Once More a Bachelor to Silpada

Of course, more pictures. The picture of Daniel and Samantha is great. It looks like she is saying, "Dude, let go of some of that shake, I'm hungry!" The picture of Earl is of a hat that Don got me because my car is a pimp car. I don't know why I should dress up like Chef Boyardee, but whatever. The picture of David and Taylor was taken fro Darla's brother, Steve, so he could see his daughter in her dress "whites". She is an MP in the Navy and stationed at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Darla is off to Kansas City this weekend with seven of the women on her team. It is the annual conference and there are 400o Silpada reps invading Kansas City. I played poker last night and she called me about 9 PM forgetting that I was in a poker game. I'm surrounded by five men and she says, "Tell me you love me and want to kiss all over me." I said, "Did you spend any money today?" She said, "No, we were in conference all day." I said, "I love you and want to kiss all over you".

Darla was put up in a suite that overlooks downtown Kansas City and has two bedrooms. She was at a Sterling Club event Thursday night for S=tar Leaders and had dinner with the founders and 1000 of her closest friends. I have to pick her up tomorrow night and decided to get the blog out of the way tonight.

I have been playing a lot of golf recently, adding in some marketing golf with agents. I played Woodcreek on Tuesday and shot 81, I played Mather Golf Club on Thursday and shot 78. We played with two golfers from Jesuit High School, who will play on the Claremont Golf Team in Los Angeles this Fall. Both of them could hit the ball a mile and they played from the blue tees at 6900 yards and I played the white at 6500 yards. They were hitting it fifty yards past me, but I shot 37 on the front and they shot 37 and 36 respectively. They quit after nine and I shot 41 on the back while my agent shot 49. I played a practice round today at Diamond for our two man blind best ball tournament tomorrow and shot 42+42=84. Hopefully, I was saving up for the game tomorrow. Boyd shot 76, Neil 90 and Mel 94.

I got home with every good intention to clean the pool and relax on the pool, but fell asleep on the couch at 1:30 and woke up at 4:00PM. I did clean the pool, trimmed the bushes and ground cover and edged the front lawn. I have some spaghetti thawing in the kitchen for dinner tonight.

Work is going well and we exceeded budget last month and will come close this month. My assistant has left and moved to Thailand and Cora, Mel's wife, is now working as my assistant. I have my old assistant, Dinda's, daughter, Toni-Anne starting with us on Monday. Toni-Anne is Cora's niece. It is one happy family. They are all excellent workers, very diligent and hard working. I look forward to Toni-Anne joining the team. She will work for Pete, who is my number two underwriter in the office and a guy who is on the cusp of really getting his business humming. Toni-Anne is a graduate of UC Davis with a degree in Psychology and she has worked for a workers compensation and employee benefits company for the past four years. She will be able to handle Pete and help him get his business booming.

Well, dinner awaits and a movie afterward. I may take a night swim tonight. it was 97 degrees today and expected to surpass 100 tomorrow. I hope you are all well. Be good to each other. Ciao.

New BLING for Darla

After seeing Jason's parent's Explorer at the lake, I went on E-Bay and bought Darla a billet grille for her car for $30. I can't believe how cheap these grills are. This one is actually a replacement grill for the stock Ford grill. They are plastic with a chrome spray that is polished to a high gloss. You can't tell here (it was twilight by the time we got out of the pool and I installed it), but double click on the picture to see the grill in all it's glory. No more plastic grills for us. Now Darla has a little pimp in her ride, too.

More Almanor Memories

Lots more pictures where these came from as Darla took 230 pictures during our vacation (luckily we have the 2MB smartcard). Most of these pictures are of Samantha and we had most of a week without her, so there are a lot more pictures, but we had such a good time and it's my blog, so I'll relive those now. There will be plenty of other pictures of our week in Almanor to be shared in the weeks ahead. These pictures are off of the Canon Rebel Digital camera, where the pictures last week were from the Canon CoolPix camera that I bought for Darla at Christmas. I haven't spoken to Jennifer since I dropped she and Sam off with her Mom. I tried calling her from Almanor on Friday, but just got her voice mail. You can see the picture of Samantha in her swimsuit and sunglasses. The funny thing is that unlike most 18 month olds, she prefers to have the sunglasses on when she is outside.

Our jet ski performed extremely well while we were in Almanor and we had no issues. We do have a broken fuel switch and it was turned half off and Jennifer struggled with the ski our first day out. I had her bring it in and Daniel and I were able to turn it to fully on and we had no further problems all week. We take the ski in every Spring and have Yamaha summerize the ski and it seems to really help us. It started right up every time and it was a no brainer for us all week.

The rest of the week was fun and relaxing. We played cards and relaxed in the sun and while the temperatures in Sacramento were 107 degrees, it was a comfortable 92 degrees in Almanor with an overnight low of 52 degrees. You have to love the mountains. I was able to make it out and golf. I went to the Lake Almanor West resort which is a 9 hole course and it wasn't well maintained last time I played it. We were able to play for $20 last time and it was $35 this year. They must have a new greens keeper because the course is immaculate. The greens are tremendous and they have stopped the practice of having two flags on each hole and one being the front nine and one the back. They have a new set of tees and that differentiates the two nines. I played alone in front of the Men's group and played two balls (I asked them if it was okay as I was stuck behind a threesome of old men that were playing the women's tees). I shot 41+40=81 and was very happy with my game. The course is relatively short, but cut into the pine trees of Almanor and very tight. I drove into town afterward and enjoyed a barbecued hamburger at The Depot.

