As part of my parent hours, I spent just over an hour tonight cutting out paper Thanksgiving quilts that Jack's class had colored!

sacbee.com -- News -- Dan Walters: Davis couldn't grow beyond money-obsessed politico

sacbee.com -- News -- Dan Walters: Davis couldn't grow beyond money-obsessed politico

Sharon got back from a long weekend on the coast in the early evening.

With Sharon at Sea Ranch until Monday, I spent a large chunk of the day working to finish painting the upstairs hall two more colors. We are trying to get it done before we have Sharon's family for Thankgiving. Next weekend, I am going to finish up the project by cutting and painting the moulding.

I bought Jack a Peja jersey on Friday night. He refuses to take it off and has wore it constantly for two days. If possible, he is even more manic about the jersey after watching the Kings game this afternoon; Stojakovic scored 33 points and was 4 for 6 from 3 point range in the King's victory.

Jack went to Kellen's birthday party at Tricks Gymnastics. Kellen is one of the boys from Jack's old day care. We have been to this place once before for a kids birthday party; they have quite a machne and have one birthday party after another tightly scheduled.

After getting Jack to bed, I watched The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers. While I thought that the first installment was pretty good, I was disappointed in how some of the second book was adapted for the movie. This film is a good example of how difficult it is to adapt a book to a movie; there are a large number of key plot points from the book that are ignored or substantially modified.

2003 Kings versus Raptors

Friday morning, Sharon, Janie Diagle and Jeana Hultquist took for a long weekend at a house they rented at Sea Ranch.

Sutter Health IT had its annual "all hands on deck" meeting. This includes all of the IT staff from Support Services as well as each affiliate. In total, there were probably close to 600 people at the meeting. In addition to a number of team building activities and guest speakers, John (the CIO) spent some time reviewing what we have accomplished and the awards that IT has received. More on some of that another time. It is interesting to look back over the last five years; it has been the most professionally rewarding period for me in twenty five years of working for a living.

Jack and I went to the Kings game. Although they have not been playing that well, the Kings beat up on the Toronto Raptors by a score of 94 to 64.




Larkin used our season tickets with Gene and I got another set of seats for Jack and I. They were great seats, about eight rows off the court and just down from center court in Section 115, row D, seat 7 and 8. Jack had a great time.

Our regular season tickets are in the second row of the upper deck just about center court. I have always liked those seat because I can see the whole floor and watch as teams work to run plays. I was struck by the speed of the game sitting down low on Friday night; you get a much better perspective on just how quick the players are.

I also gained a new level of respective for Gerald Wallace. In the second half, several players were jumping for a rebound and soaring above everyone I saw Gerald Wallace. From my angle, his head was above the rim.

On the way back from Rochester on Wednesday, I finished reading The Return of the King. I had never read any of Tolkien's books before this year. Since January, I have read The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King.

Although my taste runs towards harder science fiction, I enjoyed the books. The level of detail of the world created in the four books is impressive. Next year, I may try to read the Harry Porter novels.

My fantasy football team lost week ten by a score of 90 to 64. The team's record now stands at 7 wins and 3 losses. The play-offs for fantasy leagues start in week thirteen. At this point, the team would be seated second or third in the play-offs.

The morning was spent with IBM finishing up the briefing. A large part of IBM's presentation centered around using ISeries processors as a platform for running Linux, Windows and AIX in partitions. As I told the group, this does not fit very well into my world view. Sutter Health uses ISeries machines to host one purchased application, not as a key component of our infrastructure. Nevertheless, it is something that we need to evaluate and test as part of our technology planning process.

After two "nice" days (highs were in the high 40's and low 50's), it was snowing sideways when we left the briefing center and started for the airport. The flight from Rochester left about an hour late, but we had a long lay-over in St. Paul. We got back into Sacramento right on schedule about 7:20 p.m.

Sharon and Jack picked me up at the airport. I was great coming down the escalator and seeing them waiting there for me.

We spent all day in a briefing on ISeries directions and had a tour of the IBM plant in Rochester.



We had dinner at Michael's in downtown Rochester (Voted "Best Business Luncheon" and "Best Steaks" by Where Locals Eat).

To Rochester

Yvonne Risch, Rudy Joguz and I spent all day winding our way to Rochester, Minnesota for an IBM briefing on ISeries directions.

The group had dinner at Victoria's Fine Italian Cuisine in downtown Rochester.

The Kings are the oldest team in the NBA with an average age of 29.472 years. I think that maybe their age is starting to show based on the results of the four game road trip (1 win and 3 losses). The good news is that I am not an Oakland Raiders fan; the average age of their team appears to be 59.472.

Sharon is serving as her nephew's sponsor for his Confirmation into the Catholic Church. We went to church with Sharon's brother's family at Saint Ignatius Loyola Parish and she participated in the initial step of Kevin's Confirmation.

We spent most of the day working on the project to paint the upstairs hallway. The project includes a couple of different color paints and some moulding to create two large areas to display photos.

Sharon and I had started talking on Friday night about cooking up a couple of lobsters for dinner on Saturday night. After Sharon got back from working out in the morning, we decided to see if we could throw an impromptu dinner party. We invited two other couples and cooked up a couple of pots of lobsters for dinner!




Drew called during dinner from Disneyland; he was in line for the Matterhorn ride. A big group of the people he has met at college got season passes and have already gone to Disneyland a couple of times on weekend.

Rudy Jugoz organized a small "golf tournament" for selected IT staff with the Sutter Health CEO at Whitney Oaks. I played in a foursome with Rudy, Dave Hamilton and Lew Gasper. Van Johnson, the CEO, played in the second group with Debbie Sleigh, Todd Peterson and Julie Cooper. The third foursome was John Muncaster, Mike Marchant, Ed Brooks and Allen King.

I was in trouble from the moment I stepped on the driving range. I have never felt so uncomfortable on the driving range. I probably should have walked back and got a second bucket of balls to hit, but I did not. I got off to a terrible start; I shot a 26 over the first three holes and a 64 on the front nine. I started to settle down about the seventh hole and actually had a 55 on the back nine.

The fourteen was the closet to the pin on the back nine. I teed off first for the group and hit a great 7 iron to within about 18 feet of the pin. Dave got up right behind me and hit a shot within about 6 feet of the pin.

I ended up with a 119 and "won" high gross. Lew won low gross with an 89, while Dave won closet to the pin on the back nine and low score using Callway.

Afterwards I met Sharon and Jack at the rental in Citrus Heights. The rental has some dry rot and Sharon had done a walk through with a contractor to look at what needs to be done. It is the same contractor that we used to fix up the East View property before we sold it in 2000.

I spent almost all day at Sutter Health's conference center at Glen Cove in Vallejo for the TAG meeting. TAG is a regular meeting of all the IT Directors from the different affiliates within Sutter Health. I realized part of the reason that I feel like the pace has increased at work. While sitting in the meeting, I was trying to schedule a couple of other meetings to do some hardware planning for 2004 and the first dates I could find were in the middle of December. My calendar is almost completely full for the next month!

We had parent/teacher conference with Jack's teacher on Thursday evening. Jack is doing well academically. Jack is in the morning kindergarten class and there is 13 boys and 6 girls. The teacher is having some problems with the boys, including Jack, in this class. After going to the morning kindergarten from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m., almost of the kids go to extended day together. They spent from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. or later together in a more unstructured environment. While they have some structure work in extension, the boys spent a lot of time playing basketball and football. They are very physical with each other and this get carried back into the classroom.

