Just a Quick Update, Family dinner at Six

 

Just a quick update today. We have dinner with the Westra's at six at Spaghetti Factory here in Roseville to celebrate Fran's birthday. They are in town as Earl had to work on his rental. Apparently the rear slider is having trouble locking. The tenant is 90 so it may just be hard to lock and he'll have to loosen it up for her. Daniel and Becky are now local and still working on their new house and David will be at dinner as well. Miya had another engagement, but they started with Friday, tried Saturday night and we ended up agreeing on Sunday. Dan was in San Luis Obispo Friday and couldn't make it back in time. David had plans last night and Miya tonight. Miya still has to earn the family badge, so we are going ahead tonight.

 

Jennifer's Mom was in Las Vegas this past week and helped Jennifer work on her wedding registry at Be, Bath and Beyond. She picked out what she still needs. We received their wedding invitation on Thursday and it looks great and it also includes a link to her wedding website at Jennifer and McKenny wedding website. Diane was able to see the Grove which we had hoped to do wen we were there, but ran out of time. Darryl and Randy will be pleased to see that there is a Cigar cart on site.

 

Sam will have to miss a trip the wedding weekend that her Gate group at school is taking to the National Aeronautical museum in Los Angeles. They do the trip for both 4th and 5th graders, so she will be able to go next year. She asked her Mom if she could still go this year, but I think was a little confused on the concept as they leave Friday and come back Saturday night. Saturday night is the wedding.

 

It looks like the rehearsal dinner will be limited to the wedding party and immediate family, so the boys and Dad and Shirley will be there, but Darryl and Randy will have to find "something to do" in Vegas and we'll meet up with them later. We have no control of the rehearsal dinner as it is put on by McKenny's folks. As this is a destination wedding and the vast majority of the guests are from out of town, they had to draw the line somewhere. This may change, we'll see. I'd like you guys there.

 

I played golf on Saturday and finally had one of those really good rounds. I shot 41+41=82, my best round since October of last year. Ron shot 92, Paul shot 81 and Neil shot 107. I was going to play with one of Ron's friends, but his wife put the kybosh on that, so I had an opening on Friday. I texted Bryan and Rico. Bryan had surgery on a ganglion cyst on his finger and Rico was busy. I took a chance and checked with Neil who hasn't been playing much golf lately. He agreed to join us and it was good seeing him. I haven't seen Neil or spent much time with him in the last year. We walked together and got caught up with each other's lives. He didn't even know that we had a dog. He and Lilly leave for Dorado, Mexico in two weeks. They joined a travel club and will take a 5 night vacation at an all inclusive with friends. I'm happy for him. He is no longer on the golf board, so I don't see him as much as I used to.

 

I decided to stick with the Titleist driver and put the R1 up for bid on EBay. The auction ends tomorrow night and I've had 9 bids and the current price is $116. We'll see where it ends up. My guess is $128. I decided to stick with the driver that is more forgiving to my game. As I said, I think overall it would slow down my swing and make me better, but I'm trying to compete right now and I can't throw holes away if I snap hook one into the trees or out of bounds. I think my score from Saturday pretty well validates my decision and the $116 bid so far is gravy.

 

Samson continues in his boot camp and we've had a few updates from Kevin and a couple of videos. He sent one of Samson having a tug or war with the other golden retriever in residence. They found an old shoelace in the backyard and were really going at it struggling over the lace. Kevin was narrating the tug of war and it was hilarious. Darla wanted more videos of training, but Kevin can't take video and train at the same time. He will get us a training video probably on Thursday as his girlfriend will take the video of him working with Samson. We are looking forward to getting the boy back. We will pick him up next Sunday after church. I added a picture to sketch photo of our pup.

 

Today was an interesting day. We went to church and then out to Costco. We got there at 9:45 and they opened at 10:00 AM. As we were walking up we ran into one of my friends from the golf club. We talked for a bit and went on about our day. From there we went over to Mimi's Café and ran into Ron, one of my agents, a good friend and my twilight partner in golf. We had just played golf the day before. I was able to meet his Mom, who is 95 and his sister.

