Not a lot of pictures this week. I did add a couple of pictures of my company's newest sports endorsement. The Detroit Red Wings will move into a new arena this year and we have added our name to the floor below the ice at Papa Murphy's arena in downtown Detroit. I'm not much of a hockey fan, but its a big deal in Home Office. Also, one of our Golf Ambassadors, Webb Simpson qualified for the year end Fed Ex final as one of the PGA golfers with the top 30 Fed Ex points. That is Webb Simpson. Jimmy Walker is the other Ambassador that we have and he has been suffering from Lime disease this year and had a down year. He is still a top 20 golfer, but did not make the final this year. The other pictures are of the fake grass that I put in by the pool. Samson was killing all of the ground cover in that area and it was basically dirt and rocks.
Charlie Aichele, one of my friends from the golf league had some leftover pieces from the installation of his backyard artificial lawn. The pieces were strips and trapezoid pieces. I just had a small area to do, but it is on a rounded edge of the pool and I had to use four separate pieces to cover the small area. Funny story on me picking up the grass pieces from Charlie. He is deathly afraid of snakes and has seen one rattlesnake in his yard this year. He lives near the Granite Bay side of Folsom Lake and the snakes are active because of all the rain this year. He had stored the grass under a couple of kayaks that he has behind his shed. When we went to pull the grass, we had to move the kayaks. He was afraid that some snakes might have made residence in the kayaks, so he approached the kayaks with a hoe and began beating on the kayaks. He walked around the back of the shed to put the hoe away and began literally screaming, "Holy Shit! Holy Shit! Oh my God! I hate them! I hate them! I hate them!" He went tearing around the back of his yard and out the gate. I peeked around the shed and there was literally about an 18 inch baby rattler. I took a shovel and cut its head off and picked up the body. Charlie came back looking a little green around the gills and pale as a ghost. He looked at the shovel and said, "Where's the head? You needed to get the head!" I calmly explained to Charlie that a snake's head is useless without it's body. I tossed the body in his outside trash and went back and found the head and dumped that as well. Charlie had to go inside and sit down because he was hyperventilating. He set up to have a snake service come out and see if they can find anything. I didn't want to tell him that if there was a baby snake in his yard, there is a nest somewhere. Hopefully they find it and clear it out.
Charlie is hosting poker this Friday night and John Parola said he is going to bring a fake snake that he has and hide it in under Charlie's chair and then yell! Charlie might pass out. I was able to get the pieces loaded into my car and get it over to my house. I cleared out the ground cover on Saturday and then cleared the dirt out about six inches below the deck. I then poured crushed aggregate into the area I was covering, spread that out and then tamped it down. On top of that I added three 60 pound bags of sand and smoothed that over and into the rocks. I tamped that down and then cut and pieced the artificial grass into the area. I duck taped the pieces together and then used 5 inch spike nails to secure the turf to the ground. It is now ready for our little bubba to pee and poop on it. The 5 inch base below the grass drains well and can handle his urine better than real grass. It doesn't look perfect and frankly I wasn't careful to match the nap of the artificial grass to get it laying in the same direction. It looks fine and works for my purposes.
Here is a picture of Darla and her jewelry teammate, Cheryl, at a bridal show today. They had a booth and were trying to get brides to sign up and do home parties so that they could earn jewelry as their bridesmaid gifts. Pretty smart and they ended up scheduling two parties and have 18 others to follow up on. It was a good day for them.
I had three golf events this past week and my back is a mess. I played Tuesday in the Day on the Oaks event. I shot 88 and had a great time. Neil was supposed to play with us, but was sick that day. Friday I was invited to play at a country club in Placerville. It was one of Gail's agents and she had another commitment. Michael was in town for our CE and Customer Appreciation event on Thursday night. Darla came out to that and then went to dinner with myself, Michael and our speaker from one of the carriers, Chris. We went out to McCormick and Schmicks for dinner. Friday, I picked Michael up at 7 AM and we drove the hour up to Placerville and the club, Cold Springs. I shot 88 up there as well. Ian from my Personal Lines unit joined us for golf as the agent writes mostly PL business with us. Today I played in the Rose Cup qualifier and I woke up with a sore back. I took some cyclobenzaprine and Advil, but I was sore all round. I shot a 47+48=95, for a net 77 and no prize. I will play again on Thursday in a charity event that one of my agents is putting on, but I won't play on the weekend. I need to get my back fixed before I play more golf. I'll see Jane next week and hopefully she will do the trick. We'll see.
One of my friend's Pamas, who is an FBI agent in Sacramento and a specialist in interpretation as he speaks 5 languages, lost his wife to heart disease this week. She died early Tuesday morning and the funeral was Saturday. John and I went to represent the club and ran into Neil there. The funeral was at 10 AM at an LDS church in Orangevale. We sat together, gave our respects and condolences to Pamas and then went out and had lunch at Mel's Drive In in Roseville. Mel's in San Francisco was the drive in used in American Graffiti and it is a good old fashioned 50's drive in. We visited for an hour and I got home and put in the grass.
Darla and I went to church Saturday afternoon as I had golf today and Darla had the Bridal show. It was crowded as Lincoln Brewster was the guest worship pastor and is a well know Christian recording artist who used to play with the band Journey. He is the worship pastor for our main church, Bayside in Granite Bay. The church was crowded and they had a barbecue afterward. Darla and I were planning to go to Rubinos for dinner after church, but decided to go to the barbecue and have some fellowship with our church family. We sat at a picnic table with another couple that was about our ages. The guy older and the wife younger and young looking like Darla. It turns out that he is John Ull, who has an insurance agency in Auburn. John was a Burns customer about five years ago until the 49er fire. He was working with Anthony and we had quoted the local Harley Davidson dealership for contents coverage. The fire had started and we ended up with a moratorium in the area and John tried to bind the coverage before the fire reached the location. We could not bind it and it burned to the ground. He moved all of his business away from us at that time and blamed Anthony for not living up to his word. He had called me at the time and was not happy with my decision not to honor the quote. He couldn't show me a written order for coverage that was dated before the start of the forest fire. The problem is that we don't know once a fire starts if the coverage would have been ordered barring the fire's existence. John and I talked it out and he is interested in consolidating his five wholesalers down to two. I will visit him with Pete in Commercial lines and Linda in Personal lines and see if we can work out a deal with him. It seems to Darla and I that we were meant to be at the barbecue and to meet with John and his wife. His wife likes Darla's jewelry and is perhaps interested in doing a party.
Well it is after 9 o'clock on Sunday night and I want to get to spend some time with Darla before we head to bed. I hope everyone is doing fine. Ciao.
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