Practically Penniless in Portland

With the Seattle Temple closed for two weeks, Jim and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to take off for Portland for a couple of days and attend the temple there.  We stayed at a great Marriott Residence Inn that was within walking distance of the temple, Deseret Book, and a bunch of restaurants, and only a five-minute drive to those other important places like Costco, Winco and Best Buy.  We did not love the fact that our reservations were lost in cyber-space and that somehow, our credit card number was on some other Walton lady’s reservation for 5-days in July, which means that for the 3rd time in two years, we will have to cancel our VISA and get a new card or pay for her vacation.  We did love the fireplace, the kitchen, and the feeling of the privacy of a condo instead of being in a hotel-type atmosphere.  In fact, you have just witnessed a new Walton family tradition in the making--we will be back there next spring when the temple closes.  Thursday night after we arrived and ate a great Mexican meal we brought and cooked right in our own kitchen, we walked around the neighborhood to see what all was out there.  We had planned on using our Olive Garden gift card for dinner Friday night, since Olive Garden was a block away, but there was a little something lacking in the ambiance at the moment and the timing just wasn’t right.  Maybe next time. Thursday night after putting a log on the fire, we started the new “Emma” movie put out by BBC last month and am happy to report that I just found my new favoritest movie.  Considering the fact that I detest the A&E  version of “Emma” that we already have, I was really worried about this 5-hour long version—but we loved it.  Rather sad that the big TV there by the fire had no DVD player.  We both had our lap tops, but the level and quality of sound coming out of a lap top isn’t exactly meant for 50-year old ears and we missed a lot of what was said.  The upside of this is that we can watch it with the kids again this week.

Friday morning we got ready to go to the temple and as Jim stood in front of the mirror threading his belt through his suit pants, he couldn’t do up his belt. He looked again and realized he had put his brown belt on his black suit pants.  He started laughing at his silly mistake, and as he went to take off his brown belt, he realized that he already had on his black belt underneath his brown belt.  This was enough to keep him merrily chuckling  for the next five minutes. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a wonderful experience at the temple and spent a long time in the Celestial Room after the session.  The Portland Temple Celestial Room is unique in that there is a loft floor there that looks out over the main part of the Celestial Room with couches and more beautiful chandeliers with double marble staircases going up to it.  After getting changed, we went down to the cafeteria for lunch.  I followed Jim as we went through the line and put the food we had chosen on our trays.  I noticed that Jim didn’t seem to be getting out of there too quickly and the line was building up behind me.  I finally realized that we had a little problem.  Jim thought he still had his $20 in his wallet. Well, he didn’t.  Now what?  Did they need dishwashers back there?  My poor husband was standing there counting his measly seven dollar bills over again hoping that something would change, but came up with seven every time.  Since his lunch was already rung up, they finally decided to put back most of my lunch and we ended up sharing his.  Too bad the temple doesn’t take VISA—ours is still good for another day or two.  Well, we spent the rest of the afternoon spending more of Jim’s money.  Oregon has no sales tax so we decided to take advantage of that little detail and buy some things we had been thinking about but hadn’t done yet.  It was really quite fun.  Sometimes I actually do like to shop.  We went back to the temple Friday night for an evening session, and it was rather a coincidence that we were again asked to be the witness couple like we had been that morning.

One of the things we had bought that afternoon was speakers – with a subwoofer mind you – for Jim’s computer and so when we watched the second half of “Emma” Friday night, we actually heard and enjoyed it even more.  We slept in Saturday, ate breakfast at the Marriott breakfast buffet again at no charge, and after spending some delightful time at Deseret Book and spending the rest of Jim’s money, we had a sunny drive home.  What a great weekend!