I didn't have a whole lot planned this weekend, beyond having Happy Hour and seeing a movie with Laney on Friday night. So far it;s become a lot more eventful than I expected -- really because I texted Gabriel on Friday evening to see if he had plans yesterday, and when he said he did not I suggested I come down to see his new apartment. But I'll get back to that momentarily.

I thought I was going to get a free early dinner on Friday, with a "Happy Hour" with both drinks and food offered after one of our mid-afternoon "Town Hall" all-office meetings. They always share the menu beforehand and several of the items on offer sounded very tasty. I was looking forward to it.

But, yet again, they started the meeting late enough, and it went on so long, that I had to get out of there the moment the meeting ended so I could get to other Friday evening plans I had. I certainly wasn't the only one -- I passed by Ricardo on my bike, walking on the sidewalk down Elliott Avenue -- and even the meeting itself had an overall smaller crowd than usual due to the number of people on vacation or not in the office that day.

The meeting itself didn't yield anything particularly interesting, mostly just regular updates on our "triple bottom line" -- where we are financially, and where we are with programs the Social and Environmental Responsibility department (formerly Community Relations) is working on. There was this stunning detail I learned, though: Cate told us that, going forward, we will be phasing out self-checkout stands in the stores, and the Burien and Bothell stores didn't even open with any. (They'll do express lanes instead.) She told us about how she demonstrated to staff once how confusing and time consuming it can be to use them, especially at PCC, where so many of our produce and Deli items do not have scannable upc codes on them. But none of that is the stunning detail. That's this: "On surveys," Cate said, "forty percent of respondents admit to stealing at self-checkout." Can you imagine what that means the percentage is of people who actually steal? My jaw dropped when I heard that. Ways to steal are really simple, too, like buying a really expensive produce item but just keying in the PLU of a much less expensive item for it to calculate the weight and cost. I guess a lot of companies discover they've "sold" a ton more carrots than they ever purchased wholesale.

It was during this conversation that I had a rare moment of asking a question myself. I wondered what reason we had for installing them to begin with. Nancy, the Director of HR, said times were a lot different roughly a decade ago when we introduced them, and the idea was to offer customers the option. Cate basically feels that they don't especially align with our brand, which I think is kind of true. She also piped in, rather diplomatically, "My understanding is my predecessor felt very strongly the other way."

The thing about thos self-checkout stands is, I always kind of hated the "party line" of our public responses, which I often had to post publicly on social media on PCC"s behalf, when customers asked why we installed them. From their point of view, we were robbing people of job opportunities, and the PCC response was always, No one has lost a job due to self-checkout. But during Friday's conversation, really just in passing, Cate made a comment that really underscores how that response is kind of misleading: "They don't creat jobs, but they don't eliminate jobs either." And that's the thing: if more people might have jobs without them, doesn't that kind of mean they do eliminate jobs?

To be fair, it's easy to go either way with that argument. Nancy also mentioned that rather than tying staff to those registers, those same staff now have time to tend to other things like, say, assisting customers or restocking shelves, or whatever. And given labor budgets and the like, even I know that a very common complaint among store staff is being called to work the registers when they are scheduled to be doing other things.

Still, there was another new detail I learned about them: apparently in the end, in terms of money, companies don't save anything by having self-checkout. Their cost to install and maintain is roughly the same as it cost to pay for labor staffing conventional registers. So, Cate pointed out, having them has to be for some other reason -- such as customer convenience. Some customers think we do it just to save money, but as Cate said, "We save labor dollars, but we don't save dollar dollars." To my way of thinking, the optics alone is better just to offer express lanes in lieu of self-checkout.

That said, Cate is always saying she's happy to have people disagree with her and welcomes anyone who feels differently. Chris P in IT then piped up, "I'll go!" He said he deals with people so much in other parts of his life that he really likes having the option of getting in and out of a store and being entirely self-reliant, if he doesn't feel like having to interact with anyone. Cate asked the room how many of the rest of us felt that way, and I guess about a third of us (not including me) raised their hands. That's a lot, but on the flip side: double the number felt the same way she did.

