Stripped Bare (1/13/24)

For 23 years I have had a beautiful office at Durham Jones & Pinegar, which is now known as Dentons.  On January 13, 2024, Camille and Steve came with Dave and me to strip the office bare.  I will retire as a shareholder on January 31, 2024, although I will remain as senior counsel until I tire completely of practicing law.  Camille surveyed my oriental rug, purple armchair, side chairs upholstered in black silk, and array of oriental prints.  She decided they would look great in her newly remodeled Holladay living room.  I was delighted!  I have loved those furnishings, chosen by the same decorator who designed our St. George home.  I am glad someone else will love them, as well. 

The office looked bare after the furnishings were removed.

The view out the 24th story window was still beautiful, however.

 I waited in the lobby of my office building, guarding the furnishings, as Steve and Camille pulled up with their car to take my treasures home.

Away they went, in the back of Camille's SUV!

Deere Jonny (1/11/24)

Jonny invited Dave and me to meet him at the Deere booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 11, 2024.  CES is the largest consumer electronics conference in the world.  The conference expands through the huge Las Vegas conference center and throughout large hotels in the city.  Attending it was one of my bucket list items.  

Snowstorms raged throughout the U.S. on January 10, and we were amazed to find snow on the ground in St. George when we woke up to drive to Las Vegas and attend the show.

We picked up our tickets at the Wynn Hotel, and the decor immediately told us we were in Vegas!

The closest parking to the Conference Center was half a mile away.  As we hurried to the Conference Center, we noticed how many attendees were Asian.  "There is a huge Korean contingent here," Jonny told us.  Much technology innovation is in Asia, and many American tech people are also Asian.  

I enjoyed reading the timeline of 100 years of innovation, which brought back memories of our first computer (1986), our first CD, our first cell phone.

We looked over the sea of booths and displays and people, showcasing a huge variety of consumer innovations, from gaming to fintech (banking), to satellites, to home appliances, to vehicles.

When we arrived at the Deere booth, we were delighted to find my brother Scott there, along with his daughter, Liz.  Liz is considering writing her Harvard Ph.D thesis on innovation in agriculture.

Liz took this photo of Scott and me while standing on a rung of one of the three huge agricultural machines Deere had placed in its booth.

We enjoyed watching Jonny "do his thing," i.e. introduce visitors to Deere's machines and innovations.  Jonny was scheduled to show five U.S. senators around the booth on January 12, 2024.

While Dave and I waited for Jonny to finish his work day, we wandered among the health and fitness booths.  Rings that measured blood pressure and other health statistics were a big thing.  The booth above sold a yoga mat that showed, on a nearby computer screen, what you were going right and wrong on your yoga poses! 

We were particularly intrigued by the displays of robots.  

These dog-like robots walked up and down stairs and, when they fell over, they flipped from their backs onto their feet in one smooth jump!

In the evening, we ate dinner with Jonny at an excellent Asian restaurant, "Red," in the Wynn Hotel.

One of life's greatest luxuries is for Dave and me to have leisurely talks with our children and grandchildren.

Jonny spent the night at the Bellagio, with the rest of the 100-member Deere team who set up and manned the Deere booth. 

Jonny spent Friday, January 12, back at the Deere booth, but Dave and I drove to nearby Hoover Dam for a tour deep into the bowels of the earth to see how the dam was built and how it now generates vast amounts of electricity.

The spectacular bridge over the dam is named after Pat Tillman, an NFL player who patriotically left his team to fight in Afghanistan, and was killed there.

Huge pipes pull water from the Colorado River, via Lake Mead, through the dam.

These turbines, 35 stories below ground, turn water power into electricity.

Our guide led us through tunnels deep underground, where we could see water seeping through the rock walls.  The dam was constructed during the depths of the Depression, in the 1930s, and the dam contractors hired 3500 of the 20,000 men who applied for work.

We were intrigued by a sign on a cafe in Boulder City, advertising "Cornish pasties."  I had read about those pies, which miners in Cornwall, England, took in their lunch pails into the coal mine, but I had never tasted one.  I ordered the traditional roast beef, potato, and rutabaga pastie, with brown gravy to pour over it.  It was delicious!

The dessert was "banofree", a pie with grahm cracker crust, caramel, whipped cream, and sliced bananas on top.  Our waitress said that the restaurant served recipes from the owner's Cornish family.

The walls of the cafe had photographs of the 1930's contractors for Hoover Dam.  After our trip to Hoover Dam, we picked Jonny up in Las Vegas and spent seven hours talking with him, as we drove home to Salt Lake!

Rouladen, Spaetzl, et al. (1/7/23)

The theme at my January 7, 2023 dinner was "Germany" and the menu was rouladen, spaetzl, rye bread, and rot greut.  Liz Calder flies back to Boston this week and I offered her a German meal before she left, since she was an LDS missionary in Germany.  "What shall we have for dessert?" I asked Liz and my brother, Scott.  "Rot greut," Liz suggested, and, after some Google research, I obtained a recipe for that compote of red fruits--strawberries, raspberries, and cherries.  "It tastes just like what I bought in the grocery store in Frankfurt," Scott said approvingly.  The whole family helped to put on the meal, including Jonny snipping the kitchen twine from the rouladen.  Rouladen are beef rolls stuffed with mustard, pickle, and bacon, roasted in a savory sauce.

Good dinner parties include spirited conversation.  See how intently the family around the dinner table are listening to Camille.  After dinner, each guest shared a memory or fact about Germany.

I love to meet my children's and grandchildren's friends.

Before and after dinner, the guests laughed and talked.

The little guys roamed my house, talking their own language and only reaching to the other guests' knees!

Audrey took her usual Sunday nap on the living room couch, oblivious to the commotion about her.

Downstairs, Jonny's boys celebrated their freedom, at Grandma's house, from their usual restrictions on "screens."

And when it was all over, Grandma and her helpers cleared up the mess!

* Thank you to Mia Ebert for these great pictures!

Popcorn and Ten Touches (1/1/24)

Jonny is always searching for fun things to do with his boys.  On New Years Day 2024, Jonny invited Dave and me to attend the new film, "Boys in the Boat," with Sam, Henry, and him.

We picked up Jonny and the boys at Jonny's house, where Jenny had just made a pancake breakfast.

Sam and Henry both take piano lessons, and Henry played one of his new pieces.

Jonny and Jenny had just received new leather dining room and living room chairs.  We tried them out and expressed how much we liked them!

We talked about New Years resolutions.  Jonny said he had encouraged Jenny to adopt, as one of her resolutions, to touch him at least ten times per day.  Jenny immediately leapt into Jonny's lap to show her progress!  I asked Dave is he wanted me to adopt that resolution, as well!

We then left for our movie, where Jonny treated us all to a big box of popcorn.

It was a very fun event.