Time was short when Samantha was with us and I wanted to enjoy the days, so we didn't make it out to Paul Bunyon's while she was there (it is like a Tastee Freeze or Dairy Queen), but Darla and I did steel off Friday afternoon and enjoyed some ice cream together. Jennifer had bout a 1/2 gallon of ice cream and the boys ate that during the week.

Earl and Frances planned to treat us to pizza again to celebrate their 49th wedding anniversary. Alicia's boyfriend Don decided to surprise them with dessert and when he went to pay for the dessert at the end of the night, they stuck him with the whole bill. Don made an announcement to the entire restaurant that it was Earl and Frances' 49th wedding anniversary and they had several people come by and wish them well. Earl was asked his advice on 49 years of marriage and he said simply, "Watch your tongue". Excellent advice for all of us.

We hope to be back in Almanor next year in August to celebrate Earl and Frances 50th wedding anniversary and plan to invite the brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, for a full week. We hope to have Jennifer and Samantha join us again next year.

Well, dinner awaits my barbecuing skills as chicken breasts are on the menu, so I have to run. I did play golf today in the 107 degree heat as Darla had a "retirement" party at the house, where she sells the pieces of jewelry being replaced in the new catalog at a 50% savings. I figured I could stay at the house and help women try on rings and necklaces or play golf. I shot 84 in the sweltering heat of the Cherry Island golf course. Boyd shot 78, Bob 80 and Matt 83. We more survived the day than conquered it as we teed off at 11:00 AM and finished at 3:00 PM. Darla is off to her annual meeting with Silpada in Kansas City next weekend and I'll be all alone with nothing to keep me occupied but golf, poker and the pool. Say a prayer for me. Be well. Ciao.

Lake Almanor 2009

I've enjoyed Almanor in the past, more so since we moved to the East side of the lake, but never so much as this year. I really had a chance to bond with Samantha. Jennifer was late getting in as her plane was about 90 minutes late getting off the ground in Vegas. Not fun when you have a one year old who was kept up from her afternoon nap so she would sleep on the plane. We had a nice visit Friday night and were up early to the sounds of Samantha in the family room at 7 AM. We packed the truck and loaded the jet ski and the boys came over and added their wake boards to the cargo. Jennifer, Samantha and I snuck off to the park across the street to take Sam to the swings and play area at the park. Samantha insisted on walking even though it is a long way across the grass. She held tight to my right index finger and we walked all the way to the "kiddie" jungle gym near the kindergarten room of the elementary school across the park. Sam and Jennifer rode the dual slides and laughed and had a great time. I have pictures on the Canon that is still up in Almanor with Darla and I'll add those to the blog this weekend. We walked from there over to the swings and Sam had a good ride and then got on the hobby horse and back to another set of twin slides where she "raced" her Mom to the bottom. It was great. When we walked back, she insisted on walking herself and holding on to my finger as we walked. She started calling me "Poppa" and she melted my heart.

Samantha is now saying Daddy, Mommy, Puppy, kitty, nummy (food), birdie, nana (grandma), papa and other words. She is so cute and smart. She likes to hand things out and then go and collect them. Jennifer cut some flowers outside the cabins and Samantha handed them out to all of the ladies and then went around collecting them and putting them back in the vase. You can see a flower in her hand in the picture with David.

She was really good during the trip overall, but she had some cranky moments and is teething again. I think she's up to nine teeth in now and two more just popped in over the weekend. Jennifer is good in keeping her teeth numb with some baby teething gel and she gives her Baby Tylenol. Sam enjoyed the boat ride and was amazed at the water and the birds flying with us, but got a little cold toward the end and Jen wrapped her in a towel and we headed back to the dock.

You can see by the pictures that we had quite a gang at Almanor this year, 14 in all. Jason, Jennifer's old boyfriend came up with us and was only going to stay for the day. He ended up staying over until Monday. We all really enjoyed him. He is the young man that had throat cancer and almost died in the hospital. He has a "trach" in his throat now to breathe and has a slight chance that his body will heal itself and he will be able to have it removed. He lost his job after the year long ordeal and now is on social security and is taking classes to become an x-ray technician,. He was a warehouse foreman and it was too hard on him. He seized once at work and the liability was too high for the company to let him continue. He has a great outlook on life and a good sense of humor. Jen was talking about her job and her pending promotion to tech specialist (I think that's it, but she'll correct me) and the raise that she'll get. Jason leaned over when Jennifer was talking and said to me, "Ken I'd like to ask for your daughter's hand in marriage". We all laughed and Jennifer was embarrassed.

The weather was windy on Sunday and we only spent about two hours at the water as the winds were really strong. It was a storm blowing out as it warmed up Monday in to the mid eighties and it supposed to be in the 90's the rest of the week. It was 103 degrees in Sacramento today. We relaxed in the cabin and visited Sunday afternoon watching the end of the golf tournament. Sam played with toys and cell phones and looked at pictures on our cell phones and was a hit with the group. She is well socialized because of day care and John's extended family in Vegas. She warmed up to everyone and loved all of the attention that she got. Sam and I took a walk each morning and afternoon down to the lawn and across to the rock beach and we looked at dogs and squirrels and birds and people swimming and fishing. There was another little girl about Sam's age there and the two sized each other up a couple of times, but didn't play together. We had limited time together and there was no time for outsiders. Sam did take the little girl a flower on one of her walks with Darla.

