Saturday notes

Rough week.

1. Deposed- Has anyone gone through a deposition? Probably not, but now I have. What a terrible experience. Even though I had a top notch LA defense attorney beside me, and the plaintiff attorney was pretty cool, it was very grueling. 5 hours of straight questioning. I can't tell you how many times I stated "I don't recall".
2. Wedding Ring- I get a call yesterday on my way home from work from a balling Carol. I can't even understand what she is trying to say since she is crying so badly. After she calms down slightly, she tells me that she thinks she lost her wedding rings in the parking lot of Target. She was putting lotion on her hands in the car, put the rings in her lap, then forgot about them and exited the car and they must of dumped into the parking lot. How long ago I asked? Two hours. Strangely I wasn't mad. All I could think about was how would I leverage this into something awesome for me? Crazy enough we found the rings under a truck. Nothing missing and no damage. After we got home, I went on this rant about how I was going to put stripper poles in and Ben and I were getting hookers that night.
3. Last night Ben, Carol, and I went out for some drinks. Somehow we got o the subject of who have you slept with that had the ugliest body. Mine of course was the linebacker (the back of a Ray Lewis). But Ben trumps this with a girl from Yuma named "Spongebob Square Pants". That alone sent Carol, Lee (we called him), and myself into a hysterics. The story behind it was even better, so when you see Ben next time make sure you ask him about it.
4. College Football- As most of you know I gave up gambling on college football two weeks ago. 1-10 was a sign that I should stop. Well, I can't stop. Took West VA, Terps, and USC today. I have a little bit of a problem.
5. For once I don't think that the cable news channels are doing the firestorms out here any justice. It is horrendous out here from Bakersfield to the Border. For reference purposes, that would entail Philly to Richmond. Now just imagine that everything from Philly to Richmond has a heavy cover of smoke and ash. Have you ever seen is snow ash before? This is the second time for me. It gets old. Today is the first day that it doesn't smell like a campfire. What's wrong with the campfire smell? Its nice for the first hour, but 4 straight days and it is unbearable. I had Carol's friend Laurin, her husband, and her parents come stay with me since they were evacuated. Laurin's dad had to make a decision to either take a lot of their personal belongings in their Jeep, or leave everything and they take the Astin Martin? Let's just say that they had to take the Jeep, and when I left for work the next morning at 5:00am, the dad was getting up to go back down to the house to get the car.
6. Some interesting notes- San Diego County does not have a fire department. It is made up of little fire departments like the volunteer Hereford Fire Department. How is that allowed?
7. Ben text me on Wednesday telling me that Camp Pendelton was on fire that the fire jumped one of the hillsides and was heading towards the I-5 checkpoint. No fire department. No nothing. Just a huge wall of flames coming down towards their building. The wind changed at the last minute and they got an airdrop of water and luckily the fire fell short.
8. Can everyone stop comparing the fires to Katrina? Let's see what are the major differences? Slow and effective evacuations in SD allowed people to move to several locations that had plumbing and electricity. Supplies and assistance was easily able to get into these locations. Only one road was closed at the beginning (I-15). Christ all of our executive team was able to drive to Qualcomm to make breakfast outside and hand out different shit. Katrina was just a little bit different.
9. Insurance 101- I was on a conference call yesterday giving a status on all of the claims from the fires and someone from our Foremost company had to give a status on their claims. Foremost is a company that we bought 5-6 years ago that specialises in mobile and pre-fab homes. They were saying that one of the fires destroyed a trailer park that had 300 homes in Fallbrook. Someone asked how many homes do we have in the park and they responded with 150. Um...that's not good. In insurance, the max exposure that you want in a certain area is 25%. State Farm, which is the #1 insurance company hovers around 20% nation wide. How the hell do we have 50% of the trailer park? "Word of mouth" was the response from the marketing guy. We did such a great job selling to a couple of homes in the area, that word spread and everyone moved over to Foremost. Someone will probably lose their job over that.