Sunday, March 04, 2012
Cruise Memories and Art Lyon turns 75!!
This will be short, because the pictures are aplenty. We are back from a week in the Eastern Caribbean, Puerto Rico, The US Virgin Islands, St. Martaan and Princess Cays in the Bahamas. As you can tell by the pictures, it was a great family time and we had a ball. The picture of me with Barack Hussein Obama Darla felt was in poor taste, but I'm not punching him. It's a love tap. Hey, he even sent me a birthday card. Darla and I both sort of dreaded the formal nights, but it was a great picture taking opportunity and it was nice to hang out in formal attire with Dad, Darryl and Randy and the wives. We also celebrated Cheryl's birthday and my 55th birthday.
Shirley got the gang dancing on Thursday night and there are pictures of that as well.
I think my only regret on the trip was not exploring the island of St Martaan/St. Martin, which is a Dutch and French island and we ended up shopping with the gang for three hours and missing out on sightseeing. All of them had been to the island before and they were looking at watches and jewelry and time just got away from us and then Darla and I bought a few things and were out of cash, so we just headed back to the ship.
We did take a tour on San Juan and saw the downtown and part of the island. Darla and I also broke away from the gang on Wednesday and took a cab on a short sightseeing tour of St. Thomas and were then dropped off at Coki Beach, one of the white sand beaches with green water that is so famous there.
Darryl and Randy both had shopping agendas. Darryl bought a new Canon Rebel digital camera and a couple of new lenses. Randy bought a Tag Hauer watch in St Thomas for a small fortune. Even Dad and Shirley got into the act and bought his and her Seiko watches on St. Thomas. Darla and I are still paying for two students to attend cal Poly SLO and did little shopping of consequence. I got a tank top and a golf shirt and Darla got a cover up. We did spend some money on pictures taken by the professional photographers on the cruise ship. It has been awhile since we had any new pictures taken professionally and they turned out very nice.
You can see how close we were to Darryl and Cheryl with the picture taken from our balcony down to theirs. Randy was two rooms to the right of them as you look at their balcony and dad was down about three rooms from Randy. They all had rooms with a Jr. Suite, consisting of a bed and a sitting area with a couch and the balcony. They also had a shower and a tub. Our room was just the bed and a small desk with a mirror and it only had a shower in the bathroom. We had drinks most nights at either Darryl's room or Dad's.
Darryl and I both bought the same shirt on St Martaan and ended up both wearing the same shirt on the trip home. Darla got a kick out of it and had to take a picture.
We had a long wait at the airport on Saturday before the flight home, but that turned out to be a blessing as I had left my eyeglasses at the restaurant of the Courtyard hotel in Ft. Lauderdale and they could not locate them on the Saturday that we left on the cruise. They are nice Oakley frames and I thought perhaps someone had stolen the frames. The glasses somehow appeared during the week that we were gone and one of the shuttle drivers met me up at the Virgin America check in and brought the glasses to me. We were relieved as I would have had to order a replacement pair.
Speaking of Virgina America. I have taken many of the airlines from American to United, Southwest, Frontier, Continental, Alaska, etc., but not one holds a candle to Richard Branson's airline. First of all, he has wireless internet on the plane, DirecTv service on the seat back in front of you, video games, music, movies and television shows at your fingertips. You order your food right from the video screen and the flight attendants bring it. They don't push a big cart up the aisle and bring you cold sandwiches. More airlines should do it the Branson way, but most won't. The old joke is how does a billionaire become a millionaire? Buy an airline. So far, Richard Branson has dodged that bullet.
It was a gorgeous day in Roseville today with blue skies and 72 degrees with no wind. I was able to clean up the yard and put down some crabgrass preventer on the lawn. I also cleaned up the pool and drained off some of the water from the recent rains. I also went all around the house and sprayed weed and grass killer on all of the grass buds coming up in the cracks of the sidewalks, driveway, flowerbeds, and tree rings. We have the fruitless cherry tree on the side yard in full pink blooms and the African violets around the pool are in their full purple royalty.
Well, that is it for this week. I hope you are all well. The weather was amazing on the cruise and we saw rain once or twice, but the tropical variety which lasts ten minutes and goes right back to 90 degrees. It was definitely a tremendous memory for us and for Dad and Shirley. They are on the second leg of their cruise, having visited Princess Cays today and sailing on now to Aruba. Stay strong in the Lord and remember that all of the good in your life comes from Him. Ciao.
o
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Forced Bachelorhood this weekend and Cruising to next weekend
The blog will take a well earned rest next weekend as Darla and I cruise off with Darryl and Cheryl, Randy and Cake and Dad and Shirley to the Bahamas. I look forward to resting on the ship and relaxing on the pool deck with a tropical drink in my hand. It will be great to back together with the Lyon family and helping to celebrate Dad's upcoming 75th birthday bash. We are off to San Francisco on Thursday night where we will stay over in a La Quinta Inn close to the airport. They will keep our car for the week and drive us to and from the airport. We will have breakfast at the hotel and then take the shuttle over to the airport about nine am for our 11:00 AM flight to Ft. Lauderdale. We are staying at the same Courtyard Inn as Darryl and Randy and will meet them for a late dinner Friday night. I think we get in about 7 PM.
Saturday we will shuttle over to the Cruise Port and stand in line to get through customs and onto the boat. We leave for San Juan Puerto Rico at 4 PM. Sherry has already scouted out how much wine we can bring on board. It should be a fun week.
I will take two weeks off from golf and after the last two weekends, I think I need a break. I can feel my back starting to tighten up and I'm scheduled for a Bowen treatment on the Thursday that we get back. I played poker on Friday night in keeping with the bachelor theme and had a pretty up and down night and probably made about $10 the entire night, but was likely DOWN about $50 midway through the night. It was a nice comeback. The money that we play with is quarters and half dollars that we have collected over the years. I probably have over $200 in change sitting in a file cabinet in my office that I use to gamble with. It never feels like I make or lose much because it is containers of coins. I sometimes feel like a big winner when we have someone new at the game and he buys $60 or $80 worth of coin from me during the night. I'll come home with $150 in my money clip, but most of that is because I don't have an extra $60 in change now.
My golf game has gone south and in a really quick fashion. I played today with Darren, Paul and Neil and shot a horrific 48+47=95 and this comes a day after shooting 47 +43=90 in the 2 man qualifier at Diamond Oaks on Saturday. Steve and I teamed up to shoot a DFL 74 in the best ball competition. It was a magnificent display of ineptitude. I lost a sleeve of balls today and hit one out of bounds yesterday at Diamond. It may be a forced layoff due to the cruise, but I think I need some time away from the game to get my batteries recharged. I went from shooting 81 and 83 a couple of weeks ago to rounds of 89, 90 and 95. It is amazing how fast it can all slip away. No one shot a stellar round today as Neil had 94, Paul had 94 and Darren shot 90. In fact it was so bad that in our skin game, no one had a closest to the pin because no one landed on the green and there was a regulation four par threes on this course. It reminds me often that it is a four letter sport.
Darla will be home tonight from her sojourn to Dallas, Texas with her Silpada sisters. The gang went out to Gilley's last night and Darla had to ride the mechanical bull. I don't know how long she stayed on, but she posted it to her Facebook account. I've talked to her everyday and they have had a great time. She was telling me about being in a famous restaurant in Dallas where they have an artist who paints portraits of all of the famous people who have dinner there. These pictures grace the walls of the restaurant and include local sports figures and international actors and actresses. Darla and her gang were at one of the tables when Sue, Darla's up line, pointed at a black family who was sitting at the table across from them and yelled, " who is that with the monkey?" The waiter who was taking their order took one look at the situation and turned and ran out of the room. Darla picked up on the faux paus as Sue was actually pointing at one of the paintings of a man with a monkey. The black family was not amused and Sue jumped up and ran over to the painting and said, "Hey it looks like Jungle Bob and his sidekick." Apparently that was a local kid's show in Ohio and Darla just started busting up (as only she can do) and had the whole table in hysterics. I guess they eventually clued in the waiter who thought he had a racial incident occurring in his work station.
Darryl is now done with McClane and is an employee of Standard Beverage. He will work from home in Denver this week and then take the cruise with us and then be off to the booming metropolis of Lawrence, Kansas. He will be commuting for awhile as they attempt to get the house sold.
I was relaxing at home last night after the golf game. It was particularly cold yesterday as a cold front moved through and made way for a gorgeous day today. The doorbell rang and I got up to answer the door and there was nobody there. I no sooner sat down than it rang again. I figured whoever it was must have heard me open the door and come back, but I heard the sound of adolescent high pitched laughter as I opened the door. We live on a corner and they were playing doorbell ditch. I decided that if it rang again, I was going to get a pail of water and play "Douse the cheeky little brat." But, apparently they decided that two times was enough. Thank God as I was tired and I probably would have been arrested for assault for teaching a lesson to a juvenile. Life lessons are not allowed in California.