My fantasy football team won week nine by a score of 89 to 72. The team's record now stands at 7 wins and 2 losses. There is one team in the league with a record of 8 wins and 1 loss; I play that team this weekend. One other team has 6 wins and 3 losses.

For her law practice, Sharon travels back and forth between a couple of different sites in Northern California. She wanted to be able to sit down with her PC at any site and send and receive e-mail and browse the internet. After looking at a number of different options we got her a Sierra Wireless Aircard 750 using the AT&T Wireless Network.

Although not as fast as a 802.11b wireless connection, it is faster than a 56kb dial-up connection. Additionally, we have found connectivity to be very good. We have used it up and down the west coast. Sharon used it to do an hour of legal research from a bed and breakfast in Port Townsend, Washington, while I used it to exchange instant messages with our CFO from the Las Vegas airport.

Since I bought the card for Sharon, our Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and one of the other directors has also gotten the same card. Our CIO got a similar product from Sprint about a year ago. I carry a Sprint cell phone, while Sharon has an AT&T cell phone. Based on this experience, AT&T's network has better coverage, particularly when you get off the beaten path.

I spend the bulk of Wednesday going to CPMC and back for the kick-off of their Kronos project. Donna Gainsley, Denis Axtel and I went down for the meeting. I sat in the back of Donna's car and using the Aircard had a solid connect to the internet all the way from Natomas to downtown San Francisco. I exchanged instant messages with Drew at UCI and Lew at 345 California Street, worked on answering some e-mail and browsed the net for almost one hour and 45 minutes without ever having the connection drop!

I spent 30 minutes this morning tracing pilgrim hats on construction paper as part of my parents hours for Jack's school.

The pace at work has increased; in addition to a huge number of projects, there are several organization change balls in the air.

I spent most of Tuesday in SOMA, the steering committee for out-patient electronic medical record (EMR). Sutter Health started its EMR projects more than five years ago and now has several foundations that depend entirely on an electronic medical record rather than paper records. Without the availability of the EMR system, these foundations can not function. This creates some real urgency around the technology support and infrastructure issues.

More recently several other major healthcare organizations have started the same type of project using software from the same vendor, including Kaiser and UC Davis Medical Center.

I added a couple of pictures from the 2001 trip to Cancun.

Sharon and Janie Daigle went to a pur$e party in Davis.

Jack and I went to the Baskin Robbins in Placerville; Morgan started working there last weekend. Jack and I sat and had some ice cream and then got a chance to visit with Morgan for a while. It was a cold cloudy day and there were few other customers!

We spent some time wandering around Home Depot getting supplies for the next project; we are going to paint the upstairs hallways and create some areas to hang pictures.

Sharon got some new pictures for the dining room walls; they are very large. The afternoon project was getting them hung in the right place.

Saturday night, we watched Rocky. I had actually never seen the movie.

Halloween 2003

Every year since 1996, we have gone to Sharon's parents on Halloween night. In the past years, the group of kids going out to trick and treat in the neighborhood where Sharon grew up has included Drew, Morgan, Eric, Erin, Kevin, Eileen and Jack. Every year, the group has gotten smaller as the older kids got involved in their own activities. This year, it was down to just Jack! We did run into Brun, Kim, Sara and Velta and went to a couple of houses with them.




This Jack was Rollie Pollie Ollie. Last year in 2002, Jack was Billy, a character from the same cartoon. In 2001, Jack was a lion.

Jack and Sharon worked on carving a pumpkin for Halloween.


After winning five weeks in a row, my fantasy football team, Sacto Rare White Tigers, lost week eight by a score of 101 to 80. My record now stands at 6 wins and 2 losses.

2003 Kings versus Cavaliers

Larkin and I went to the King's home and season opener on Wednesday night. The Kings beat the Cleveland Cavaliers by a score of 106 to 92. The game was LeBron James' pro debut and it was a media circus. James ended up with 25 points, nine assists, six rebounds and four steals. Frankly, it was hard to believe that he was an 18 year old kid playing in his first pro game.

Wednesday morning, I was up a little after 4:00 a.m. for a 120 mile three hour drive to Mills-Peninsula Hospital in Millbrae. We had a post implementation meeting for their Lawson HR/Payroll implementation followed by a data center consolidation meeting.

With a healthy Chris Webber, Sports Illustrated predicts Sacramento will beat New Jersey for its first NBA championship!?!

In a survey of twelve ESPN analysts, six picked the Lakers to win it all. while the other six picked the Spurs. Only one of the EPSN analysts [Chad Ford, ESPN Insider] even picked the Kings to make it to the Western Conference Finals. The survey does not predict any individual awards [Most Valuable Player, Coach of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Sixth Man, Defensive Player, Most Improved or Exec of the Year] for the Kings.

ESPN the Magazine rates the Kings as the fifth best team in the Western Conference, behind the Spurs, Lakers, Mavericks and Timberwolves. Their overview of the team says "the Kings, top to bottom, are no longer the NBA's most talented team" and that any long-shot hope hangs on the health of CWebb."

USAToday's preview of the Basketball season shows the Kings as the fifth best team and predicts that the Spurs will beat the pistons in the NBA Finals.

Sharon has volunteered as the Art Docent for the afternoon Kindergarten class. She spent an hour and a half this afternoon teaching a lesson plan titled "Artists paint People." The lesson talked briefly about Thomas Sully, Edward Manet and Pierre Auguste Renoir. It highlighted a painting by each Artist: The Torn Hat by Sully [shown below]; A Girl with a Watering Can by Renoir and The Fifer by Manet. The lesson uses mirrors to have the kids look at themselves and then draw their portrait.


Afterwards, She spent two plus hours volunteering to work in the extended day program. She had some interesting insights about Jack's ability to run with much bigger kids. Jack is used to having to try and run with bigger kids: Drew and Morgan; Kevin, Erin, Eric and Eileen his cousins; the almanor crowd and Pat's son Ryan. Outside of daycare, he is almost always the youngest wherever we are, except for your kids Brun!

Sharon, Jack and I went to the Western Railroad Museum on Highway 12 between Rio Vista and Suisun. The museum operates trains over a 21 section of track in Solano County. As a special event, pumpkin batch trains are operated Saturdays, October 11th, 18th and 25th and Sundays, October 12th, 19th and 26th. The trains take visitors to the Gum Grove station where the pumpkin patch is located in a wooded glen.


Jack had a good time on the hay fort, the hay ride and the wheat maze. Jack is standing on the top of the hay fort in the picture shown below:

Sharon spent the afternoon serving as a coordinator for her third wedding at Good Shepherd. She enjoyed this wedding the most of any that she has done so far. She is more experienced and comfortable in the role and the wedding party had its act together.

Jack, Sharon and I went to dinner at the Gainsley's. Donna Gainsley and I have worked together on the Lawson implementations at Sutter over the last five plus years. Mike Kaplan and his wife and Rudy Jugoz were also there for dinner. Donna and Kevin have a nice piece of property in Sheldon.

Sharon worked a wedding rehearsal as a wedding coordinator for the church. It turns out that we can count up to eight hours of her time as a wedding coordinator towards our 30 parent hours for the school.

I spent most of the day in a Technical Management Council (TMC) meeting; the group includes the Regional CIOs and the SHSS IT Directors.

The Kings cut their roster from 18 to 14 after the October 22 pre-season game against the Dallas Mavericks by releasing forwards Mark Strickland and Phil Ricci, guard Brandin Knight and swingman Roberto Bergersen. With Chris Webber and Lawrence Funderburke expected to be placed on the injured list, the Kings appear to have an active roster of 12.