There was an interesting occurrence on our trip. Monday the sheriff's boat ended up towing in a jet boat that had stopped running on the water. He dropped the guy at the gas pumps at the dock, talked to him for a few minutes and left. The guy was working on his engine and must not have had his blower on because all of a sudden there was a loud "WHUMP" and smoke and a small flame came from the engine as he tried to turn it over. Apparently the spark had ignited the trapped fumes in the hull. He tried valiantly to put the fire out with a small Wal-Mart fire extinguisher. His family bailed out of the boat as it began drifting from the dock and several men yelled at the boat owner to jump. The fire was being fed by the gas in the engine and the concern was it would travel to the tank and explode. Finally, he went overboard and the boat became a fireball sending up a black flume of toxic smoke. We called 9-1-1 and the fire department arrived within minutes. Unfortunately, they were on the boat ramp at Big Cove and the boat was drifting over to the northeast side of the lake. The sheriff finally showed back up on his boat and he began making several passes in front of the burning boat to drift it onto the shore. He was successful and the fire department finally stretched 300 feet of hose down to the water and was dousing the flames. The West Almanor Fire pumper boat showed up about twenty minutes into the ordeal and helped put out the fire, but it was too little too late as the boat ended up a charred remnant of itself as it sat smoldering on the shore. The sheriff was yelling at the condo dwellers on the shore to get off the deck and close their windows as the smoke was highly toxic from the plastics and resins burning and it was floating into the condo. I'd say it was a bad day of boating for the owner of that boat.

Daniel was up with his girlfriend Becky (the redhead in the group photo). The two other girls are our nieces, Shae and Taylor, Darla's brother's girls who are about the same age as David and Daniel. Taylor's arrival was a surprise to most as she is on leave from the Navy, where she is an MP at Guantanamo Bay. Gantanamo Bay? Yes, it's still open, Obama is full of ...hot air? Daniel and Becky left today and her car broke down in the canyon. They had to hitchhike to town to use a phone and then Darla and Earl drove an hour to meet them and Earl was able to fix the broken air conditioning belt housing and get them back on the road. He had to take off the a/c belt as it was frayed from the housing breaking. Darla had called me to ask about our AAA. Our towing is only 5 miles, so I upgraded to the Plus membership today that allows 100 miles. (Again, too little, too late). Luckily, Earl was able to fix the car. They had planned to be back by 2:00 PM and got home at 6:00 PM instead. Quite an ordeal.

Well, there will be more this weekend as I'll add many more pictures from our trip. I want to thank Jennifer for taking a day off of work and coming to join the family vacation. You made our trip this year by sharing Samantha with all of us. I love you, Jen. Everyone be good and hug their loved ones this week. I'm back to Almanor tomorrow night. Ciao.

Indepence Day was a Party

We had a houseful on July 4th as we had a cookout, swim party and get together with friends from the Golf club. For Darryl and Cheryl and Dad and Shirley, the last picture is of Neil and Lilly who will join us in Nuevo Vallarta in November. We decided to have the party late in the week and I think Darla made phone calls on Thursday night. We called four couples and got a positive response from everyone. Amazing, either our friends have no life or they enjoy our company. I'm hoping the latter applies. We got together about four pm and enjoyed a few hours of pool time with beverages and good conversation and a lot of laughs. I cooked hamburgers and chicken breasts for sandwiches and everyone brought something to share. We had margaritas, beer and soda, bean dip, chips and salsa, some roll up finger sandwiches, pasta salad, potato salad, sloughouse white corn on the cob, fruit salad, cut watermelon as well as two kinds of dessert for later in the evening. Darla had an impromptu jewelry show and we all poured outside at 9:15 PM to watch the fireworks from the park across the street. It was a great time with great friends and we enjoyed ourselves completely.

I did, of course, manage to get in two games of golf this week. I will go into shock next week as we head up to Lake Alamanor and I take a two week sabbatical from golf. I played Friday morning with Boyd, Bob, Phamas, Neil, Rick, Matt, and Mel. Boyd had arranged the tee times at Woodcreek and we put eight balls in a hat and shook out four to determine the teams. Boyd, Phamas, Matt and Rick managed a cool 16 under par between them and my team managed a paltry two under par. Bob shot 78 and I shot 80, but Mel and Neil both shot 100 and killed our chances. Boyd and Matt shot 76, Phamas shot 79 and Rick shot 88. It was fun, but we lost $5 a man. I'd set up a second round at Woodcreek for Saturday and played with Bob Hand, Darren and Gary. I again shot an 80 with three birdies and a 25 foot eagle putt on number 16 that curled out of the hole. My game is pretty strong right now and I am shooting consistently in the low eighties and high 70's.

The weather was nice after the brutality of last week and we enjoyed mid nineties over the weekend and bit cooler day today at 90 degrees. It is supposed to stay in the mid eighties this weekend before jumping back into the nineties next weekend.

We leave for Almanor on Saturday and pick Jennifer and Samantha up from the airport Friday night. Jen and Sam will be with us until Monday night and I will drive back and deliver Jennifer to her Mom. They will spend Tuesday together before Jennifer flies home Tuesday night at 5:00 PM. Jennifer has been working hard latelylately and needs a vacation. We want to spend time with her and Samantha and our family vacation to lake Almanor is a good excuse. We are flying them to California and looking forward to a few days at the lake as an extended family. I ordered a life vest for Samantha from Overtons this weekend that will arrive on Wednesday. She will be able to go on the boat with us and be water safe as we hang out on the water and on the dock. Both boys will be with us as neither has a job this Summer and they are both looking forward to seeing Samantha and spending time with her. I'll have plenty of pictures, but the blog will be late next week. I hope to work on it Tuesday night as I will be at work on Tuesday and Wednesday. I have my assistant leaving after three years with BW and want to see him off. I'm also hoping to have our new employee hired that week and beginning to train.

