will have pizza and sliders as well as Cracker Jacks. The Giant game will be on in both conference rooms as they play the Mets starting at 4:30 PM. The CE course will again be taught by one of our carrier partners' VPs. He is about 65 and a very entertaining speaker and educator. We have almost 70 attendees already and the invitations were just sent out on Monday. We did send out a Save the Date postcard about a month ago.

 

Well, dinner is on so I will bring this to a close. I hope you are all hale and hearty and living life well. Ciao

Post Easter Memories

 

It has been a nice little break from the blog with a trip to Las Vegas and the celebration of Easter with Jennifer, McKenny and Miss Samantha. We had a great week and enjoyed the time with them immensely. Sam came and stayed at the casino with us the first two nights and we took her to see two movies at the on site movie theater. We saw Beauty and the Beast, which was tremendous, and Boss Baby, where Darla actually took a picture of me sleeping in the theater. Sam enjoyed them both and we ate too much movie candy and popcorn. Darla and I are both on a diet following our trip to Vegas. (I say that having just finished a barbecued cheeseburger with home made French fries.)

 

We flew in Wednesday night and didn't get in until 9 PM. We called and told Jennifer that we would be over early Thursday morning, but Sam was still up, packed and ready to go with Papa and Grandma. The girl knows when the spoilers come into town and didn't want to miss out. We drove by their place and got Sam and then got checked into the hotel. She was way too wired to go to sleep, so we stayed up talking and playing until almost midnight. Did I say spoilers?

 

Thursday we slept in and then headed out for breakfast and some shopping for movie candy. We drove down to Lumberjacks, a restaurant where "the big boys eat". We had a waiter, great guy, who must have weighed 300 pounds. Apparently, the big boys "work" there too. It is a Lumberjack themed restaurant with cedar logs, red checked tablecloths and lots of food for the money. We sat next to an older fellow, who counseled us to buy the "whole hog" meal, as he had enough for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He had about three Styrofoam containers packed to go and was sitting enjoying his coffee. We passed on that.

 

We did stop at the CVS and Darla was looking for some conditioner for her hair. There was a beauty store next door, but apparently it was just for black woman as they had straighteners, and jeri curl and other things, but no conditioner. She bought it at the CVS. Sam shopped for candy and ended up with something called Gobstoppers and Nerds. I settled for Reeses Pieces and red licorice. We headed back to the casino as the movie was at 1:50 PM.

 

We had dinner reservations at Maggiano's Little Italy, which is a must stop for us each time we travel to Vegas. The restaurant is located on the strip above the Fashion Show Mall. The picture of Darla, Mac, Jennifer and Sam was taken at Maggianos. We had the Family Meal that consisted of two appetizers, four main courses, and two desserts. We all walked the mall after dinner to burn off some of the considerable calories that we put away.

 

We drove Mac and Jennifer back home and then headed back to the casino for another night with Sam. We were able to get to bed earlier and wake up earlier. We all showered and headed to breakfast. We tried a little French restaurant that had baguettes, egg whites and crepes on the menu. We took one look at the menu and were out of there. Sam asked if we could go to Mimis as she likes the puppy dog pancakes there. We drove over and enjoyed a great meal and I even got a free meal by downloading their app on my phone. From there we stopped and got Sam a couple of Easter dresses at Target and then headed back to the casino for the 12:50 showing of "Boss Baby" where I got caught up on my sleep. Jennifer joined us at about 2 PM for some pool time. Tuesday was warm, but windy. Friday was ideal with a temperature of 84 degrees and a light breeze. We hung out by the pool for about two hours and then headed over to Jennifer's for dinner. Mac didn't join us as he has a 4 PM call everyday.

 

We played games at Jennifers' and then ordered Chinese food and then watched a movie. Sam had decided that she was staying home and we had packed up her bags. After the movie, she wanted to go back to the hotel with us. We should have let her, but she had already made her decision and so Darla and I went and lost $100 at the casino. Well, we got five drinks for that price, but it wasn't pretty. We were down almost $160 and made a nice comeback before heading to bed. 