It appears that free agents Jabari Smith and Rodney Buford have made the team. The resulting roster looks like:

NO.	PLAYER	POS.	HT.	WT.	BORN
10	Mike Bibby	PG	6-1	190	May 13, 1978
32	Rodney Buford	GF	6-5	189	Nov. 2, 1977
13	Doug Christie	SG	6-6	205	May 9, 1970
21	Vlade Divac	C	7-1	260	Feb. 3, 1968
51	Lawrence Funderburke	PF	6-9	230	Dec. 15, 1970
24	Bobby Jackson	G	6-1	185	Mar. 13, 1973
34	Tony Massenburg	FC	6-9	250	Jul. 13, 1967
52	Brad Miller	C	7-0	261	Apr. 12, 1976
8	Anthony Peeler	SG	6-4	208	Nov. 25, 1969
55	Jabari Smith	PF	6-11	240	Feb. 12, 1977
25	Darius Songaila	F	6-9	248	Feb. 14, 1978
16	Peja Stojakovic	SF	6-10	229	Jun. 9, 1977
3	Gerald Wallace	SF	6-7	215	Jul. 23, 1982
4	Chris Webber	PF	6-10	245	Mar. 1, 1973

Up at 2:00 a.m. to help run incident command for a problem encountered during the coordinated downtime. A small problem turned into a three hour marathon due to some confusion on hardware maintenance contracts. First thing in the morning, Yvonne and I met with the CIO to talk about the organization structure. We are working to create a purer engineering group headed by a CTO and a larger operations team. It was a long 14 plus hour day...

Sharon worked in Auburn most of the day for Margaret Heiser. On her way back, She stopped and had dinner with Holly (Wong) Chang. Holly and Sharon job shared the Assistant General Counsel position for a number of years at the AgAmerica/Western Farm Credit Banks.

Sharon and her brother Tim went to the Kings preseason game tonight and saw them beat the Dallas Mavericks. The Kings won by a score of 121 to 99.

I spent most of the traveling to, attending and traveling back from the West Bay CIO meeting. The meeting was held at the Sutter Health office in downtown San Francisco.

The web cam and weather station on my home page are back on-line. The desktop computer at home died with a nasty registry error just before we went to Las Vegas. After several late nights in a row, I am just in the process of getting everything back up and running.

My fantasy football team won for the fifth week in a row by a score of 95 to 87. The team's record for the season is 6 wins and 1 loss.

I spent a couple of hours this morning working the registration desk for the Knights of Columbus golf tournament. The tournament was a fund raiser for Jack's school.

Sharon went with Jack's kindergarten class to the Crocker Art Museum Art Ark.

Morgan got a job working at Baskin Robbins!

Last weekend while we were in Las Vegas, Jack stayed with Sharon's brother Tim and his wife Kathy. This weekend, we kept their girls, Erin and Eileen. Friday was Tim and Kathy's 16th wedding anniversary. We did the same thing last year; they kept Jack the weekend of our anniversary and we took their girls the following weekend for their anniversary.

I took Jack and his cousins to church in the morning, while Sharon took them to the movie Good Boy! in the afternoon. Neither Sharon or the kids gave the movie a very good rating...

After a long weekend in Las Vegas last weekend, we stayed close to home. Both Sharon and I brought colds back with us from Vegas.

I participated in a live draft for a NBA fantasy basketball team on Saturday morning. I am not very satisfied with the team that I drafted. The last couple times I have participated in live drafts I have drafted in the sixth or seventh spot. I prefer to be either higher (one through three) or lower (nine and ten).

Saturday night, we left the kids with a babysitter, had a bite to eat and went to see Intolerable Cruelty.

Although most of the discussion has been about Weber returning in December, he seems to be making good progress rehabbing his knee. In the radio interview I heard that was done during the two hour tour of his rehab, Weber initially said "a couple more weeks" and then immediately back away from the statement.

Peter Vecsey reported in the New York Post that Weber will be suspended five games for lying to the Grand Jury penalty, but the suspension won't be executed until his surgically repaired knee is fully rehabilitated in early to mid-December.

The Kings signed Gerald Wallace through the 2004-05 season when they exercised a $1.65 million option Thursday, two weeks before the deadline.

A photo gallery from the trip to Las Vegas.

Jack's school requires 30 parent hours over the course of the school year. Sharon has done some yard duty at recess already and I am going to work at the golf tournament fund raiser next week. One of the things that we volunteered for was prep work for class projects. I spent 45 minutes tonight stapling black construction paper on 37 toilet paper rolls. Apparently, the class is going to use them on Friday to make bats.

The Kings have until Oct. 31 to pick up the $1.65 million option on Gerald Wallace's contract for the 2004-2005 season. Wallace showed encouraging improvement during early practices, then made 8 of 28 shots (0.285) in the first three exhibition games and looked lost on defense.

Wallace played better tonight in a lost to Houston; he went 6 for 9 with 15 rebounds.

My fantasy football team won week six by a score of 70 to 55. The team's record improved to 5 wins and 1 loss with four straight wins. This weekend I play the team that I have lost to back in week two.

2003 Las Vegas Day Four

After getting up and packing, Pat Funk picked us up at the hotel and the three of us went to breakfast. Pat dropped us at the airport and we caught a late morning flight back to Sacramento.

Some random thoughts on Las Vegas. I would not stay at New York New York again. The room was nice, but the hotel and casino seem cramped and uninspired compared to many of the other hotels. I would probably choose to stay at the Venetian or the Paris. The Mandalay Bay is nice, but too far to the end of the strip. Sharon liked the Bellagio. As an aside, we also visited the city of Bellagio on Lake Como during our Italian trip in the fall of 1996.

I was dumbfounded by the number of people. There were people everywhere, including lots of families with small children. Las Vegas appears to have become a major family destination resort.

We will probably go back again. We did not get around to doing several things that we had on our list including the Napoleon and Red Square Bars and hiking at Red Rocks.

2003 Las Vegas Day Three

Sunday morning, we had a light breakfast in "Times Square." Afterwards, we walked past the Excalibur and the Luxor to the Mandalay Bay Hotel to pick up our show tickets. In January of 1996, we stayed one night at the Luxor and one night at the Mirage. We took the tram back to the Excalibur and walked through the casino on our way back to New York New York. The Excalibur would be last on my list of places to stay; in my opinion, the atmosphere is cheesy.

We then took a cab to the Venetian. The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum is within the elaborate structure of Las Vegas's Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino. We toured an exhibit titled American Pop Icons. The exhibit featured 28 paintings and sculptures from eight of the precursors and participants in the Pop art movement of the 1950's and 1960's—Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann. Except for maybe one of the Warhol's, I would not pay a nickel for any of the items.

The Venetian includes gondolas, canals and "St. Mark's Square."


Sharon and I visited Venice, Italy in October of 1996. Although I like the Venetian, it is impossible to duplicate the character of a city like Venice.

Sharon had seen a Food Network show on the Cheesecake Factory. We headed over to Caesar's to find the Cheesecake Factory for a late lunch. After lunch we returned to Bellagio where Sharon did some shopping while I checked the NFL scores...

Sunday Night, we went to see Momma Mia! at the Mandalay Bay. We took a taxi back to Venetian for a late dinner at Postrio. After dinner, we actually walked all the way back to New York New York from the Venetian, stopping at the Mirage to watch the volcano and the Bellagio to watch the fountain show.

Las Vegas Day 4

2003 Las Vegas Day Two

In spite of a late night, we were up early. Before about 9:00 a.m., you could fire a cannon off in the casinos and not hit anyone. We walked over the to the Monte Carlo for breakfast.