We've made some wholesale changes at work and shuffled up the underwriting teams. Mel's wife, Cora, will be working with me and all of the other assistants will be juggled from one underwriter to the other. The office is doing well now and I'm trying to find the right mix to take us to the next level. Hopefully, change is not just change, but a significant improvement and a catalyst for higher earnings. We'll see.

Darla and I were both exhausted this morning and slept in missing church. Our pastor is still on vacation and we had a guest speaker, a Christian attorney that Darla and I both know. I'm sure it would have been a good sermon, but we needed our rest after a busy couple of days. Well, that's it for now. i hope to have some pictures of Miss Samantha and Jennifer next week. I hope you are all well and enjoying your independence. It's a great country that we live in. Ciao.

Summer arrives with a BANG

6:15 PM

109 degrees officially, but it was 118 degrees on my car thermometer when I left the Golf course today and it only cooled to 113 degrees by the time I got home. The 118 degrees was the temperature on the hot pavement of the parking lot, but it didn't cool dramatically on the drive home. The pool is at 86 degrees and we need some relief. It was 103 degrees yesterday and we had Darla sister, her boyfriend and Darla's Mom and Dad over for a swim party and tri tip on the grill. We ate outside and thank God we have the new canvas and metal gazebo with zippered netting on all sides. It was hot when we ate at 6:30, but we didn't have bugs and we all sat in wet swimsuits and enjoyed the dinner before hopping back in the pool afterward. So, this is what it feels like to live in Vegas, eh, Jen?

Golf today was absolutely brutal. I walked the course against Darla's better judgement that I should have taken a cart. I haven't been walking at night lately with Darla's broken foot and I'm getting a little soft around the edges. I think I lost about five pounds in water weight today. I played really well on the front side while I was fresh, but withered down the stretch and shot 38+42=80, a net 71. We endured playing behind one of the slowest members in the club and he exacerbated his reputation with a 13 on a par five. He was lining up his putt for 13 like it was the last hole of the US Open. We were hooting at him. I had about 215 yards into the hole after a great drive and came up just short of the green after waiting about ten minutes to hit the shot. I hit a nice chip and had a tap in for birdie, but I'm a tempo golfer and don't do well with waiting. I did pick up two strokes on my Eclectic score ( the year long tournament that keeps track of your best score on each hole) and I'm now at 32+34=66 on the year. I was so hot when we finished the round that my clothes were absolutely soaked through. There was very little breeze on the course. I guess I'm out of shape, because Bob walked the course as well and shot a 33 on the back side for a 73. I will play golf on Friday morning at 7:30 (the July 3rd holiday) and again at 7:40 AM on Saturday.

Darla is inches away from winning her trip to the Mayan Riviera in Mexico in January of next year. She needed $5,000 in sales as of last week (it includes her whole team of 20 reps) and she is right at the finish line with two days left. I'm excited about this trip as it is at an all inclusive resort in Riviera Maya and that includes all drinks, food, golf, massages, activities, etc. Last year there were over 550 reps at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas and as of last week only 205 reps had qualified for Mexico. Darla said , "Make that 206" as she says she is in. The only problem I have with the trips is the amount of vacation we get. I want to spend time in Las Vegas with Jennifer and Samantha, we take our yearly trip to Nuevo Vallarta, have another week of time share time each year (one in Puerto Vallarta and one in Hawaii every other year), plus we take the annual trip to Lake Almanor that comes up July 11th - 18th this year. I only get three weeks of vacation plus another week of sick time. I guess it is a good problem to have, eh? I'm proud of her. What pushed her over the top was her last push sale, which if you look at the picture of her on her scooter was called "Boot scootin' savings!" She has a scooter and is in a walking boot. We've invited Jennifer and Samantha to join us for part of the trip to Almanor this year.

8:45PM

I just got out of the pool. I washed the 300 and was dripping wet when I finished and not from the hose, so dove in the pool and cooled off. It is supposed to get down to 85 degrees at midnight tonight and down to about 70 degrees at 4 AM (About Vancouver's high temperature yesterday). It looks like the heat wave will break on Tuesday with a forecast high of 96 degrees and an overnight low of 63 degrees. Nice.

Our computer printer went out this week and I scoured the repair blogs and the Epson site to find a fix. The printer shut down and has an error message saying "Take in for Service." What I can tell from the blogs is that there is an ink overflow pad that gets full and needs to be replaced. I called around and everyone wants $100 minimum to service the machine. Epson said we could ship it to them and they'd do it for $35. I said, "bunk" and ordered a new HP Wireless All-in-one Printer on Amazon for $99, no tax and no shipping cost. the advantage with this is that Darla's HP laptop will be able to print as well. She is forever sending work items to my e-mail to print. Now, she will be able to print from the living room and I can still print from my desktop computer, which also happens to be an HP.

July 4th is around the corner. We have been invited out boating on Friday with Alicia and Don and I will rush back from golf for a day on the lake. I hope you are all well. The speaker, Vince Antonucci, was great today at church as advertised and we encourage Jennifer to try out his church in las Vegas. I hope you are all well, hale and hearty. Ciao.

Father's Day 2009

Happy Father's day to all of the fathers out there. We all do our best and it is often inadequate, but we try. Guiding and directing children is difficult and doubly so in a world that has slowly eroded the fabric of life. Values and morals are less important to the world in 2009 than they were in the 60's. There is a small demographic that is once again introducing values and boundaries to their kids and I applaud them. I see the respect and the honor given to parents and others in authority at our church and I give thanks for that. We had a nice service this morning and a video of a young boy watching everything his father did, from how he played with him to how he acted when he got in a small fender bender and how he handled his family's bills. It was powerful to see the influence that a father has on his young child's life.

