HOLY WHAT THE WHAT
I was at work more than an hour before I noticed an email in my inbox from Cate, our CEO, with the subject line "A new PCC location, and thoughts about our growth." It was sent out just passed 9:00 last night. My initial thought was just, Another new store? Hmm, okay. And then I read this in the body of the email and just about fell out of my chair:
Tomorrow morning, we will announce that PCC will open a store in the Rainier Square development in downtown Seattle.
Downtown?! Whaaaat! I already knew about a ramp-up of new store developments coming over the next five years or so; this was discussed at the last "Town Hall" all-office meeting and lunch. What didn't quite hit me until this morning, though, was the explicit notification that our number of stores will increase by fifty percent in the next three years alone. And, in all this talk of new stores, a downtown location was never brought up until now. I always thought of a downtown location as a dream unlikely to be realized in my lifetime.
So then, before even finishing that email from Cate, as my excitement and shock mounted, I saw the email newsletter from PCC -- thereby making it officially public information -- sent at 7:00 this morning: "Announcing Downtown PCC in 2020." As you can imagine, I clicked that link to the press release right quick. And that's where I found the information that made this doubly exciting, the part that just about made me shit my pants:
PCC will join Amazon, and Equinox fitness clubs, in their precommitments to the 58-story, 1.17 million-square-foot mixed-use project, which will open in mid-2020...
--Wait. Hold on. What! PCC will be the anchor tenant in Rainier Square Tower, my favorite skyscraper currently under construction, set to be Seattle's second-tallest building upon completion, this city's tallest skyscraper built since the Columbia Center was finished in 1985! It's also got a refreshingly unique design, a relief for a building going up right next to the tapered based Rainier Tower, itself one of Seattle's most distinctive skyscrapers. (At 514 ft, it will be dwarfed by the 850-ft Rainier Square Tower.) Rainier Square Tower, which I have long known and been excited about, at 849 ft will be 88 ft shorter than the Columbia Center, and 77 ft taller than 1201 Third Avenue (formerly Washington Mutual Tower), which has been Seattle's second-tallest skyscraper since 1988.
I don't often email Cate because as CEO I'm sure she sifts through two tons of emails every day, but today I could not help myself and sent her this:
I can’t believe I was at work over an hour before even seeing this. Then I just about fell out of my chair.
I have a decades-long love of skyscrapers and this is going to be in the Boot Buiding, Seattle’s tallest since the Columbia Center (our tallest)! There is no way I could adequately express how exciting this is to me.
I was already thrilled by the news of Madison Valley (since mitigated by seemingly endless postponements; I’m beginning to think I’ll be cremated before that store opens), which is roughly the same distance – barely more than a mile – away from where I live as this one will be, just in the opposite direction. This one, however, is just a couple of blocks off from my way to or from work!
People can keep whining and moaning and complaining about how fast the greatest city on earth is changing all they want. Clearly Seattle loves me.
I guess I have no need to worry about emailing her since she responded all of twenty minutes later, and even began with I love your emails so much, thank you for always making my day. Hmm, okay! That was rather nice to read. And then she went on with a fairly amusing statement: And we WILL get Madison Valley open before you die! I promise!
I'll believe it when I see it! (I did not say that to her.) That damned store was supposed to open in fucking 2017! Now it's slated for 2020 -- the same year as this downtown store, which, as it happens, will actually be way more convenient to me than the Madison Valley store, much to my shock and amazement. It is just barely farther away from home (1.3 miles) than Madison Valley will be (1.1 miles), but the major difference is that the new store will be nearly halfway on the way to the office from home, as opposed to more than a mile on the other side of home from the office. That makes it far more convenient to me, being all of two blocks off my route to and from work. All this time I thought Madison Valley would be my primary store for shopping once it finally opens; now it looks like it may never be at all. Because, assuming we'll still be in this same condo (and I see no reason to expect otherwise), clearly the Rainier Square store will ultimately become the primary store I shop at.