Afterwards, we walked north up the strip and wandered through the Aladdin into the connected shopping mall called Desert Passage. Several of the hotels and casinos have very elaborate shopping malls connected to them.

After the Aladdin, we went into the Paris Hotel. The Paris Hotel has a two-thirds replica of the original Arc de Triomphe and a half size replica of the Eiffel Tower.



Those people who know me well know that I am not a heights person. Nevertheless, we went up to the top of the replica. Sharon and I are talking about a trip to France and Holland in 2004 and I thought that going to the top of the replica would be a good warm up for the real thing. Sharon took this picture from the top looking south down the strip.



We headed back to New York New York for lunch. Sharon wanted a pastrami sandwich. We had lunch in a section of the hotel called Times Square. Sharon and I stayed on Times Square in 1998; this section of the hotel bears no resemble to the real Times Square.

While Sharon took a nap, I ran on the hotel treadmill and watched the mayhem of the Yankees and Red Sox in Game 3.

We had an early dinner at Drais in the Barbary Coast. The Barbary Coast is a small, older hotel in the middle of the strip. We had walked by it earlier in the day and were even more skeptical we went got out of the cab and walked into the Casino. We were pleasantly surprised. Drai's was named one of the top 5 Las Vegas Restaurants in the 2001 Zagat Survey. I rarely recommend restaurants, but this is a place I would recommend (warning: it is pricey).

We went to Zumanity at New York New York. Zumanity is billed as another side of Cirque du Soleil.

Las Vegas Day Three

2003 Las Vegas Day One

Sharon and I have tried to make a tradition of taking a trip for our anniversary. In 1997, we spent a week in Grand Caymen scuba diving. After taking two years off after Jack was born, we started up again in 2000. We spent the anniversary weekend in Napa in 2000, Mammoth Lakes in 2001 and Cambria and Hearst Castle in 2002. This year we went to Las Vegas. Although Sharon and Jack spent a couple of days visiting Pat in Las Vegas in July, Sharon and I have not been to Las Vegas together since January 1996.

We stayed at the New York New York Hotel. Afer we decided on Las Vegas in late August, we had a difficult time finding a room. New York New York was definitely not our first choice.

After getting to the hotel in the early afternoon, we had a light lunch at Il Fornaio.

After lunch, We wandered around the hotel and then headed over to the Bellagio. From the there, we headed to Caesar's Palace .

We met Pat Funk and Bernard for drinks at the Shadow Bar in Caesar's and then the four of us went to dinner at 808.

After dinner, Sharon and I took a cab to a late show at the MGM Grand called La Femme.

Las Vegas Day Two

Drew has gotten a part in a student directed play called Forbidden Broadway. The play runs October 24, 25 and 26. He described it as a show poking fun at other shows; there is a web site for a Broadway production of this play at www.forbiddenbroadway.com.

My fantasy football team won week five by a score of 88 to 70. The team's record improved to 4 wins and 1 loss.

I highly recommend the Newsweek article on Kobe. It can be found at:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/976158.asp

The article is pretty long and paints an interesting picture of his childhood and social development.

I talked to Tomasin for a while last night. Tomasin, Hunter and Geselbracht are taking off on Wednesday for a Rugby World Cup Tour to Australia and New Zealand with the California Bald Eagles.

Tomasin, Bachman and I went to the 1991 Rugby World Cup in Scotland, Wales and England with the Tennessee Long Rifles.

I spent most of the day in Modesto for the SOMA Committee Meeting. This is the steering committee for Sutter Health's outpatient electronic medical record project.

Larkin and I went to the first King's pre-season game; the Kings beat the Clippers 101 to 82. Bibby and Stojakovic looked very good. Both of them scored 19 points in limited minutes. Peja was 6 of 10 from the field, while Mike was 7 of 9. Unfortunately, Gerald Wallace who is tagged to replace Jim Jackson and Hedo Turkoglu and back up Peja at small forward did not look good. Although he had 8 rebounds, Wallace was 2 of 10 from the field.

Talked to Rob

I talked to Rob Nooter on the phone for about 20 minutes this morning. Rob, Barb and their kids are moving to Tanzania in East Africa for at least 2 years. Rob will be working on a dairy project that is intended to improve production at the farm level, improve the quality and efficiency of the processing sector and promote increased consumer demand for milk and dairy products. They will be living in Dar Es Salaam, one of the capital cities on the coast of the Indian Ocean.

I visited Rob and Barb in Moscow in April of 1995. My working goal is to visit them in Africa in April of 2005.

Jack had a play day with Noah; one of his best friends from the old daycare center.

2003 Fall Dinner Party

Busy day... Sharon and Jack took our cat, Peja, to the blessing of the animals on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi in the morning. We have an odd cat that enjoys water and liked having the parish priest sprinkle water on him.

In the afternoon, we took Jack to a birthday party for one of the boys in his new class.

We had the Larkin's and Bell's for dinner on Saturday night. Sharon made a wonderful dinner of Osso Buco and risotto.



For desert, she made another baked alaska as a cake for Matt's birthday.

2003 Kings Tickets Draw

We had a conference call to divide up the King's season tickets. It is a very odd group. Joe Larkin and I spit a quarter share in two King's season tickets; this works out to ten games. The other three shares are held by Sharon and her brother Tim, Sharon's ex-husband and a former boss of both Sharon and her ex-husband. Needless to say, interactions within the group are more than a little strained. I am not sure, but I think that this is the seventh year that Larkin and I have participated with the group.

It looks like Weber may not be on the court for the Kings until December. He has not yet been cleared to run on the knee.

Powered by big games from Randy Moss and Peyton Manning, my fantasy football team won 130 to 74. The team's record is now three wins and one loss.

A recent study ranked Sacramento traffic as the 9th worst in nation.

One of the major reasons that we sold the house in Shingle Springs and moved to Elk Grove was traffic. By late 1999, I was reaching the point where I was spending up to twenty hours a week commuting to Sacramento. Additionally, Sharon's family lives in Sacramento and we would often find ourselves going down to Sacramento on at least one of the weekend days.

While our commute improved dramatically with the move to Elk Grove, it has gradually deteriorated over the last three plus years. In spite of a national economic downturn, housing starts in Sacramento have continued at an amazing pace. Some of the projections I have seen suggest the entire region will be gridlocked by 2015.

Drew and his girlfriend Kaylen had both auditioned for the major 2003-2004 theater productions at UCI. While both of them got callbacks for second auditions, neither of them got cast. Drew seems to be taking it in stride; he indicated last week that very few freshmen were likely to be cast.

I spent most of the day in San Francisco at CPMC. We met with the CIO, Applications Director and Technical Services Director about a strategy for including them in a enterprise change control process.

2003 Management Symposium

I spent the day at the Sutter Health Management Symposium at the Sacramento Convention Center.


One of the breakouts sessions that I attended was called Key Technology-Driven Trends: How Disruptive Technology will change healthcare in the next 10 years. Presented by HealthTech, the session outlined coming medical technologies (not IT technologies). If we can figure out who is going to pay for them, there are some major medical techologies in the pipeline that look like they could provide people with longer healthier lives.

Long and Winding Road

June marked the five-year anniversary of my starting at Sutter Health. It has been an interesting journey. I have started this note on several occasions over the last three months, but have always got sidetracked. I promised myself I would finish it and get it sent out.

Shortly after I started, a number of people asked me what it was like working for Sutter Health. I described the situation with the following analogy.