 

Saturday, we headed back to Lumberjack and had the same server. Jennifer, Mac and Sam came over and we hung out by the pool until about three and then packed up and headed to their house where we spent the night Saturday night. We went to church for the 5 o'clock service Saturday night and had a really nice service with good music and a great message about redemption. They highlighted a couple who were married young, divorced under difficult circumstances with cheating in the marriage and a sad story of lost love. The redemption came when the husband reached out to his ex after getting sober and making amends for his past. She had moved to Vegas and was a single mom. The man had joined the Army and cleaned up his act. They began a long distance relationship, eventually married and he relocated to Vegas where he is raising her child and they now have one of their own. They tied that message into the message of forgiveness that Jesus showed us when he died in our place to absolve us of sin.

 

The church was doing baptisms that day and had Icees, funnel cakes and a band playing. I think Sam thinks church is a party. I guess those of us who are members also consider church a party. We stayed for awhile and Sam got her snow cone. We went home and had leftovers and played games (Sequence and Connect 4). We tried a new game called Rhymes, but it was not a good one. McKenny had bought it and announced he was no longer buying board games. It was funny.

 

Sunday we got up and had a nice breakfast, played the Egg fight game with hard boiled eggs (McKenny was the champion), and got cleaned up and headed to the park. I had hoped to play with Sam's RC car we got her for Christmas, but McKenny was getting it ready and the pull cord ripped out of the housing when he was starting it. We stopped and bought some drinks, chips and got Sam a new kite. It was breezy and a perfect day for a picnic and kite flying. We headed out to their nearest park and ran into about a two mile backlog of cars heading into the park. Apparently there was an Easter Egg hunt or something. We got out of there in a hurry and went to the Butterfly park near their house and relaxed there for a couple of hours.

 

There was a guy there with a monkey. He was dressed up in a flannel shirt suspenders and shorts...and so was the monkey. We laughed and Jen was remarking how the monkey looked just like his owner. The owner was black and I gave her a ration of grief for her comment. She was NOT amused with her Dad.

 

Sunday afternoon we went to a new Smoothie shop in their neighborhood and had sandwiches and smoothies for lunch. We headed back to the house and got packed up for our last night where we were moving to the Excalibur to be close to the airport for our 5:55 AM flight. John was picking Sam up at five, so we headed out about that time, actually passing John as he was heading through the gate and we were heading out.

 

I had credit on my Expedia account and got the hotel for $18, but we had to pay a $29 resort fee. Darla and I walked the strip and bought some snacks for the plane in the morning and then went to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. We were in bed by 9:30 PM and up at 3 AM the next morning. We returned the rental car ( a nice Toyota Rav 4) and caught the shuttle to the airport. The guy sitting next to me was about 25 and completely bombed. How he drove his car back to the rental center was beyond me as he was wasted. He stunk of booze and couldn't keep his eyes open.

 

We were in Sacramento by 7:15 and I was in the office by 8:30. I had one unfortunate employee that was ten minutes late to work and I brought her in and explained that if I could start the morning on the strip in Vegas and get to work on time, she could too.

 

I got the financials for March and it includes our profit sharing checks from our carriers for the year before. I received over $120,000 in profit sharing last year and our profit for 2017 went from $100,000 to over $290,000. I was thrilled, but timing is everything and it would have been nice to have that news before Alan visited. Oh well. I'm taking the staff out to lunch on Wednesday to celebrate our good fortune (or hard work to be accurate)..

 

There are a couple of pictures above of my staff working on the grounds at a non profit called 916 Ink. They work with low income kids and kids at risk and provide an afternoon program geared to arts. They promote creative writing, crafts, painting, theater, etc. We hooked up with them earlier this year and helped them build a garden with planters, trees, rock and pea gravel. We worked Saturday and helped spread rock and plant trees and work on the benches and planters. I had poker Friday night and the work gig was 9 AM to 2 PM. I offered to buy lunch for anyone that came out and got there after 10 AM and bought pizza for my staff and all of the volunteers that showed up. It was fun. I included a few pictures from inside the Imaginarium, with an eyeglasses tree and a light tree as well as other exhibits, including their "author wall".

