we'll figure something out

— पांच हजार तीन सौ पैंतीस — I am now less convinced that I won't make tomorrow's deadline for the "2022 in Ten Minutes" video. I may still not make it, I'm not sure; it depends on whether I can dedicate my evening tonight to finishing it. I basically dedicated my evening last night to starting it: I got iMovie opened, created the "2022 in Ten Minutes" project, and got all the video clips and photos I wanted included put in there. I may later find there was something I might otherwise have considered vital that I forgot to include, but whatever. I'd rather get the thing done before we ring in 2023, if we can. Shobhit and I just made burritos out of leftovers last night. He had asked me to make rice and chop an onion, thinking we would heat up lentil packets. But I suggested burritos again using the leftover eggplant dish he made a few days ago (not his usual "eggplant squash" this time, but sauteed and spiced fried pieces of eggplant, with other vegetables), and he decided we wouldn't need the onion, which I already chopped. It's being stored in water in a container in the fridge. Anyway, I was happy to have rice to add to the eggplant that is a tad too spicy, and we also added some shredded cheese. It made for a pretty tasty, relatively light dinner. I ate in the living room with Shobhit while he watched his news programs. I didn't want to suggest any of the shows we need to catch up on because I wanted to work on my video. — पांच हजार तीन सौ पैंतीस — — पांच हजार तीन सौ पैंतीस — Shivvy, Shobhit's niece who's staying with us, clearly has a fiercely independent streak. Not that she shouldn't, necessarily, at age 22. I had to remind Shobhit, who got really irritated that she wouldn't let him come pick her up from the ferry terminal, that she's an adult and can make her own decisions. She insisted she wanted to take the bus, but he was afraid of her waiting for the bus downtown at night. This was at like 8:00 on a Thursday though so she really was fine. She apparently got on a ferry to Bainbridge Island at 4:00. She didn't catch a ferry back until 7:20, which was delayed. She commented on how there was nothing to do over there, which is true, so I don't really know why she didn't bother to take any of the three other earlier ferries she could have taken back, but whatever. I had thought we might take her up the Space Needle and on the Seattle Great Wheel this weekend. She's decided she's just going to take herself up the Space Needle at sunset time today. Okay, whatever. She also said, "I don't like wheels," meaning ferris wheels I guess. "They're too slow." I told her it's really high and gives a great view of the city but she didn't seem to care. I did tell her about the observatory at Columbia Tower, which she seemed relatively interested in—but, I just looked online and it appears they are closed for a special New Year's Eve event tomorrow. Dammit! I wonder if the Smith Tower is an option tomorrow afternoon? Shit. Just checked: nope. Goddammit. We can still do either of those things on Sunday or Monday maybe. So at the moment the only thing I know for certain we'll be doing tomorrow is going to watch the Space Needle fireworks at midnight. If it's still open maybe we can take Shivvy to the "Teddy Bear Suite" at the Fairmont Hotel. I don't think Shobhit has been to it yet either. We'll see, I guess. We'll figure something out. — पांच हजार तीन सौ पैंतीस — [posted 12:27 pm]

2022 at PCC

Sunday, January 2: Return to Work-from-Home Heyyy, do you guys remember the good old days of the Omicron Wave? After I had returned to daily working at the office at the end of June 2021, and then took calculated risks with holiday gatherings over Christmas, I went ahead and returned to work from home for the month of January as a tactical move, until Omicron had peaked and waned again. So here, we see my home work station set up yet again, now with an old TV monitor as my external monitor, so I didn't have to go through the rigmarole of dismantling my dual monitors at work again. I have no idea how much of a difference it really made to work from home that month . . . I wound up with covid in April anyway.

Friday, January 14 "Conference Room" mode on Zoom. The unnatural relative proportions of people on this video call cracked me up.

Wednesday, January 19: PCC Downtown opens Guess who showed up in the Seattle Times the day PCC Downtown opened! Okay, sure, a lot of people. But a particularly special one can be seen in a black pea coat there at the far left.