 

From there we went over to PetSmart to return a gift and get a couple of hard chew dog toys for Samson. We did that and then ran Darla's Explorer through the Car Wash and stopped and vacuumed it out. I got home and then slept for about 90 minutes getting caught up on some sleep. I watched the golf tournament from Torrey Pines and then worked in the back yard. It was a great day and I took a picture of the front and back yard to show the growth that has come from all the rain we've been having. This coming week is supposed to be sunshine and temps in the upper sixties. Ah, California.

 

 

 

Back from dinner with the family. I wanted to finish this up and get it published. That's it. I hope you are all well. Have a great week. Ciao.

 

 

 

Samson is heading to Doggie Boot Camp...Again

Yep. Off we go again to dog training. This time it is Kevin, The Dog Prodigy.The first training was a disaster simply because we used a guy that trains hunting dogs to try and train a family pet. It was a bad fit from the start, but he was a friend and we made a mistake. This guy is expensive, but guarantees his work, will be there for us even after the training and we can drop Samson off for the week of Jenn's wedding for $20 a day. BTW, you can see some of Samson's work on the controller for our sound bar above. He will chew up anything he gets in his mouth.

I was going to say, we have plenty of money to spend now that we don't have kids at home, but I already referenced Jennifer's wedding. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone at the wedding and I can tell you from experience, Vegas in April is awesome. We are set up for our hotel and flights. We fly in Thursday the 19th at 1:00 PM and we are staying at the Aliente in North Las Vegas. Dad, Darryl and Randy will be able to come over to the Aliente and see what the fuss is all about. We think it is probably the nicest casino complex off of the strip in Las Vegas. It is owned by Boyd Gaming. We have the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner on Friday night and the wedding is at 6 PM on Saturday. Jennifer and McKenny fly out to Hawaii at 9 AM on Sunday and Darla and I will bring Sam back to the hotel on Saturday night, hang with her on Sunday and return her to John Sunday night. We then fly home Monday afternoon.

I added a picture from Diamond Oaks. We had a lot of rain this last week and there is now a small waterfall on the 6th hole at Diamond. The area around the course has been built out and the street runoff all runs to the creeks on Diamond and sometimes they back up and the water finds its way to lower ground. The culverts are pretty good, but there are three or four places where the water will go over the creek banks and invade the course. The 6th hole is one of them and it makes a nice babbling brook with the small waterfall as you traverse the sixth.

I mentioned last week the new Taylor Made driver I got from one of my workers. I tried it out on Saturday and had mixed results. The one thing I noticed is that I cannot over swing with the R1 or I will pull the ball left. I had some brilliant drives when I was slow and deliberate with my swing. If  I rushed it at all the ball went left. The Titleist is much more forgiving, but I think if I switch to the R1 I will improve my swing and tempo over time. I shot 42+45=87 and played with John, his son, Jason and his daughter's boyfriend, Justin. John and Jason both shot 88 and Justin had 90. We had a great time, though.

Jason is down with his Dad to visit for the weekend and he has a 7 year old daughter named Payton. John wanted her to meet Samson, so we took him by yesterday afternoon. The girls were at a birthday party so we visited with John and Jason before carrying on with our walk. John called this morning and said they were going to come by and meet Samson and I suggested that we walk him over. He is hyper and I didn't want him to knock her down. They live about a quarter mile away and the walk tires him out. John is great with dogs and gets down to his level and pets him and calms him down. Payton was able to come over and pet him and he was fine.

Kevin, the Dog Prodigy that we are taking Samson to, will have him for two weeks and guarantees that he will have him loose leash walking, not play biting, not jumping up, not reacting to other dogs or the doorbell, stealing food off tables, chewing shoes (and other things like remotes), not bolting away and coming when called. He will also not go crazy with our guests, leave our cats alone, listen from a distance, respond to No, Leave it, Stay, Come and Heel.  If he can correct the leash walking and the biting, jumping up, I'll be thrilled. We will miss our little Samson (he's 65 pounds now), but Kevin will keep in touch with daily texts and videos of Samson's progress. We will have a two hour session with Kevin when we pick him up where we will take him to a dog park and see all of the commands and try them out ourselves. I included a You Tube video of his work. The other trainer simply walked him and shocked him 20 times and sent us on our way. Useless.