Darla roused me a minute ago and told me to get in and work on my Blog. I had taped the US Open golf and was watching it and relaxing. When it ended, she sent me in here to update the blog.

Sorry that I haven't had any new pictures for awhile. Things have been so busy at work that we haven't done much but relax at home. I was in Scottsdale last Sunday-Tuesday night. I was able to learn alot about the company that put on the seminar and was able to come back and share that with the Underwriters. I was also able to have lunch with one of my contract carriers after the seminar on Tuesday and dinner with several underwriters and my old boss, Emery, who is now the Pacific Division Manager of our largest carrier partner. Wednesday I had about seven hours to get caught up on work and then was off to the airport to pick up our CEO and a Product Manager from HO. Harvey was supposed to go with me, but got stuck in traffic and I had to make the airport run myself. The plane from Salt Lake was due in at 5:24 PM and was on time when I left the office. I got to the airport early and parked in the Cell Phone lot waiting for a call. 5:30 came and went and I finally started the loop around looking for my passengers. Five trips around and I started to panic, thinking perhaps they expected me to meet them inside. I quickly parked the car and ran in to the airport to find the flight delayed until 6:05 PM. We went to dinner with a retailer that night and I finally got home at about 10:30 PM. I was up early the next day and at the hotel to pick them up at 7:15 AM for a breakfast meeting with another agent.

We went in the office, visited with the staff and had lunch brought in (one of the ladies bought meats and cheeses, breads, condiments, veggies and drinks from Whole Foods). The cost of the lunch was over $200. I had my sit down and was told to increase the writings in the office. We will do close to $500,000 in profit this year, but can always do better. The afternoon was spent looking at buildings.

My boss is a real estate mogul owning over 100 properties as a landlord and has little patience for brokers. We met two of them and he carved them up pretty well. We then looked at new office space for two hours, before I drove him to a local former military base where he met a Net Jets for a trip to Las Vegas and a Net Jets event. It looks like best case we will stay in our space for one more year and then move to a larger space. The company is in an acquisition mode and we may buy more of our competitors and need more space.

The Product manager stayed over another day until Friday and I carted him out to one of my retailers for lunch Friday. I told him in the morning that I had to get some work done at my desk before we left and was able to get about three and a half hours in before we left. He had a 4 PM flight, so I had to get him to the airport by 3:00 PM and just drove back home after that.

It was a tiring week and left me WAY behind at work. It is the company's 40th anniversary and we are having a celebration on Tuesday afternoon. I have to go out and get cake and ice cream. Baskin Robbins here I come.

I did manage a golf game this weekend. We played at Ancil Hoffman, which is one of the oldest golf courses in the Sacramento area and also has the most trees. It is also home to the infamous Reagan Governor's mansion that was built in the late seventies and never lived in by a California Governor as Jerry Brown took over the state and Governor "Moonbeam" railed against the excesses of government and refused to live in the mansion. It was built entirely by donations, but Jerry felt the cost of just upkeep and security on the mansion was a waste of money. He had a small apartment in downtown Sacramento and lived on a mattress. He was and he is a goofball, but he had Linda Rondstadt as his girlfriend at the time and Mike Curb (of Curb records in Hollywood) as his Lieutenant Governor. My driver was not behaving on Saturday and I was pushing shots all over the place. When I do that it is because my arms get too far from my body. I figured it out on number 8 and finished par-par on the front for a 45 and managed a 40 on the back for an 85. I wasn't happy, but better a 45+40 than a 40+45, eh?

I talked to Jennifer this weekend and she is working three ten-hour days on her off weeks with Samantha as they attempt to have the City Center Casino open in December. She also worked overtime Saturday and was praised by the GC for her hard work in getting the new fiber optic network up and running. I received a card from Jennifer for Father's day, which I appreciate, but I got a card from Samantha with her scribble on it that really touched my heart. Thank you, Jennifer.

Our pastor is taking a family vacation next week and we will have a pastor from the Verve church in Las Vegas come and preach to us. We saw a hilarious video of their pastor, Vince Antonucci, today and I'm trying to get Jennifer and Dina to try out the church. We will see him next week and report to Jennifer. Here is his YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V2RHG5c3HM&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Evinceantonucci%2Ecom%2F2006%2F01%2Fvideos%2Ehtml&feature=player_embedded

I hope you are all happy and healthy. I'll write more next week. Ciao.

Just a Quick note

It is Saturday afternoon and I just got back from golf. Darla told me she'd meet me on the pool, but she isn't home, so I thought I'd add to this now. I leave for a three day seminar in Scottsdale tomorrow. It is unbelievably busy at work. I've been putting in 60 hour weeks and now I know what Darryl feels like every week. Ugh. The last time I worked this many hours was when I was a struggling stockbroker, before Darla and I got married.

Darla and I both had setbacks physically this week. Darla went in to have her cast removed and they x-rayed her foot and found that the bone has still not healed and is split. Darla has put entirely too much pressure on her foot and will need surgery if it doesn't heal over the next four weeks. She is in a metal and canvas walking boot now and has been told to stay off her foot. Why they put her in a boot if she is supposed to stay off the foot is beyond me. She wanted to be completely healed, but really was poor about staying off her foot. She drove way too much and her injured foot being her left foot, she put tremendous stress on her foot just getting in and out of her car. She had to step down onto her foot to get out and push off on that foot to get in the car. She is going to take some sick time and work from home to try to rest her foot. The injury was to her fifth metatarsal bone and it is still split. The bone has grown closer together, but the stress of being on the foot caused the bone not to heal. She's frustrated with Summer coming and the prospects of surgery in July, so she is going to heal herself and when Darla sets her mind to something, it generally gets done. Also, with her Silpada business, she put on a big "Cast Off" sale for her customers and didn't want the cast put back on.

