Autumn is showing some spunk with a little breeze blowing through the River City today. Darla is and was at a street faire in Lodi, CA today and she will be home soon. I have hamburgers ready to cook for dinner and have some cut French Fries chilling in ice water right now and will oven fry them for dinner. The ice water makes them crispier when you cook them in the oven. Darla was up and out of the house by 6 AM and Samson and I slept in. I got up and took him outside and you can see my chair that I sit in by his fake grass and coax him to "go potty!". He's getting really good and is in a routine of getting up, getting out of his canvas cage and (ALWAYS) getting a toy and then going outside to pee. The two shots of Autumn Sunrise are from one of our early mornings.
Samson is fast and you have to be prepared when you walk him or open the front door or anything. We got back from a walk this afternoon and I wrapped his leash around one of the chairs and began to take off my shoes. He tried to run after a leaf or something in the breezy back yard, upended the chair and then took off running. I tried to intercept him and the folding chair flew up at me and put a big gash in my right shin. I had to almost tackle him as the chair was following him as he took off running. Having a puppy is an experience. The joys certainly have outweighed the inconveniences. He is really smart and sometimes at night gets a little riled up and will start biting. We put up with it for a minute and try to correct him, but soon enough he is off to the bedroom and locked in his cage. He has gotten to the point that when Darla tells him that he needs to go in the room, he will walk in and head into the cage himself.
He is still having some issues with number two and luckily his diet is all dry food (if you get my meaning). I'll have him outside and he'll diddle around, biting plants and chewing sticks and biting the grass. I'll finally tire of his antics and bring him in. If he leaves the living room at all, he'll likely do his business in the hallway on the tile. He knows to go pee outside, but is a little mixed up on the poop protocol. We continue to work with him and praise him like idiots when he poops outside, which is most of the time. If the neighbors heard us over the fence, they would think we'd lost our minds as we praise him, "Good boy, Samson. Way to poop, boy! Good Samson. Good boy!"
I took a break and started the fries and Darla is now making up the hamburger patties and cutting all of the garnish for the burgers. The fries will take about 35 minutes and I will get the burgers on the grill in about five minutes. Darla had a decent day at the Faire, made some sales and a few connections. She had one really pretty girl come by her booth and buy a cross. She said her boyfriend was pretty rugged looking, but he gave her money to buy something. What Darla didn't see was the six inch heels and four inch platforms. The girl offered to do some marketing for Darla and she has a lot of followers on her site. When Darla checked her site, she realized that the girl had a lot of followers because she was a hooker. Pretty funny.
So the wind today. I'm sitting and watching the NFL games, trying to tune in right after the anthem to miss the crazy. I heard a loud noise and Samson sat up and looked around. I'm half deaf as it is and didn't realize until I took the boy outside to do his biz, that one of the umbrellas that I had closed had blown over and into the pool. I fished it out, but the umbrella kept opening and it was tough to get out. I had to turn it sideways and yank it up and out. I set it back in it's stand and it dripped dry. The wind had it dry within an hour.
I played golf yesterday in the 6-6-6 event. My partner was supposed to be Pamas, but when I called him last Thursday, he said that he was having good and bad days and didn't want to commit to playing and then flake on me at the last minute. Pamas is the one whose wife recently passed away from heart disease. I asked Charlie, our Tournament bookkeeper if he could hook me up with a single in the club who was looking for a partner. I played with a guy named Gary Wilson, a retired Army Corps of Engineer worker who worked at Guantanamo Bay for years. Gary is a 21 and a better tournament golfer than a recreational golfer. Some guys just concentrate more in tournaments and it is the reason that our club has a Tournament Handicap. We use the lower of your GHIN or Tournament handicaps. The Tournament Handicap tracks the 5 best of your last 10 tournament scores. A lot of guys don't like it, but it evens the playing field. Our first six holes were best ball and we had a 19 Team handicap. I birdied the first hole from the trees on the left side. I hit a hooded 9 iron that was supposed to go below the tree branches but somehow went through them and landed on the green about 30 feet from the hole. I drained the snaking right to left putt. I parred the next five holes and Gary's score was never used on the first six. We were one under after six gross and seven under with our handicap. That was my highlight of the day. We went four over on the next six which were a modified chapman. We shot 39 on the front nine. The final six holes were a two man scramble and we were three over on that and shot 40 on the back for a 79, net 60. We tied for first, but one of the teams in our flight was a 15 and shot 75, so they won the low gross and the other team that we tied had shot 38 on the back and we took 2nd on the tiebreaker with a team win of $64. Not bad. Gary was a nice guy, but a little chatty for me. I found out all about his work life and his last twenty golf tournaments and needed a break when we finished the round. I had a few of the members come up and ask me how my round with Gary went. I guess he has a bit of a reputation that I wasn't privy to. I'll take the second place money and endure the chatter.
My friend and insurance agent friend, Ron, approached me on the sixth tee when he was finishing two and heading to the third tee box. He asked if we were still on for Saturday night. I was dumbfounded and quickly recalled that I passed on going with him to the Republic FC soccer game last Saturday as we had tickets to the comedy show and agreed to go to this week's game against Phoenix. I said, "Oh, yeah, I'm in." I quickly called Darla and let her know I had a work commitment for Saturday night. It was her month end close and she had one of her leaders coming over to work on the close.. I picked Ron up at his house at six and we had planned to go to a sushi place in downtown Roseville, but parking was pretty lean as the city is working on a new four story parking garage and took 50 spaces out of commission in the interim. We were heading to Sacramento so decided to drive over and go to the Elephant Bar restaurant. The game was great and we won 2-0 against one of the better teams in the league. Sacramento is in line to get an MLS soccer franchise in 2020 and the announcement will come in December. The team has already started to build a new stadium in downtown Sacramento that will seat 20,000 fans. Their current stadium is at Cal Expo, site of the California State Fair and seats about 11,000. This franchise has the highest attendance in their league and have over 6500 season ticket holders. We will need to have 11,000 season ticket holders to get an MLS franchise We have almost 15,000 people on the list for season tickets when they get the franchise. I don't think I'll ever be a big soccer fan. It is ice hockey on turf and I find hockey to be boring and lack scoring. Soccer is identical. I know it is exciting to watch the strategy and intrigue of a nil-nil game., but hey its nothing to nothing. Yawn.
Darla has the dog out for a walk as I finish the blog. He was carrying his leash around in hi mouth like he was taking himself for a walk. It was funny.
I talked to both Dad and Shirley on Thursday night and Randy on Saturday afternoon. Randy had cancer surgery this past week on his nose and it was pretty brutal. They filleted his nose and took out a bunch of the skin and then his plastic surgeon pulled everything back together. He said it pulled his mouth, his eyes and his cheeks all tight. Then Wednesday night came and swelling settled in and he said his nose swelled up like a balloon and he looked like WC Fields. We are all a little sensitive to skin cancer issues because of Mom. Randy did have a mass on his back that was similar to Mom's. It was also melanoma, but Randy's was stage one and Mom's was stage two (already attacked the lymph nodes). Randy had Mohs surgery and they kept cutting until they had all of the cancer isolated. They ended up taking a mass out of his back about the size of an egg. I kidded with Randy and said that it was lucky his bra strap irritated the area as he was able to catch it early enough. He is cancer free and lost some weight in the process.
Well, that is it for this week I have golf next Saturday with Paul, whose birthday is Friday along with Rico and Ron. Have a great week. Darla and I will be in Vegas in two weeks and I will get my allotment of pictures with the two Sam's that week. Looking forward to it. Ciao.
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