Work has been going pretty well, but I may have an issue soon. I have very little control over pay increases, working hours, even promotions, but the one thing I have allowed in my office is for some employees to work remotely once or twice a week. My boss is not a fan of that and thinks people will goof off. Part of the reason I allow it is that I trust my staff and this is one of the things that I can do to affect their quality of work and life. The other is that this is a sales organization and the numbers have to be there to continue the work from home ability. Harvey brought it up on Friday and said he wants to revisit the issue with me. This will be a big issue with me if I'm told to stop this altogether. I don't work from home and don't have any desire to. I did that for ten years and it was fine while it lasted. My employees who travel 60 minutes to work consider this a God send to them and I want to continue it. To his credit, he said that he isn't saying NO, but wants to put some controls on it. He had a bad experience in his office with someone they could never get a hold of. I told him if that was the case in my office, that I would pull the plug on that person's ability to work remotely in a heartbeat. It is a privilege and not a right and I try to catch my remote workers working by calling them routinely and they know it.

I had a bad weekend in terms of small injuries. First, the dog was harassing the younger cat on Saturday morning and she goes into full attack mode and was hissing and clawing at him to the point when he retreated she was still jumping on his back. I tried to separate them and ended up hitting my toe  and splitting it open. Today, when we got back from walking Sam, I was working on the pool and spa and hit my left index finger on a piece of wood and split that wide open with blood running down my hand and onto the ground. I got that patched up and am all bandaged up, walking with a limp and even having some difficulty with typing this.

The football games are starting. We have to leave to drop Samson in the middle of the second game, but I may get a couple of pictures over at his place. He only takes a maximum of 4 boot camp dogs at a time and they are kenneled IN his home. That alone is a huge difference from the concentration camp he was in at his first trainer. Again, this is the difference between a family dog and a hunting dog.

7:30 PM
We are back from dropping our boy off at Kevin's house. He had about 7 dogs in his home. Darla was really nervous and upset. Kevin let us know that he would be using a pinch collar for when he walks Samson. She didn't like that, but I completely understand. The dog WILL NOT pull on the leash when he is wearing a pinch collar because, well, the collar will choke him. I can see from the videos that he trains the dogs in a day not to pull on the leash and now I know why. It makes all the sense in the world. I don't have a problem with it. He won't be hurting himself because he's a smart dog and won't pull on the leash. We will end up with a dog that doesn't pull.

She was still upset after the drop off and concerned for our boy. Then, Kevin sent us a video of Samson meeting the other dogs in the backyard and she was fine. She could see that he was enjoying himself and socializing with other dogs which is one of the things we need him to do.

Here is the video:

Samsons Training Video

That's it for this week. Hope all are well. Not thrilled with the Super Bowl. Sick of the Patriots and really wanted to see the Jaguars vs the Vikings, Oh well. Ciao.



Lierly Christmas Celebration

When you get older and your kids all have other obligations at Christmas time, you carve out time to be together and celebrate. Even if that time comes 3 weeks after Christmas. We were able to get David and Miya and Daniel and Becky together to have dinner, celebrate and open the gifts from our gift exchange last night. Darla fixed a nice Mexican food dinner with salsa chicken, ground beef, tortillas, and all the fixings for tacos. It was great. David had brought some concoction he made called Tamarind, which is a drink of some sort. Miya brought some persimmon loaf that was still warm and delicious.

 

As for the gifts, Daniel and Becky got us a Bluetooth meat thermometer for our barbecue. Now I can set the tri tip to barbecuing and know when it is done as my cell phone will tell me. Nice. They also got us another hammock seat cover for Darla's truck. This is for when Samson travels with us.

