26 Crazy Things That Happend to Me on My Mission in Scotland

I thought I was too cool to do these cheesy list things. I actually had fun writing it. Cheese can be good.

1. Glasgow (Cathkin): Trying to land burnt pieces of toast on top of the phone “box” (booth) thrown from our 14th floor balcony.
2. Glasgow (Cathkin): President McConkie starting our first one-on-one interview with the question: “Well Elder Jensen, have you ever heard of bleach? Your shirt is looking pretty gray.” Nice to see you too President, I thought. I was mortified.
3. Somewhere in Glasgow: One Friday night we tracted into 11 drunk people in a row. Perhaps this isn’t too crazy.
4. Glasgow (Cathkin): From our 14th floor balcony, regularly seeing a woman gazing from her balcony in the next high-flat over. We named “Miss Lonely Heart.” We decided to go knock on her door. A few months later, she was baptized. Great memory.
5. An unendowed Zone Leader/companion (the London Temple was closed for renovations at the time) who wore leopard print skivvies.
6. Edinburgh: 9:30PM each night Elder England and I held “TIF” meetings that we told others we “had” to go to. Here’s the secret…TIF = tennis is fun.
7. Baptizing 4 different women named Karen. All of them in different areas.
8. Dalkeith: Baptizing Karen Fairgrieve (now Beveridge) in a font of brown water. Very unsightly. However, our clothes remained white. Great memory.
9. Edinburgh: Jumping our Ford Fiesta 26 feet off a hump-back bridge.
10. Edinburgh: Going to the Pat Metheny concert and meeting him back stage while in my suit and nametag. He was very gracious. He must have thought I was nuts. President Swanney gave me permission to go. He was still “green.” McConkie wouldn’t have allowed it. Great memory.
11. Edinburgh: A young woman investigator who had a severe crush on the Zone Leader’s Companion. We finally got her to pray. Here’s the word-for-word text of that prayer: “Heavenly Father. We thank thee for Elder Hunt; We ask thee for Elder Hunt. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.”
12. Glasgow (Springboig): Elder Frank and I greeted with “F*** the Mormans” spray painted on the side of our new flat.
13. Glasgow (Springboig): One morning, my daily ritual of drying my wet, semi-polyester suit by kneeling in front of the gas heater resulted in it catching fire and melting into my leg.
14. Glasgow (Springboig): Getting to know Sister Green and her 11 year old twin girls. My brother Rich—in the then Scotland/Northern Ireland Mission—taught and baptized her 10 years earlier!
15. Glasgow (Springboig): In the pre-caller ID days, at the precise time of week I regularly received the “stats call” from Elder Kay, I received a “Happy Birthday” call from sweet (and very proper, I might add) Sister Swanney. Thinking it was Elder Kay, I answered, “Hey dude, what’s going on?” Imagine Sister Swanney’s (and my) surprise…
16. Dumfries: Sleeping out on the roof of the garage on P-Day Eves. Elder Martindale and I even ate our morning Wheetos out there. Good times.
17. Dumfries: Way out in the country, we set fire to a pile of old suits on top of a stone monument commemorating the Battle of Waterloo. Missionaries do the dumbest things…
18. Dumfries: “Falling” into the moat at the Carlaverock Castle and a little English boy shouted, “Look mummy someone has fallen into the water!”
19. Lockerbie: Getting a call the morning after a dinner appointment. “Are you guys feeling okay? We’ve discovered there was bleach in the milk we served last night.” We felt just fine. Amazing.
20. Glasgow (Govan): Teaching and baptizing a great guy named Hugh D. Brown. Not to be confused with the late Apostle, Hugh B. Brown.
21. Dumfermline: Freezing cold winter and the heater was broken. So, we heated the house by leaving the full-blast lit stove burners on all night. This one could have qualified us for a Darwin Award.
22. Dumfries: Getting a free kilt and shoes from a guy we befriended who owned a kilt shop. The reason? His horse had just won and he cashed in his bookie bet.
23. Dumfries: Somewhere on Holy Island (just off the west coast) there are two trees planted in honor of Elder Bentley and myself. Long story…
24. Eating Donner Kababs. (see the BBC story that says they have 1,000 – 2,000 calories each!)
25. All areas: Having so much fun on P-Days that we had to do preparation (e.g. grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning the flat) on other days. Lame, I know.
26. All areas: Telling the cheeky street kids who cursed at us incessantly, “no matter what you yell at us, never, ever yell Joseph Smith is a Prophet of God.” Naturally, they would yell it to us every time we came around. Great memory.

Sinatra, Jobim & Lou Rawls

Sorry I've fallen of the blogging wagon. I'll get going again in earnest when my life gets back to normal. In the mean time, enjoy these videos.

Frank Sinatra with Antonio Carlos Jobim. Wow! Wow! Wow! Makes me wish I lived in this era. I love medleys...


Lou Rawls on the Muppet Show singing "Groovy People." Primo artist, primo show, primo song. What else could you want?

Reflections on a New Year

January is a doubly (Is that a word? Or just what David St. Hubbins girlfriend on Spinal Tap called Dolby?) reflective time of year for me. It's the New Year and my birthday.

In years past I've complained that it is a dark, cold, unfestive time to have a birthday. True, true, and true. However, this year I've decided to embrace my Capricorniness (another cool made-up word) and think about all the great things I have in my life.