Peter was supposed to be back to work tomorrow, but his doctor has not released him to drive yet and wants him to work no more than six hours a day from home this coming week. He can work two hours at a time and then has to rest. Hopefully he is ready to return the following week, because I am gone. I'm going to meet Peter at his house and bring lunch on Thursday.
Well, that is it. Not much news. I got the car washed this weekend, the lawn mowed and the pool cleaned. I had my car custom detailed a couple of weeks ago and it is so easy to wash now. He did a really good hand wax on the car after cleaning it and doing the interior, including dressing the seats and the dashboard. I had a hot dog and some garlic fries at Auburn Country Club today and I will likely skip dinner. I have to input the individual scores from the Saturday tournament. I hope everyone has a good week and we'll see Dad, Darryl and Randy (anf their wives) this coming weekend. Ciao.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Before the Rain
If you watched any of the Pebble Beach Pro Am Golf Tournament this weekend, you know that Northern California is bracing for a cold, wet storm. It will blow in overnight tonight and the snow level is expected to drop to around 3000 feet. They were lucky to get the golf tournament in and actually did without any major weather problems. The only issue was fog and cold temperatures. They actually started the week out in perfect conditions, it was 70 degrees here on Thursday and about 65 degrees and Sunny on the Monterey Peninsula. It is one of my agents' birthday tomorrow and his wife asked me to take him golfing. I called the course in Camino today to make a reservation and the pro told me that they may be snowed out tomorrow. This agent, Gary turns 55 tomorrow and his wife turns 48 in April. I turn 55 next month and Darla turns 48 in May. We definitely live common lives, although he has a son who is 11. I'm pretty sure that I don't.
I did get out today and put some fertilizer on the lawn. I also took a garden rake to a portion of it and de-thatched some of the grass. In fact, I just looked outside and the rain has started already.
Darla is at her sister's house. Her parents came into town tonight and I guess are staying over and will watch Luke tomorrow. I was invited, but had some handicapping things to prepare for next week's tournament and wanted to get the blog completed. I just finished a nice dinner of turkey meatloaf. It actually sounds worse than it is and Darla and I have substituted ground turkey for a lot of red meat. If you season and spice it enough, add onions, etc., it actually isn't bad. The meatloaf is a relatively new recipe and delicious.
I guess given what went down with Pete in my office, we need to eat healthier. Pete ended up having surgery on Tuesday and getting the stints installed. He had one stint installed on Saturday night. That artery was 99% blocked and was the cause of his heart attack. They went in Tuesday and did three more. I talked to him Thursday and Friday and he was doing great, but one of the meds caused a rash on his body and he went back into emergency this morning and they took him off one med and put him on Prednisone, which is to help fight the allergic reaction he is having to the drugs he is taking. He will see his cardiologist on Tuesday and we'll know if he will be back the following Monday and also whether he is able to travel with me to Scottsdale in March. If he is not able to travel, Anthony may come in on Sunday night and see the markets with me. Darla and I will still go on the Friday and probably have Jennifer and Samantha come to Scottsdale and hang out with us. It is about 280 miles from Vegas to Scottsdale. Colony is giving me free use of a two bedroom corporate condo in Scottsdale.
I sent Pete a personalized padfolio with his name embossed on it. I also sent him a personalized greeting card with a picture of Anthony, Pete and I on it that reads overlaid on the picture: ""We Need You! and inside it says that if we are to get to the next level in Sacramento, we need Peter back and at full strength for the stretch run. He called when he got it Saturday and said, "Hey, what are you trying to make me cry?" The cost was actually less than the flowers and teddy bear I sent to Connie at the hospital two weeks ago when she had her surgery. I need to get back to having all healthy employees in the office. I really like Personalization.com. Try it sometime, it makes great corporate gifts, but also unique gifts for loved ones.
I got out and played golf on Saturday with Paul, Pamas and Darren. I got up a little late and was rushing to make my tee time. I got there on time and was even able to make it into the restroom for a little morning constitutional and then hit a few balls on the range before rushing to the tee. I teed off and then was transferring my i phone and keys and what have you into my golf bag from my coat when I realized that I left my wallet in the men's room. I asked Darren to take my cart and I ran back to the rest room to get my wallet. Thankfully, it was still stuffed into the seat cover holder where I'd put it. I should have put it in my coat, but that would have been too easy and smart for me. I ran back out toward the first fairway in time to see Darren with both carts flipped over and clubs and balls falling all over the place. He was pushing both carts down the hill when the carts started moving in two different directions and he tried to save both of them from crashing and managed to save neither of them. I played with Paul , who is an 8, Pamas who is a 5 and Darren who is an 18. Paul, Pamas and I all shot 46 on the front side and struggled all over the course. Darren played very well for himself and shot 42. We played marginally better on the backside and I ended up with a 46+43=89, Paul shot 89, Darren shot 86 and Pamas shot 38 on the back for an 84.
Darla leaves for Dallas on Wednesday morning and leaves me to my own devices. I have a tournament, our 4 ball qualifier on Saturday and I also set up a tee time for Sunday. I won't be playing golf on the cruise and need to get my fix in this coming weekend. I don't think we'll be able to play tomorrow, but I will probably get in a game later in the week with Gary. Darla will be at the leadership conference for Silpada.
By the way, I haven't seen the "poop man" at the office since his "problem". I'm wondering if he's still with the company. We had an office lunch on Friday and I had one of the caterers bring in the food. This was a reward for the office hitting our budget goals in January. Anthony suggested that we have lunch catered from the Thai food restaurant down the street. That is the restaurant the man had lunch at that caused his issues.
Our lease has finally been signed for the office building in Roseville. I first met with the leasing agent in March of last year and we toured the Roseville site in June. So, basically seven months after we decided on our space, the deal is done. They were fighting over stenciling on the front glass doors and who was going to pay for 15 replacement ceiling tiles and silly stuff. Our lease runs for 88 months, so the cost of either one of those items likely would have been about $10 per month. Whatever. It is done and we can now start planning for our move probably in April. The permits will be pulled for the buildout this coming week and then they will start on the tenant's improvements and betterments. I am really looking forward to the upgrade in our office environment. A bonus in all of this is that my monthly lease nut will drop from $10,000 to $9,600. It will really be nice to work in the community that I live. I'm already considering joining the Chamber of Commerce and maybe even the Lion's Club or another civic organization.
I talked to Jennifer this week and she went from working nights to working in Temecula and being away from Samantha. She got back on Wednesday and her boss asked her to work Thursday night because the job of replacing the radio receivers wasn't complete. She seemed a little aggravated that her boss isn't as organized as she is. He tends to fly by the seat of his pants and with her a single Mom, it doesn't work well. I guess John was a little upset that she had to work after not being with Sam all week. She does get to spend part of the day with Sam, but she also has to sleep.
Finally, I talked to Darryl as well. He talked to his company on Monday about his move and they asked him to stay on for two weeks and help transition his move. The new company has also given Darryl the flexibility to work from Colorado his first week and then start in Lawrence when we get back from the cruise. Darryl will not be working in the corporate office and has told the CEO that he will do a buildout for a new office in the warehouse. He wants to be close to the action because he has a lot of deficiencies that need to be worked on. He seems pretty excited about the possibilities of this new job. He also said that they do all of their offsite conferences at the winery in California, so hopefully we can see something of him. By the way, Darryl, our golf trip to Reno this year is Saturday and Sunday June 9th and 10th. The courses are Somerset Country Club and Lakeridge Golf Club. You'll have to plan to come out for that or if Cheryl isn't working for Spirit, you can come out to Monterey again for the weekend. The dates on that are October 13th and 14th and we will play Poppy Hills and Carmel Valley Ranch Country Club. Spend some of that money you are making and visit California.
That is it for this week. I think I was a little wordy with Darla being gone. If so, I apologize. I hope everyone has a good week. Be well and walk with the Lord. Ciao.
I did get out today and put some fertilizer on the lawn. I also took a garden rake to a portion of it and de-thatched some of the grass. In fact, I just looked outside and the rain has started already.
Darla is at her sister's house. Her parents came into town tonight and I guess are staying over and will watch Luke tomorrow. I was invited, but had some handicapping things to prepare for next week's tournament and wanted to get the blog completed. I just finished a nice dinner of turkey meatloaf. It actually sounds worse than it is and Darla and I have substituted ground turkey for a lot of red meat. If you season and spice it enough, add onions, etc., it actually isn't bad. The meatloaf is a relatively new recipe and delicious.