 

Jennifer and Mac had Daniel and Becky and got them each a book. Daniel got a book about engineering and Becky got a Christian novel. They also got them a heated throw for use when they are watching TV. David and Miya had McKenny and Jennifer and got them an indoor herb garden as well as some syrups for their soda maker. Finally, Darla and I had David and Miya and got them each an apron that reads "Miya, David's Girl" and "David, Miya's Guy". We also got them a gift card at a restaurant downtown.

 

We had a great time together as you can tell from the pictures. We put Samson in his crate while we ate dinner and then brought him out when we opened gifts. Jennifer and McKenny got him some pet safe tennis balls and Daniel bought him a couple of large rawhide dog bones ( I have a picture of him gnawing on one from today). He settled in good and was appropriate with our guests. I also included a picture of David and Miya from their New Year's dinner and celebration.

 

Daniel and Becky are working hard on his Dad's rental home that they are in the process of buying from him. It is located here in Roseville and they are getting the walls painted, replacing most of the flooring with laminate and cleaning up the backyard. They are partially moved in now, but will be completely in with furniture by February. They have never lived in a house before, so will be living with a lot of Craiglist furniture. They do have their master bedroom bed, but will be slowly adding new pieces to each of the rooms, starting with a dresser in the Master. It will be nice to have them close by.

 

David and Miya are doing well and Miya is looking forward to meeting the family at the wedding. Jennifer and McKenny have their wedding invitations and have worked all weekend to get those out. The wedding will take place at the Grove in Las Vegas and she has blocked rooms at both the Aliente Casino where we will be staying and at the Santa Fe Casino in North Las Vegas. Darla and I will fly in to Vegas on Thursday morning April 19 and stay until Monday April 23rd. Darla and I will take Samantha after the wedding and return her on Sunday afternoon to John. She will hang with us on Sunday and visit with family. The wedding is coming sooner than we can imagine. At one time it seemed so far away. but now it is 14 weeks out. Jennifer is starting to get a little stressed about the whole thing. She'll survive.

 

I played golf in the first tournament of the year at Diamond Oaks. It is a Captain Crew scramble event with all of the players flighted by handicap and then the computer picks random teams made up of players in A, B, C and D flights. That is the ideal. My team ended up with two B players, a C player and a D player. We struggled on the front with a 34 and shot 33 on the back for a 67. We birdied holes 10, 11 and 12 and I thought we were going places. Then we bogeyed 13 when we couldn't decide on a drive and took one in the fairway 185 yards from the hole rather than one in the rough 150 yards from the green. Oh well, it was fun. I'm not a fan of scrambles because I work and want to post a score when I play golf, but whatever. I had the closest to the pin on number 12, but lost it to the last group that played that was about 4 inches closer than me.

I had one of my employees approach me on Friday and tell me that she had a new golf club for me. I asked her where she got it and she said she wion it in a raffle. She told me it was a brand new Taylor Made driver! I figured it was an M1 or M2 and was ready to buy it from her. I opened it and it was a brand new...R1. Nice club, but brand new in 2012. I asked her when she won it and she said, "Um, I think 4 years ago." Nice. I tried to get a couple of the guys from the club to buy it as we have some guys who have literal antiques as clubs, but no one was interested. I may try it out and see if I want to change out from my Titleist 915 D. We'll see.

I took it easy today, watched some football and slept. Samson found a comfortable spot next to me and Darla took a picture.

Well, not much going on. Tomorrow is a holiday, MLK Day. I will be working and announced to everyone Friday that we would go casual dress and that Pete is buying everyone breakfast. That was news to Pete. I hope all are well. We'll do this again next week. Ciao.

 

 

 



What? I have to work a 5 day workweek this week?!!

Back at the keyboard on Sunday night. The smell of an oven baking tri tip assails my nostrils as I pen this and Darla is bustling about in the kitchen with potatoes and bread and I will drop this like a hot stone as soon as the dinner bell rings. It dawned on me earlier today that I have a five day work week this week for the first tie in almost a month. Pray for me.