Friday, January 28: goodbye dinner with Scott This was Tracy's idea: a goodbye dinner for Scott, who decided after twenty years that it was time to blow this joint. We went out to eat at Tanoor, just the four of us: Scott, Tracy, Noah and myself.

Monday, February 7 Have I ever mentioned how I never, ever tire of the view from our 5th floor office on the waterfront? Technically the railroad tracks and Myrtle Edwards Park are between us and the waterfront but I think you would agree this is close enough.

Tuesday, February 22 Snowy view from our office, looking south toward downtown, in February. After the snow we had the week before Christmas and the ice storm we had on December 23, this now looks positively quaint.

Wednesday, April 6 On the day of Mary's 20th anniversary lunch, we got to talking about the infamous "Zebra Printer," which was supposed to print out our store herb and spice jar labels but never, ever worked. IT finally found a way to retire that godforsaken printer, and in December 2006 we had a joint party with Merchandising and IT, at which I was promised I could take the printer outside and smash it to pieces with a sledgehammer. Our Director of IT at the time, Gary—who has since passed away—said he had a sledgehammer at home that he would bring for this. But on the day of the party, he forgot it. And I have never, ever forgotten this: Gary just went across the street from our central office location at the time, to Hardwick's Hardware store (which themselves closed after 88 years of business in 2020), and bought a brand new sledgehammer, just so I could still smash the hated printer! It remains one of my favorite moments in my own time at PCC, which was also 20 years as of August. I have long since kept a cutout of the photo of me wielding that sledgehammer at my work station. I had totally forgotten that IT actually kept that sledgehammer—and Mary informed me the day of her lunch that they still have it! She took me to it in one of the IT supply rooms so I could get an updated picture. They've kept it for the past 15 years, with "IT SLEDGEHAMMER" stickered alongside the handle.

Monday, April 18: covid-19 penetrates my home Hey look, my covid test is on the right, and it's negative! That was Shobhit's test on the left, though. He very generously brought it home from work as a gift. I'll never forget the sinking feeling I got when Shobhit texted me at work that Monday, telling me he had a fever. I knew it had finally caught up with us. I packed up my stuff for what I already knew would be a second stint working from home this year, and tested us both as soon as I got home. I worked from home the next day, feeling progressively worse and not knowing if I was truly getting sick or manifesting it with my worry. It was also inevitable, though, and by Tuesday afternoon I also tested positive, my second line much more faint yet still unmistakable. I spent most of the next three days in bed; postponed this year's Birth Week vacation that had originally been scheduled to start that Friday by a week; and continued to work from home the next week instead of having to wear a mask at the office that week until ten days had passed. My Birth Week vacation followed that, so for the second half of April and the first week of May, nearly three weeks, I was away from the office again.

Wednesday, May 11 Not knowing how soon Elin would be moving across the country to the Greater Atlanta area, Scott and I coordinated another lunch just the three of us, just like old times, something we were doing at least annually before the pandemic. This was my first time seeing her since 2019, by far the longest I had gone without seeing her. We're hoping to make this happen at least once more before she moves. And then one day I'll just go visit her!

Wednesday, June 8: Pride at PCC This year for Pride, instead of marching in the Pride Parade as has happened many years in the past, PCC instead sold these fantastic Pride socks that also supported the Trevor Project. Should I upload this photo to WikiFeet?

Friday, August 5: Matthew's 20th Anniversary at PCC A major milestone for me: 20 years working at PCC. I never worked any other job longer than 14 months before this. I was 26 years old when I was hired here. After all this time, I have worked my way up to . . . a different title for the same position! Three times! I've been a Merchandising Assistant, a Merchandising Specialist, an Assistant Merchandiser, and—least clear of all!—a Center Store Support Specialist. You can call me "Csss" for short. Anyway, Eric very sweetly organized a party for me. He did his damnedest to get some beloved retired staff members I once worked with to come back to the office for it, and at the very least, Scott did. I did not begrudge those who did not, given the pandemic has never truly ended, and for many it would have been a rather long distance to travel from the homes where they live their retirement lives, not to mention the number of current staff who regularly work from home. Had the pandemic never happened, I am certain a much larger crowd would have come, but under the circumstances, the 14 people who did come, I considered to be a great turnout. Eric was openly disappointed that he couldn't manage to get more people there, but his ample efforts—including samosas and pakoras and more ordered in from Saffron Grill, Shobhit's and my favorite Indian restaurant (Shobhit also came)—were greatly appreciated.