I went into my dermatologist for my six month cancer screening after the basil cell carcinoma was cut off my back and it healed well. He checked me out and saw a spot on the top of my right hand. I thought it was a bug bite, because it showed up on my hand, crusted over and then began to itch. I was treating it with Calamine lotion for the itch. He took one look and said, that is a precancerous growth, I'll burn it off. He got his can of whatever it is to burn it off (they actually freeze it) and started to apply the spray. I said, "you might want to clean off the Calamine lotion first with antiseptic" He said, "We'll burn right through that." As he applied it, the calamine lotion liquefied and started to boil and my hand was smoking. He looked at me with a smile and said, "I haven't seen that before." I thought I was in Canada talking to Dad's doctor. People were knocking on the door seeing if there was a barbecue. I think they smelled chicken cooking.

Dad has been back to his doctor and had more cells cut off his body and they will have them screened for cancer. It's too much with this damn cancer stuff and skin cancer definitely runs in my family. I'll be checked yearly now by the dermatologist for skin cancer. The doctor said I have a 30% elevated chance of getting more basil cell carcinomas, now that I've had one. Lovely.

I shot 81 in the golf tournament today and was tied for fourth when I left. There were three groups still on the course. Boyd shot 77 and was tied for second. The weather was perfect, about 78 degrees with a light wind.

The boys are done at Cal Poly for the school year and will be home late tonight. Neither have jobs line up and I'm hoping they land something. I worked all during my college years and don't have a lot of sympathy for them not having jobs. I was never out of a job when I was in school and helped pay for my schooling, taking over paying for my school in my Junior year. They both tried (weakly) to get internships for the Summer, but didn't really follow up on it and will likely spend the Summer sleeping in and complaining they are broke. I hope not.

Darla is in the final stretch of trying to qualify for her annual trip with Silpada. She needs to do like $7,000 in sales this month and I wouldn't bet against her. She has until the end of June and is working hard to qualify. the trip in 2009 is to Maya Riviera near Cancun, Mexico and is an all inclusive resort.

Well, Darla is home and I need to spend some time with her. I think we are having dinner at Black Angus tonight. We have a coupon for bacon wrapped filet mignon for $13.95 and thought we'd take advantage of that. I leave at 9:15 tomorrow morning for Scottsdale. I have an Underwriting Trainee in the office, Matt, and he is leaving for two weeks in Home Office tomorrow. He was saying goodbye yesterday and I told him that maybe I'd see him at the airport. He asked me what time my flight was and I said 9:15. He said, "well, mine is 9:30. What airline are you flying?" I told him US Air and it turns out his flight is 9:15 as well and we are on the same flight to Phoenix. He will change planes there for Detroit. His tickets were arranged by our travel department in H.O. so I wasn't aware of his travel itinerary. Funny stuff. I will add more next week. Pray for me this week as I entertain my CEO Wednesday and Thursday. Ciao.

Busy Times at Work

It has been a cool week with some night thunderstorms, evening rain and sun and clouds during the daytime. We had our Big I Golf Day on Monday and had ideal weather. Darla and I were able to finish the signs and although as one person said, "It looks like someone's third grade daughter did these signs", the event went off without a hitch and I took our art project to the cardboard recycling bins across from the Fairgrounds on Monday night after the event. I also went up in the attic this weekend and cleared out any old signs for companies that have gone out of business or were older signs with an old font we no longer use. I was able to make a new inventory of signs and threw out a bunch of worn or tattered signs. Our team ended up shooting 9 under par and the winning team was a group of novice golfers including my underwriter, Pete, who likely used creative accounting to get their score down to 59. I'm not buying it. I've seen two of them play and , frankly, they look like ex football players trying to play golf. Pete left for a week's vacation to Hawaii the day after the tournament, so I haven't had a chance to harass him yet, but I will.

The merger and purchase of our competitor fell through at the last minute and another of our competitors was able to get nine of their employees to accept positions with them. They had hoped that having their talent would give them access to the book of business, but we hired the five best employees and then reached a late agreement with the former firm to purchase the book. We have rights to all of their in force business and to exclusive renewal rights on the business until July of 2010. I was over in their Rancho Cordova office on Tuesday with 5 of my staff and we picked up all of the files. I then was off to Fresno on Friday morning to pick up files from the Fresno office. The delay was because the other firm that hired nine of the employees had hired the Fresno Manager and staff and subleased the same building that the other firm was in...along with the files that now belonged to us. It is a three hour drive to Fresno and I wanted to be sure we could get access to the office. I called the trustee the night before and told him to make sure I could get in the building because I would be there at 9 AM. I borrowed Gail's F-150 King Cab and left at 6:00 AM for Fresno with Ben, my assistant in tow. Sure enough, when we showed up the manager refused to let us in. She got on the phone with her boss and he said we needed paperwork, which I produced as a cover letter from the purchased company's attorneys granting us full access to all files. We tap danced for awhile and I stood my ground, finally getting the trustee on the phone and having him convince the manager to butt out and let us in. It was uncomfortable, but two hours later we had five trucks loaded up and took the files to our Fresno office where we parted them out to Fresno and Sacramento. I had left a padfolio with my business cards and a legal pad and some papers on the receptionists window and when I went to retrieve it, it was gone. I asked the receptionist and she said, "was it the blue padfolio on the windowsill?" When I said, yes, she smiled at me and said she'd never seen it. Nothing that was in there was important, but I did have an invitation from one of the local country clubs to come out and try their course. I brought it to set up golf for Saturday, but Bob and I ended up setting a game at Cherry Island. Keeping my company property was BS on their part. Ben and I finally got out of Fresno at 2:00 PM and were back in Sacramento by 5:00 PM. I dropped him off, gassed up the truck, stopped at Office Depot to return some boxes that we didn't need and then drove up to Gail's house to drop off the truck. She will be bringing the truck to the office tomorrow and we will unload the files and begin processing them. We will have to scan all of the files into Imageright and then begin making calls to the agents. When I get into the office tomorrow the old phone lines from the purchased company will be patched into my phone system and we will begin servicing their files. A lot of work is in the cards for the next while. I will be bringing in kids of staff to handle the scanning project and paying them $10 an hour.