Imagine that you were given the keys to the car. When you were taken to the car, you found that someone had taken the car and ran it off the road into the middle of a cornfield. The hood of the car was still warm so apparently the previous owner had not been gone long. The car looked good, but there were two flat tires. The gas gauge was just above empty. When the previous owners had left the car, they had left the lights on so now the battery was run down, but not dead. The corn is tall enough that you cannot see the road. There are a number of people milling around the car and there is some disagreement amongst the group about which way to go to get back to the road. Working to get people back into the car, you fail with some people (Nafees Coleman and Karl Danielson). Oh, and by the way, the car is supposed to be somewhere far from there in a very short time; there was a go-live scheduled in less than a month at SMCS, essentially two very large hospitals.

Eventually, we got the car back on the road and had the first major Lawson implementation at SMCS and SHSS in November of 1998. (Finance and procurement for VNA had actually been implemented in May of 1998.) This implementation was followed by the long dark winter of 1998 and 1999. While the team struggled to resolve post-implementation issues from the SMCS go-live, we worked successfully to get a number of Y2K implementations started. Everyone involved in the project demonstrated a remarkable amount of perseverance during 1999.

Through 2000, 2001 and 2002, the team picked up speed. At this point, there are so many cars with different drivers spread across Northern California that I could not keep track of them even if I tried. The Lawson implementations have grown to include 82 separate companies within Sutter Health using different parts of the finance, procurement, workflow, payroll, benefits and human resources applications. One of the most telling statistics is that now more than 30,000 Sutter Health employees receive their paycheck off Lawson.

I believe strongly in the importance of the individual functional teams. Each of your teams and your team lead are the foundation for everything we have done. I am extremely proud of your accomplishments of the last five years and the particularly satisfied with the growth of the managers and team leads.

Your success and the growth of the management team have given me an opportunity to do some other things within Sutter Health. I got an chance to participate in what John Hummel has termed “a once in a lifetime experience of moving a major data center.” As part of this, I have gotten the opportunity to work with and get to know Rudy Jugoz and return to some of my data center, operations and systems roots. It has also given some of you a chance to work on other applications, such as Kronos and Authoria.

This year, I have had a chance to start to get to know Mark Dynes, Kelli Hunt and Laurie Lock and work with them in areas of automation, desktop and help desk.

All of these accomplishments and opportunities are the result of your hard work.

An interesting article entitled The Coming Job Boom in the on-line version of the magazine Business 2.0. Unfortunately, most of the article requires a subscription.

The articles highlights that, although job growth in the United States is expected to slow to 3% over the next two decades, there is going to be a huge exodus from the work force as the baby boomers retire. [This means you Larkin!] It suggests that these demographic forces are about to put a squeeze on the labor supply and create a much tighter labor market.

Camera phones are outselling digital cameras

We laid pretty low this weekend; the next three weekends are going to be very busy. Saturday morning, the three of us went to the American River Bike Trail. Jack rode his bike, while Sharon and I ran.

Norma Udell organized a barbecue for former Western Farm Credit Bank employees last night at a park in Fair Oaks. Most of the group were the IT employees that worked together during a period from 1987 to 1998, but some non-IT people also attended.

In addition to the usual suspects like Joe Larkin and Sherry Bell, the group included, but was not limited to Anita and Jeff Boone with their two boys, Manuel Codero, Chris Doherty, Charles Guenther, Robert and Jennifer Goolis, Dave and Irene Hackett, Tom Harper, Ray Jerd, Don Jones, Mary Kessler and her youngest, Kelvin Kishaba, Lynn Lamothe, Cinda Lewis, Bill Markley, Dan Mattos and his wife, Dave Newlin, Karl Okamoto, Patti Rabe, Terry and Dan Richardson, Carlos Tillmanshofer with his wife and kids, Helga White and Steve Wike. I am sure that I have missed more than a few.

I spent a lot of the time talking to George Beitzel. Although I have tried to figure it out, I am not sure when I last saw George. Beitzel originally hired me at the banks in October of 1980 and is responsible for giving me the opportunity to be the Vice President of MIS for the banks in early 1987. Beitzel had a big influence on my professional development during the 1980's.

While the 1980's were a pretty stable period personally and professionally when I got a chance to get some mentoring, the 1990's were a decade of trial by fire, including an ugly divorce, the Texas boss from hell, the Alltel outsourcing, continuous child custody battles, a second marriage, the merger with the AgAmerica Bank, the Perot outsourcing, starting a new family and the job switch.

UCI Drama holds auditions for all for the major productions for the 2003-04 academic year in the week before school starts. This year's shows are Sweeney Todd, Romeo & Juliet, War to End War, Pedro Gynt, Medea, Lady's Not for Burning, and Portrait of a Lady.

Drew had his initial audition last night and got a call back for Sweeney Todd which he did tonight.

They asked him if he would be willing to cut this hair if he got a part!

Today was also the first day of classes for the fall quarter.

Sharon and Janie had a "pur$e party" at our house last night. Think tubberware (something your neighbor tries to sell you at a party in her living room), but with pur$es, wallets and jewelry.

Jack and I had gone out for dinner and to run some errands as they were setting up. It was a little surreal to come back to a house full of people (more than 40) with several hundred pur$es spread around the downstairs. Really, several hundred pur$es.

Pictures taken with a Sanyo SCP-5300 Sprint Phone!

Kings forward Lawrence Funderburke, who is in the final year of a five-year contract, is expected to be out six months after undergoing surgery Monday on his left Achilles tendon. He is entering his seventh season in Sacramento -- the longest tenure of any current King. This opens up a spot on the roster, but it appears that the Kings are having trouble getting free agents to show up at camp to try out for their team. Training camp opens in ten days on October 3.

With an extremely pitiful performance, my fantasy football team won week three by a score of 56 to 49. My team now has 2 wins and 1 loss.

2003 InformationWeek 500

For 15 years, InformationWeek has tracked the technology practices of the nation's largest and most innovative companies. InformationWeek publishes an annual ranking of the top 500 users of technology. Sutter Health ranked 205th in the 2002 InformationWeek 500 survey. We have jumped to 53rd in the 2003 InformationWeek 500 rankings.

The survey includes a section in the industry breakdown titled "Health Care & Medical: Tech Innovation Keeps The Doctor In." The article includes a number of quotes from Sutter's CIO and notes that "Sutter, which runs 33 hospitals in Northern California, spends about $100 million annually on IT and has about 680 IT projects in progress at one time."

It is very rewarding to be involved as a senior member of the management team building the IT organization within Sutter Health.

Sharon and I played in a nine hole scramble golf tournament with Janie Diagle and her stepson Jeff at Arcade Creek. Afterwards we had a light dinner and a couple of drinks at California Cafe.

Drew leaves for college today! He, Morgan and his mother are driving to Clovis to stay with his grandfather tonight. Tomorrow they will drive the rest of the way to the Univesity of California at Irvine. Go Anteaters!

2003 Back to School Night

Sharon and I attended back to school night at Jack's school. We listened to the Priest and the Principal talk about the role of the parent in education and his kindergarten teacher outline the structure of the class and the curriculum for the year.

While Sharon and her brothers are products of Catholic grammar and high schools, this is a new experience for me. I was raised a Presbyterian in a small rural farming town in Northern California. While we were fairly active in the Church (church groups were one of the few available youth activities), it bears no comparison to being involved in the local Catholic parish and the parish school. Even in a larger city, the Catholic parish is a much tighter community with more connections into day-to-day life.