 

It was a good weekend. I hosted poker Friday night and we had the last of a rainstorm that sprinkled the parched valley over the preceding three days. We haven't had much rain this season and our snow pack is at about 1% of normal. Skiers in this area have been flocking to Colorado and other states where the snow is ready. The resorts have seen a nice snowfall out of this last storm with a stronger storm due in tonight. Grass Valley is expected to see up to 4 inches of rain out of this storm so it is a soaker. We are expected to see about an inch and a half of rain. I usually fix deli sandwiches to save Darla the hassle of having to attend to us guys, but decided with the rain to make steak chili. I got two big cans of chili con carne, some onions, red bell pepper, chili peppers, a can of stewed tomatoes, chili powder, shredded cheese, marinated strip steak, and served it with Fritos, sour cream  and French bread and made up a large pot of chili. Sure enough one of the guys mentioned that he was looking forward to carver sandwiches. Oh well. I though the chili was excellent and the 8 guys finished up the pot of chili that was enough to feed 12. I had a good night with the cards and finished up about $65.

 

Saturday, I set up to play golf with John and Paul (Ringo was busy) and John's soon to be son in law Justin joined us. We drove up to Auburn and played at Auburn Valley Country Club. It is a track that sits up in the foothills and runs alongside a creek and has several man made lakes on the course. That track is known for their greens and our only saving grace on Saturday is that they received about 2 inches of rain out of the last storm and the greens were soft and accepting. They ran fast and true. The guys all struggled on the 129 slope course with John shooting 110, Justin

 105, Paul 98 and I had a pretty nice 44+42=86. I'm starting to get my game back and it's been just about 11 months since my shoulder surgery. The top two pictures are from Auburn Valley and the second picture shows Paul hitting his approach shot to number 11 (and, yes, that's a pony tail). I took $10 in bets from my friends, but I did drive up to the course and brought the gang in the 300.

 

I had a nice break for some tri tip and enjoyed a nice visit with Mrs. Lyon. She went out with the girls Friday night to Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln while we were playing poker. The girls had dinner at the seafood buffet. Any buffet is one buffet too many for Darla. The casino has a nice Chinese food restaurant and a steakhouse, but the girls were up for the seafood. They all played the slots afterward and Darla and Frieda found a bank of nickel video poker machines and camped in for the night. Frieda won a quick $150 jackpot and was the big winner on the night. Camille was the other winner. Brenda called Steve about 9 PM and said that she'd already gone through her $100. Darla finished down $9. They went over to Denny's after the casino and had beignets with cream cheese sauce and were home about 11:30. The game broke up at midnight.

 

Saturday night Darla and I went out to dinner at our favorite white table cloth Italian restaurant, Rubino's, in Rocklin. I got a couple of pictures of Darla at the restaurant. We had hoped to have the waitress take a picture of the two if us, but she was one of those that would take our drink orders and then walk past the table ten minutes later and then rush back to the kitchen to get the drink she forgot. She was extremely nice, but seemed harried and we thought her head might explode if we asked her to take our picture. I had a nice chicken piccata dish with a gnocchi side, while Darla had a chicken marsala with gnocchi. I love gnocchi and had the main dish gnocchi the first couple of times that we went to the restaurant and then had one of the waiters suggest a main dish and the gnocchi as a side. It is much nicer to have it as a side as the potato gnocchi is a lot at one sitting. I also get a vegetable side with the meal. We had a Groupon for $30 that I bought on sale for $14.40, so good deal. I have another Groupon in the bank for next month.

 

Darla talked me into heading over to Thunder Valley after dinner and we sat and played the nickel slots until almost 11:30 when we rushed home to let the pooch out of his caged purgatory. We ended up spending about $25 each after initially turning $80 into $94 in the first 90 minutes. We had a good time playing slots and people watching. I always get a kick out of the couples that are arguing. It's apparent that they can't afford to be at the casino to begin with and the fight is usually at the ATM when the guy is raiding the rent money. We also get a kick out of the "slammers" that come around. They are the slot players who slam the keys really hard and seem tremendously impatient to lose their money. They usually only last a few minutes as they are so antsy.

