I took Colin and a friend mini-golfing at Airway Hills. Some times he gets a little impatient waiting for everyone to finish their putts and he moves on to the next hole. I probably hollered at him to wait. When I looked up he was sitting like this:
I'm pretty sure he got this from Phineas & Ferb.
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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.
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.
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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....
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We also played a little Blackjack, as has become our tradition.]]>
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'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.
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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.
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We've contacted our lawyer and expect the patent to be filed soon.
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