so that's it

— पाँच हजार सात सौ उनतीस — It's done! It's all done! All of my end-of-year projects finished, and "released," so to speak. I posted my annual Book Log on Saturday morning. (Side note: the one book this has resulted in multiple people—specifically, Laney and Alexia—putting on their reading lists is Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson, what I would regard as the third-best book I read this year, behind Brave New World and Dune. It is thus the best of the new books I read this year. (It was published last year.)) I posted my top 10 and five worst movies of the year on Sunday morning. I sent out my "2024 at PCC" email this morning, already garnering lots of positive responses. And I posted my "2024 in Ten Minutes" video this morning, right after sending out the PCC email. All this is more than enough for me to work on every single year. I really need to get more disciplined about working on some of them earlier than I managed to get started on this year. I work on the Book Log draft with each book I finish as I go through the year; I should start a similar tack with any movie I give at least a solid A throughout the year—of which I did nine movies this year. I could stand to start working on the video earlier than just after Christmas as well. At least I finally dispensed with posting my most-listened-to albums and podcasts every year; that one likely had less interest than anything else I ever share. I need to say a couple of things about the "2024 at PCC" email, though. Jeff C, who left PCC after 25 years earlier this year, gave me an incredibly nice compliment on it. Every other year in the past, I used his PCC email for this annual photo retrospective, but this year I had to hunt down an email from his new business website. I'm so glad I did, given how articulate his response was: Thank you for sharing this. I always enjoy your missives, with their glimpses of and insights to the quirky gems hidden (in plain sight) in the day-to-day. Most of all, I appreciate you, your brilliance, your kindness, and the wonderful irreverence with which you bring all the aforementioned to bear. Then he wished me a "fabulous new year." I've had only one virtual meeting today, but as is typical, Gabby has had several. At 9:36 she sent me a message on Teams that Justine had joined a meeting 5 minutes late because she "said it was because she was engulfed by your pcc 2024 end of year email." Ha! Gabby herself was able to get to it about half an hour later, and she liked my Wilson Phillips-inspired band name for her, Amy and me, "Taylor McBui." We should record a music video. — पाँच हजार सात सौ उनतीस — — पाँच हजार सात सौ उनतीस — I walked home from work last night, and it actually did not take me long to finish up the small amount of clip editing I still had to do on the "2024 in Ten Minutes" video. I did that while eating my dinner, which was a veggie ham and cheese sandwich with sauteed mushrooms added which made it super delicious; and a cup of chai using the very last of the cow's milk still left in the refrigerator. When I had the video uploaded to Flickr, I soon after that got on FaceTime with Shobhit for a while. Longer than we'd stayed on since he got to India the day after Christmas, in fact. But, we disconnected when I told him I was about to vacuum. I did a fair amount of preparation last night for the arrival tonight of Jennifer and Matthew, with Ian and his girlfriend Bella from Alaska. I put linens and a blanket on the hide-a-bed in the living room; I vacuumed; I put several towels in the guest bathroom and made sure there was shampoo, conditioner and soap in that shower. (I'm pretty sure the shampoo and conditioner already in there was left by previous guests, I have no idea which, but it works.) In the middle of all this I was exchanging a lot of messages with Jennifer on Facebook Messenger, as we're still not sure what we'll be doing for dinner tonight or breakfast tomorrow, though we're getting close to settling on ideas. Tonight is going to depend a lot on when they can leave town and thus what time they can actually get here. For tomorrow I suggested Hudson Diner in south Seattle, which we can stop at on our way out of town toward Olympia. But, how busy they are and how long the wait is may be an issue; I need to come up with some backup ideas. So anyway. That's it for 2024! See you next year, which promises to be a lot worse! (I'll still make the best of it, because I'm me!) — पाँच हजार सात सौ उनतीस — [posted 12:31 pm]

2024 at PCC

Thursday, January 11 You'd think the people in Finance had never seen hail before!