 

The last two pictures are of Samson from today. He is progressing with us. He was able to come out and meet the guys at poker although he was a little fired up after being cooped up for two hours. He came in and barreled into Steve who was sitting in the recliner and Steve almost lost his chili. Samson is a very social dog and if he get in trouble during the day for not minding or biting, he is put in his cage and usually comes out and is very good for awhile afterward.

 

I did hire a new Personal Lines Underwriter last week. The process was tougher than usual as Harvey and our HR director in SF both felt that Meghan is a bit introverted and wouldn't make a good marketer. I think she was tremendously nervous when she visited Harvey in SF and had to sit through three separate interviews. She had driven 100 miles into San Francisco and then had the interviews. They felt that she was "low energy". Pete and I both found her tremendously knowledgeable and bright. She currently works for a competitor and our regional HR Director reached out to her on social media and let her know we had an opening for an underwriter and asked her to reach out to me. She did and I'm thrilled. She was very professional and friendly in her interviews with us. She has not done marketing calls as that function is handled by a marketing rep at her company. I can teach a person who knows insurance how to do marketing visits. I have more trouble slowing down the Type A marketing types who talk a blue streak and put me in an Errors and Omissions quandary. She has worked for our competitor for 14 years and is in her early 30's. She is well liked and respected in the insurance community. I talked Harvey into the hire and he told me that he was holding me personally accountable to her marketing calls. As I told Harvey, I'm personally responsible for all of my underwriters' marketing activity, so no problem. I'm excited to see her impact on our office.

 

I still have one position open for an Assistant Underwriter and met with a great candidate on Thursday. She lost a 2 year old child to a rare medical condition over Memorial Day this last year. She took a leave of absence from work and was let go when she returned to her position. Callous. I hope to have her do a video interview with Harvey this week or next and we may then close the last gap on the last opening in the office.

 

That's it for this week. Darla is finishing up some call reports for her social work job and Samson is sleeping at our feet below the leather couch. I hope you have a great week and we'll do this again next weekend. Ciao.

 

 

 

 

Happy New Year 2018

Happy New Year. It has been a blessedly quiet celebration for us. We sat and watched movies the last two nights, seeing Denzel Washington in Fences and Out of Time as well as Keanu Reeves attorney drama The Whole Truth, Drew Barrymore's I Miss You Already and Nicholas Spark' latest movie, The Choice. It was nice. We actually sat in bed last night and watched the ball drop and then slept in until almost 8:30 this morning.

 

I played in The Holiday Classic this weekend with Paul. It was a 2 man scramble and we played both Saturday and Sunday at 9 AM. My game is pretty bland right now. I'm a 17 handicap at Woodcreek and playing like it. We shot a 74 on Saturday and left a lot on the course. Our combined handicaps at 25% gave us a 68 and we were in 4th place after the first day. The leaders had 63 and 64. We played with the team that had a 64 the first day. They played well and just didn't make any mistakes. The club at Woodcreek offered us two rounds with cart and lunch both days for $120, The scramble required each player to get in 6 drives and Paul was not playing well early on. I had the first six drives before he finally warmed up.

 

It was the opposite on Sunday as I couldn't get warm. It was about  40 degrees at tee time and only warmed up to 48 degrees by noon. Today was sunny and a high of 65 degrees. Sunday was overcast and COLD. It took me 16 holes to get my 6 drives in. We felt like we struggled more, probably because we missed about 4 really makeable birdie putts, but actually shot a 73 net 67 and hung on to our 4th place position. The guys that shot both 63 and 64 struggled and ended up tied with us for fourth. The winning team had 61 and the guys we ended up playing with on Sunday that had a 68 the first day shot a 72 with 9 strokes for a 63 and took second. Apparently Paul and I are great to play with. Fourth place ended up with five teams tied and a payout of $10 per man. If we had made one of those putts for birdie we would have won $50 each. Oh well. I added a couple of pictures from the course above.