There is a good article in the September edition of Healthleaders Magazine. The cover story is entitled All Together Different and covers the development of Sutter Health as an integrated delivery network. The lead-in notes that "Sutter's strong position reflects its focus on the standardization of business information and clinical systems." The article talks a lot about the EICU project that we have underway, the new data center and includes a number of quotes from our CIO.

Perseverance and Persistence

I have had the opportunity to have some interesting life experiences. Through all of the challenges, I have come strongly to believe in perseverance and persistence.

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not;
Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not;
Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not;
The world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Calvin Coolidge

One the other hand, maybe I am just a stubborn dutchman...

Today is Jill Wallen's birthday.

Sharon spent Saturday afternoon serving as the coordinator for a wedding at Good Shepherd. This was her second wedding as one of the wedding coordinators for the church.

We both got a kick out of the number one reason on Dave Letterman's list of the top ten reasons why Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck postponed their wedding. You can find the list at: CBS | Late Show Top Ten Archive: September 11, 2003

We worked Saturday and Sunday finishing up a project to dig out and replant the area in front of the pond and the fountain.

In January, we spent two weeks in the Philippines visiting Pat Funk and her family. I have made several attempts to organize the pictures with some diary entries, but could never get any momentum for the project. I am trying again to get everything organized.

One of the unique experiences on the trip was playing night golf in downtown Manila! Check out the of pictures of the 16th century fort walls.

Sharon met Mary Franklin for Dinner at the Zinfandel Grille in Folsom.

My fantasy football team won its first week by a score 81 to 62. Although I am now 1 - 0 on the season, four other teams in the league scored more than 81 point last weekend. It is going to be a long season if I don't get better performances from Indianapolis Colts Quarterback Peyton Manning.

At our August 25 Senior Operations meeting, the CIO tossed out a pile of books and asked everyone to take one and bring back a half page book report in two weeks. I choose The Art of the Long View.

This book was written by noted futurist Peter Schwartz and is designed to provide a toolkit for long term planning and thinking. The toolkit resolves around developing scenarios to alternative futures and using these scenarios to help plan. His scenarios are not technical presentations, but stories. The author draws the analogy of writing scripts for the theater as a way to think about the development of the scenarios.

My favorite section of the book was entitled Tactics: Where to Look in the Information-Hunting and Gathering chapter. His recommended sources for information to research scenarios includes: remarkable people; sources of surprise (reading outside your immediate specialty); filters (routinely pick up a dozen magazines from a newsstand and scan them); immersion in challenging environments (travel is the single best way to immerse yourself in unfamiliarity); and networked sensibilities (using technology to exchange and share information).

An interesting application of the tools can be seen in some scenarios developed by the Valleys Futures Project. As part of this project, four possible scenarios for the Sacramento area in 2025 were developed, including: Rios de Oro; Silver Lining; New Tech Mirage; and Paradise Lost.

If you live in Sacramento, I strongly recommend reading the Silver Lining scenario!

Sharon and Janie Diagle played the 9 hole executive golf course at Bing Maloney this morning.

Eightfold

Drew's band, Eightfold, played at the Coffee House in Placerville on Friday night. He and Kellen Gracia [the bass player on the left] have played together for four years. They have won their school's battle of the bands every year for the last four years. Although Drew's interest have morphed more to theater over the last two years, Drew is a talented musician who has written most of the material that Eightfold has recorded.

This was billed was the last performance of the group. With Drew heading to UCI in less than two weeks and Eric, the drummer, heading to UC Santa Cruz, it is possible that they will not play together again.

We spent most of the day working in the backyard planting a new weeping crabapple tree and replacing some ground cover.

Starting in 1997, I played an increasing number of different fantasy sports games on the ESPN web site. I actually won a baseball and a basketball league in 2001. I decided in August of last year that I was spending too much time on too many different games and too many teams in each game and quit cold turkey.

Over the last year, I found that I enjoy the football and basketball season a lot more if I have a group of players that I am following so I decided to put my toe back in the water. I participated in a live draft for a NFL fantasy team, Sacto Rare White Tigers, on Monday.

I spent most of the day driving to Lakeport and back for a Lawson go-live readiness assessment at Sutter Lakeside. Leaving Williams in the morning and heading up highway 20 into the Coastal range, I headed straight into a series of large thunderstorms with lots of lightning and rain for almost 50 miles. It was pretty impressive to watch the lightning strikes on the hilltops.

We spent Labor Day at Tom's house, Sharon's oldest brother. Jack had a great time swimming in the pool with his cousins, while the adults barbecued, had a few cocktails, debated the appropriateness of the recall election of the California governor and reviewed the merits of the 135 candidates for governor.

Sharon's mom, Rosemary, had a major stroke in January of 2002. Rosemary and Sharon's dad, Jack, have continued live in their home with a live-in carekeeper. Sharon and her two brothers have been taking turns making meals for the week and taking them to church. We went over on Sunday afternoon. Sharon made dinner and got a couple of other meals organized for the coming week.

By the time we got home and got Jack to bed, it was almost 9:30 p.m. Digging through the pile of DVDs that we have been wanting to see, we decided that we were too tired to make it until midnight. Instead, turning on Showtime, we got sucked into watching one of the worst movies I have ever seen, Rules of Attraction. The film's writer-director is Roger Avary, who directed "Killing Zoe" and co-authored Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction."

Jack's 5th Birthday Party

Today was Jack's fifth Birthday. We had a very successful birthday party with five other kids from Jack's old day care plus Andrew, Jack's godfather and godmother, his cousins and the DiGorgio's.

We had planned a number of activities for the party, but one of the biggest hits was unplanned. After lunch, the kids all started wading in the pond and climbing on the waterfall. They were playing with a boat the Lee Ann and Dean had given Jack as a present for Christmas in 2001. I would never have expected the kids to start doing this on their own; Jack has never really had any interest in wading in the pond.

There is a photo album from at the party at:

http://www.heringer.org/jack5/index.html

Drew's class schedule for the 2003 Fall Quarter at UCI includes:

Crse         Crse     Sec      Grd 

Code  Dept   Num  Typ Num Unts Opt  Days    Time          

----  ----   ---- --- --- ---- ---  ----    ----

02050 DANCE   30A STU   A  2.0  PN   M W F  08:30-09:50   

03025 DRAMA   30A STU   D  4.0  GR    T T   08:00-09:50   

03088 DRAMA    65 LAB   B  2.0  GR   M W    04:00-04:50

44011 MATH     1A LEC   B  4.0  GR   M W F  02:00-02:50

44012 MATH     1A DIS  20  0.0  GR    T     02:00-02:50

 

 total units enrolled 12.0       2.0 p/np units

I expressed some concern to Drew that he was not taking one more general education class.

Over the last three weeks, the Kings have made three moves.

On August 5, the Kings traded the forward/center Keon Clark and two future second-round picks to the Utah Jazz for a second-round pick.

On August 15, the team made a move to replenish their depth by signing veteran free-agent guard Anthony Peeler. The signing of Peeler could signal the end of Sacramento's pursuit of G Jim Jackson, who revitalized his career after joining the Kings early last season. Several teams are interested in Jackson, and owner Joe Maloof has said the team probably can't afford to keep him.

Finally, August 22, the Kings, moving to replenish their frontcourt depth, signed journeyman free agent Tony Massenburg to a one-year deal..

With these moves, the Kings have twelve players under contract for next year.

