Odds and Ends from April and May

The time since London and Paris has been filled with Easter and all the usual stuff. The dentist pulled my tooth that gave me so much trouble on our trip abroad. An attempted root canal showed it was cracked and couldn't be saved. An implant in the final tooth position at the back of the mouth is highly subject to failure. So the best option was to pull the sucker out and live with one less molar. The extraction took place on 1 May and the healing is underway. This will serve as a trigger warning for those who don't want to see the bloody tooth below. Also, I seem to be the watchdog of the park with demands for tree watering during construction, replacing cement broken by the contractors, and now replacing a section of sunken asphalt that formed a trip hazard.

Trying to kill the saudades (longings) for France with
some celeri remoulade and soupe a l'ognion


A rainy Easter


Lamb and all the accompaniments


Coconut cake is traditional (for now)


Group dinner at the Ostergars - Phil Freestone is the
new President of the Provo Temple


A new (to us) Brazilian eatery


Kreg brought one of his flower arrangements to Cousins' Breakfast


Emily and Jayson headed off to England


Timp on a beautiful morning walk


Rock Canyon Creek is starting to flow with runoff


Long and difficult roots came out in several pieces


I reported this trip hazard on the walking path to the city
and they responded within just a couple of days


Tearing out the sunken asphalt


Ready for new paving


Finished

That's all for now, but we are headed to AZ and TX, so there will be more.

OXO

D.

Vernal Visit

Shortly after returning home from Paris and London, on 12 April, we drove to Vernal to see how the Colvers are settling in. It was great to see that they are, in fact, getting settled and seem to be enjoying life a lot.

 Living room is very comfortable

 The new pieces are great in the room

 Master bedroom

 Master bath

 Also master bath

 Family room

 Kids' bedroom

Kids/guest bath

 Stairs down to the kitchen

 Guest room where Arthur is sleeping temporarily

 Kitchen

 Dining room

 Don Pedro's north of Vernal

 Good, but not La Casita good

 Evy was excited to show us the Dinosaur Museum

 Not surprisingly, they have dinosaurs

 And fantastic fossils

 This girl loves it all

 This boy loves his momma

The Colvers in Vernal

It makes me happy that they are doing so well. That's all for now.

OXO

D.

London 2019 Day Six

It hardly counts as a day in London, but that's where it started, and it ended in Provo. We left our great flat at 16 Linden Gardens and took a car service that Annie arranged to Heathrow for our flight. Everything went swimmingly and after a very long direct Delta flight, we arrived at SLC where another car met us and brought us home. Everything went off without a hitch.

 Dining and sitting area of our flat

 The original fireplace from the Victorian Era when

the houses on the street were built

 Dining and kitchen

 Our bathroom (1 of 2)

 Our bedroom

 Heathrow is always slammed

 There are some nice bits up front, but overall Heathrow 

is a drab and uninspired airport

Flight 51 direct from LHR to SLC

This was a great trip! I fell in love with Paris all over again. It is a magical place and I would say that the Paris leg of our adventure was my favorite. London is broken. It was still fun, but everything is torn up and under hoarding and scaffolding. There are no English people on the streets or in the shops, but Eastern Europeans primarily. I have a romantic memory of a London that really doesn't exist anymore. After Paris, the food didn't seem as good, plus my tooth was killing me and that may have put a damper on my enjoyment. It certainly made it harder to eat. In spite of all that, London still feels like home, but less magical than in the past. We are home now, and this will be all for now.

OXO

D.

London 2019 Day Five

Rain was predicted for the afternoon, so we tried to get our adventure done this morning. SKT and AW had tickets for a showing of Clockwork Orange, so we split up. Kris and I bussed up the hill to Kenwood House. The ride is wonderful, traveling through the heart of London, then up through new high-density developments behind King's Cross and St. Pancras International Stations, and then along lots of pleasant older middle-class streets. When one changes buses at Archway Station and heads up into Highgate, the real estate becomes leafy, green, refined, and posh. Kenwood is lovely and has a small but wonderful collection of art. Because the rain started as we were leaving, we headed back to Oxford Street and M&S to pick up a spiffy rain coat for Kris and some soup for a late lunch. When Stephen and Ann returned, we went for a last supper at De Amicis, an Italian restaurant around the corner, and Stephen and I had a small cup of gelato to finish off the meal.

Mid morning on a Sunday, Oxford Street was all ours

From Selfridges to Oxford Circus in just eight seconds 

 There was no view of "the rooftops of London" from the Heath today

 Robert Adam's redesign of Kenwood House

 A beautiful late-winter day

 These aren't my favorite (as Evy likes to say), but they 

were nice today

 These look like azaleas, but not so sure -- awfully pretty though

 A cozy fire in the coal grate in the entry hall at Kenwood

 Library

 This house makes me feel like I have stepped into an 

English period drama

 One of two really wonderful Rembrandts at Kenwood

 One of 43 Vermeers in the world

 Georgian-era row houses in Bloomsbury taken through the 

 front window at the top of the 390 bus

 We didn't go in, but Selfridges, the grand dame of Oxford Street, 

is more interesting than its simpler cousin next door, 

Marks and Spencer, where we did go in

 Sitting area of our flat has a small black message board and a bowl

of letters so guests can create personalized messages

Annie has done her part to keep us entertained

 Over the years I have walked past this place hundreds

of times, but this was the first time we have eaten there,

and it was very good

 bruschetta

 Veal, tagliatelli with fungi, bolognese, and sea bass

New gelato shop where Starbucks used to be

We are packing and getting ready for our Delta flight direct to SLC tomorrow morning. We can watch lots of movies going west because there is no reason to try and sleep to avoid jet lag (which for me is always worse flying west toward home). See you soon.

OXO

D.