For example:

• Soft-serv & snow-cones (the picture makes me smile)
  
• 3 super sweet girls who love their daddy
  
• A lovely and amazing wife
  
• A certainty about God and the purpose of life
• A rat-free basement (ask me about that one later)
• The Earth Wind and Fire music catalog
• 2 smurf figurines (Brainy and Vanity, in case you we're wondering)
• A Ute football team that went undefeated
• A dented Saab
• A love for learning
• A love of 99.999% of people (I'm an extreme extrovert)
  
• The best mom ever who taught me valuable life-skills from how to sew to the lyrics of Burt Bacharach tunes (Happy Birthday today Mom!)
  
• Friends from all eras of my life (thanks Facebook!)
• A sister who happens to my favorite artist--I have 20 of her works on display for my daily viewing pleasure
• A evergreen, optimistic outlook. 2009 here I come!

It's going to be a great year. Happy new year everybody.

"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" as a parenting tool

Why are my kids so wild? Why do other kids their age seem so well behaved? December, excess sugar, no naps, and the craziness of the Christmas season had turned Aja & Anna into demons...then I discovered the manipulative lyrics of...

"You better watch out,
you better not cry,
you better not pout,
I'm telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming to town.
He's makin' a list,
He's checkin' it twice,
Gonna find out who's naughts and who's nice,
Santa Claus is coming to town.
He see's you when you're sleeping,
He knows when you're awake,
He know if you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake."

I want to publicly thank the stressed out parent who penned these lyrics. They have been a godsend this last week. What parenting trickery can I rely on when January rolls around?

(thanks to our friend Matt Molen for the great photo)

A reason to live in NYC

This high-rise under construction in NYC was designed by the same firm that did the "Bird's Nest" in Beijing. If we were trust-fund heirs this would be one of our residences in 2010. Very cool video below.

Project: Herzog & de Meuron - 56 Leonard Street, NYC
Location: 56 Leonard Street, Tribeca Historic District of Manhattan, New York City
Construction Commences: Fall 2008
Projected Occupancy: Fall 2010
Design Architect: Herzog & de Meuron, Basel, Switzerland


56 Leonard Street from david basulto on Vimeo.

60 Dollar Fireplace Makeover

I wasn't feeling the love from our gas fireplace.

Problem #1: We went for the supposedly groovy glass-chips fireplace look. It's a contemporary alternative to fake logs. Yet, the glass chips I selected we're purple and they looked like a pile of crushed coal. Hardly eco-friendly chic.

Solution #1: Cover the glass-chips with Mexican River Rock. These gray, monocrome, uniform disks look super cool with blue flames shooting out. Our groovy English friend Dominic Green gave us this idea. It's a good look. I'm pleased.

Problem #2: The hearth was a cheesy piece of gray specked marble from 1989 (when the house was built). It even had a few chipped corners. Aside from the look, I'm not a huge fan of marble, because it is so cold...figuratively and literally.

Solution #2: I ripped out the marble slab. We replaced it with a red, shiny, translucent 1/2 inch resin panel. In honor of the BCS bound Utah Utes (just joking, but it's fun to get a reaction from die-hard BYU fans). Because the panel is translucent, we put a birch vaneer scrap I got free from Lowes under it...so you can see the wood grain through the red panel. We fastened the panel with star-drive finishing screws to give it a rivited, industrial look.

The panel is made from recycled plastics from a company called 3-form from my home state of Utah. We have a couple other 3-form installations in the house. We love the stuff. It's from their "reclaim" or scraps department. It's much less expensive than marble, and in my opinion much more visually interesting...not to mention it's not cold to the touch.

How to score cheap hotel rooms!

Everyone loves a good bargain. Here are some tips and websites that I use to stretch my travel dollar. The picture is of the Grand Hotel in Florence, Italy. Carmen and I stayed in this room in 2003. We felt like royalty!

A better way to use Priceline. Before I found biddingfortravel.com, I always wondered if I had overbid for the rooms I booked on Priceline. Biddingfortravel is a message board on which people post their winning Priceline bids for hotels in cities around the world. This helps you get closer to the lowest price that Priceline will accept. The site also has great advice for how to get multiple re-bids in the same cities & hotel class without having to wait 72 hours. Pretty tricky. Check it out.

If you must stay at a Marriott. Use their "look no further guarantee". If you find a Marriott room cheaper somewhere else, they will beat that price by 25%. Here's what you do to get the best deal:

a) book your room by calling Marriott telephone reservations (888 236 2427);
b) place your reservation on a 24hr hold (no need to give a credit card number);
c) meanwhile look for the same hotel room on a hotel aggregator site like Mobissimo or Kayak...you will probally find a better deal than what Marriott offered;
d) finally fill out the claim form and within 24 hours Marriott will beat the rate by 25%.

I just did this an scored a room in Vancouver BC for $70 rather than the $170 that Marriott initially offered. Now I can spend that $100 I saved on gelato and dim-sum.

Bonus section - Airfare. Farecast.com is a great site that uses an advanced algorithm to accurately tell consumers when they should book in order to get the best deal. Just put in the date and the route you want to fly, and it will tell you to either buy now or wait for a better deal. If you hate seeing a better deal come along after you've already booked as much as I do...then you'll love this site! Happy travels!

Funny sidenote: I stole the happy travels phrase from the travel guru Rick Steves, who I saw in-the-flesh in Bath, England ordering a Whopper at Burger King. Pretty ironic based on the "get to know the locals" approach he espouses. I have pictures to prove it!