Oh what a dinner

So I arrived in Salt Lake City about midnight Thursday, slept through some coughing fits, and then awoke to a beautiful, clear, chilly Friday morning. Lots of snow still cover the mountains all around the valley here. And the view from Mardie's front window toward Mt. Olympus is spectacular! They took me to a great little Mexican place for lunch (yeah, it was good, even in Utah) where we had fish tacos, carnitas tacos, and carne asada tacos (with Dos Equis, of course).

Mardie had to go to a meeting at the University in the afternoon, so Mona and I went shopping! Three hours later, we had a new surround sound receiver, upconverting DVD player, universal remote, and a few other little goodies. When we picked up Mardie, she took us to the Red Butte Botanical Gardens at the University, which was pretty cool. The daffodils are starting to bloom, and the gardens were very nice. That would be a great place to get away from the busyness of life for a couple of hours, especially if you worked or went to school at the University.

Even though all of that made for quite a good day, we topped it off with a wonderful dining experience. We headed to The Gateway with plans to go to the Brazilian restaurant that we had found during the Olympics in 2002. Well, we found it easily enough, except that it said it was opening in a few months. Huh? We ate there 6 years ago! But, we were hungry and instead of trying to figure out what had happened, we headed to Flemings Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar.

Oh my.

Without a doubt, this is one of the top five best dinners I've ever had. We were even sitting at the bar, because it was an hour wait for a table when we got there around 8:00pm. It didn't matter. It was...fantastic! And then, they began bringing us food.

Oh my.

I had the 22oz bone-in ribeye. Oh my. Mona had the Veal chop. Yum. Mardie had scallops. Probably the best scallops I've ever tasted (and Utah is a land-locked state!). Wine, hefeweizen, grilled asparagus, chipotle macaroni and cheese (this ain't your mama's mac-n-cheese!), and then...cheesecake. With blueberries. And chantilly cream. Oh my!

Honestly, we didn't want to leave. But it was 10:00pm, and we were getting pretty sleepy. Wow - what a meal.

So today, I'm the geek squad for Mardie, installing all the new stereo components, fixing the old ones that weren't connected properly, hanging speakers on walls, fun stuff like that. And, well, it's time to get started...