Well, sir, it was a pretty good meeting with a pretty good turnout and pretty good food and a pretty good speaker.  If you ask this writer, I'd say it was a pretty good meeting.  It led off with President Sean kissing Neil's tookus for the fine job Neil did greeting almost everybody that entered the room.
 
 
                               Neil greets Tom at the door
 
                         Tom is still smiling moments later
 
Anyway, we then got on to the business of starting the motor and it was Clarence who remembered to say, "I pledge..." and the next thing you know, everyone joined in to help him along.  T'was then time for the house tenor, Conrade Mayer to lead us in God Bless America and he did a great job.. well, okay, a pretty danged good job... strike that, it was an above average job.  Okay, let's give him the benefit of the doubt; it was really good for a change.
 
  About that time, your writer entered the food line and didn't hear a thing for almost 10 minutes, so if you heard anything interesting after GBA, let me know and we'll add it next week.  We were lucky to have Beth and her granddaughter Layla with us today, so the usual scatological material was nowhere in evidence.  After a fine lunch of cold cut sandwiches and pasta presented by head chef Dave Maestas, the Prez got into the announcing business and again, this writer may have inadvertently nodded off for just a few precious seconds.
 
After that, old Doc Chapman got up and began to outline an aggressive membership recruitment effort that the Club is going to launch shortly.  This is Rotary Membership Month and so we're going to focus initially on attracting new members to our Club and the geezer promised that next week, co-chair Gary Spainhower is going to announce some incentives for members to bring in eligible guests.  More to follow, but the key message is this: if our members don't bring guests that are willing to become engaged in community service, we will continue to shrink and some point our viability may become questionable.  Our plea to our members is this: bring a guest, a neighbor, a friend, a business owner or operator you know; you won't regret it.
 
It wasn't long after this brief diatribe by the big fella that we had another unfortunate incident with the weekly drawing, which drew comparisons to the Clinton Foundation, when Beth's Layla chose Beth's ticket in the drawing.  The subsequent heat was so overwhelming that Layla quickly bailed out on granny and picked a white ball for the effort.  Not sure what the prize was...  Layla, honey, you are always welcome at our Rotary Club...:-) 
 
                  Less than half the room is comatose...
 
As one might imagine there was an overwhelming urge for most of us to clear the room when it was announced that Clarence was Sarge for the month.  The fining began with standard 'Paul Pin Infraction' and continued on with the ex-pres noting that his badge wasn't correct, for which he paid a handsome sawbuck.  Moving on to birthdays and anniversaries, perhaps the highlight was Merlin 'double-dipping' so to speak with one of each.  When prodded, he admitted to his 88th birthday, but couldn't recall which anniversary.  It was then reported that Tracy McLinn also is a double-dipper this month, but no one had the nerve to ask her how old she was.  Chapman got caught having forgotten his anniversary and Ross Johnson also paid for his 47th anniversary to his bride Sandy, who he reportedly married in a foxhole in a foreign country that rhymes with Nyet Ham...(I believe that's Russian for "We don't have any ham.")
 
Tom Redmon celebrated the departure of his family with some semi-serious bucks and then the Sarge nailed Gary Spainhower for plugging his business by having the Chamber of Commerce hold a ribbon-cutting at his new office on Olson Drive.  The Sarge came down hard on Prez Sean for not having learned the acronyms IPOTS and ROTS... shame, shame... where is this Club headed?  Good/fun Sarge's session...
 
With that, the President arose and introduced our guest speaker and partner in our upcoming community service project, Dennis Lamantia.  Dennis is the president and long-time member of the Rancho Cordova Little League and gave an excellent overview of Little League operations and history and then he talked about our partnership in rehabbing one or more of the ball fields that Little League uses.
 
                     Dennis Lamantia, Little League President
 
       Conrade grills Dennis after his excellent presentation while Clarence does cataract surgery
 
 This is going to be a great project for our Club.  After his talk, Dennis took questions and comments and before you knew it, the meeting evaporated like Tanqueray gin on a hot sidewalk.  Don't ask me how I know that...
 
Good meeting.