Dreams of Porto

Porto, Portugal--can it really be this quaint and lovely?  I would love to go there someday.  In the meantime, I am perfecting my Portuguese cooking.

 On March 24, 2019, the Flindts (Spencer, Naomi, and Grant) joined us for a Portuguese feast.  They will be gone all summer making presentations and doing internships in Heidelberg, Florida, Slovakia, and Houston, so we enjoyed them while we could.

 I laid out my "tile" pattern, Portuguese runners and tablecloths, and we ate a savory sweet potato soup, braised beef, Portuguese paella, and an orange cinnamon cake for dessert.

 Our neighbor, Carol Garza, is a beloved regular.  She treats me with fancy knives, spatulas, and hand cream, and I keep serving food!

 We invited Herb and JoDee Flindt to join us, since our joint grandchildren were in town.

 We always enjoy Shauna and Alan.

As I did the dishes, I dreamed on about my trip to Porto.

Vegas Vagaries

 Dave had a psychology conference at the Tropicana Casino in Las Vegas from March 22 to 24, 2019.  I flew down Thursday night and we stayed until Saturday.  We are trying not to let it cramp our style, having to get home for Church on Sundays!

 I enjoy the bling and glitz of Vegas, so long as my visits are only for a few days.  My Uber driver from the airport to the Tropicana was a would-be stand-up comic, who spends every evening haunting the comedy clubs, trying to get his break.  Vegas is a city of dreams.

Dave and I made our pilgrimage to Primm, 30 minutes drive south of Vegas, on Thursday night.  It is never too early to begin assembling gifts for my Christmas table.

 The Williams Sonoma Outlet in Primm is irresistible.  I piled my cart high.

 On Friday morning, I took part in a conference call on one of my Utah developments, and I then spent the afternoon moseying along the Strip, as David finished his meetings.

 I stopped in at the new Eataly space, with its array of Italian restaurants and food shops.

 I inspected the imported cheeses and proscuitto, but spend my calories on a cannoli and gelato.

I wandered on to the Bellagio, where I checked out the latest installation of plants and structures in the Conservatory.  The theme was a Japanese teahouse in the spring.

I admired the tulips and dared to hope that spring would come soon to Salt Lake City, as well.

 Dave and I ate dinner at Il Fornaio, a fancy Italian restaurant at the Venetian.

 We then attended a performance by Earth Wind & Fire, a 70s rock band.

 We didn't recognize as many songs as we hoped, but we were impressed with how well the group had moved into the 2000s, with amazing special effects and a modern sound.  I wish I could do so well at retrofitting my 1970s body and soul!

 The Venetian auditorium was decorated like an Italian opera house, all red velvet and gold.  Pretense and hope--those are at the center of the sumptuous, gambling soul of Vegas.  We'll be back.

St. Patrick's Day

 Camille treated me to my 69th birthday party on St. Patrick's Day--March 17, 2019.  I provided the "Green Day" ornaments--leprechan hats and beards, and Irish posters.  My favorite poster proclaimed, "Tonight We're All Irish!"

 Mia humored her Grandma in posing in hat and beard.  During dinner, the Eberts related memories of their own trip to Ireland, visiting both Dublin and parts of Northern Ireland, where our Scotch-Irish Hamilton ancestors lived for 200 years, before coming to America.

 Dinner featured Old Country favorites--corned beef and cabbage, boiled potatoes, and soda bread.

I contributed a raspberry trifle for dessert.  Next year in Dublin!

Two Temples and the Old Idaho Penitentiary

"No, it will be fun," I keep promising David, as he travels around the West with me, helping me reach my goal of visiting ten new LDS temples each year.  We spent March 15 and 16, 2019, in Boise, Idaho.  We finished the five hour drive from SLC to Boise just in time for the 7 p.m. Boise Temple session.  It was a dark, chilly night, but the temple was filled with warmth and light.

I love this photo of the six-steepled Boise Temple, framed with summer flowers.  The Chicago, Dallas, Manila, and Taipei temples are of the same vintage (mid-1980s) and have similar designs.