It will also be a lot easier for people to try getting me to do some kind of work at that store sometimes in a way no one has yet managed at any other store, since I don't have a car, but I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. This store, by the way, will be the second one (after Columbia City) to be right by a Light Rail stop. It's about two blocks from University Street Station, itself two stops from Capitol Hill Station (which is itself half a mile from home).
I just can't even contain myself, I am so excited about this. Truly I have not been this excited about a PCC-related announcement since I found out in 2015 the central office would be moving to the waterfront the following year. And by the way, this downtown location is way more convenient to me considering the office is located in Belltown now. I mean, it would have still been thrilling even if I still worked in the U District since I've always spent plenty of time downtown, but now I am downtown literally twice a day every weekday at a minimum. It's nearly as convenient as the downtown Target location, which is only a block off from my usual route two and from work.
Honestly I'm going to be riding high on this news all day. I guess there's also going to be a local news segment on TV this evening, in addition to a lot of print coverage already released this morning, including that Seattle Times article that apparently was on the front page. Fuck, I love working here!
What else can I tell you? What else is even worth bothering to tell you? I mean really?
The weather sucked yesterday. Normally I don't mind the rain although I've enjoyed the many days lately of being able to read my library book while walking home, the one time I manage to get even 45 minutes' worth of reading it, which I never manage while at home. Not yesterday, though -- and although it wasn't raining hard, it was breezy enough that other people's umbrellas were getting blown inside-out. I managed to keep that from happening to my beloved umbrella with the clear material and white and purple stars printed on it. I love that umbrella. Still, it was sometimes a challenge just to keep the damned thing in my hands, as I walked home.
I took my dry cleaning to be dropped off. The guy who works there was in the middle of a dispute with a customer contentious enough that she was asking him to call his manager. Not the best timing I suppose, but this guy keeps calling me "Matt" when I walk in and I couldn't take it anymore. It's Matthew, I corrected him, as friendly as I could. It's never easy to say that in a very friendly way.
I was glad to get back home and not have to go out into the windy-wet weather again for the rest of the evening. Soon after Shobhit got home I was chopping vegetables for him and we had lentils and rice for dinner.
When I was leaving for work yesterday morning, someone had dropped a bunch of weird items in the stairwell of my building, included what looked like some tea bags, other things I don't remember -- and a 10.1-oz bag of dark chocolate peanut m&m's. Free candy! I picked it up to make sure it hadn't been opened or tampered with, and it was totally closed and intact. I stuffed it into my shoulder bag on my way out.
I must have eaten two thirds of that bag yesterday. Shobhit asked last night if I ate a lot at work and at first I hesitated. Then I was like, "...I had some candy." Well, if the bag has 7 servings at 220 calories per serving, then I guess I ate about a thousand calories' worth of it yesterday. But hey whatever, I was still down a pound this morning! (I didn't snack on anything else between meals yesterday.) Anyway I finished the bag this morning, so I guess that takes care of that.
This was the second time this month, actually, that someone left something strange and sweet out in public. Shobhit and I were walking past a bus stop on the way back from Trader Joe's maybe a week ago, and on the short wall holding up a raised front lawn behind the stop, someone had left about half a full sheet cake, still inside the cake box, but with the lid open. It looked pretty fresh. That one I would never have taken, but some other guy noticed it as soon as it turned both Shobhit's and my eyes, and he immediately went up to it: "Whoah! I'm taking this!" I felt safer grabbing the m&m's since it was in a sealed and unopened bag, the original packaging. God knows whose it was originally, or if it "belonged" to someone among the frustrating number of homeless people who sneak into our building. Well, it's mine down. Half of it is probably already in the Seattle sewer system by now.
But I digress. We watched some TV: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to see Adom Rippon and Reese Witherspoon fawning all over each other; Modern Family; a couple episodes of Roseanne. I decided I was done at around 9:00 and was in bed by 10.
[posted 12:30 pm]