                                Under contract until

 10 Mike Bibby, G                    '08-'09

 52 Brad Miller, C                   '08-'09 

 13 Doug Chrisite, G/F               '05-'06 

    Geoff Petrie, GM                 '05-'06

 16 Peja Stojakovic, F/G     '05-'06 with Player Option

  4 Chris Webber, F          '05-'06 with Player Option 

    Rick Adelman, Coach       '04-'05 with Team Option

 24 Bobby Jackson, G                 '04-'05

 21 Vlade Divac, C                   '03-'04 

 51 Lawrence Funderburke, F          '03-'04 

 44 Tony Massenburg, F/C             '03-'04

 44 Anthony Peeler, G                '03-'04

  3 Gerald Wallace, G/F       '03-'04 with Team Option 

 99 Darius Songaila, F               '??-'?? 

Today was Jack's first day of kindergarten!

2003 Back to School Ice Cream Social

We spent the weekend working on the yard and the house trying to get things ready for Jack's birthday party next Saturday.

This afternoon, we went to an orientation for Jack's new school. The principal talked, we went to Jack's classroom and found his desk and cubbie, and visited the new extended care room.

Sharon, Jack and I went to the California State Fair on Friday night. Jack had a great time going on rides, while Sharon enjoyed a deep fried twinkie!

There is an article in the Sacramento Bee about Sutter Health's CEO:

sacbee.com -- Lifestyle -- His interwoven worlds

We had breakfast at the Mansion family style with the other guests. Afterwards, we started winding our way back. It was a two hour drive from Port Towsend to the SeaTac airport. This was followed by an uneventful hour and 40 minute flight. We were home by 4:30 p.m.

At best, I would give Port Townsend a C+ as a tourist destination.

We rented a car early Monday morning and headed north to Port Townsend. It is about an hour drive from the Wallen's house. We walked around the downtown on Water and Washington Streets before Lunch and then had lunch at Fins. Sharon and I both had some very interesting Manila Clam Chowder.

After lunch, we checked in the bed and breakfast where we are staying: the Anne Starrett Mansion. Sharon had found the place on-line and booked the Master Bedroom.


In the afternoon, we went out to the Old Fort Wolden State Park and wandered through some old bunkers that housed large guns guarding the coast. Jack feel asleep in the car as we left the park. When we stopped at the visitor's center on the way into town in the morning, Sharon had gotten a map that include a driving tour of the area. We spent an hour or so following the driving tour of the area, including a large number of impressive Victorian Mansions.

We had dinner at the Silver Water Cafe.

Wallen and I went out for a 10k run in morning. We ran around their bay and out to the end of the peninsula between Oyster Bay and Twice a Day Bay. We are both too competitive for our own good. Wallen end up running the distance in 48:01 which works out a 7:45 per mile pace. I was about 20 seconds behind him for a 7:48 per mile pace. After working hard to close a 60 yard gap on a long downhill coming back into their bay, I completely ran out of gas and Wallen pulled away from me on uphill to their house.

When we got back to the house, Sharon, Jill and Jack were already in the boat. After John and I cleaned up, they picked us up. It was an absolutely beautiful day. We cruised around the Sound sightseeing and looking at houses on the water.

We ended up back at the Gregg's house on the water where we had dinner the night before. We picked them and headed to the Boatshed for a late lunch.

Jack and I ended the day by cruising around the bay in the Wallen's paddle boat out

John Wallen, Sharon, Jack and I took the ferry to Seattle to see the Red Sox play the Mariners at Safeco Field. We stopped and had lunch at J&M's before the game. Pedro Martinez pitched for the Red Sox and the Marineers lost 5 to 1.


After the game, we took the ferry back to Bremerton. Meeting up with Jill Wallen, the five of us went to dinner at some friends of the Wallens. The Greggs have a very interesting modern house on Osyter bay.

In one of those odd six degree of separation stories, the Greggs had spent a few years in Fresno and knew my ex-wife's sister Sayre and her husband Byron.

We played some ping pong on a table set-up next to the water, had a few drinks, watched a large family of raccoons fight over dog food and had dinner about 10:15 p.m.! It was almost 12:30 a.m. before we got home.

Sharon, Jack and I took off for a long weekend to visit the Wallen's who live across the sound from Seattle in Bremerton. Wallen picked us up at the airport and we headed back to their house. The Wallen's have a great house on Phinney Bay. It faces to the west and has a good view across their bay of the mountains in the Olympic peninsula. We sat on their deck and barbecued on Friday night.

Today is Jack's last day at the Cottage Kids daycare center. He started going there in February 1999, almost four and a half years ago.

Almanor Diary, Day 8--Saturday, August 2, 2003

I woke up about 5:00 a.m. on Saturday morning and it was pouring rain. I finally got out of bed just after 7:00 a.m. and it was raining cats and dogs. In all of the years that we have been going to Almanor, I have never seen it rain that hard. I stood on the porch with a cup of coffee and watched it rain. Tomasin joined me and we both sat there shaking our heads. Tomasin had some concerns about the boats. It had been raining for several hours and John was concerned about how much water was collecting in the boats. At this point, there was an amazing amount of water running off the cabins and running through across the Dorado Inn grounds.

It took us a little more than 30 minutes to get Tomasin's boat out of water. By the time that we were done, I was soaked and cold.

We spent the next two hours loading up the trucks and cleaning out the cabins in the rain. The Wallens left a little after 9:00 a.m.; they were planning to make the run all the way back to Seattle in one jump, probably a fifteen or sixteen hour trip. The rain finally started to let up after 9:30 a.m. By 10:00 a.m., everyone was loaded up and ready to go.

In past years, we have usually spent the morning on the lake skiing one last time; it was wierd to be packed and ready to go so early. We caravaned with the Tomasin's and Bachman's down the Feather River Canyon to Oroville. At this point, we split up and headed for home.

Almanor Diary, Day 7--Friday, August 1, 2003

Sharon, Jack and I took off Friday morning for a hike on the Bizz Johnson trail. We hiked for about four miles along the Susan River. The trail is the old railway right of way from Susanville to Westwood. The hike included both of the old railroad tunnels on the trail.


After the hike, we went into Susanville for lunch and then toured the museum at the trailhead.

In the late afternoon, all of the adults went over the Chabriers (they own a vacation home just up the lake from the Dorado Inn) for cocktails. Danny Hunter had to take off for Mexico at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday and Loren Hunter had a soccer game at 10:00 a.m. As a result, Hunter spent most of the afternoon packing. He stopped at the Chabrier's and then took off for home from there.

Sharon and I made burritos for dinner. Cal and Cheryl, the new owners of the Dorado Inn, joined us for dinner.

Almanor Diary, Day 6--Thursday, July 31, 2003

Most of the week at Almanor, Jack slept on a fold out couch in the front room of the cabin. About 3:00 a.m., we were awaken by Jack screaming like a banshee. I went into the front room and Jack was standing in the middle of the bed screaming. I asked him what was wrong and he said that his stomach hurt. I picked him and carried into the bathroom where he almost immediately started to throw up. While he was throwing up, Jack continued to wail at the top of his lungs. Once there was nothing left in his stomach, He started dry heaving. Jack did not take this in stride; it was the first time that he has gotten sick to his stomach. After the dry heaving, Jack had diarrhea. fun, fun, fun...

Interesting, while all five of the Heringer's got sick during the week, only two other people got sick. David Tomasin was sick on Wednesday, while Gail Bachman was sick on Thursday. Bachman and Tomasin complained on several occasions that their stomachs were upset and suggested that they might have a touch of the bug. More likely it was the 97 beers they had.

I got up the fairly early the next morning with everyone else still asleep and went for a four mile run on Highway 147. After I got back, Sharon and Jack were still asleep. Morgan and I ended up going out on the boats for the morning.