Bob and I did make it out to Cherry yesterday and played golf with two thirty something women who were excellent golfers. I shot 39+42=81 and Bob shot 43+39=82. The ladies were a nine handicap and a ten handicap and said that they had never played golf with any male golfers who were better than them. I think they were more than just friends (not that there's anything wrong with that), but I really enjoyed playing with two women that were very good golfers. It was a treat. At one point, the course comes in contact with a city street on the border of the course and some idiot yelled out, "You bunch of girls!" as he drove by in his beat up pickup truck. One of the women is Irish and she said, "Eh, it looks like they noticed the tits!" I instinctively looked down at my chest and they all got a good laugh out of it.

Darla is anxious to lose her cast as it is time for her to move about without the confines of a plaster boot on her leg. Hopefully, she's learned a lesson, but knowing my wife, I doubt it. She's been in the pool just about every day with saran wrap and a shower boot on her leg since the start of swimming season.

I had a golf tournament today, but woke up with an aching back and an inflamed foot where I stepped on a bee while trimming the ground cover around the pool yesterday. We went to church and then Darla dropped me at the course, where I tried to play, but gave up after nine holes. My back was aching, my foot was pounding and I even have a sore yoke (collar bone). I shot 46 on the front and couldn't make a complete pass through the ball. I called Darla and asked her to pick me up. I sat and watched Tiger play some REAL golf instead.

The pastor talked about the concept of unanswered prayer. Garth Brooks had a famous song about the subject. The pastor's story was about a man who shipwrecked on a deserted island. He prayed every day and night for a ship to rescue him, but none ever came. He finally built a small hut and kept a fire for warmth near the hut. When he was gone one day out foraging and fishing, the winds came up and reignited his campfire which spread to his hut and burned it to the ground. He was mad at God and yelled about the fire and why was God punishing him. He brooded and cursed God, but a ship showed up that same day and rescued him. When he asked how they found him, the ship captain said that they had seen the smoke from his signal fire. God works in mysterious ways.

Well, that is it for this week. I'm off to Scottsdale next Sunday and an underwriting conference. I will try to update this before I leave. I hope you are all well. Do yourself a favor and find a good church to attend. It helps get us through all that is so sad in our world and our economy. Ciao.

Summer is Near

A wonderful weekend is in the books. A highlight for Darla and I was getting back to church and our church family. We had a couple stop us on the way out, some friends from our life group, and they wanted to know what happened to Darla. It was baptism Sunday and there were about forty-five people who were baptised, including a man whose wife has been praying for him to come to the Lord for 11 years. The sermon was on how to find joy in times of trouble and the first lesson in the series was based on the fact that Christians don't fight their battles alone. They are not only directed by God, but also surrounded by Christian friends who help them along the way. If you aren't involved in a church, get involved. Some of our strongest friendships are those we have made in church and they are the ones we turn to in times of crisis to pray for us and to help us get through. The only downer of the service was that Darla had an older gentleman sit next to her that had horrible gas and it was killing her. I got a wave t one point and felt physically ill. I don't know how she could take it. My wife has a tremendous amount of grace, but this old fart, well...you get it.

I spent this weekend taking out a planter in the back yard. We have limited space and this planter is about 15 square feet and had two rows of stones that were forever being tripped over as we moved around the tables and chairs on the back patio. You can kind of get a feel for what was there by the picture above and what I've added is basically pavers. it wasn't easy to fit the pavers into a round space, but I did my best and Darla and I will likely put flower pots on this spot and hand water them. The problems was the stones that were in the way and we've eliminated that problem. If you double-click on the wide picture, you can see the planter pretty well.

The weather this weekend was ideal in the mid eighties and the pool got a good workout as I was in and out as I worked. I took the weekend off from golf as I do have the insurance tournament at Sierra View CC tomorrow. I realized today as I readied the signs for the hole sponsors, Closest to the Pin, etc. that the sign vendor missed seven signs. It was my fault for not catching it, but Darla is hand drawing signs as I write this. With all of the excitement from the pending purchase of our competitor, I've been too busy to worry about my commitment as the sign chairman for the Golf committee. I can't leave the sponsors without signs, so we dashed off to Michael's and bought some sign stock and a couple of post holders and some Sharpies (paint pens) and my lovely wife is making me proud as she works on signs.

The buyout of our competitor hit a major snag this week and fell through. We were waiting until Friday to hear that the sale was final, but legal wording and wrangling by the other company had us back off. It may yet go through, but they have ceased operations, fired all of their staff and basically left their insurance agents without representation. I was at Home Depot on Saturday buying the pavers and I got a call from Harvey. He had been in talks with our CEO and they decided to go ahead and make offers to an underwriter and assistant from the Sacramento branch, so I sat in my car and we teleconferenced with each of the people and hired them over the phone. The underwriter starts tomorrow and her assistant will be in on Tuesday. We are going after the business and ended up losing a couple of the underwriters from some of the offices to other firms, but still will go after ALL of the business. It should be an interesting week. My hope is that they will come to their senses and get something out of the business. If they stand pat, they are basically walking away from millions of dollars in business. The advantage to a purchase is that we don't have to fight for that business with the other wholesalers on the street. It is ours.

