I had a lot of potatoes
Well I'm glad I already posted yesterday about visiting the Amazon Spheres (third time, for me!) on Saturday. I don't have a lot of time today!
What I can tell you is this: Friday evening Shobhit and I went shopping. Exciting! Not only that, but I bused and he drove and we met, not at the PCC Greenlake Village as usual; not at PCC Columbia City as our typically occasional alternate; but at PCC Fremont, which was my default store for shopping between 2002 when I was first hired, and 2014 when Greenlake Village opened. Bearing in mind that Shobhit lived in either New York City or Los Angeles between 2010 and 2016, the two of us doing a regular grocery shop there was quite the blast from the past -- as we had not done our regular grocery shopping together at Fremont since early 2010. Eight and a half years! (Granted, for me personally, it had been about four years.)
Anyway. One of the few PCC-sold products Shobhit really loves is Gabriel Cosmetics Red Seaweed Gentle Exfoliator -- which, although Gabriel Cosmetics has not discontinued it, PCC has. It has been absent from shelves for a while at Greenlake Village, and finally a couple of weeks ago I got confirmation of its discontinued status from Steven here at the office. I looked up movement and saw recent movement at Fremont. I even emailed the HBC Coordinator there to ask that two bottles of it be set aside for us.
I reached the store first on Friday, and got the two boxes set aside in the back retrieved for me. As it happened, there three yet another three boxes on the shelf -- plus a tester tube, which the HBC staff member present allowed us just to take. She said she could then go ahead and remove the shelf tag now. So basically, we came home that night with five and a half tubes of this stuff -- which we'll still be able to special order in the future (in that case, back at Greenlake Village), but it will be some time now before that is necessary. These tubes retail for $28.49, although with my 25% discount that went down to $21.34; five of those makes nearly $107 -- barely more than half the total I spent on Groceries that night.
On the way home, Shobhit decided he wanted to get pita bread and falafel sides from Aviv on 15th on Capitol Hill, because that was cheaper than getting a falafel pita as it exists on the menu -- which also meant no vegetables or all the sauces they use. Whatever. It still made for a tasty dinner when we got home. Because he insisted on taking it home and not eating there, though -- no Social Review point for him.
. . . Well. I wrote way more about all that than I expected to. Are you still awake?
Shobhit does get a Social Review point for yesterday, even if he kind of manufactured it: he asked me to come with him to his audition at Theatre Puget Sound at Seattle Center, saying we could hang out for a bit to look at the Winterfest decorations afterward and before he gave me a ride to the U District for the movie I wanted to see.
He only took about 15 minutes for his 11:30 audition, during which I walked around and got a few pictures; I got a few more after he came down as well. As of now it only amounts to 9 shots, but I still made a dedicated photo album for Seattle Center Winterfest, given that I also did last year, after Laney and I went down there to look at all the stuff and also some of the ice sculptures on a Saturday (one of which was still around yesterday). I went back in my archives and found 12 shots taken in 2013, and thus took them out of the original "Seattle Holiday Sights" album they were included in, and made a dedicated photo album for those too -- now I have a Flickr collection of photo albums featuring four different visits to Winterfest.
And then we got lunch, which alone counts as a Social Review point by default: a place called Cool Guy's Fry Bar. We got a Mexican-inspired tub of fries with cheese sauce and salsa on it that was a calorie explosion and also delicious. We later stumbled upon a KEXP coffee shop (specifically, "La Marzocco at KEXP") neither of us had ever noticed (it must be new) on 1st Avenue off Republican Street, and we shared a couple of cookies and a hot chocolate, all of which were delicious.
Then he drove me to the U District and dropped me off at the Varsity Theatre, where I could see Maria By Callas, the movie I had wanted to see at Pacific Place on Thursday last week, only to discover they changed the schedule to showtimes I could not do. As of this week, it's only playing at the Varsity, so I went there. And? Well, it wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. Whatever. At least it was a heavily discounted matinee price and I paid less than $9 for it.
I took the bus home from the movie, wrote the review, and made dinner: frozen scalloped potatoes from Costco, "serves 8," which I divided into 3: one for each of Shobhit's and my dinners, and a lunch for today for Shobhit. It was pretty heavy, as I also fried up two Field Roast veggie sausages for protein and sliced them and split them three ways as well. I wonder if our oven is not working right? The directions said to bake at 350° for 25 minutes, and I had to add another 20 to that because half of it was still frozen after 20 minutes, even though the digital readout said 350°. And even after that, I had to put my portion in the microwave for a couple of minutes. What the hell?
It was still delicious and I would buy those frozen scalloped potatoes at Costco again. Highly recommended!
We just had a special lunch for Joe, our Produce Merchandiser, because it's his 30th anniversary. So many people have worked here for decades, it's incredible.
This lunch was unusually formal -- okay, not really, but more than usual, I mean: four tables in "The Ranch" conference room, arranged to seat 8 people each, all of them with tablecloths on them, and even a colorful strip of cloth down the center. It just looked really nice, is all.
People are always so hesitant to go first for the food line. It's ridiculous. I'm happy to be first! Of course Joe would be first if he were ready to get his food at that moment but he wasn't. So, as everyone else dragged their feet in getting the line started, after about two seconds I made a beeline for the food table. Lynne coordinated the preparation of it all. The main dish was salmon, which I could not eat, but I did have the potato dish she made, along with some bread and a truly incredible pear salad with a certain type of cheese I forget. When I was all done I had to go up to Lynne and say, "Lynne! I've never had a more delicious salad." People are always taken aback when I make statements that strong about their food. Well, it's true! And fun.
Cate, the CEO, misheard me. "You've never had a more delicious salmon?" Uh, no. I just said, "No, I'm vegetarian, I wouldn't eat the salmon." She then said she was sorry and "I knew that" -- she just forgot. I mean, of course; I don’t rank high around here in any sense of the word, so why would I expect her to anyway? "That’s okay," I said. "You don't have to know 10 million things about everybody." She countered with, "But I do!" I was walking away when Lynne said to her, "I once asked him if he eats gluten, and..." Why didn't I stay to hear how she finished that? I can't remember what I said! It must have been something amusing, for Lynne to be relating it again today.
Anyway! When I was seating with my food, being the first to do so, I went to a chair that faced the window because it's a beautiful day and I wanted the view. People immediately after me went to different tables, so for a few minutes I was at my table alone. Matt S came and sat across from me and one seat over, at least. And then a few minutes later Steven, who is the newest addition to the Merchandising Department, came and sat with me, which was nice. We're clearly very different people, but a) we're the two gay guys in Merchandising; and b) we do have basically the same job, just in different sub-departments (Grocery, and Health and Body Care). We had a more informal, non-work-related discussion than we had since he started maybe a month ago, so I learned a few more personal details about him -- such as his apparently also being married. He referred to his "husband," which is notable to me less because of him individually than just as an example more broadly. I refer to "my husband" very regularly, but am not really used to hearing it used by other people at work. The more time goes on, though, the more I will be.
Eventually Brenna came and sat on the other side of Steven, and Elizabeth sat next to Matt. So our table had five, in the end -- the least populated of all four tables.
It was a nice example of how much I love working here, though. Great people who make great company, at one of many regular events expressing appreciation for longtime staff, in a space with an incredible view. I mean, shit. I've got nothing to complain about here whatsoever.
[posted 12:56 pm]