The McWessels

As most of you know, I'm privileged to be able to work remotely for a great company whose headquarters are in Virginia. I travel there a few times each year to remind my coworkers what I look like and spend some quality time with my boss manager. I was there this week at the company's new headquarters in Reston:

Previously the employees were split between three buildings in two different locations. Now almost everyone is in this building and even I have my own cubicle, which I fully expect to be used for storage by the time of my next visit later this year.

The new building has a cafeteria (the sodas are free but empty cups cost $1.25), underground parking (watch out for the speed bumps), and a workout room. Meanwhile, here in Moscow, my drafty office occasionally smells like pot when the people downstairs get stressed out from printing and selling t-shirts.

Just returned from a work-related trip to our old stomping grounds, Boulder. The flight arrived in Denver with a slight delay due to snow. I had planned to take the RTD bus from the airport to Boulder, as I have done hundreds of times while living there. Unfortunately, this brought back only bad memories of standing in the cold waiting for a bus that was 20 minutes late, not knowing when it might choose to arrive. I gave up and got a rental car, trading abuse by RTD for abuse by Hertz. The drive to Boulder was pretty exciting in the small (oh, excuse me, "midsize") rental car with lots of slush and blowing snow on the roads.

After our meeting ended, A bunch of us went to the West End for beers until about 9:30. Walking along the Pearl Street Mall back to the Boulderado, it was eerily quiet. Maybe it was the cold. Or, more likely, maybe the student's weren't back yet.

It was impossible to not notice how pretty the Boulder Theater looked with its lit marquee, dangling Christmas lights and spectrum of colors. So at about 10pm I went back out with my camera and got some pictures of it that I like quite a lot. Fortunately, due to the lack of people, there were no cars parked on 14th Street.

After the photo shoot I warmed up with some hot chocolate and delicious apple pie at the Corner Bar. In the following days I managed to visit a number of other old favorites, including the Mountain Sun, Snarf's and McGuckin's.

The highlight came on the last day when Alex and Mariya invited myself, Scott, Bronwyn, and Ken and Mary (just back from Europe) over for an exceptional authentic Russian dinner and new home tour. I managed to eat the minimum required number of dumplings, so as not to insult the hosts, but I think I had a few too many chocolates.

It was a dreary day so we took Zachary bowling with us at Zeppoz over in Pullman. No waiting for a lane, but they put us on lane 1. This lane was not level. Little boys can't throw the ball very hard, so nearly each one drifted over to the left. The bumper on that side was soft as well, so if the ball touched that side it just stayed there. There was much frustration among the bowlers.

After bowling we blew through quite a few tokens in the Zeppoz arcade. Just a few of the games were out of order. C & Z took turns playing the one working H2Overdrive!

I get a little thrill whenever I wander down the peanut butter aisle at the Rosauer's grocer store here in town. This Wessels Honey is made, not too far away, in Greencreek, Idaho, where my Dad grew up. "Graduated 10th in his class.... out of 11."

Elmer is my Dad's cousin. Elmer's father (Albert) and my grandfather were brothers. Elmer and my Dad were roommates during college, and both went on to become teachers.

I need to visit Greencreek again one of these days....

Grandpa Roy came to visit a few days after Christmas. After helping install some new lights in the basement and lunch at the local sports bar, he took on his two favorite grandsons in a 2-against-1 match of ping pong.

We also played a little Blackjack, as has become our tradition.

Both my parents grew up in small towns in Idaho County. It's a large county (8,500 mi²) with a small population (about 16,000).  That's a population density of about 2 persons per square mile. Compare to, say, Manhattan, which has 70,000 persons per square mile.

Grangeville is the largest town in Idaho County. About 3,000 people live there. We often pass through, or at least very near, Grangeville if we drive south to McCall or Boise. Sometimes we go there to ski at Snowhaven. The picture below is the intersection of Main and Idaho Streets in Grangeville.

I was a bit blown away when my Mom recently remarked that this was the only traffic light in the whole county! Makes you wonder if it was installed only to meet some requirement that all U.S. counties must have at least one traffic light. Or perhaps it is job security for the county's lonely traffic engineer? Do they stock one spare replacement bulb? Compare, again, to Manhattan where, according to some random web page I found, there are about 2,800 traffic lights.

Some other fun facts about Idaho County:

• It was named "Idaho" before the State, and even the Territory, was.
• It is among the very few counties with more than one time zone.
• Nearly 7,000 mi² of the county are National Forest land. Only counties in Alaska have more.

Here's Colin catching up on work while on Thanksgiving vacation at Grandpa Roy's house.

A couple weeks ago we drove to Boise, making the long drive through Idaho's Heartland. One of my favorite spots along the way is the imaginary line representing 45° N latitude, also known as the 45th Parallel.

It's a special place for me for a couple of reasons. First, its just a cool geographic spot. Also, as kids we often went skiing at Brundage Mountain, where they have a run named "45th parallel." That was probably the first time it registered with me. Later, our family had a getaway cabin in the development then known as Kimberland Meadows. The turnoff from highway 95 is right at the sign and the turnoff road is named 45th parallel. So we "lived" very close to it for a while. On weekends.

Colin happened to ask "where are we?" about a mile before we got to the sign and without hesitation I answered "halfway between the equator and the north pole." He knows about the earth's poles, equator, and latitude, but didn't believe that I could possibly be telling the truth. It was great to have him read the sign as we passed it. On our way back we stopped for the picture.

We spent Thanksgiving this year with Grandpa Roy and Grandma Sue, down south in Boise town.

Dinner was very traditional -- turkey, dressing, cranberries, and both kinds of potatoes. It was exquisite! And for desert both pumpkin pie and cheesecake.

I forgot my "No, I won't fix your computer" shirt and was duly pressed into tech support. At least the solutions were simple!

Bradleigh and I stayed up late and witnessed the spectacle of Best Buy at midnight first hand. We stood in three lines. The only one that moved faster than 2 feet/hour was the one to get in the store. Once inside it was just ridiculously slow and stupid. We left without opening our wallets.

Colin and I spent a few quality hours at Pojo's, where they had all-you-can-eat bumper cars. He must've gone 25 times!

Back at the ranch, when we weren't playing the Wii, we played blackjack with Grandpa Roy's good poker chips. Maybe next year we'll graduate to five card stud.