I guess given what went down with Pete in my office, we need to eat healthier. Pete ended up having surgery on Tuesday and getting the stints installed. He had one stint installed on Saturday night. That artery was 99% blocked and was the cause of his heart attack. They went in Tuesday and did three more. I talked to him Thursday and Friday and he was doing great, but one of the meds caused a rash on his body and he went back into emergency this morning and they took him off one med and put him on Prednisone, which is to help fight the allergic reaction he is having to the drugs he is taking. He will see his cardiologist on Tuesday and we'll know if he will be back the following Monday and also whether he is able to travel with me to Scottsdale in March. If he is not able to travel, Anthony may come in on Sunday night and see the markets with me. Darla and I will still go on the Friday and probably have Jennifer and Samantha come to Scottsdale and hang out with us. It is about 280 miles from Vegas to Scottsdale. Colony is giving me free use of a two bedroom corporate condo in Scottsdale.
I sent Pete a personalized padfolio with his name embossed on it. I also sent him a personalized greeting card with a picture of Anthony, Pete and I on it that reads overlaid on the picture: ""We Need You! and inside it says that if we are to get to the next level in Sacramento, we need Peter back and at full strength for the stretch run. He called when he got it Saturday and said, "Hey, what are you trying to make me cry?" The cost was actually less than the flowers and teddy bear I sent to Connie at the hospital two weeks ago when she had her surgery. I need to get back to having all healthy employees in the office. I really like Personalization.com. Try it sometime, it makes great corporate gifts, but also unique gifts for loved ones.
I got out and played golf on Saturday with Paul, Pamas and Darren. I got up a little late and was rushing to make my tee time. I got there on time and was even able to make it into the restroom for a little morning constitutional and then hit a few balls on the range before rushing to the tee. I teed off and then was transferring my i phone and keys and what have you into my golf bag from my coat when I realized that I left my wallet in the men's room. I asked Darren to take my cart and I ran back to the rest room to get my wallet. Thankfully, it was still stuffed into the seat cover holder where I'd put it. I should have put it in my coat, but that would have been too easy and smart for me. I ran back out toward the first fairway in time to see Darren with both carts flipped over and clubs and balls falling all over the place. He was pushing both carts down the hill when the carts started moving in two different directions and he tried to save both of them from crashing and managed to save neither of them. I played with Paul , who is an 8, Pamas who is a 5 and Darren who is an 18. Paul, Pamas and I all shot 46 on the front side and struggled all over the course. Darren played very well for himself and shot 42. We played marginally better on the backside and I ended up with a 46+43=89, Paul shot 89, Darren shot 86 and Pamas shot 38 on the back for an 84.
Darla leaves for Dallas on Wednesday morning and leaves me to my own devices. I have a tournament, our 4 ball qualifier on Saturday and I also set up a tee time for Sunday. I won't be playing golf on the cruise and need to get my fix in this coming weekend. I don't think we'll be able to play tomorrow, but I will probably get in a game later in the week with Gary. Darla will be at the leadership conference for Silpada.
By the way, I haven't seen the "poop man" at the office since his "problem". I'm wondering if he's still with the company. We had an office lunch on Friday and I had one of the caterers bring in the food. This was a reward for the office hitting our budget goals in January. Anthony suggested that we have lunch catered from the Thai food restaurant down the street. That is the restaurant the man had lunch at that caused his issues.
Our lease has finally been signed for the office building in Roseville. I first met with the leasing agent in March of last year and we toured the Roseville site in June. So, basically seven months after we decided on our space, the deal is done. They were fighting over stenciling on the front glass doors and who was going to pay for 15 replacement ceiling tiles and silly stuff. Our lease runs for 88 months, so the cost of either one of those items likely would have been about $10 per month. Whatever. It is done and we can now start planning for our move probably in April. The permits will be pulled for the buildout this coming week and then they will start on the tenant's improvements and betterments. I am really looking forward to the upgrade in our office environment. A bonus in all of this is that my monthly lease nut will drop from $10,000 to $9,600. It will really be nice to work in the community that I live. I'm already considering joining the Chamber of Commerce and maybe even the Lion's Club or another civic organization.
I talked to Jennifer this week and she went from working nights to working in Temecula and being away from Samantha. She got back on Wednesday and her boss asked her to work Thursday night because the job of replacing the radio receivers wasn't complete. She seemed a little aggravated that her boss isn't as organized as she is. He tends to fly by the seat of his pants and with her a single Mom, it doesn't work well. I guess John was a little upset that she had to work after not being with Sam all week. She does get to spend part of the day with Sam, but she also has to sleep.
Finally, I talked to Darryl as well. He talked to his company on Monday about his move and they asked him to stay on for two weeks and help transition his move. The new company has also given Darryl the flexibility to work from Colorado his first week and then start in Lawrence when we get back from the cruise. Darryl will not be working in the corporate office and has told the CEO that he will do a buildout for a new office in the warehouse. He wants to be close to the action because he has a lot of deficiencies that need to be worked on. He seems pretty excited about the possibilities of this new job. He also said that they do all of their offsite conferences at the winery in California, so hopefully we can see something of him. By the way, Darryl, our golf trip to Reno this year is Saturday and Sunday June 9th and 10th. The courses are Somerset Country Club and Lakeridge Golf Club. You'll have to plan to come out for that or if Cheryl isn't working for Spirit, you can come out to Monterey again for the weekend. The dates on that are October 13th and 14th and we will play Poppy Hills and Carmel Valley Ranch Country Club. Spend some of that money you are making and visit California.
That is it for this week. I think I was a little wordy with Darla being gone. If so, I apologize. I hope everyone has a good week. Be well and walk with the Lord. Ciao.
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Another Boring Super Bowl in the Books
I was afraid that with one of the worst defenses in the league in New England and the worst rushing team in the league in the Giants, that the SB would be dull, but this was ridiculous. Sure the score was close, but there was a tremendous amount of mediocrity and sheer boredom in the game. I can hearken back to the divisional games with Denver beating Pittsburgh and The Niners upsetting New Orleans. Those were exciting, well played games. How did both of these teams make it to the Super Bowl and not realize that you can only play 11 men on defense? Thank God it is over. As Randy said on his Facebook page, this was the WORST Super Bowl in history. And to name Eli Manning MVP? Wow, that was an amazing two yard passing TD to Victor Cruz. That was the extent of his scoring in the game. MVP, eh? At least I won $75 in our office football pool. That will pay me back for the four hours of my life I lost today.
I had a call at almost 11 PM last night and it was Pete's wife, Vicki, telling me that Pete had suffered a mild heart attack and was in the hospital. He had done yard work and was sitting on the couch early in the evening and felt his chest tightening and his left arm go numb. They had a neighbor who is a nurse come over and tell them to get him to the hospital. He was sweating profusely. They ran some tests today and he has three blockages in the ventricles leading to his heart. Right now they are trying to decide if they should put stints in to clear the blockage or do a bypass. The stints have a life range of 12-15 years and they would likely have to replace them when he is in his late 60's. The other option is a triple bypass, which would permanently correct the problem, but have him in the hospital for 7 days and out of work for three months. I plan to visit him in the hospital tomorrow night. Darla has a Silpada sales meeting at the house.
Connie had her surgery on Tuesday and will be out of the office for six weeks. She is feeling stronger every day, but has a great deal of pain. The timing can never be good, but this is really stretching my staff thin.
I took Matt up to Chico this week and introduced him to my agents there. We left Roseville at 6:45 AM and had an 8:30 breakfast, another meeting at 10 AM and then a lunch with another agent. We finished that with a 2 PM call on a fourth agency and all of the calls went really well. The agents that I am turning over to him write a combined $350,000 in premium with us. As I said before, it was a hard decision to make, but one I just had to do. Matt can get up and see the agents and perhaps grow them to over half a million in premium with a more concerted marketing effort. As I told the agenst, I'm still here, but I only expect to hear from them when Matt isn't reaching the customer service level they expect. In other words, I don't plan on hearing from them. It was a good trip and I'm impressed with Matt's demeanor and marketing savvy shown on these calls. He will do very well.
Darryl called me on Friday afternoon and announced that he is leaving McClain and will take a job with Standard Beverage Company in Lawrence, Kansas. I admire him and Cheryl for their ability to shift on the fly. If I was offered a position in our home office in Detroit, I would be moving on my own. Darla isn't leaving Northern California and I can honestly say that I'm not either. I'm lucky to really enjoy my job and the people that I work with. On top of that, I love California (politics aside) and can never imagine leaving. I love the weather, our church and our friends and the golf club and our home. I wouldn't want to mess that up by looking at what is behind door number three. I certainly wish him well and one consolation is that he is moving closer to his family in Texas. I know they all like coming up to Denver to visit and hit the slopes. Kansas has....well......uh, good barbecue? The golf group had tentatively planned to head up to Denver in the Spring to visit Darryl and Cheryl and play golf.
