October 20, 2023 Lunch - Poke fried Rice Dinner - Neighborhood Party

October 20, 2023 Lunch - Poke fried Rice   Dinner - Neighborhood Party 

This was a great day for lots of reasons.  I finalizing two Purchase Agreements for a hotel purchase, my son’s 38th birthday, and a lovely  Neighborhood Party.

Food was secondary but it was really good. 

At 11:30 I stir fried the PPI poke, snow peas, and Napa cabbage with 3 oz. of onion and two sliced small mushrooms and rice and then added three eggs and cooked the mixture into a congee soft mixture with bits of undercooked egg and bits of cooked egg.  I love this type of dish better than the firmly cooked egg Foo young because it is not fried as egg Foo young often is and because you can taste each of the ingredients because they are in a soft matrix.

I spent most of the day editing and negotiating the final drafts of a land purchase and a hotel purchase agreement with two different attorneys and my client.

It is hard to describe the dynamic that goes into negotiating a contract to purchase a $5 million hotel, but it is very exciting as it comes together in a final draft when you are dealing with intelligent lawyers on the other side of the transaction. They understand the deal points and the law at a very high level and both are trying to get the best deal for their client while trying to make the deal. In this deal as in other successful deals they accepted several of my last minute changes because they were rational and objective about the need for the changes and I was able to convince them that the changes were necessary and reasonable.

By 5:30 I had finalized the contracts and helped my client sign and send the signed contracts to the sellers.

I then made a salami and Gouda sandwich on a slice of Bosque South Valley Sourdough bread and watched some news and the news was breathtaking.  A second Trump lawyer, Cheseboro, who was a co-conspirator with Trump and Giuliani to overturn the result of the 2020 election had pleased guilty to a felony charge in the Fulton County, Georgia, criminal case.  More interestingly it became known that the first Trump attorney to plea yesterday, Sidney Powell, had made a video tape recording as a proffer of evidence to the prosecution that probably detailed the elements and persons who conspired in the plot to overturn the election.

Both lawyers also agreed to testify truthfully in and trial of the other 16 co-defendants. 

Two other take always for me.  These two lawyers surely knew they would lose their license to practice law because of their convictions and they plead in the Georgia case without a plea deal in Jack Smith’s federal January 6th case, which means their truthful testimony might expose them to conviction of federal crimes and jail time. Not a happy thought for them and their co-defendants, including Trump and Giuliani. 

I am thrilled that Justice is being served finally.

After I ate my sandwich I opened the large can of dolmas and arranged them on a platter with a mound of green olives.

At 7:00 we drove to the Neighborhood Party at Erika and John  Robbenhaar’s house.  There was a group of about ten neighbors who gathered around a fire in a fire pit on their back patio and lots of interesting food and beverages.  We took a new bottle of Albariño Suzette was tasting for her Spanish journey meal at the Bistro next month name Columnor that was very good and will be featured with the meal.

John is a US federal magistrate judge and Erika is a mosaic artist and has a store that teaches art classes downtown. They are both lovely people and they have a boules court like we do.

We left around 9:30 and came home. Suzette went to bed and I watched news until 12:00.

Bon Appetit