Thursday, January 18 Shobhit and I browse the mostly empty aisles of the Downtown PCC store, which would permanently close the next day—coincidentally, on the two-year anniversary of its Grand Opening.
Sunday, February 18 When Shobhit, my friend Danielle, and I all went to the Madonna concert at Climate Pledge Arena, we parked at our office building, since it was easy free parking there, and then easily walked to the arena. First, we went up to the office to use the bathroom. I always liked the view of the Seattle Great Wheel from down the office hallway, and at night with all the lights off, I just thought it made for a lovely, colorful view.
Monday, February 19 Mark F emailed out a photo of this unprecedented sign program glitch and I was so astonished I had to save the image for posterity. And then, after I suggested to him that the sign program was haunted, he sent the actual tag to me in the courier.
Friday, February 23 It's not every day that you see a flood in your 5th floor office.
Thursday, April 18 Portrait of Jeff C at his retirement party. Which is, perhaps, the wrong term: he went on to embark on a different venture. I suppose it was more accurately a "Going Away Party." Earlier that month, I recorded a video of him and me greeting each other the way we'd been doing for a solid 20 years. And now I will share the very specific history behind that: it actually started with how he and Harvey, another beloved office staff person who left PCC in 2004(!), used to greet each other. They would say each other's names to each other, in an exaggeratedly deep voice: "Harvey Varga." "Jeff C*x." Then one day Jeff greeted me in the same deep-voiced enunciation of my full name, and I responded with a more high-pitched, nasal tone, just to switch it up, which cracked him up. And thus this oddball tradition was born.
Thursday, July 11 One of these cows suddenly leapt up and shouted "Haylent Green is Cattle!" I'm kidding! If any of these cows are inadvertent cannibals (cattlebals?), nobody said anything about it. Instead, they voluntarily walked right up to be milked by robots. Not creepy at all! This was on a tour of Styger Family Dairy, one of many Organic Valley farms in the Northwest.
Wednesday, July 24 A beautiful day for a Summer Office Barbecue.
Wednesday, August 7 Pricing & Promotions Team photo with Gabby, Amy and myself, at the Smith Tower Observatory Bar, celebrating my 22nd anniversary with PCC (which technically was on August 5).
Thursday, August 15 Amanda, myself, Amy and Gabby, in front of one of Wilc*x Family Farms' many mobile hen houses, on my second tour of Wilc*x Family Farms in as many years.
Thursday, August 29 I really, really love this shot. Tracy gave his phone to a staffer at Titanic: The Exhibition to take of us all right before we went in. After I asked Tracy to send it to me, I told him it's the kind of shot a whole lot of us will look at nostalgically decades from now. As of this date, there are 26 people in Merchandising. There are 21 in this photo, and two who came to the event but for some reason did not get in this shot: Benny, and Cathryn. Three people in Merchandising did not make it at all: Amy (who sat it out because she had already gone to this recently), Beth, and Stephen (not to be confused with Steven, who is in this shot). It would sure be great if we could one day get a shot this good with all 26 of us. It's too bad Tristan and Amanda are turned around here but whatever, you can't have everything.
Saturday, October 5 Big news! Probably the biggest news of 2024 for PCC: we are reopening our Downtown store, in late summer 2025. I took the above photo of the business tenant directory at Rainier Square Tower while showing my cousin and her boyfriend around on a Saturday in October. It's that large, unlabeled space in the center. That's what the Downtown store used to be, anyway—when it reopens, the unprecedented "small format store" will occupy only the lengthwise space to the right of it, with a width maybe 2/3 that of where it has a wall along the street. The rest of the space, to the left? That's going to be our new Central Office location.
Thursday, October 31 I joined the Office Relocation Project Team (perhaps we should start calling it Orpt), which is made up of one representative from each department, to be a liaison between this team and the respective departments. This meant I got to go with the team on a site visit to the old Downtown store, still locked up and filled with a lot of the furniture and fixtures that were there when the store closed in January. Here we stand in what used to be the store's public seating area and what will be the new office location's kitchen / break room, the only part of the office which will have natural light through windows to the outside. It's still a great location though, and that makes up for a lot!