 

I had a good time and I'm committed to improving my game this year to the point that I start shooting those "boring" 83's like I used to. I remember coming home from golf and telling Darla I shot 83 and she asked why I even played the game if I shot 83 every week. That seems a long time ago, but I look forward to getting back to those days. It will be a year since my shoulder surgery in February.

 

We did not end up hosting our friends for New Years as Darla was feeling a lot of anxiety and not sleeping well. I called our friends and asked for a mea culpa and they were all very gracious about the cancellation and wished Darla a speedy recovery. Her blood sugar numbers have been up and likely due to her lack of sleep. We have had a lot of frustration with the dog as the Obedience training was not successful. Once we took the collar off of him he was out of control, running from us and not paying any heed to us. We finally sat down and really had a heart to heart on how to get him under control. We don't want to shock him because it just makes him scared and skittish, but we need him to listen to us. We decided to put the collar back on him and use it if and when he refused to listen. What we have since realized is that we don't have to shock him. There is a Pager feature on the collar that just vibrates and lets him know to come. He immediately runs back to us when we push the Pager feature. It is nothing short of an epiphany as we now have a well behaved dog. You can see the picture of him chewing up the blackberry bush in the backyard.

 

What prompted the heart to heart was Samson totally losing it outside and running across the top of the pool with his e-collar on and me being afraid he was going to fall in the pool. I was so mad at him and went ballistic when he finally came back around. Darla has a feral cat that she feeds and he was chasing the cat in the dark at about 10:30 at night. We paid a fortune for the trainer to completely mess the training up, but the one good thing that came out of it is actually the collar and the fact that he heeds with it on.

 

Darla leaves Thursday for six days in Florida for a leadership event with Touchstone. They are staying at the Universal Studios hotel and the event is Friday to Sunday. They are staying an extra day in order to save money on the flights. They will visit Orlando on Monday and fly home Tuesday. She also qualified for the trip to Punta Cana, but did not qualify me. We thought about going, but with the wedding in April, we are looking to save money.

 

Darla and I paid for David and Becky's honeymoon in Hawaii and agreed to pay for Jennifer and McKenny as well. We had used our timeshare in Hawaii and they traded it for a place in Maui. Jennifer and McKenny want to go to Oahu and my timeshare company does not have any resorts on Oahu so we were hoping that something would come open for them. I called Diane this last week and asked if they'd be willing to pay half of a hotel in Oahu and we'd buy the airfare. She not only agreed, but offered to kick in $1000. We will book them the Outrigger Waikiki Beach hotel which is right on the beach in the middle of Waikiki and has Dukes as their main restaurant. Darla and I had stayed at the Sheraton on the beach and we ate there a couple of times at Dukes and ended up hanging out at the beach in front to the Outrigger. Small world.

 

Jennifer was supposed to have Sam on New Years eve for the first time in years, but John's plans fell through and he asked to celebrate with Sam. Jennifer agreed and she was glad that they did. They were home last night and dog sitting one of their friend's dogs, who is older. The dog ended up with a problem with his rectum and they ended up at the emergency vet all night. The old dog will have to be put down this week as the repair is sketchy at best and the dog is older. Sad, but also good that Sam missed all of that drama.

 

I cleaned out the pool filter and equipment today. It was pretty clogged with debris from the leaves that were in the pool. The pressure was way down and the sweep was pretty useless. I cleaned it out today and the sweep is working great. The only problem I had was that the bolt lock on the filter had stripped and I had to "jerry rig" some washers and nuts to get the strap seated properly.

 

Well, this is short, but dinner is almost ready (Chinese chicken salad) and I am ready to relax a bit before work tomorrow. I have a new employee starting tomorrow and will likely make an offer to a new Personal Lines Underwriter tomorrow. I hope all is well with each of you.  Here's to a healthy and Happy New Year. I look forward to our cruise with the family in December. Ciao.