I did make it out to the golf course this weekend, but all of my buddies let me down. Paul from the club joined me and we played the Orchard Course at Lincoln Hills. I shot 42+44=86 and really struggled with my driver on the backside. I managed two birdies during the round, but was quite inconsistent. Paul shot 46+39=85 and played much better on the backside with his two birdies coming on 10 and 12. Paul is an 8 handicap. With Bob having left for San Jose, Mel back in the Philippines and Matt doing his Masters program at UC Davis, that leaves Pamas, Darren and Boyd. Pamas plays in the Golf Channel Am Tour tournaments and works one Saturday a month for the FBI. Darren is inconsistent at best and always has to check with his wife. Boyd is usually good to go, but had a granddaughter's birthday party Saturday. Paul is in now with Boyd and I on Saturdays and I will try to sprinkle in Matt, Neil, Rick, Darren, Pamas and Bob Hand. We had a good time on Saturday. Paul is 58, divorced and likes to carve out time for golf every Saturday (my kind of guy). He moved to the US from Guadalajara when he was 15 and is a registered alien just like the rest of my US family. His green card expired last week and he didn't realize it and was scrambling around to fix that oversight last week. He plans to take out his citizenship in 2012. Darryl and Randy, you should do the same. It's about damn time.
Darla is back in our office working on taxes, getting her receipts together so we can get our tax package off to our accountant before we leave on the cruise. It is always so much fun. We owe every year because Darla does not withhold taxes on two of her jobs. We get our returns back and then wait until the 15th to send in our money. Luckily, I have a bonus check that comes to me in mid March that pays for the taxes due.
We do only have three weeks until we will be on our cruise to the Bahamas. Darla and I leave for San Francisco on February 23rd where we will leave our car at a Sleep and Fly hotel (La Quinta Inn close to the airport). We are looking forward to the trip and I just hope I have a full staff when I leave. That, of course, remains to be seen.
I haven't heard from Jennifer in about a week. She was on nights last week as she was changing out radio receivers on some of the cell towers in Vegas and they have to do it at night when the phone activity is lower. The benefit was that she got some extra time with Samantha and John got to see Sam every evening.
Well, that is the news that is fit to print. Darla has a trip to Dallas coming up right after Valentines Day. She will return from that on Sunday night the 19th and we leave for the cruise on Thursday night. Wild. I hope you are all well. As our pastor says, If you want to be in a better (Friendship, Marriage, Neighborhood, etc.) be a better ( Friend, Spouse, Neighbor, etc.). Good advice. Ciao.
I had a call at almost 11 PM last night and it was Pete's wife, Vicki, telling me that Pete had suffered a mild heart attack and was in the hospital. He had done yard work and was sitting on the couch early in the evening and felt his chest tightening and his left arm go numb. They had a neighbor who is a nurse come over and tell them to get him to the hospital. He was sweating profusely. They ran some tests today and he has three blockages in the ventricles leading to his heart. Right now they are trying to decide if they should put stints in to clear the blockage or do a bypass. The stints have a life range of 12-15 years and they would likely have to replace them when he is in his late 60's. The other option is a triple bypass, which would permanently correct the problem, but have him in the hospital for 7 days and out of work for three months. I plan to visit him in the hospital tomorrow night. Darla has a Silpada sales meeting at the house.
Connie had her surgery on Tuesday and will be out of the office for six weeks. She is feeling stronger every day, but has a great deal of pain. The timing can never be good, but this is really stretching my staff thin.
I took Matt up to Chico this week and introduced him to my agents there. We left Roseville at 6:45 AM and had an 8:30 breakfast, another meeting at 10 AM and then a lunch with another agent. We finished that with a 2 PM call on a fourth agency and all of the calls went really well. The agents that I am turning over to him write a combined $350,000 in premium with us. As I said before, it was a hard decision to make, but one I just had to do. Matt can get up and see the agents and perhaps grow them to over half a million in premium with a more concerted marketing effort. As I told the agenst, I'm still here, but I only expect to hear from them when Matt isn't reaching the customer service level they expect. In other words, I don't plan on hearing from them. It was a good trip and I'm impressed with Matt's demeanor and marketing savvy shown on these calls. He will do very well.
Darryl called me on Friday afternoon and announced that he is leaving McClain and will take a job with Standard Beverage Company in Lawrence, Kansas. I admire him and Cheryl for their ability to shift on the fly. If I was offered a position in our home office in Detroit, I would be moving on my own. Darla isn't leaving Northern California and I can honestly say that I'm not either. I'm lucky to really enjoy my job and the people that I work with. On top of that, I love California (politics aside) and can never imagine leaving. I love the weather, our church and our friends and the golf club and our home. I wouldn't want to mess that up by looking at what is behind door number three. I certainly wish him well and one consolation is that he is moving closer to his family in Texas. I know they all like coming up to Denver to visit and hit the slopes. Kansas has....well......uh, good barbecue? The golf group had tentatively planned to head up to Denver in the Spring to visit Darryl and Cheryl and play golf.
I did make it out to the golf course this weekend, but all of my buddies let me down. Paul from the club joined me and we played the Orchard Course at Lincoln Hills. I shot 42+44=86 and really struggled with my driver on the backside. I managed two birdies during the round, but was quite inconsistent. Paul shot 46+39=85 and played much better on the backside with his two birdies coming on 10 and 12. Paul is an 8 handicap. With Bob having left for San Jose, Mel back in the Philippines and Matt doing his Masters program at UC Davis, that leaves Pamas, Darren and Boyd. Pamas plays in the Golf Channel Am Tour tournaments and works one Saturday a month for the FBI. Darren is inconsistent at best and always has to check with his wife. Boyd is usually good to go, but had a granddaughter's birthday party Saturday. Paul is in now with Boyd and I on Saturdays and I will try to sprinkle in Matt, Neil, Rick, Darren, Pamas and Bob Hand. We had a good time on Saturday. Paul is 58, divorced and likes to carve out time for golf every Saturday (my kind of guy). He moved to the US from Guadalajara when he was 15 and is a registered alien just like the rest of my US family. His green card expired last week and he didn't realize it and was scrambling around to fix that oversight last week. He plans to take out his citizenship in 2012. Darryl and Randy, you should do the same. It's about damn time.
Darla is back in our office working on taxes, getting her receipts together so we can get our tax package off to our accountant before we leave on the cruise. It is always so much fun. We owe every year because Darla does not withhold taxes on two of her jobs. We get our returns back and then wait until the 15th to send in our money. Luckily, I have a bonus check that comes to me in mid March that pays for the taxes due.
We do only have three weeks until we will be on our cruise to the Bahamas. Darla and I leave for San Francisco on February 23rd where we will leave our car at a Sleep and Fly hotel (La Quinta Inn close to the airport). We are looking forward to the trip and I just hope I have a full staff when I leave. That, of course, remains to be seen.
I haven't heard from Jennifer in about a week. She was on nights last week as she was changing out radio receivers on some of the cell towers in Vegas and they have to do it at night when the phone activity is lower. The benefit was that she got some extra time with Samantha and John got to see Sam every evening.
Well, that is the news that is fit to print. Darla has a trip to Dallas coming up right after Valentines Day. She will return from that on Sunday night the 19th and we leave for the cruise on Thursday night. Wild. I hope you are all well. As our pastor says, If you want to be in a better (Friendship, Marriage, Neighborhood, etc.) be a better ( Friend, Spouse, Neighbor, etc.). Good advice. Ciao.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Back to Sunshine and Happiness in NorCal
The rain was entirely welcome and we got a nice drenching last weekend. That has moved on and we are back to cold nights and warm days. I played golf today and yesterday and I'm sporting a little bit of a sunburn from the two days of bright blue skies and intense sunshine. It was about 67 degrees both days after overnight lows in the mid thirties.
My assistant, Cora, worked her last day on Friday and she is off to Manila next weekend to rejoin her husband. It will be a transition for me as I will be working without a direct assistant for most of February. Anthony's top assistant, Connie, is also out effective Friday on a medical leave. She will have surgery on Tuesday to remove a tumor that is attached to one of her ovaries. My new assistant, Veronica, will be backing up Anthony as he produces about $55,000 -$60,000 a month in net retained income and helps pay the bills and keep the lights on. I will work with Cindy in the office, who is the assistant to Renee. Connie is expecting to be well enough to continue work from home by the end of February and she will return to the office in Mid March. At that time Veronica will be working with me and Gail in the office. I've decided to attempt to reduce staff because I have some great young talent in the office that I need to boost their salaries and I want to use the fact that we will end up with a net reduction in salaries after the increases to sell this to upper management. I am in the middle of reviews right now and then will move on to salary administration and handle the raises and promotions for 2012. Fun times in River City.
Darla and I took Cora out to lunch on Wednesday and gave her our personal goodbyes. Friday, we had sixteen of the staff go out to Olive Garden to send Cora off in style. We returned to the office about 1:30 and I used the men's room.