Anyway. I spent way more time on that than intended. You can imagine, I suppose, how that kind of discussion meant the meeting went on long. The meeting started at 3:30, and it would have made such a big difference if it could have started even just half an hour earlier. I usually leave work at 4:30, and Laney found she was going to be arriving downtown by 5:00. But, the scheduled part of this meeting lasted until around 4:30, and then the requisite Q&A to follow lasted another half an hour. I had thought I might have at least 10 minutes to grab some food -- free dinner! -- but, nope. The moment the meeting officially ended, I bounced out of my chair, went to my desk to shut down my computer, and went straight down to my bike, which I was on at about 5:05. It was another 20 minutes or so before I finally had my bike locked up outside of Pacific Place and managed to get up to the fourth floor.

Laney and I decided we would do our Happy Hour right there, on the same floor as the AMC Theatre, because we were to see a movie there at 7:30, and I wanted to get over to get our tickets by 7:00, the maximum half-hour early I could use my MoviePass to check in. So, we had our Happy Hour drinks and dinner in the bar at Mexico Cantina.

I've been there many times, but it had been a little while. Laney brought up being there once with her and Hayley and Thayer, and maybe even Amy from the chorus. I don't remember that. I even just scoured my Social Review archives and can't find a record of it -- that doesn't mean it didn't happen; it may just have been so long ago it was before I was as adept at tracking these things in a way that makes them easy to find years later. I can tell you, though, that the last time I ate there with Laney was in May 2015, before we went to see Mad Max Fury Road. I even mentioned in that journal entry how impressed with both were with our meals -- and I had the vegetarian quesadillas then too!

This time, though, I had two $4 orders of one small such quesadilla. I had skipped lunch, after all, anticipating a late lunch/early dinner at work that I wound up unable to partake in. In the end, even with tip, I only paid $39 -- for two small entrees, two Happy Hour house margaritas, and then we each had a third margarita at third price, right after 6:00.

Anyway, we had lots to talk about as always, although nothing worth reporting on here, really. Laney is always easy to talk to and hang out with.

So then we made our way over to the theatre, where I was certain I would have to pay the $3.99 premium for "Peak Pricing" that MoviePass officially instated just earlier this past week. It was a new release on the Friday it opened, at 7:30 pm -- even for a movie as dumb as Skyscraper, I completely assumed it would be crowded.

Something tells me that movie will rake in lower box office than projected. Not only was peak pricing not in effect at 7:00 -- so I did not have to pay anything at all -- but even by the time the movie was starting at 7:25, the theatre was filled to 30% capacity at best. On opening night! Indeed, Box Office Mojo reports the movie underperformed, coming in at third place for the weekend. Setting the movie in Hong Kong in a semi-transparent play for international audiences will likely give it worldwide box office that exceeds its budget, though. And to be fair, setting it in Hong Kong also makes sense: that city is the skyscraper capital of the world.

Laney's and my deliberate plan to see this movie sloshed was only moderately successful -- for me, anyway. Even after three margaritas, I was not nearly drunk enough to think that movie would have been worth paying for. It does have a lot of redeeming qualities (some of which Laney mentioned in a comment on my Facebook post), but not enough to make the movie great, or even particularly good. I read online someone saying it was "like Die Hard and The Towering Inferno had a dumb baby," which was apropos. Both those movies to this day are far superior works.

When it was over, Laney had driven there after running an errand on Lower Queen Anne, so she had her car to return to. I had my bike to return to, so we did not take Light Rail back up Capitol Hill as we usually do. It was just getting dark but I keep a light on my helmet now so I am much more comfortable riding at night.

As for yesterday, Shobhit and I did a bunch of shopping in the morning, given my paycheck coming on Friday: Costco in Edmonds; PCC Greenlake Village; QFC on Capitol Hill. We now have five quarts of ice cream in our freezer because QFC had a weekend deal offering up to five of them for 99 cents each. When we got home we had six bags of groceries to lug upstairs and put away, and that doesn't even include the mass of produce we plan to get today, as Morgan, who turns 14 on Friday the 27th, asked that Shobhit cook Indian food for her birthday. Danielle will be bringing her and some friends up here for it, as it's just a lot easier for Shobhit to took a bunch of Indian food if he doesn't have to transport it all. We won't be able to reserve the Community Kitchen, though -- someone already has it reserved; Danielle didn't ask us about this early enough. But, doing it in the condo should still be fine (and even easier, with the cooking).

Once all that was done, I could finally catch a bus to Tacoma. I took two buses, actually, and probably should have caught a third from Capitol Hill first -- I left home only 15 minutes before the Sound Transit 594 was to leave 9th & Stewart at 1:45, which under most circumstances would have been a mistake. I barely made it on time only because I finally found a LimeBike about halfway there, at which time I had five minutes to spare -- but then I was able to coast down the hill, turn right on 9th, and I literally got to Stewart the moment the #594 pulled up.