We finished the month strong at work and beat both our budget on the bottom line and our premium written from last year. We have some momentum going and Alan will be here on June 18th. I have arranged dinner with one of our retailers Wednesday night the 17th and breakfast on Thursday morning. We will visit with the staff in the morning and then meet with the real estate people in the afternoon. We are looking to finalize our lease deal when Alan is here. I have two extra employees and the space we were looking at did allow us room for growth.

I called into action as a painter of signs, so this is it for this week. It's 11 PM and I have to be at work at 7 AM tomorrow to get ready for my new underwriter and then drive back to Roseville for the golf tournament. Ciao.

A BIG Thank You to the Euless Lyons!

Yes. The hospitality was gracious and it was great to see both Jenny and Chris home. BTW, is Jenny wasting her time behind the camera? That's one good looking niece. I know, Jenny, you'll put aside vanity to make some money. It's Austin's loss. Cake had gone out and bought us new sheets for the bed upstairs and laid out towels on the bed ala Sherry in Canada. Cake said she thought that was the height of luxury when Sherry did it and we got the royal treatment as well. Of course, I was standing there naked and wet after my shower and the towels were neatly folded at the foot of the bed. (Just kidding!) We enjoyed some good conversation, some laughs and some interesting moments with dogs who run away at inopportune times. Luckily, the dog was found by friends and returned to the backyard of a neighbor and we could get on with our lives. Randy and I had a chance to get caught up on our jobs and lives and it was nice to relax at such a warm home. We had a rental car, which was a complete waste of $10 a day, as Randy drove us everywhere and I'd only put 9 miles on the car when I returned it. The clerk asked me if I refilled it and I said, "Oh yeah, sure."

The rehearsal dinner was great, although we only found out the night before we left that we were invited. We had planned to go out to dinner with Randy and Cake on Friday night, but drove out to the restaurant, Abuelos and helped Darryl spend some of that unGodly salary that he commands. It was good to get caught up with some of Cheryl's family and spend a bit of time with the bride and groom.

The wedding was nice. It was a cloudy day, threatening rain that never came. The venue at the Stonebriar Country Club was a first class affair and mercifully short. I give Josh and Laura kudos for keeping the ceremony to 15 minutes. Having the minister talk about the rings being a "perfect circle of love" for the umpteenth time is tedious. If I could talk to any bride and groom, I'd say brevity is a gift to your guests. As usual the wedding party was gone for forty five minutes taking pictures, but the wait was more than bearable with an open bar near the reception room. Their pastor was hilarious and made the ceremony memorable and kept things light. Weddings are about the reception and this one was great. We were able to visit with all of our family and the few people that I knew there and Darla was able to get pictures and totter about on her broken foot for the afternoon. The food was very good and the line went fast.

Afterward, we enjoyed some downtime at Bruce and Kathy's house and drank a little more and visited a little more and even sat through a performance by Abigail, Janelle's daughter, who is a little ham. She took down everyone's name on a sheet of paper and then did a dance recital by calling each person's name to come and dance with her. Jessie tried to jump the gun and dance before his name was called and Abby sent him back to the couch. It was good fun.

We did manage to play some golf on Sunday, meeting Dad and Shirley and Bruce and Darryl at Riverside golf club in Grand Prarie. I started strong by going par, birdie, par, but the lack of a pitching wedge and hybrid irons caught up to me and I shot 42+43=85 and struggled with unfamiliar clubs. It was a great time and I look forward to Mexico and more golf with the Lyon clan (minus Randy).

I did make it back to work today and the merger is on, so I will conduct formal interviews by the end of the week and we will make offers to the employees we want to keep. It is busy at work right now with the merger and I'm getting ready for the annual golf day on Monday. Of course, I'm on the committee.

I'm going to take this weekend off from golf and work on my backyard as I bought some pavers to take out the half moon planter by the kitchen nook window. I will fill the planter with sand, place and cut the pavers and then paint and seal the finished product to match the decking we have in now. It will give us more room by the pool as we have two sets of patio chairs and tables (4 chairs and an umbrella) in that spot now and need the room. I don't have water run to the planter now and will take out the irises in the planter and transfer them to another spot in the garden. I also plan to finish scrubbing the pool tile and will put a coat of marine wax on the tile to keep the scale and calcium from building up, especially below the waterfalls.

Well, that is it. I will add to this on the weekend. The Insurance Golf Day is next Monday and I have stacked a team this year with Matt, my Underwriting Trainee, who is a 3 and Bob from the club who is a 4 (Bob is also an insurance agent so it's legal). We will play with my workhorse, Anthony, who doesn't have an index, but makes me lots of money. That's it for now. Ciao.

We got Josh and Laura all Married UP

We got home at two a.m. last night after getting out of Dallas an hour and a half late and then enduring a two hour delay in Denver. A tornado touched down somewhere near the Denver airport and threw the entire world of jet travel into or out of Denver into complete disarray. We were finally ready to go out of Denver at 11:30 and then had to wait for four passengers to run to the plane from another waylaid airliner. Airline travel has definitely taken a turn for the worse with the economy In Obama's hands as airlines insist on flying only full planes. The point here is that I slept in this morning and relaxed by the pool today and will add to this tomorrow night. We had a blast in Dallas and thank you to Randy and Cake for their warm and excellent hospitality. I'll add to this tomorrow night. Ciao for now.