 

I have a new employee starting tomorrow. Alan encouraged me to bring in more young people. I had interviewed a guy who had just graduated from Lehigh in Pennsylvania last year and was working for a stats company that is affiliated with Major League Soccer. He grew up in San Diego and has lived in San Francisco, Denver and New York City. I really liked the guy, but Harvey thought he was a "flight risk" as he was used to big cities. We re-evaluated after Alan's visit and hired him. I had one employee who was on probation and I had her on a Performance Improvement Plan. She gave me her notice last week and saved me from having to make a tough decision on her continued employment. I'm living right.

 

I did go in and have a skin cancer screening. The spots that Darla found on my back were nothing, but he burned off a couple of spots and took one spot on my chest and had it biopsied. I got the results this week and it s a basal cell carcinoma and I have to go back in May 1st and have more of the surface of the skin removed to make sure they got all of the cancer. Make sure you wear your sunscreen SPF 50 or higher and reapply it every hour or so.

 

My PT is continuing and I am at about 80% of full Range of Motion. I have almost no strength and have just started strength training. I will move up to like a one pound weight this week. I am going to physical therapy twice a week and they are really stretching out my shoulder and working the muscles around the joint. I will start chipping and putting in about a month.

 

Well, Darla is waiting to spend the evening with me, so I need to bring this to a close. I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. Remember that God chose us through our Saviour. Let's choose Love over Hate and Acceptance over Judgment and Affirmation over Criticism. I'll be back at this next week. I think I will start on the patio next weekend. 

Rainy Days and Rain Nights

We had some Biblical style rain on Friday and Saturday with a huge downpour, hail, thunderstorms and a total of almost 4 inches of rain in 36 hours. The flowerbeds over the pool and in front of the pool overfilled and drained into the pool. The drain from the pool to the street filled up so much that the grate over the drain housing came loose and was laying by the side of the drain when I checked on it yesterday. It started out as a solid rain Thursday and Friday and by Friday night became a torrential downpour that over filled the gutters on the house, filled the gutters in the street and swamped everything in it's path. We sat Friday night and just listened to the rain and hail pounding the roof and were glad to have a warm hoe to hunker down in. The rain kept up on Saturday and again I jut hunkered down and watched the Masters on TV. We did venture out at 5 PM for church and the storm had passed on by then and some sun was peaking out of the clouds.

 

Today dawned bright and sunny although it didn't get over 63 degrees today. I set the DVR to tape both the Masters and the Giants baseball game and headed out to clean up after the storm. I had the tree in the front trimmed on Thursday and some of the branches that were caught up in the tree came down in the storm and I filled the trash can with the cuttings. You can see the original shot of the tree before the trimming right below the first picture of the trimmed tree. The arborist brought the canopy up and thinned out the branches, but to say he "shaped" the tree would be a misnomer. The tree is a Valley Oak, also strangely known as a Coast Oak, and it grows in clumps and fits, but is a great shade tree for the house. Unfortunately, it had been about five years since I had it trimmed and it had pretty well dwarfed the house. The tree crew did a great job. You can actually see our house from the street again. You can also see the nuisance tree in the neighbor's back yard that I had cut down in the third and fourth pictures and then finally the arborist up in the tree with his chain saw doing his work. He climbed the tree and didn't even wear a safety belt. I took  picture of the tree with him way up in it and then one zoomed in on him. He was very good at his job. It is a relief to have the neighbor's tree gone. I used to have a grove of four birch trees along that fence and had them taken out when we put the pool in. It was nice to not have leaves in the pool and then a volunteer grew up in the neighbors yard and hung over my fence inundating the pool with leaves in the Fall. I told our neighbor that I was having my tees trimmed and wanted her trees taken out and agreed to pay for the job. It will all be worth it this Fall. The arborist said the root system is very invasive and is likely already impinging on the wall of the pool.