The Metro Trip planner had that bus arriving at the Commerce Street Transit Center in downtown Tacoma at 2:51, with the connecting Pierce County Bus leaving half a block fro there at 3:00. I worried and worried about missing that second bus, with heavy traffic delaying the 594 on the freeway. In the end I got to the #16 bus stop at precisely 3:00 -- I was down to the wire with both buses.

And then? That bus was delayed -- fourteen minutes! It was lucky for me it was delayed, but it would have been nice for it to be only delayed, say, five minutes. Whatever! I added 14 minutes to the 3:26 scheduled arrival time at Gabriel's new apartment complex, and texted him my new ETA was "3:40 I guess." It was about 3:45 when I actually got there.

I can't say exactly where "there" was, becase Gabriel doesn't want anyone to know. I should probably even be careful not to share any identifying details. All you can deduce so far is he lives somewhere within a radius of a Pierce Transit bus traveling 26 minutes (minimum!) from downtown Tacoma. Gabriel has been sort of twitchy about sharing his actual address for a while now -- he never did give me the specific address at Salmon Beach, but then, that was never technically his home anyway, and it hardly mattered for my purposes since all I ever needed was how to get to the gate where he buzzed me into the neighborhood. With this new place, he apparently hesitated even to give his mother the address. Well, I had a clever plan! I looked at the number on his door! I already found the address online when he told me the name of the complex, so now I have the full address in my phone. If I ever want to send him a postcard from somewhere again -- or, say, a Christmas present -- I can send it directly to him.

In any case, he was running sort of behind with dropping Tess back off with Stephanie anyway, so it was for the best that I was so delayed on the bus in the end. Had I been on time, I would have had to wait around for twenty minutes. Now I waited only five or so.

His new apartment is quite nice, and he showed me around, both inside and around the outside. He had much to tell me about, as always. We walked to a nearby grocery store to get a few supplies for dinner. He wouldn't let me buy anything myself, not even the two stawberry Mike's Hard Lemonades I got. I never had to spend anything at all yesterday. He even bought me an iced chai tea latte at Starbucks right after he picked me up at the corner where I'd gotten off the bus.

By the time we were having dinner, Gabriel barbecued vegan "Impossible Burgers" on this balcony, frying them to a crisp and then apologizing for it -- which was actually perfect so there was no apology necessary. It was very tasty. We did this after I watched him play Fortnight with Tess and his nephew Leighton, all in different locations, but they can also talk to each other. I was kind of interested in seeing what all their fuss has been about, but lost interest after not too much time. He played for somewhere around half an hour or forty-five minutes, probably.

I had figured out that if I were to bus home from there, the local bus's last time leaving was 7:00. I pretty much knew I wouldn't be leaving by then. The last 594 from downtown left at 10:20, so I figured I could fairly safely make that one -- but in the end I did not. Gabriel's friend Mandy invited him to come over and hang out around the bonfire behind their house. Gabriel asked if I wanted to go over there with him later after they were done with their dinner and I immediately said "Yes!" I love Mandy and she loves me.

It was lots of fun hanging out with all of them, Gabriel, Mandy and David. So many fucking Davids! I was joking with Mandy on Facebook Messenger that we could just call him "Mandy's Husband #feminism." Then she suggested taking a page out of The Handmaid's Tale and calling him OfMandy, which I thought was hilarious and perfect.

Anyway, 10:20 came and went, and Gabriel started suggesting I stay the night. Even Shobhit texted that suggestion at one point, but I didn't feel like staying over when it was never part of the original plan and I had none of my supplies. Also, I didn't like the idea of making that decision last minute when Shobhit had expected me to be coming home -- whether he had texted that suggestion or not.

So, it was just after midnight when we finally left. Gabriel drove me all the way home. It was 1:42 am before I was actually laying down in bed to go to sleep. That's way later than I am usually up, but I actually managed it fairly well. I couldn't have gone much later. Gabriel was hungry so before we left Tacoma he stopped at a Taco Bell for a snack and a really nasty "Skittles Freeze" drink. I took a sip and dripped a couple drops onto my white shorts which are probably permanently stained with it now.

I could probably write more about the evening last night but it's nearly 10:30 am already and I haven't even showered yet. I need to get on with my day!

[posted 10:23 am]