This is a potty story so be prepared. I went in and there was a God awful reek in the room. I was washing my hands when the toilet flushed and an older fellow who I had never seen emerged. He was white as a sheet and sweating profusely. I asked him if he was okay and he said that he thought he had food poisoning. Suddenly, he jumped and ran back to the stall where I heard him retching and then I heard some splat sounds and a load groan. It turns out that he was firing from both ends simultaneously and hadn't got his pants down. I again asked if there was anything I could do for him and he asked me to wait. He emerged from the stall about five minutes later carrying his underwear that were loaded and dripping all over. He tried to to stuff them in the trash receptacle and spewed debris all over the wall. Some of it even got on me as I tried to dodge the onslaught. I'm about 9 when it comes to poop stories and started to laugh, but the guy looked about ready to die. I asked if I could call someone or get him some help. It turns out it was his first week with the other insurance company on our floor and he was too mortified to walk back into his office with his poopy pants. He had tried to call his wife who dropped him off at work and was in another office building not far from ours, but she hadn't answered either the office phone or the cell. He sheepishly asked if I could drive him over to her office, that he had keys to the car and could at least get the car and go home and clean up. Now, I am not a total neat freak, but my car is always clean and immaculate and the idea of this guy getting into my clean car was not sitting well with me. I had a towel in my gym bag, so I set that out on the passenger seat and rolled down all of the windows and drove him over to his car. He wanted to shake hands and was thanking me profusely, but I was all of a sudden Howie Mandell and just waved at the guy and wished him well. The car reeked and my gym towel had a silhouette of this guy still on it. I threw it in the trunk and rolled down the windows and opened the sun roof. I also sprayed some car deodorizer on the carpet to mask the smell.
When I got back to the office, it was in an uproar. One of he guys had gone into the restroom and it was thrashed by this guy. There were piles of excrement all over the walls and floor of the stall and the smell was emanating into the hallway. Anthony had put a sign on the door that read "Bathroom closed. Do not enter. (Trust Me!)" I called a couple of the guys into my office and told them the story and we were all in tears laughing about it. How did I get involved in that? The guys thought it was hilarious because they know how I am about my car. It will be interesting to see if the guy shows up for work on Monday or just decides to retire.
We finished 2011 very strong and were up a little over 7% in written premium and over 19% in net retained income and I am thrilled with the results. We made over $800,000 in profit and I am shooting for $1,000,000 in 2012. I will be giving up a lot of my agents this year to Matt and concentrating on my local agents and doing marketing with the younger underwriters. Matt and I have a trip planned up to Chico on Thursday of this week to have him meet my agents up there and take them on. It is a tough decision for me, because I have always been an active underwriter even over the years that I have been managing the office, but I have too many people now and I can't give the customer service to the agents that they deserve. Matt is 29 years old and hungry and will be able to get out and market to the agents and will also give them first rate service. I will probably end the year with just $1,000,000 in written premium after I give Matt a lot of my agents, but it is time. I think I will see him grow a lot of these agents to levels they haven't been with us in years. It will be a tough transition, but I will be able to do more mentoring and concentrate more on marketing to the agents and getting out with all of the underwriters to do marketing calls.
I did play golf both days this week. I snuck out yesterday afternoon and played the white tees with an older couple that were using one of those golf cards to try out different courses. I shot a 41+41=82 and thoroughly enjoyed both of them as we told jokes and learned a bit about each other. Today was our Super Bowl tournament and my driver decided to give me fits today. It was one of those days where my scrambling was excellent. I chipped in on two holes for par and sunk at least five putts of over 20 feet . I shot 40+43=83, but maybe hit five drives that were in the fairway. I played with Boyd who shot 82, Tom who shot 80 and another 4 handicapper who shot 83. It was the type of day that if I was driving the ball well, would have shot in the mid 70's. Oh well.
It was my Mother-in laws birthday this week and she turned 70. Earl and Frances came into town on Saturday and treated all of us to dinner last night at the Outback Steakhouse. It was fun and and we enjoyed the meal and the conversation. Alicia and Don joined us along with Lucas, who was pretty well behaved for a 17 month old.
Darla has been hot and heavy on the Silpada trail, having parties Thursday, Friday, Saturday and today. In fact she just got home and it is 6:45 PM. She is bound and determined to get back on the incentive trip list. The group is going to Oahu in January of next year and she wants to go and maybe stay over and visit her brother on the big island.
Pete and I in my office will be returning to Scottsdale in March for what is becoming our annual trip to see our carriers and to see some Spring Training baseball. Our carrier partner, Colony, has again offered the use of their corporate apartment and this year we will have the ladies fly in with us for Saturday and Sunday and then Pete and I will stay over Monday and Tuesday to see all five of our carriers. We will also have dinner on Saturday night with one of our carrier underwriters and her husband. We will be there in the middle of Spring Break, Spring Training and over St Patty's Day. We will leave on March 16th and stay until the 20th. The girls will fly home on Sunday night.
Well, that's it. Sorry for the poop story, but it is blog worthy, as Darla calls it. Not one to tell over dinner though. I hope you are all doing great. Be well and keep living in the Lord. Ciao.
My assistant, Cora, worked her last day on Friday and she is off to Manila next weekend to rejoin her husband. It will be a transition for me as I will be working without a direct assistant for most of February. Anthony's top assistant, Connie, is also out effective Friday on a medical leave. She will have surgery on Tuesday to remove a tumor that is attached to one of her ovaries. My new assistant, Veronica, will be backing up Anthony as he produces about $55,000 -$60,000 a month in net retained income and helps pay the bills and keep the lights on. I will work with Cindy in the office, who is the assistant to Renee. Connie is expecting to be well enough to continue work from home by the end of February and she will return to the office in Mid March. At that time Veronica will be working with me and Gail in the office. I've decided to attempt to reduce staff because I have some great young talent in the office that I need to boost their salaries and I want to use the fact that we will end up with a net reduction in salaries after the increases to sell this to upper management. I am in the middle of reviews right now and then will move on to salary administration and handle the raises and promotions for 2012. Fun times in River City.
Darla and I took Cora out to lunch on Wednesday and gave her our personal goodbyes. Friday, we had sixteen of the staff go out to Olive Garden to send Cora off in style. We returned to the office about 1:30 and I used the men's room.
This is a potty story so be prepared. I went in and there was a God awful reek in the room. I was washing my hands when the toilet flushed and an older fellow who I had never seen emerged. He was white as a sheet and sweating profusely. I asked him if he was okay and he said that he thought he had food poisoning. Suddenly, he jumped and ran back to the stall where I heard him retching and then I heard some splat sounds and a load groan. It turns out that he was firing from both ends simultaneously and hadn't got his pants down. I again asked if there was anything I could do for him and he asked me to wait. He emerged from the stall about five minutes later carrying his underwear that were loaded and dripping all over. He tried to to stuff them in the trash receptacle and spewed debris all over the wall. Some of it even got on me as I tried to dodge the onslaught. I'm about 9 when it comes to poop stories and started to laugh, but the guy looked about ready to die. I asked if I could call someone or get him some help. It turns out it was his first week with the other insurance company on our floor and he was too mortified to walk back into his office with his poopy pants. He had tried to call his wife who dropped him off at work and was in another office building not far from ours, but she hadn't answered either the office phone or the cell. He sheepishly asked if I could drive him over to her office, that he had keys to the car and could at least get the car and go home and clean up. Now, I am not a total neat freak, but my car is always clean and immaculate and the idea of this guy getting into my clean car was not sitting well with me. I had a towel in my gym bag, so I set that out on the passenger seat and rolled down all of the windows and drove him over to his car. He wanted to shake hands and was thanking me profusely, but I was all of a sudden Howie Mandell and just waved at the guy and wished him well. The car reeked and my gym towel had a silhouette of this guy still on it. I threw it in the trunk and rolled down the windows and opened the sun roof. I also sprayed some car deodorizer on the carpet to mask the smell.
When I got back to the office, it was in an uproar. One of he guys had gone into the restroom and it was thrashed by this guy. There were piles of excrement all over the walls and floor of the stall and the smell was emanating into the hallway. Anthony had put a sign on the door that read "Bathroom closed. Do not enter. (Trust Me!)" I called a couple of the guys into my office and told them the story and we were all in tears laughing about it. How did I get involved in that? The guys thought it was hilarious because they know how I am about my car. It will be interesting to see if the guy shows up for work on Monday or just decides to retire.
We finished 2011 very strong and were up a little over 7% in written premium and over 19% in net retained income and I am thrilled with the results. We made over $800,000 in profit and I am shooting for $1,000,000 in 2012. I will be giving up a lot of my agents this year to Matt and concentrating on my local agents and doing marketing with the younger underwriters. Matt and I have a trip planned up to Chico on Thursday of this week to have him meet my agents up there and take them on. It is a tough decision for me, because I have always been an active underwriter even over the years that I have been managing the office, but I have too many people now and I can't give the customer service to the agents that they deserve. Matt is 29 years old and hungry and will be able to get out and market to the agents and will also give them first rate service. I will probably end the year with just $1,000,000 in written premium after I give Matt a lot of my agents, but it is time. I think I will see him grow a lot of these agents to levels they haven't been with us in years. It will be a tough transition, but I will be able to do more mentoring and concentrate more on marketing to the agents and getting out with all of the underwriters to do marketing calls.