 

I spent a good three hours out working on the downed leaves and the pool and mowing the lawn. The winds died down today and it was very nice. We leave for Vegas Wednesday night and it will be in the 80's there. Sam is on Spring break, so we will get to spend Thursday and Friday with her. Jennifer and McKenny both work, so we will bring her to the hotel with us and hang by the pool, go to movies, out to lunch and other "goofing off" things with her. We will be in the hotel until Saturday when we move over to Jennifer's house. We will spend one night with them and then move to the Excalibur on the strip for one night as we have a 5:55 AM flight back home Monday morning. We both look forward to seeing the kids and having some fun with Sam. I told McKenny to have the RC car fixed (it has a broken front axle) as I want to see Sam run it and help her build a track for it in her back yard. Darla wants to take Sam out and play soccer with her. We had hoped to see a game, but they are off this week for Spring break.

 

Work is going great. We are having a good month in April, but had a fantastic month in March. I was hoping for about $80,000 in profit, but we received profit sharing checks from five of our companies totaling $114,000, so my estimate of $80,000 was correct, but add in the profit sharing and we had a $194,000 profit month. It would have been nice to have that news when the CEO was here, but I'm thrilled. Pete and I were whooping it up on Friday when I got the numbers. We are actually above budget now for the first three months. I had a young college grad in Harvey's office for a third interview on Friday and we will make an offer to him on Monday. He is a graduate of Lehigh University and sharp. He is a soccer coach and official and currently works for a national stats company that works on soccer stats for MLS.

 

I had my first couple of PT sessions for my shoulder and my range of motion is way ahead of schedule. I ditched the sling after four weeks and I have very good flexibility. It is tight, but I am able to push it pretty good on my exercises and feel great. I had some pain after seeing the physical therapist because she manipulates the arm and pushes me a little further than I'm willing to push myself. She said that most people after six weeks have seriously restricted movement and have to really ease into the exercises. My ROM is very good and she actually moved me into the three week exercises after the first week. I can start to chip and putt in a month and will be back to the driver by June 17th which is four months after surgery. That was the best case scenario and I am living that dream.

 

Darla and I will go to the River Cats baseball game tomorrow night with Charlie and Frieda. We were supposed to go to the season opener on Thursday night but it was rained out. They are having a double header on Monday, but we only plan on going to the second game. I have PT on Monday afternoon at 5 and have asked if they can get me in earlier. They have a good barbecue place up in the Solon Club, which is only open to season ticket holders and we will have dinner up there. We were going to take Miya and Dave, but Miya had a conflict.

I also have a picture of Samantha from her book report on Harry Potter. She was J.K. Rowling and gave the book report as the author. She had memorized the speech and had cards as a prop, but didn't refer to them. She wore one of her Mom's suit coat with the sleeves rolled up and looked like a little executive. Cuteness.

 

I will be back at the keyboard next week AFTER Easter and will return with stories and pictures of our trip to Las Vegas. Until then, enjoy the biggest gift you will ever be offered, the gift of eternal life paid for by the death on the cross of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Praise God. Have a great Easter!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Survived another CEO Visit and PT Starts tomorrow

 

It was a hectic week last week with a visit from our CEO and the final week of the month for March. We ended the month up marginally (about 3.5% on profit) and it was good timing with Alan in the office. Our CEO has not visited Sacramento in two years and he was due for a visit. He was fairly tough on us as our profit has dropped the last three years from the high of $1,080,000 to last years profit of $683,000. I'm amazed we are still as high as we are as I have 6 former employees out prospecting my agents and going after my business. It is the same old saw and I am committed this year to stealing one of my competitors and bringing them over to work for me.

 

There were a few staff that had not met our big boss and they were all nervous. Most of them said that reality was not as bad as their expectations. He was actually pretty engaging and upbeat during our all staff meeting, but was tougher on the troops in the Producer meeting afterward. He is an intimidating guy and is pretty tough on people that get answers wrong when he is talking to them. One of my people just froze in the meeting and he wouldn't let her up for air. It was brutal.

