A Distant Swimming Pool
Last Friday, after eight and a half months of hard work, shipping our new NextPage product finally seemed imminent. It wasn’t quite ready to go, but there wasn’t much stopping it. My boss announced he was taking the whole next week off.
Other people started saying they weren’t bothering to come in either, so I considered my own four weeks of vacation time remaining for the year, and Shannon’s long expressed desire for a family trip.
It was all good timing too, since our scheduled move to our new office building would be a major interruption to any serious work anyway. So we packed up, and were off to Moab by Monday afternoon. Shannon and the kids had made this trip last year without me, and thought it fun enough to do again as a whole family.
Ethan was excited about staying at a hotel. He hasn’t had enough pop culture exposure to ask, “Are we there yet?” Instead he incessantly asked, “When are we going to get to the hotel?” Gerrit just quietly sucked his thumb for much of the 3 1/2 hour drive.
The first order of business after checking into the hotel was to hit the swimming pool. We discovered over the next couple of days that a swimming pool is all that is required for Ethan to have a good vacation. In fact, other activities were just distractions to him.
We went to Arches National Park on Tuesday, and the novelty for Ethan lasted about half an hour before he started complaining that he wanted to go back to the hotel (presumably to go swimming).
Ethan, clearly thrilled to be here,
with Mamma & a wiggly Gerrit
September 12, 2000
Gerrit was fairly happy, especially when you put him down so that he could walk himself. He toddled all over the place, and even did one of our strenuous little hikes almost all by himself.
Gerrit and Daddy
September 12, 2000
Ethan finally started to come around after I talked to him about how neat all the rocks and arches were. You can’t always assume wonder comes automatically with kids. We talked about how those big holes got in the rocks — with wind and rain and sand hitting against them. I picked up a small flat rock and started throwing sand at it.
“How long do you think it will take me to make a hole by doing this?”
“A long time,” Ethan answered.
“Now imagine how long it would take to make that big hole up there!”
That was enough wonder to make the rest of the day bearable.
North Window
September 12, 2000
Still, though, you weren’t allowed to make too much of it all. Another park visitor was trying tell her companions how one formation looked like elephant heads. After a few minutes explaining where she saw ears, eyes and trunks, Ethan finally burst out, “Come on! It’s just a big hole!”
Turret Arch
September 12, 2000
The Wolfe Ranch was one of my favorite sites in the park. John Wolfe was a Civil War veteran who settled in the area with one of his sons to do some ranching. He was supposedly looking for a drier climate than his native Ohio because the dryness alleviated the pain from a war injury. I think he went a little extreme, though, because his log shack (‘cabin’ seems too generous) is in the middle of the desert. There isn’t a decent tree for miles, and the closest water supply was a stream that, at this late time in the summer, was more like a skinny pond for as much as the water was moving.
Ethan exploring the Wolfe “shack”
September 12, 2000
After a few years homesteading, one of John Wolfe’s daughters (daughters-in-law?) came out to live there with her husband and their children. She was appalled at the living conditions, and insisted that a better cabin be built, with a wood floor. This was a little better than the shack, but still no bigger than Gerrit’s bedroom in our house. To think that they had four adults, and who knows how many children, living in that thing is amazing. I now realize that I live in a mansion.
Ethan on the lookout
(finally back in the pool)
September 13, 2000
Switching Offices
Since I’ve officially worked for something like four companies, but have only had a desk in two different buildings, it seems high time to bridge the gap a little. To that end, we’ve made the move from our site in the Riverwoods Business Park out to Thanksgiving Point.
The old Folio/Open Market/NextPage, etc. building
September 14, 2000
When we first moved into the building in Riverwoods, there were two other buildings out there. Now, there are a half-dozen office buildings, an upscale mall, a movie theater, and some really nice restaurants. I guess someone was getting too uncomfortable with all that nice infrastructure, so we are now the only office building in the new park.
Old office on packing day
September 14, 2000
There were actually all kinds of reasons to move out to Thanksgiving Point. One minor reason, hardly worth mentioning, is that Alan Ashton, one of our principal investors, happens to own Thanksgiving Point, and paying rent to yourself seems like a pretty good plan.
The new NextPage building
September 16, 2000
And of course, Thanksgiving Point is also getting some interesting things going. There’s the dinosaur museum, complete with an IMAX theater, the animal park, the gardens (which are pretty cool), and an impressive golf course (if you like that kind of thing).
I’ll miss the old building mostly, though, because of the Sports Court it had in back. I’ve spent many a lunch hour playing volleyball and basketball back there. Our facilities manager promised us a court at the new building, but I’m starting to fear that he’s going to renege on that. There are some rumors that the business park will have some sort of indoor athletic facility, but that could be years away.
One last game of volleyball on the old court
September 14, 2000
But I unpacked into my new office yesterday, and noted a few evidences that we had really rushed the people putting the place together: a bunch of desks are built wrong, furniture is missing, I don’t have a name tag, etc.
The new digs
September 16, 2000
And in the sea of changing companies and buildings, a constant continues: I’ve still got my faithful chair.