I did play golf both days this week. I snuck out yesterday afternoon and played the white tees with an older couple that were using one of those golf cards to try out different courses. I shot a 41+41=82 and thoroughly enjoyed both of them as we told jokes and learned a bit about each other. Today was our Super Bowl tournament and my driver decided to give me fits today. It was one of those days where my scrambling was excellent. I chipped in on two holes for par and sunk at least five putts of over 20 feet . I shot 40+43=83, but maybe hit five drives that were in the fairway. I played with Boyd who shot 82, Tom who shot 80 and another 4 handicapper who shot 83. It was the type of day that if I was driving the ball well, would have shot in the mid 70's. Oh well.
It was my Mother-in laws birthday this week and she turned 70. Earl and Frances came into town on Saturday and treated all of us to dinner last night at the Outback Steakhouse. It was fun and and we enjoyed the meal and the conversation. Alicia and Don joined us along with Lucas, who was pretty well behaved for a 17 month old.
Darla has been hot and heavy on the Silpada trail, having parties Thursday, Friday, Saturday and today. In fact she just got home and it is 6:45 PM. She is bound and determined to get back on the incentive trip list. The group is going to Oahu in January of next year and she wants to go and maybe stay over and visit her brother on the big island.
Pete and I in my office will be returning to Scottsdale in March for what is becoming our annual trip to see our carriers and to see some Spring Training baseball. Our carrier partner, Colony, has again offered the use of their corporate apartment and this year we will have the ladies fly in with us for Saturday and Sunday and then Pete and I will stay over Monday and Tuesday to see all five of our carriers. We will also have dinner on Saturday night with one of our carrier underwriters and her husband. We will be there in the middle of Spring Break, Spring Training and over St Patty's Day. We will leave on March 16th and stay until the 20th. The girls will fly home on Sunday night.
Well, that's it. Sorry for the poop story, but it is blog worthy, as Darla calls it. Not one to tell over dinner though. I hope you are all doing great. Be well and keep living in the Lord. Ciao.
Monday, January 23, 2012
The Rain has finally arrived in Northern California..Praise God!!
A day late and my brother is already harassing me. I had to work today, Saheeb. It is Winter and the weather finally decided to mirror that fact. The rain rolled in on Friday and it rained off and on all weekend. We had a good drenching on Friday night, replete with wind and cold and it left a lot of downed tree limbs and debris for me to clean up on Saturday. I cleaned up around the house between storms, cleaned out the pool, unblocked one downspout and cleaned out the other gutters. I'm glad I did it, but we had another big storm last night and there are branches and junk all over again. At least the gutters worked well. The storms are supposed to peter out tonight and it will dry out over the next week. We got about two inches of rain out of this system and it was long overdue.
I also changed out the light fixture in the laundry room. It was the light fixture from the kitchen when we first moved in and the ballast was going on it. I tried to take the diffuser off and it was so brittle that I couldn't get it to lift off the base. I went to the internet and saw a posting that said you may as well go ahead and break it now as it would happen two hours later. I finally just took the whole thing down and replaced it with another chrome light fixture with two neon bulbs for $33. The cost to change out the ballast was $22.50 and their were two of them on the four bulb system. It looks nice and took me less time than trying to mess with the current wood light fixture that I took out of the kitchen because I thought it looked cheap. Darla is happy to have light in there instead of the flickering hum of a broken ballast.
Saturday night we watched Sanctum, a good film about underwater caving in Papua New Guinea. It is based on a true story wherein a huge storm caused portions of the cave to collapse as they were exploring it and the race to get back to the surface. It was directed by James Cameron and is worth a few hours of your time. Darla and I watched it on HBO. That night we were awakened by our alarm system at 4:20 in the morning, blaring and blasting away. The odd thing is that the alarm was not set. It turns out that the fire alarm went off because of a dusty smoke detector attached to the system. We were able to disarm the alarm after about ten minutes looking up the code. It was deafening inside and out. Oddly, we had no police show up and no neighbors heard anything. That's a comforting thought. We need to get up and clean out the smoke detector. It went off one other time when we were having the whole house fan installed and the construction debris (wallboard and dust, etc) rained down on the smoke detector below the fan. That isn't something you want to wake up to. Trust me.
I did not get out to golf this weekend and missed it, although my golf elbow appreciated the respite. I have a tournament on Sunday with 108 players and that is why the Blog got missed last night. I watched the two football playoff games after sleeping in Sunday morning (after the fun of the alarm at 4:30). I had to give Neil all of the player's handicaps and tournament handicaps, adjust the white and red players' handicaps and send that across to him. I got done at 9:30 and decided the Blog could wait until tonight.
As to the football, it should be a good Super Bowl with a replay of the 2009 Patriot-Giant slugfest that saw the Giants beat the unbeaten Patriots in surprising fashion. The Pats should have plenty of motivation and I see them winning this one in a fairly high scoring affair. I swear I have tried to see some good in Alex Smith of the Forty Niners. He had a great year and made very few mistakes, but an NFL QB that throws for 197 yards a game and one TD on average is hard to like. Alex Smith was the 19th ranked QB in the league this year, right behind that All Pro Rex Grossman of the Washington Redskins. Alex had a career game against the Saints and played a very good game, but was still outplayed by Drew Brees who had 470 yards passing in the game to Alex' 299. Granted, Alex won the game and made two great drives when it counted. He failed on Sunday with the game on the line. In the 4th quarter he had four straight three and out drives and looked like a scared rabbit as he ran around the pocket either afraid to throw or throwing the ball into the turf. He ended the game 12 0f 26 (46%) for two tds and no interceptions. He didn't make any mistakes, but didn't do anything to help his team. Eli Manning, on the other hand, was 32 of 58 for 316 yards and two tds. I really like the Niners defense, offensive line, running back and tight end, but overall their passing game is what hurts them. Alex Smith made a huge turnaround this year with Harbaugh preaching ball safety and no turnovers.
As a Dallas fan I'd love to see what Harbaugh could do with Tony Romo. Romo's biggest fault is that he takes too many chances with the ball. His stats are great, but he loses games by his street ball mentality. Smith is a cerebral quarterback, where Romo is a great athlete, so apples and oranges, but if Harbaugh can shine that turd with Smith...
Ah, next year. The eternal cry of the loser and right where both Dallas and SF are. By the way, I hear that SF stands for Stop Fumbling. Poor Kyle Williams, nobody knew who he was before yesterday and now he's in line for a share of the Giant's Super Bowl money. He'd probably drop it if they gave it to him anyhow. I know, the jokes are out there. The poor guy had death threats from his own fans last night. I think he and Billy Cundiff could get together and trade sob stories. Both games were tight and came down to mistakes. I would tell any SF fan that the silver lining here is that the Niners are still undefeated in Super Bowls at 5-0. If they'd beat the Giants, New England was ready to pounce. If Eli went for 316 yards against the Niners in the Niner's house, Brady was looking at 400 and 3 or 4 TDs in Indy. It is just too bad that the Packers and Saints got knocked out. They had the best teams in the NFC, but any given Sunday.
My assistant shocked me last week when she turned in her resignation. Her husband had gone back to the Philippines last year and they had a long distance relationship. She was considering what to do with her life and if she would stay here and go on alone, but her family talked her into moving back home and giving it a go. She leaves her two college aged children behind, which is hard for her, but knows it is time to put her energy into her marriage. The kids are moving on with their lives and she would have soon realized that she was truly alone here in the United States. Her husband has a thriving Import business in Manila and he just opened a Thai restaurant in the financial district with a partner, so things are good for him. I'll miss her, but I am excited for my friends to repair their marriage and have a chance for happiness.
Well, I stayed late tonight to work on this and get it in the can. Darla is waiting at home, so I am on my way home. We have been studying how to have a better life, marriage, home and neighborhood at church and Saturday night the big secret was revealed. To be in a better marriage, you have to be a better husband, to have a better relationship with your kids, you have to be a better parent. To live in a better neighborhood, you have to be a better neighbor. A simple concept, but one that not too many people get. I hope you are all doing well. Until next week,Ii bid you adieu. Ciao.
I also changed out the light fixture in the laundry room. It was the light fixture from the kitchen when we first moved in and the ballast was going on it. I tried to take the diffuser off and it was so brittle that I couldn't get it to lift off the base. I went to the internet and saw a posting that said you may as well go ahead and break it now as it would happen two hours later. I finally just took the whole thing down and replaced it with another chrome light fixture with two neon bulbs for $33. The cost to change out the ballast was $22.50 and their were two of them on the four bulb system. It looks nice and took me less time than trying to mess with the current wood light fixture that I took out of the kitchen because I thought it looked cheap. Darla is happy to have light in there instead of the flickering hum of a broken ballast.