Several people asked me during the course of the day about the amount of noise that Jack was making at 3:00 a.m.; he apparently woke up a number of people with his wailing.

We went to the Hamburger Hut for a late, long lunch. The adults had more than a few beers, while the kids swam in the swimming area and threw each other off the dock. As we were getting ready to leave, everyone got involved in throwing everyone off the dock and into the water.

When we got back to the cabins, Sharon and I went into Chester to do some shopping. Each family takes one night to cook dinner during the week; we were on the hook for Friday night.

Pat and Kathy Tomasin, John's mom and sister, showed up for several hours in the afternoon. Wallen's brother Bill also showed up with his wife and three kids.

After dinner, we had a birthday celebration for Robby Hunter and Kendall Brown. Kendall turned 20 on Thursday, while Robby turned 19 on Friday.


Jack rallied pretty well. After dinner, he was running around with Bill's two boys playing baseball and football.

Tomasin, Hunter and Bachman took off about 10:30 p.m. for a boat ride to Plumas Pines returning about 1:30 a.m.

We spent most of the weekend working on Jack's bedroom, including new paint, moldings and curtains.

Almanor Diary, Day 5--Wednesday, July 30, 2003

After sleeping in on Wednesday morning, I spent most of the morning helping Sharon put together billing statements and correspondence for her law practice. In the rush to get organized and out of the door at the end of last week a few things were left undone. We had been talking for a couple of weeks about how to provide Sharon with internet access so she could do some work while we were at Almanor for the week. I played around with some cellular solutions, but never found any options that would support a PC internet connection while we were at the lake. I said something to Cheryl on Wednesday morning about going into Chester to try and make and internet connection and she offerred us the use of the fax line in the office. I reconfigured her laptop to use a Pac Bell Internet account that I keep as a back-up and we were able to send and receive mail using the Dorado Inn's fax line.

After lunch, we took off for the Bailey Creek Golf Course. Hunter, Jill Wallen, Sharon and I played in one foursome, while Robby and Danny Hunter, Chris Tomasin and Nathan Wallen were in the other foursome. After the three days of great weather, the weather changed on Wednesday afternoon. As we pulled in the parking lot at the golf course, a series of thunderstorms started to move over the lake.

Sharon and I only played the front nine. I was very happy with the way that I played. I had a par on a long par five that has destoryed me in the past (>10). Coming up to the ninth tee, I thought I had a chance to shoot a 48 on the front nine which would be a very good score for me. The wheels came off on the very easy ninth hole; I hit into a fairway bunker, shot an 8 and ended up with a 50 on the front nine.

We got a few drops of rain while we were playing and watched some impressive lightning displays to the south of us over the Lake. Jack rode in the cart with Sharon and I. He has taken some golf lessons and has a set of clubs. He hit a few tee shots and putted on a couple of greens. His favorite part was raking the sand traps. He started cheering at one point when point when Jill hit into a sand trap! Once the lightning started, he mostly stayed in the cart and insisted that we end back to the cabins.

The adults went to Plumas Pines for dinner. We loaded up the Hunter and Wallen boats and headed across the lake.


The after dinner excitement was that shortly after we turned the lights on in the Wallens boat the temperature gauge showed the engine was overheating. Through trial and error, we realized that if we left the running lights off the engine temperature stayed normal. We ended up heading back across the lake running dark; there is really no boat traffic on the lake at night so it was not a major problem. Although we ended up about a half mile north of the Dorado Inn, we made it back uneventfully, albeit slowly.

I have always loved being on the lake in the middle of the night without a moon. It is one of the few places where we go that you can see the milky way; it is a very cool sight.

Drew is in Southern California today for a one day orientation at UCI. The fall quarter starts September 22. Twenty eight years ago in the summer of 1975, I attended a multiple day orientation at UC Davis.

Almanor Diary, Day 4--Tuesday, July 29, 2003

By Tuesday morning, everyone was back up to close to full speed. We spent the morning on the boats.

Rick and Karen were involved in a motorcycle accident in early July. Rick hit a patch of transmission fluid in an intersection near Clear Lake at fairly slow speed and dropped the bike. They both broke their ankles and had surgery. Tomasin performed the surgeries! Rather than use crutches, they were using wheeled carts. Rickie preferred the carts to crutches because it allowed him to have his hands free while he worked. It was quite a sight to see Rick and Karen going everywhere with the carts over the course of the week.


After lunch, Tomasin and I took on Bachman and Hunter in horseshoes. Although Bachman and Hunter won the first game, Tomasin and I took the second and third games and the match.

After Dinner, the boys went to the Ranch House to play pool and more horseshoes. Bachman and Hunter beat Tomasin and I two straight games of pool. Bachman then insisted that we play more horseshoes behind the bar under the lights. I had enough horseshoes for the day. Wallen and Tomasin played Bachman and Tomasin and won two of three games. Wallen threw a double ringer to win the third game.

Almanor Diary, Day 3--Monday, July, 28, 2003

THE LOST DAY--Drew got sick late Sunday night. At 1:00 a.m. Monday morning, Morgan was sick and by 2:00 a.m., Sharon was sick. Although I did not get phyiscally sick to my stomach, I felt very bad all day Monday with flu-like symptoms. Interestingly, Jack did not get sick. As a result, we spent most of Monday trying to keep track of Jack, while marshalling our strength and staying close to the bathroom.

Monday turned out to be one of the nicest days at Almanor in years. It was hot and very calm all day long; the wind never came up in the afternoon. As a result, the boats spent almost the whole day out on the water. In my fever induced state, I seem to remember Tomasin returning to the dock to reload with people and beverages five times during the course of the day.

Late in the day, Sharon wanted some Chicken Noodle soup. I started to get in the car to drive into Chester and then started to doubt whether I could make it. I ended up getting Wallen to drive me to the store.

The Heringer's all ended up crashing at about 8:00 p.m., including Jack, hoping that Tuesday would bring a better day.

Almanor Diary, Day 2--Sunday, July, 27, 2003

We spent most of Sunday morning on the Tomasin boat with Morgan skiing on doubles, Drew wake boarding and Jack tubing with Mike Tomasin; Tomasin and I slalomed. It was first of three straight hot days with calm water well into the afternoon.




In the early afternoon, we loaded up all three boats and headed for Hamburger Hut for lunch. Afterwards, Wallen and I carried down a ping pong table from Bachman's trailer. Although I was initially skeptical, the ping pong table got a lot of use over the week, particularly by Mike and Jack.

The Dorado Inn changed hands about three years ago and the new owners, Cal and Cheryl, have started a tradition of having a cocktail hour at 5:00 p.m. on Sunday. Greg and Dean Chabrier joined the group for cocktails with their twin one year girls!

During dinner, Drew started to complain that his stomach was brothering him. He ended up getting sick about 10:00 p.m. Sunday night. Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of our problems...

Almanor... Every summer since 1988, sixteen straight years and counting, a group of families has spent a week at the Dorado Inn at Lake Almanor. The core group has included the Hunter's, Tomasin's, Bachman's, Wallen's and Heringer's with appearances over the years by the Snipes', Nooter's, Chabrier's, Foss', Geselbracht and Connor. When we started going there, Morgan and Drew were one and three years old, respectively.

The week includes lots of time on the boat with skis, wake boards, knee boards and tubes, lunches at the Hamburger Hut at the Lassen View Resort, horseshoes, Dinner at Plumas Pines, midnight boat rides across the lake, pool and shuffleboard at the Ranch House, 21 aces and some great sunsets.