I just spent an inordinate amount of time at home rearranging photos, photo sets, and photo set collections on Flickr -- all relating to Thanksgiving. This is because, after twelve years of combining the PCC Thanksgiving Feast (now called the Holiday Potluck) and the Thanksgiving Day photo set each year into one photo set, I finally decided I wanted a collection of just the holiday potlucks.

That meant creating 12 new photo sets (excluding 2008 as I missed it that year to go see Madonna in concert in Las Vegas); taking the stupid amount of time Flickr takes in dragging each one to their respective chronological positions among all of my photo sets; removing all the PCC Holiday Potluck photos no longer needed in the straight-up Thanksgiving photo sets; and creating separate collections of sets for each year since 2005, since now every year Thanksgiving will yield a collection of at least two photo sets: one of the PCC Holiday Feast and one of Thanksgiving itself.

That took meat least a couple of hours. Then I went through and captioned all of this year's 17 photos -- that part really didn't take too long. You can read them, and see the actual photos they are captioning, by clicking the above photo.

In any case, this potluck is why there was no DLU at the normal time today. Last night I made the eggnog quickbread (pictured below, also a link to the full photo set), which I will be making again next week for Thanksgiving itself at Gina and Beth's; and yet again next month when we go visit Mom, Bill and Christopher in Idaho. I had to modify the recipe yet again; the original says it takes up to 50 minutes for the single loaf to bake completely, and mine took fully 90.

I only got feedback from a couple of people on it today, but those who said something seemed to like it. I liked how it turned out. When I got up to leave once done with my meal, there was well over half of it left. After all the stuff was packed up and the kitchen cleaned, it was nowhere to be found. I think it might be wrapped up and deep in the refrigerator or something, I don't know.

Part of my rationale for not bringing anything last year or the year before was that potlucks always result in a massive excess of food, so there would be no shortage if I didn't bring anything. So I'm not sure if I'll do it again next year or not. Oddly, for the first time in ages I was never asked if I wanted to help set up. Last year and the year before, I didn't bring food but I did volunteer. This year I did not volunteer but I did bring food.

Also for the first time, there was a Field Roast Celebration Roast, for those of us who wanted a meat-like protein but did not eat turkey. Yay! I took a ton of that as leftovers when the call was put out to gather for that -- I took, like, eight slices. Topped some mushroom gravy on it. Then another container of parmesan mashed potatoes. The containers didn't seem stable enough for cramming into my bag to walk home with. I suppose I could have found a plastic bag with handles somewhere. Oh well; they should cover my lunches at work both tomorrow and Monday.

I actually sat with people I don't know very well -- two of the much newer employees, both hired within the past year for the newly formed Environmental Responsibility and Sustainability Department. Their names were Rebecca and Arianna, ages 29 and 34, respectively. They asked me how long I've worked for PCC and suddenly, having been there for fifteen years, I'm turning into one of the elder statesmen. I've still got nothing on Mimi, though -- whose co-retirement party with Sharon and Marilyn is coming up on December 1 -- she's been with PCC 39 years!

We all decided we'd like to have a Christmas (or "Holiday" as they will no doubt call it) party again, now that we have space to do it in this new office location -- we haven't had those, which back in the day were in off-site rented spaces like the Seattle Aquarium or the Pacific Science Center, since 2007. Although it just now occurred to me, as I was writing this, that it could easily be argued last year's Holiday Bake Off kind of serves as a new version of that. I'll have to email them all about that tomorrow.

I didn't spend nearly as much time with the Holiday Potluck as usual this year, probably just because I wasn't called upon to help set up. Most of the food was spectacular, I must say. It didn't seem visually like I consumed a huge volume of food, but it sure felt like it in my belly when I was done. Having done that but not eaten breakfast or dinner, I have no idea how my weight will be affected by tomorrow.

[posted 8:44 pm]

[older PCC Holiday Potluck posts]