 

I took him to a lunch with one of my retailers and he asked them how they were doing and how they felt about Burns. The agency principal looked at me and said, "Is this where we say all the good things about you like you coached us?" Funny guy. It was a good lunch and we all enjoyed the visit.

 

The Producers went out for cocktails with Alan on Wednesday night at a local fine food restaurant that has a patio overlooking a quarry pond. The pictures from that event are above. Harvey is  standing next to Peter and Alan is with the ladies in the photos.  It was a beautiful Roseville Spring evening and we had wine and appetizers on the patio. Pete ordered the most expensive wine on the menu and had a glass of it when we arrived. Alan asked me on the drive to the airport if he was taking advantage of the situation and I assured him that  Pete is a bit of a wine snob and would have ordered that even if he was paying the bill.

 

It was nice to get through that visit as it is always hard on the staff and they get nervous when he visits. We went through and looked at a couple of spots for some new art and he is sending us a couple of pieces from his private collection to display. We actually sat in my car after the drinks and went through salaries for the coming year. That was a brutal exercise. He ended up about 45 minutes late for his Net Jets flight out of McClellan Air Park and I left him discussing his tardiness with the pilot.

 

I made it by the golf course on Saturday and visited with the guys as they came in from playing the Masters event. It has been hard for me to know they are out there playing. I only stayed about 45 minutes as I felt like I was out of place. It was nice seeing the guys and I helped post a few scores. It was about 77 degrees on Saturday and I took the opportunity to completely clean the pool equipment and the pool, spraying and cleaning out all of the filters and vacuuming out the pool and getting the chemicals up and running for the new pool year. I also trimmed the bushes around the pool and weeded the flower boxes. The amount of huge weeds and growth over this very wet Winter was amazing. I have a picture of the pool with it's spring flowers above.

 

I had a meeting on Friday with our company owned inspection service at 11 and then an appointment with a tree service at noon at the house. I got a call at 10:30 from the tree guy telling me he was heading to the house. I told him I couldn't go as I had an 11 appointment. He insisted as a tree had fallen on a house and he was meeting them at noon.  Someone needs to explain to contractors what an appointment is and how it works. I ran over and met with him. We are having the front tree trimmed back (you can see a picture of the monstrosity that is a Valley Oak tree). They grow tall and wide and have a bad hair day all the time. The tree is starting to grow over the roof of the house and I want it cut back. I also have a photo of my neighbor's tree that started a s a volunteer and is now a huge tree with a ten inch base and it's roots are starting to infringe on my pool. He will do all of the work for $1000 and the two trees on the neighbor's side yard will be gone. No more leaves in the pool next Fall and he will kill the roots to protect the pool.  I made it back to the office about 11:15 and we had our meeting and Larry, the rep, even took me to lunch. Nice guy.

 

Jennifer got her new job at Cox Communications and now has a full benefit package including paid PTO and a 401 K plan. She is really happy and so is the firm. in fact her boss, Tony, wanted her so bad, he spent about an hour with her prepping her for the interview, giving her the questions and coaching her on her answers. Right before the interview he was promoted to a Director position with Cox, so she is in good with the mucky mucks.

 

Darla and I will be in Vegas over Easter holiday and spend some time with Sam as she is on Spring break. We fly in Wednesday night the 13th and will be in Vegas until Monday the 17th.

 

I also have a picture of Jennifer and her family with a friend headed to Sam's soccer game. We will miss seeing her play soccer this time as the team will be on a break Easter weekend.

 

Well, that is it for this week. I am out of the sling and start my physical therapy tomorrow. I haven't had any pain, but expect that to change as I begin working my shoulder. As the Army says: "Pain is just weakness leaving the body." I hope you are all well and ready to celebrate the biggest gift you will ever be given. Jesus death on the cross to forgive our sins. until next week. Ciao.