Sunny Days.

I can't even remember when we had our last cloudy day here. It's been like early summer up north here for the past couple weeks. The folks just headed out of town yesterday after a nice weekend here. We visited Jax Beach and St. Augustine on Sunday. On Monday we road the Skyway around town, played some golf, and had dinner at the dog track. I shot a solid 87 at the course we played in Orange Park, but my driving is still erratic at best. We pooled our money at the dog track and bet 3 dog quinella boxes every race. We won two races and netted $10 on the night. My picking ability was particularly stellar that night. Through the first 7 races I had picked the winner 5 times. I thought that was pretty remarkable but the folks didn't seem too impressed. Or maybe they just didn't like me pointing it out every 5 minutes. That makes 3 trips to the track since I've been here and I'm yet to come away a loser. But give me time.

Work is good. I've been doing a lot of blue board, window and door installation, and siding. We are using hardy board siding now instead of vinyl which is much more labor intensive and less volunteer friendly. I used to be able to vinyl side a house in a day with a decent size group but it is taking us almost 3 days to side a house with hardy board. This week started the first of three weeks of "Collegiate Challenge." CC just means that a group of kids from one college will be here volunteering with us for a whole week. This week's group is from Penn State. I think all the girls got sunburned (or is it sunburnt?) the first day and now look pretty ridiculous. They are a good, hard working group. Today I worked with some back office operations people from Merrill Lynch. It was funny because it turns out that some of them work in variable annuities and have to deal with SEC exams sometimes. Also, last Saturday I met a regular volunteer who runs his own investment adviser out of his house with his wife. He said he has $71 million under management so he must be doing pretty well. I picked his brain for quite a while for some pointers on starting up my own adviser. I'll probably see him a few more times before I'm finished here. Speaking of investment advice, my last two stock picks (TLCV and OPMR) have been doing pretty well.

In other news, I received confirmation that two more friends will be making the trip down here at the end of March for a big golf weekend. I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully I'll bring my A-game. Time is running out for others to come for a visit. I'm happy to have you stay here as long as you remember to set the alarm when you leave the house in the morning.

I'm out of here on Sunday and won't be returning until next Thursday so there probably won't be another post for a while. Have a nice week.