Friday, August 12 When Shobhit and I were both down for the count with covid, Cathryn offered to order us a lunch delivered one day. Shobhit has an especially hard time accepting that kind of generosity, particularly from people he doesn't really know, but we brokered a deal: I told her we'd let her buy us lunch if she'd agree to come over for dinner sometime after we recovered, to partake in Shobhit's famous homemade Indian food. Cathryn was all about it. As it happened, I had long been telling Lynne that we would have her over for dinner once the pandemic chilled out enough to make it possible. I even reminded her of that once again when she herself retired from PCC at the end of 2021. So, when this deal with Cathryn came up, I suggested we just plan for a dinner with both of them (and their plus-ones, as you can see). I think I can safely say that, once this dinner finally got to happen in August, it was a hit.

Wednesday, August 31: Office Barbecue First office social event of the year! It had been quite a while, since the holiday events in late 2021. I was able to bring nine samosas Shobhit had made, which were a hit as always. Not quite enough for everyone—he used the last of dough he'd previously made to make puris—so it was very much a "while supplies last" kind of thing.

Thursday, October 20 Smoke, smoke smoke. And the regional wildfires seem to go later into the year every time: August in 2018; September in 2020; well into October in 2022. This year we even managed two days of air quality worse than Delhi, which usually has the worst in the world. It really tends to muck up our beautiful views from the office.

Monday, October 31: Halloween at PCC My very well-received Halloween costume: "Crazy Cat Lady." I must thank Tracy for giving me the idea, which I was very excited to have after having no ideas for much later than usual.

Friday, November 4: Kathy Retires (On Her Birthday) Oh sure, a bunch of people come out of the woodwork for Kathy's party, I see how it is! Okay, I guess you could say Kathy's 42 years at PCC was literally more than twice the achievement my 20 years has been. Fine! Also, I wasn't retiring. Maybe I'll get more people at my retirement party too, huh? (Probably not the fellow retirees who already came to Kathy's party. Let's not get too deep into why.) Here Kathy is with former CFO Randy, who retired in 2017 and still holds the record for longest employment here, at 46 years. I was told at Kathy's party, though, that one Reed Handyside will come very close to that record: 45 years next year, apparently. If I make it here 45 years, I'll be 71 years old. That's hardly unheard of; we had one or two retirees over the past decade who were over 70 before they left. I'll probably still be changing prices. With an even more obscure title.

Wednesday, November 30: PCC Harvest Potluck An annual office tradition I was more than happy to be part of making sure it still happened—in fact, this year for the first time I wound up on not one, but two events committees. I can't say I did a huge amount of work on either one, but hey, I have ideas! And: I take pictures, which alone seems to go increasingly appreciated.

Thursday, December 1: Miracle On 2nd Amanda, me, Mackenzie and Noah, all taken out for drinks by Katy at UNFI, at the "Christmas popup" that transformed Rob Roy on 2nd Avenue.

Wednesday, December 7: Merchandising Department Holiday Night Out About two thirds of the Merchandising Department (17 out of 26) showed up to make pasta at Pasta Casalinga in Pike Place Market, and 15 are either visible or barely visible in this shot alone. Note the rolling pins hanging above and behind us, which make for charming decor. The cutting board is apparently designed specifically for making pasta dough, we were told.

Friday, December 16: PCC Ugly Sweater Brunch Ugly Sweater Group Shot 2022! I had to get shots of Leon and Robin separately because they had been in a meeting. We've now got a nice history of these ugly sweater group shots going.