Saturday night we watched Sanctum, a good film about underwater caving in Papua New Guinea. It is based on a true story wherein a huge storm caused portions of the cave to collapse as they were exploring it and the race to get back to the surface. It was directed by James Cameron and is worth a few hours of your time. Darla and I watched it on HBO. That night we were awakened by our alarm system at 4:20 in the morning, blaring and blasting away. The odd thing is that the alarm was not set. It turns out that the fire alarm went off because of a dusty smoke detector attached to the system. We were able to disarm the alarm after about ten minutes looking up the code. It was deafening inside and out. Oddly, we had no police show up and no neighbors heard anything. That's a comforting thought. We need to get up and clean out the smoke detector. It went off one other time when we were having the whole house fan installed and the construction debris (wallboard and dust, etc) rained down on the smoke detector below the fan. That isn't something you want to wake up to. Trust me.
I did not get out to golf this weekend and missed it, although my golf elbow appreciated the respite. I have a tournament on Sunday with 108 players and that is why the Blog got missed last night. I watched the two football playoff games after sleeping in Sunday morning (after the fun of the alarm at 4:30). I had to give Neil all of the player's handicaps and tournament handicaps, adjust the white and red players' handicaps and send that across to him. I got done at 9:30 and decided the Blog could wait until tonight.
As to the football, it should be a good Super Bowl with a replay of the 2009 Patriot-Giant slugfest that saw the Giants beat the unbeaten Patriots in surprising fashion. The Pats should have plenty of motivation and I see them winning this one in a fairly high scoring affair. I swear I have tried to see some good in Alex Smith of the Forty Niners. He had a great year and made very few mistakes, but an NFL QB that throws for 197 yards a game and one TD on average is hard to like. Alex Smith was the 19th ranked QB in the league this year, right behind that All Pro Rex Grossman of the Washington Redskins. Alex had a career game against the Saints and played a very good game, but was still outplayed by Drew Brees who had 470 yards passing in the game to Alex' 299. Granted, Alex won the game and made two great drives when it counted. He failed on Sunday with the game on the line. In the 4th quarter he had four straight three and out drives and looked like a scared rabbit as he ran around the pocket either afraid to throw or throwing the ball into the turf. He ended the game 12 0f 26 (46%) for two tds and no interceptions. He didn't make any mistakes, but didn't do anything to help his team. Eli Manning, on the other hand, was 32 of 58 for 316 yards and two tds. I really like the Niners defense, offensive line, running back and tight end, but overall their passing game is what hurts them. Alex Smith made a huge turnaround this year with Harbaugh preaching ball safety and no turnovers.
As a Dallas fan I'd love to see what Harbaugh could do with Tony Romo. Romo's biggest fault is that he takes too many chances with the ball. His stats are great, but he loses games by his street ball mentality. Smith is a cerebral quarterback, where Romo is a great athlete, so apples and oranges, but if Harbaugh can shine that turd with Smith...
Ah, next year. The eternal cry of the loser and right where both Dallas and SF are. By the way, I hear that SF stands for Stop Fumbling. Poor Kyle Williams, nobody knew who he was before yesterday and now he's in line for a share of the Giant's Super Bowl money. He'd probably drop it if they gave it to him anyhow. I know, the jokes are out there. The poor guy had death threats from his own fans last night. I think he and Billy Cundiff could get together and trade sob stories. Both games were tight and came down to mistakes. I would tell any SF fan that the silver lining here is that the Niners are still undefeated in Super Bowls at 5-0. If they'd beat the Giants, New England was ready to pounce. If Eli went for 316 yards against the Niners in the Niner's house, Brady was looking at 400 and 3 or 4 TDs in Indy. It is just too bad that the Packers and Saints got knocked out. They had the best teams in the NFC, but any given Sunday.
My assistant shocked me last week when she turned in her resignation. Her husband had gone back to the Philippines last year and they had a long distance relationship. She was considering what to do with her life and if she would stay here and go on alone, but her family talked her into moving back home and giving it a go. She leaves her two college aged children behind, which is hard for her, but knows it is time to put her energy into her marriage. The kids are moving on with their lives and she would have soon realized that she was truly alone here in the United States. Her husband has a thriving Import business in Manila and he just opened a Thai restaurant in the financial district with a partner, so things are good for him. I'll miss her, but I am excited for my friends to repair their marriage and have a chance for happiness.
Well, I stayed late tonight to work on this and get it in the can. Darla is waiting at home, so I am on my way home. We have been studying how to have a better life, marriage, home and neighborhood at church and Saturday night the big secret was revealed. To be in a better marriage, you have to be a better husband, to have a better relationship with your kids, you have to be a better parent. To live in a better neighborhood, you have to be a better neighbor. A simple concept, but one that not too many people get. I hope you are all doing well. Until next week,Ii bid you adieu. Ciao.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Winter looks like it may show up this week
Just a few more pictures from our visit with Samantha and Jennifer. We really enjoyed ourselves, but the Christmas tree, Christmas lights and other decorations have come down and we are now just back to normal here at the house. I got all of the boxes packed up and stored back in the attic. The memories are still here and I smile when I see Sam's lizard lying around or her punch ball sitting in our tub. I also have some of her Lifesavers in my desk drawer at work. She is growing up and is a sweet little girl.
Our nephew, Lucas, who is a year and a half is visiting us tonight. Tomorrow is MLK day and Darla has the day off. She was nice enough to invite Lucas to spend the night with us and let her sister and Don take an overnight trip to Napa. Lucas is running around throwing balls and playing with Sam's punch ball as I write this on the sofa. It is nice having a laptop and not being banished to the study when I'm working on the blog. Darla has his little DVD player going with one of his Einstein videos, but he is oblivious to it as he plays in his little footy pajamas.
I slept most of the afternoon as the creepy crud that has been on Darla for the last month and has made it's way through my office finally hit me. I didn't get it too bad, but I've had nasal congestion, a cough and had a sore throat last week. Hopefully, most of the worst has passed for me. I do work tomorrow and have the staff coming in casual. It is always dead in Sacramento on national holidays as this is a government town and the roads will be empty. I am working on employee reviews and payroll increases, so quiet will be nice and will let me get through a number of the reviews.
Darla is trying to get Lucas to go down to bed and is having no luck so far. He was down and crying and now is in her arms as she slowly rocks him. He looks tired so we hope to have him down and be on to our evening in front of the tv soon. The Golden Globes are on in the background and Ricky Gervais is skewering everyone in sight.
The NFL playoffs are down to the conference Championships and I was sad to see Tim Tebow take such an unceremonious exit from the national stage. It was perhaps overdue as he isn't much of a passing prodigy. That said, somehow Alex Smith did a turn on Joe Montana's stage and somehow managed to rally his 27th ranked offense to victory over the New Orleans Saints. The huge chasm between their 2nd ranked defense and the 27th ranked offense is HUGE, but they managed to pull it off this week and even saw the favored Green Bay Packers beaten by a 9-7 team in their own park. This will allow SF to host the title game and may even see them favored. The Giants are playing well right now. Frankly I dislike both teams and think neither can beat either the Patriots or Ravens. Funny, the NFC has had the best teams this year, but of the teams left, the AFC has by far the best teams. The win by the Niners likely cements their relationship with Alex Smith, who is a below average NFL qb and actually hurts the Niners. He averaged 195 yards passing per game this year with 1.06 touchdowns per game. Pitiful. They would be an unbelievably good team with even a mediocre qb that can throw for 300 yards and 3 touchdowns. They'd be the team to beat if they had Eli Manning as their QB. As it is, they will likely win their division and falter year after year. Of course, they played fantastic yesterday and could manage to pull it off. My thing is I just watched Tom Brady throw for six tds today, and would be hard pressed to ever see Alex Smith do that. Even four td passes and 300 yards is a stretch for this guy. He had a CAREER game Saturday and threw for three tds and 299 yards. Drew Brees threw for 471 yards in the loss.
I made it out and played two games of golf this week. I played Diamond Oaks Thursday afternoon and shot 79 from the white tees on Thursday. I then met Darren out at Diamond on Saturday and we had a two hour frost delay and we played the whites again and I shot 81. For some reason, most people struggle during the Winter and their handicap goes up. Mine has dropped from 11.4 to 10.9 to 10.8 and now down to 10.2. The club played a scramble tournament on Saturday and I skip it every year because I want to post a score if I spend four hours on the course. Interestingly, one of our foursomes had two hole in ones on number 5, the same hole I had my hole in one on last April. The hole in ones came back to back and unfortunately, being a scramble, they could only use one of them. I left to watch football and missed the free drinks.