Friday, November 8 I got tricked by an email phishing test. I am always so proud of myself when I catch them, and then I feel like such an idiot when I fall for one. And when that happens, I have to watch another stupid cyber safety training video. But guess what, while I watched all I could think about was this man's smoldering good looks. He deserves a better gig than this!
Friday, November 15 A tiny duck! Since sometime last year, someone has been placing these in odd little places around the office, just to be discovered. No one knows who is doing it. The mystery remains unsolved. Originally I had used this shot from June, but then I saw this duck in November and I really like this shot. I even started a photo album of these sightings, which now seem to be branching into new species.
Thursday, November 21 Oh and I also got selected as one of the three Q3 "Office Stars." No big deal! I suspect few people actually read these anyway. I mean, I almost never do. Some "Office Star" I am! Boy have I got all these people duped. BWAHAHAHAHA
Wednesday, December 4 Wonderful group shot out on our office balcony, at the annual "PCC Foraged Feast" holiday potluck—traditionally our "office Thanksgiving," but scheduled in December due to a variety of factors. I'd say let's play "Where's Matthew?" but I kind of stick out more than most in this group (or any group, really). This is a group of about 40 people, roughly a third of our total office staff, most of whom do not work in the office every day since returning to offices after the pandemic. I'm tempted to complain about this getting scheduled in December after Thanksgiving, rather than in November before Thanksgiving as has been done most years in the past, but I'm just grateful it still happened at all. This was our last one at the current office location, and how we can pull off anything similar at the new, much smaller office in the future is still very much an open question. Still, this did mean that we never got a separate, December holiday office event like usual, settling on this as a kind of hybrid of the two, and it bums me out a little not to get separate events in both November and December. But it's better than nothing!
Justine, Amanda and Cathryn hang out at Seattle Art Museum's "Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams" exhibit—still on display, through January 19, I highly recommend it! That said, this served as our Merchandising Department "holiday social" this year. It was so Christmasy! (It was not at all Christmasy.) I think I might have enjoyed it more than anyone else in our group, actually. Everyone was done and ready to go after about an hour, and I could have spent twice that much time there, if not more.
Look at this beautiful picture of us! We should start a band. Move over, Wilson Phillips! We are Taylor McBui. Anyway. Big day for Merchandising, December 4: all-office "Foraged Feast" in the late morning and early afternoon; department museum outing in the afternoon; and then, at my suggestion, out for Happy Hour at The Fonté Bar, so we could have some more directly social time on the day of our holiday outing. I even made the reservations myself, over my Thanksgiving break, I am so dedicated! I could have used this photo of the seven other coworkers who went up to Fonté Bar ahead of us and staked the seats around a marble coffee table by the fireplace, but, with all due respect to all those other wonderful people, it's just not as good a shot as this one. Also, we can't help it if we're the prettiest. Get over it! Fonté Bar is on the second floor, shared lobby space at Rainier Square by the way, beneath Rainier Square Tower, and directly above what will next year be our new office space.
Tuesday, December 24 Bonus! A little supplier anecdote for the end of your year: I was combing through my unread email messages after returning from PTO I took the four weekdays prior to Christmas (giving myself a full week off), and found one sent on Christmas Eve from Dale at our egg supplier W----- Family Farms, apologizing for having sent the wrong link in an email he had sent out the previous Friday, December 20. First I must tell you what he'd written in the original email: Hello everyone, All of us at W----- Family Farms wants to thank you for your support throughout 2024, and we wish you all a merry Christmas & New Year! See below link, to a special W----- Christmas video…it includes W-----’s from the 5th, 4th & 3rd generations. Then, in the follow-up email the following Tuesday (Christmas Eve), with a corrected link, he wrote, in part: This is the video that I thought I was sending out this past Friday. But instead, I sent the Christmas video with Santa enjoying a W----- hardboiled egg. I laughed so hard when I read this. It's a delightful note to end the year on.