 

Each temple has distinctive features.  The Boise Temple was filled with stained glass.  Not just one major piece, but a dozen.

The stained glass next to the baptismal font was particularly beautiful.

On Saturday morning, March 16, we visited the new Meridian Temple, on the outskirts of Boise.  It is massive, like a Meso-American temple.

The temple was decorated in blues and golds, representing the sky and harvest of the Idaho land.  I especially loved the murals of Idaho mountains and fields in the endowment rooms.

Mission accomplished.  After finishing our temple sessions, Dave parked by the Idaho statehouse.  While Dave answered the never-ending texts that follow him everywhere, as a bishop, I wandered through this beautiful old building and learned about Idaho history.  Idaho has struggled to forge a distinctive, unified identity.  Nevada and Washington have both tried to carve off pieces of it, and Idaho has, from the beginning, been an uneasy amalgam of its LDS, agrarian south and its non-LDS, resource-rich north (lumber, mining, tourism). 

Dave and I searched for a Basque restaurant for lunch, since many Basques settled in the Boise area.  "We serve paella only on Thursdays," our best bet informed us, so we chose soup and salad at this downtown pub.  I forgot to take a photo of our meal, so the best I could do was take a photo of our check!

Our last adventure was visiting the Old Idaho Penitentiary.  Boise is as much a part of the Old West as Cheyenne or Tucson.  This Penitentiary housed cons from the 1850s, when Idaho was just a territory, until the 1960s.  Our guide told tales of prisoners escaping by scaling the limestone walls and riding off on horses, or of digging beneath the walls with knives and spoons smuggled from the cafeteria.

The solitary confinement cells were barbaric.

I paused at the penitentiary shop to buy sheriff's badges for Sam and Henry.  I also bought a kit to make a lie detector.  "We need that around here," Jonny said.  "We hear some tall tales."

Straight from Bangkok

Mike's favorite city is Moscow.  I love lots of cities, but one favorite is Bangkok, Thailand.  I remember Dave's and my recent, almost dreamlike visit there, where our private guide took us on all types of transportation--tuk-tuk, river ferry, subway--to such unique experiences as visiting a Buddhist temple honoring female monks, touring a street filled with life-size Buddhas and gift baskets for monks, having my face "shaved" with a piece of string in Chinatown, and watching as our own prayer bowl was hammered out of a piece of metal.  

Bangkok is dizzyingly modern, with a traditional core of golden palaces.

On March 10, 2019, family members gathered for homemade Thai food.  I went shopping the day before at SLC's huge Chinese supermarket and dragged home such treasures as canned lychees and longans, fish sauce, and Thai green curry.  Let the cooking begin!

The meal included chicken in green curry sauce, beef with snow peas, and pad thai with shrimp.  We sampled homemade coconut and mango ice creams for dessert.

"We're foodies," Naomi described Spencer and herself.  Naomi was my right hand in cooking dinner.  The piece de resistance was the chicken in green curry sauce, which Naomi made in my new Instant Pot.

Mike knows the best Thai restaurants in town, including tiny Mom and Pop shops with pad thai to die for.  His endorsement of my dinner meant a lot.

"I don't know what this is," Alan often says warily, as I offer him exotic food.  He is a good sport, but his wife, Shauna, is a convert.  "I tell my kids what I eat at your house and they don't believe it," she says.  I think that's a compliment!

Finalist--CCIM Real Estate Lawyer of the Year

On March 9, 2019, family members gathered at The Grand America to see me honored as a finalist for the Utah chapter of CCIM's Real Estate Lawyer of the Year award.  CCIM is the national commercial brokers' trade organization.  Each year the Utah chapter presents more than a dozen awards, for best industrial broker, best office broker, best architect, best project, and many more categories.  I was a finalist in 2017 and 2019 for the real estate lawyer award.  It was a fancy, festive party, even though I didn't win.  As Mike listened to the live band and looked at all the guests in tuxes and sequins, he commented, "This is not how people in finance live."  It was a treat to be with family.  We sat at the Durham Jones Pinegar table and ate a gourmet meal, including a dessert bar with macarons and bread pudding with caramel sauce.  What a life!