Lucas is now down and Darla is enjoying a slice of low cal cheesecake. She offered me a slice, but I told her I had to finish this first. I hope all is well for each of you. My only New Year's Resolution this year is to read the Bible cover to cover and I am on track now working my way through Genesis. Be good to each other. Ciao.
Sunday, January 08, 2012
Jennifer and Samantha make it a complete New Year
The girls flew in Thursday night into the new terminal at Sacramento airport at 10:30 and it was so good to see them. Sam was awake and chattering away to us about everything on the drive home. We all hit the sack as soon as we got home and were up a bit late Friday morning as we awoke about 9;00 AM. Sam came to our bedroom door and came in and climbed up on the bed to say good morning. Darla fixed a nice quiche and we opened gifts around the tree that is still up and was awaiting their visit. Samantha liked her new clothes and her Tangled doll and she got dressed right in her little purple outfit that her Grandma picked out.
We went out and exchanged a golf shirt that Jennifer bought me. No one believes that I wear an XL shirt, but I have a massive upper body and need the extra room to swing when I'm golfing. A Large shirt feels tight and binding across my chest and shoulders. We also stopped off at a Payless Shoe Source for Kids and bought Samantha some new dress shoes "with a heel" to wear out to dinner Friday night. From there we headed over to the Chuck E. Cheese for some marginal pizza and some fun for Miss Samantha. The manager of the store is one of Darla's Silpada girls' boyfriend and he gave Sam about 150 tickets to spend in the store. She rode rides and played games for about an hour and a half after lunch (she had 50 tokens) and finally decided to get some Nerds candy, a ring and a blue lizard with all of her tickets.
We headed home to rest up before dinner. I stopped and bought Samantha a balsa wood airplane with the rubber band that you wind up to make it fly. We took that over to the park and the tail section was broken on about the third run. We taped it up and she chased the plane as i sent it flying. I tried to get her to throw it, but she'd let go of the propeller too soon and it would have no power when she finally threw it. We tired of that after twenty minutes or so and dropped the plane off at the seat by our front door and ran back to the park for her to ride the swings and play on the jungle gym. She made a couple of friends along the way and they ended up building a big castle in the sand pit that doubles as a volleyball court when the kids and cats aren't using it.
We took Jennifer and Samantha to Benihana's for shrimp and chicken and Samantha had the fried rice and wide noodles with chicken. We told the staff it was her birthday and they came out and sang to her afterward and took pictures and gave her some chocolate ice cream and whipped cream with cherries on top. There was an older couple at the table and the lady was enthralled with Jennifer. She approached us before they left and asked Darla if Sam was her daughter. I guess they thought Jennifer was the older sister or something. We had put Samantha between Darla and I at the table and I guess that is where she got the idea, although she said that Samantha looks so much like Darla. Darla of course was thrilled and I told her the lady was suffering from dementia. She didn't care for that line. We got home early and watched movies with Samantha and Jennifer and she went to bed about 10:00 PM and Darla and I watched a movie.
Saturday we slept in again. I got up about 9:00 AM and Jennifer asked if she could borrow the car. She wanted to look for a gift for a friend. She was gone for about an hour and a half and Samantha had just got up when she got back home. Darla fixed pancakes and we relaxed and enjoyed the morning. It was really windy, so we just stayed at home. Jennifer's friend, Jason, came by and visited after his wrestling match in Sacramento. Jason coaches his old high school team and this is prime wrestling season. He stayed for a couple of hours. Alicia and Lucas came over and the kids played together for awhile. Jennifer's best friend, Sara and her daughter, Arianna, came for dinner, although they are vegetarians and we had prime rib. I opened a bottle of nice Italian red wine that my assistant, Cora, had bought me for Christmas and we enjoyed a nice dinner and visit. The girls got along pretty well, which was good as Jennifer and Sara were heading out on the town after dinner and we babysat.
The girls had a couple of issues and are both pretty strong headed. They are both 4, but Arianna is 7 months older than Sam and a head taller. They played hide and seek and dolls and set up dominoes only to knock them all down. It was a first sleepover for both of them and they were wound up. We finally got them into bed about ten, but they were watching a movie on Sara's ipad. Darla and I stayed up and watched Saturday Night Live and the girls kept getting up and coming out to ask for water or something to eat. I finally shut the movie off at midnight and texted Jennifer to let her know that they were still awake and asking for their Moms. As soon as I did that, about twenty minutes later they were out ..fast asleep. Jennifer and Sara ended up coming home early (for them) and they all had a big slumber party in the guest room.
This morning Sara and Arianna were off to do some errands and we had breakfast, watched Happy Feet and then went over to the park to let Sam ride the swings and play on the slides. We then went out to lunch at the local taquerria that Dad and Shirley liked so much and dropped them at the airport at 4:30 for their flight home.
It was a fun and enjoyable visit. Darla and I are both tired and wonder how Jennifer does it every day. Sam has a lot of energy and wants things done mostly her way. Her Mom is constantly fighting with her and slowly winning the battle. I love them both and will miss them this week, but hold them memories in my heart until we see each other again, which likely will be April. I hope you all had a good first week of 2012. Do something nice for each other this week and let them know how much you appreciate them. Be well. Ciao.
Sunday, January 01, 2012
Happy New Year 2012
Happy New Year. We brought the New Year in pretty typically for us, quietly and at home watching a movie. We watched Dick Clark mumble his way through the countdown of the ball in Times Square. Someone needs to get to his handlers and tell them to preserve his legacy and keep him off television. It's pretty bad when he is still at six and the ball has already dropped. I know that he had a stroke and is doing the best he can, but there is no reason to have him on television every year. I remember Dick Clark as a vibrant man who never seemed to age. Now, he is a late night tv joke, which is sad.
Darla and I invited Neil and Lilly out to dinner on Friday night and decided to celebrate an early New Year with good friends. We had a $50 restaurant certificate for the Paragary restaurant chain in Sacramento and ate at the namesake restaurant, Paragary's, at 22nd and N street in downtown Sacramento. We had margaritas and Italian food. Afterward, we drove over to Rick's Diner on K Street and had some delicious desserts at the Victorian diner.
I did play a couple of games of golf this week. Monday, I joined Pamas and Neil at Morgan Creek Country Club in Roseville. They had a $30 deal after noon, but it was packed and we didn't get off until 1 PM and the starter dropped our fee to $25. Boyd was supposed to play with us, but wasn't thrilled with the crowds and opted out. We likely wouldn't have finished as it took us 2 and a half hours to play the front side. Pamas decided to skip the back nine and play the front again and I shot 42+41=83 to Pamas' 79 and Neil's 92. We finished before dark. Yesterday, I met Pamas, Boyd and Paul at Woodcreek and played 18 holes in the morning. I shot one of my best rounds in the last couple of months with a 41+39 for 80. Boyd shot 77, Pamas had 79 and Paul shot 82. We will play Ancil Hoffman tomorrow morning and Pamas, Neil, Boyd and I will give the Ancil Hoffman course a try. My handicap dropped to 10 for 2012 after some pretty decent scores lately.
I had to run the sprinklers today as we've had such dry and warm weather lately. Our average temperatures lately have been a 40 degree low and a 64 degree high. I also trimmed the roses back yesterday now that we've had some morning frost over the last couple of weeks.
Yesterday we had Alicia and Lucas over along with Darla's parents for a late Christmas celebration. Alicia and Don have been sick the last week, Alicia coming down with the flu on Christmas day and Don picking up the bug last week. He still wasn't feeling 100% yesterday and stayed home. It was fun hanging out with Lucas and watching him play with his toys and ball. He knocked over my soda as he was throwing his toy football around.
Thursday night we have Jennifer and Samantha coming to town to celebrate a late 4th birthday for Ms. Samantha and a late Christmas as well. I have Friday off on a floater holiday and we will have some fun together. We plan on going back to Incredible John's pizza in Roseville and letting Samantha ride the rides again. Jennifer will have a couple of her friends, Jason and Sarah come over for prime rib on Saturday night and we will babysit while Jen hits the town with her friends afterward.
Hard to believe, but the Dallas Cowboys are still alive for a playoff spot thanks to the New York Giants playing so poorly and losing to a division opponent the week after beating Dallas. I'm hoping they can put together a solid, error free game and win the game tonight. It's hard to feel confident the way that they've played this year, but New York is vulnerable, aren't a great home team and anything can happen. Here's hoping that they can bring the division home tonight.
Well, that is it for this week. I will be back next week with a bunch of pictures of Samantha and Jennifer. I am really looking forward to seeing them and spending the weekend together. I was able to Skype with them earlier last week and Jennifer gave me a video tour of her new apartment. Samantha was in a playful mood and said she is looking forward to coming to my house. Be well and have a wonderful and safe 2012. Ciao.
