Hot. Humid. Rainy. We got a lot done. Went to a Braves game. Ate at a nice restaurant. Got upgraded to first class on the way over. Did a lot of sketching for my Italy trip.
Every year at some point in the spring I come to the realization that I have been in a pseudo hybernatory state during the winter. I think of all of the possibilities of what I should be doing outside and wonder why I haven't been thinking about it before then. That moment occured to me this weekend. I had an awesome weekend. It started out in what turned out to be a double date on Friday night. We rode the train to SLC and toured my office and took a bus downtown and then tracks to City Creek Center. We watched the fountain choreographed to music and listened to music on the different speakers in the Bose store. Paul Harvey was right. We walked down to the gate way and ate dinner at the Taiphoon (I got confused and was calling it the psunami. We ended up just referring to it as the natural disaster restaurant). We had all kinds of wonderful dishes. We had a 50 minute wait on the train and invented a game based on pass the pigs where a map of City Creek center is spun on the table and wherever your pen lands while your eyes are closed earns a certain amount of points.
Saturday I went on a hike with RaeAnn. As you can see, there were lots of people there including a full ROTC unit doing some kind of training. After I drove up to Ogden to do a survey of the Weber County Main Library. Coincidentally, RaeAnn was going there to because that is where she waits four hours while her foster child visits her mother.
I went clothes shopping on my way home from that, then worked on modeling the library in 3D until 1am in the morning. I am not ready for it to be Monday yet.
My mission president came up from Brazil for general conference. I went to the reunion. Here is a picture of the dads holding the babies during the slide show. R.Cox and his wife in front of them.
Scott, the interior designer from Perkins + Will Architects found my camera in the back seat of his car. Since I am lucky to get my camera back, I am posting some of the Atlanta photos:
I booked our flights and hotel. We stayed at the Artmore because the Marriot was booked. It is really close to the MARTA train station, and very close to the Perkins + Will office as well.
We bought Calzones at a nice little pizza place just as they were closing, so we took our dinner back to the hotel courtyard and ate by the light of the water/fire sculpture.
P+W office. Very modern.
Here is the conference room where we lived for two days -- looking out on the open office space.
It was warm enough Thursday to eat lunch outside. Arrin Holt (FFKR) in the front, Scott Thompson (P+W) in the back.
View of a church from the deck at P+W.
P+W is at Midtown. There are different pockets of commercial centers around Atlanta with high rise buildings.
I am studying the Doctrine & Covenants right now. Reading it has reminded me of when we learned about Samuel H. Smith in institute. I think that we often don't make the connection about who he was and what he did. Here are some facts that helped me put the puzzle together. He is an amazing person.
1. Born three years after his brother, Joseph Smith.
2. He occasionally served as scribe for Joseph while he was translating the Book of Mormon and brought Oliver Cowdery to Joseph to be the full-time scribe.
3. He was the third person to be baptized into the Church.
4. He was one of the 8 witnesses of the golden plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated.
5. He was one of the original six members of the Church.
6. He is known as the first great missionary. Through Books of Mormon he had distributed, Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball found the Church.
7. While he was gone, the mob sent his wife and small children out of the house and into the rain and burned it to the ground. His wife became ill from the incident and never recovered. She died at age 32, leaving 3 small children behind. He remarried after that.
8. When he found out that his brothers Hyrum and Joseph were in trouble at Carthage, he rode in a wagon with a 14 year old boy to help them. The mob found out that he was Joseph's brother and chased him away into the woods. He returned home and got a horse and broke through the mob. They shot at him and a bullet went through his hat. He didn't make it to Carthage in time. He drove the wagon back to Nauvoo that held the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum.
9. When he arrived at Carthage, he had a severe pain in his side. This pain did not go away. His health declined and he died a month after Joseph and Hyrum.
Here is a link to an ensign article about the life of Samuel H. Smith:
"It was Samuel who helped chop the wood, plow the land, and harvest the crops in 1829 so that Joseph was free to translate the gold plates. It was Samuel who, as an early missionary during the years 1831–32, walked more than 4,000 miles through the Midwest and New England distributing copies of the Book of Mormon. It was Samuel who often helped his parents move as Joseph led the Saints from Ohio to Missouri to Illinois. And, in the end, it was Samuel who helped load the bodies of his martyred brothers, Joseph and Hyrum, into the wagons that carried them to Nauvoo. This was the pattern of Samuel’s life."
This is a link to a video posted on Youtube describing a dream WWPhelps recorded that Joseph Smith had before he died. It is called Joseph Smith's Last Dream.
Wednesday before Christmas, I got last minute tickets to the Jazz vs Portland game. The tickets came from Cache Valley Electric, who has a suite.
Here is the suite. We had fajitas for dinner.
The Jazz had a hard time passing the ball, but they still managed to win (They should try bounce passes. They are much less likely to be stolen).
Final score: Jazz 92, Portland 88.
New Years Eve John, Meli, Elena Julia and Pozzo relatives along with Crenshaws went to the home basketball game. John made each letter of the name Martineau that we held up at the end of the game when #14 Nick Martineau was in.
