Above: my favorite artifact at
Titanic: The Exhibition. It was the one thing in there that could not possibly be more Matthew-coded. Back when my Birth Week theme was "Boating & Waterfronts" (
2019), I shared the length of all the vessels whenever I could—and compared that to the height of buildings turned on their sides!
What was the tallest building in the world in 1912, anyway?
The Woolworth Building in New York City: completed 1912, 791 ft tall, 55 floors, a record not beat until 1930. (This excludes the Eiffel Tower in Paris, built 1889 and 906 ft fall, categorized separately as a "tower" and not a "building.") The length of the
Titanic was 882 ft.
Anyway. I did not post a regular Daily Lunch Update (DLU) earlier today for two reasons. First, too many things kept coming up to divert my attention all morning, which was very annoying, with a level of stress only exacerbated by a stupid text argument I had with Shobhit about whether we'll ever get another cat. He's making bonkers arguments steeped in wildly illogical anthropomorphism and a refusal to understand that cats don't die of depression and neither did ours. To be fair, he's coming from a place of pain that he's expressing in a different way because it's still too soon and he misses them. Still, by the time noon rolled around, I went out on the patio to read a book instead of trying to work on a draft of a post, because I truly needed a genuine break, in spite of the fact that I would not be working all afternoon.
Which brings me to the next reason: we had our "Department Social" today, the kind of thing we once thought was committed to being done once a quarter—and the last time we did one was
last summer. One thing or another kept postponing the idea: a holiday outing was precluded by the closure of the Downtown store; the winter idea of an outing to the Seattle Art Museum was precluded by the threat of a strike among union workers at stores; further postponements occurred to one budgetary reason or another, and here we are.
I should make more of an effort to research ideas I can put forth for outings. It can't be that hard, the size of our group (23, I think) notwithstanding. Having ideas to begin with seems to be a big part of the challenge, and people like Dave or Justine always seem too busy to spend much time brainstorming. I mean, we all are. But this is important to me, so it may be one thing I'm actually willing to put some effort into outside of work hours.
Gabby worked the morning at home and planned to drive in for this. Amy sat it out because she had already gone not very long ago. So, Gabby drove to the office first and picked me up. Kevin had come over to my desk at one point to ask if I knew exactly where the exhibition is located so he could figure out what bus to take. I told him I was sure Gabby would be happy to give him a ride, which he accepted.
There was another point where Mackenzie came by my desk and asked if either Brandy (who sits behind me, the few days she's in the office) or I wanted to share an Uber with her. I told her Gabby had said she had room for two more, and Mackenzie meandered away, presumably to see if anyone else wanted to take up Gabby on the offer. And then, several people actually decided to walk the 1.4 miles down the waterfront to the location: Justine, Tracy, Dave, Mackenzie—they all walked. This was kind of funny to me because at first Gabby's suggestion was to park at the office and then we walk together, and when I told her that although it was a fine walk for me, it might be farther than she'd want to walk—she then changed her mind and said she would drive us.
Kevin has a prosthetic leg, so it would take like twice as long for him to walk anyway. In the end Gabby just drove him and me. We were among the first to arrive; I think I only saw Steven sitting right inside the door when we got there. Kevin and I waited outside until the walkers arrived, but after Gabby went in to use the bathroom, she hung inside the entrance with Steven, and then Adrienne, until we all went inside.
After having seen the exhibition, I have somewhat mixed feelings about it. I have been deeply fascinated by the sinking of the
Titanic ever since I was a teenager, and I found a lot of it very interesting. On the other hand, I was hoping for something a lot more interactive than this, which was mostly straightforward museum style. There's a few diorama-like replicas of first-class and third-class state rooms, but you can't go inside them. There's a ton of blown-up and backlit photographs mounted on the walls.
I did love the giant scale model showing a cross section of the entire ship, miniature replicas of furniture, passengers and machinery in all the rooms and on all the floors. That might have been my second-favorite thing on display. The only truly interactive part was a replica of a hallway to first-class staterooms you walked through, from one section of the exhibition to another.
I think we might have done well to rethink this outing as a so-called "team building" exercise had anyone known before tickets were purchased that it's a very individual experience: the only way to get all you can out of it is to walk through the whole thing listening to narration on a pair of headphones. We took a group photo outside before going in (I'm still hoping to have Tracy send me a copy of that), but once inside, there was no sense of doing this "together" aside from walking past each other in silence.
We even had a chance to vote on a few different options. The only reason I voted for
Titanic: The Exhibition was because a) I was genuinely interested in it and probably would never go otherwise; and b) the Seattle Aquarium was another option, and any other time I would have voted or that, but I am already planning to go with Danielle to see the new Ocean Pavilion and I didn't want to have to go twice in such a short period of time. In short, I voted for this for purely selfish reasons. So sue me!
I could tell that Gabby wasn't super into it. She clearly didn't think a story this much of a downer, about thousands of people dying in a tragic event, was the best idea for a team outing. There's no way she actually listened to all of the narration; when I finished and came outside, she said, "Matthew! I thought you were never going to come out!" Well, I wasn't interested in skipping any of the narration. Especially when someone else bought my ticket for me, I was going to get PCC's money's worth!
We did have more of an interactive time for maybe an hour after that: about half of us decided to go out for a drink. There were several minutes trying to decide where to go that could accommodate a group our size, and ultimately Adrienne suggested
The Owl 'N Thistle, an Irish pub in Pioneer Square only a few blocks away.
Let's see if I can remember everyone who went there. Justine sat to my right, near the end of the three tables we pushed together. Gabby, who came last because she had to go move her car, sat at the end of the table, between Justine and Erik. Going further around beyond Erik, there was Adrienne who sat across from me, then Noah, then Amanda, then Dave, then Mackenzie on the other side of Kevin from me, and then Kevin to my left. So there were ten of us.
I shared some of the French fries Adrienne ordered. Several dishes were ordered for the table. Justine tried to convince me to order food, but I was already planning to make pizza for dinner tonight while Shobhit was working, at Shobhit's request. We all had a drink, though, and Kevin and I were the only two who ordered cocktails; everyone else had a beer of some kind. I had a Moscow Mule, and it was probably the most mediocre Moscow Mule I've ever had. I love to order that drink because it's a bit different everywhere and almost always delicious. This one was underwhelming. Good thing I didn't have to pay for it!
There was a lot of talking shop, which was fine and to be expected. It was nice just go go out and hang out and a much more casual environment than usual. A post-exhibition outing somewhere really should have been planned beforehand, as it felt rather loose in not the best way when trying to figure out what to do once we were all done with the exhibition. But whatever, it was still nice. And now I'll need to spend tomorrow trying to get done all the things I could not do this morning because of shit that kept coming up.
[posted 9:00 pm]
