As I noted in yesterday's post, last year and this year, Halloween Day has pretty much become all about celebrating at work, and little to nothing going on in the evening. Which is fine, especially considering staff at work seems to be stepping it up further and further each of the past few years. The group photo of everyone in costume grew from 18 in 2017 to 39 last year to this year including . . . by my count, 56 people! Even people not dressed in costumes were encouraged to be in the photo, but such people would probably count less than five in the above, spectacular shot. The full-size, high-resolution photo yields a bevy of delights with all the individual poses.

We have so much turnover at the office anymore, it's kind of a bummer when thinking about it too much: Aimée, who had been the Office Manager last year, has since moved on; we don't even officially have an "Office Manager" position anymore—just a "Receptionist and Office Admin" and an "Office Specialist," often with both of them working the front desk at the same time. They are both new since last year, and the office duties for a day like Halloween fall to them now for organizing. To their credit, they still did a pretty good job. (Also, to my surprise, Hezza told me she voted for me for one of the costume awards, which was nice and kind of a surprise.) I just missed Aimée; I liked her a lot.

In any case, you can click here for the full, 46-shot "Halloween 2019" photo album on Flickr, which duplicates all 36 shots found in the "Halloween 2019 at PCC" photo album. The slightly larger album includes one Halloween-themed shot taken on Capitol Hill earlier in the month, then the 10 more photos I took after work last night, one on my walk home from work and then 9 during a walk Shobhit and I took up Broadway, for that very purpose: finding more things to take pictures of. I'll get to that in a minute.

The tradition here at PCC is for Halloween to include popcorn and hot apple cider, in addition to candy, which Hezza and her helpers did indeed make yesterday, although the apple cider wasn't ready until about lunch time. It was made heated in a huge pot and actually cram packed with fresh cut apple slices. I should have taken a picture of that with the lid off the pot but for some reason I didn't think to. Next year, maybe.

I ate way too much candy, largely less because of the, say, chocolates available in the office kitchen or at the front desk, and more because of the many Little Secrets samples I had access to. Same shit from the previous day, only magnified. I am making a herculean effort not to snack between meals at all today. I need to get my shit together. I took a selfie with Shobhit last night in which my neck was, let's say, less than ideal. And although I need to learn to accept my body as it is, I also need to avoid gaining so much weight that I can't fit into my fucking clothes anymore, which it feels like I am on the precipice of getting to. My weight has been up the past three mornings in a row, and I need to reverse course! TMI ALERT: It'll probably help, actually, that I already took two massive dumps this morning.

Anyway. I sent out the requisite email photo digest via Gmail last night, but this morning I forwarded it to several people here at the office who were featured in it but were not part of my regular recipient list. I actually noted that aspect, and then got three requests to be added to the list, with compliments on my writing and storytelling style: Lamai, Kathryn and Karen. So now I need to make a note of their email addresses for the next such email I send out, likely after Thanksgiving. Or after the annual work "Holiday Potluck," which this year was pushed to after Thanksgiving, on December 6, because the two store openings have just made everyone too busy to make a November date work this year. Nancy has assured me we'll move it back into November again next year, and even that we can still have the usual, separate "holiday cookie exchange" (which I had noted I like being a separate event in lieu of a staff holiday party in December), but I have my doubts. We'll see how that pans out.

Not all of the photos are captioned yet, but I have copied and pasted those from the corresponding photos I included in the digest email. Halloween is very visual anyway, so, how much do you need in the way of captions, really?

As for after work? Shobhit got off work himself at 7:45, and it was about 8:10 when he finally got home, and I had just finished making a tofu noodle dish for dinner at his request. Before that, though, I spent my time working on the aforementioned photo digest email, so I would not have to work on it later after Shobhit was home. We watched this week's Halloween-themed episode of Modern Family on Hulu, and then we went on the walk I wanted to go on, which yielded nine more photos -- including a nice one of a ghost hanging on the swings at Cal Anderson Park, which we cut through to get to Broadway.

Shobhit would have gotten a Social Review point just for the walk, but for some reason he wanted to stop in at Añejo, the Mexican joint on the corner where Dilettante Chocolates used to be, when he saw that it was "Tequila Thursday" and tequila was half off. We each just had a shot of tequila, after taking some time deciding which one to choose from their extensive menu. That's where the selfie I linked to previously was taken; you can see our shots in the photo, in nice little fancy glasses bigger and more rounded than your standard shot glass. It was good tequila, but increasingly difficult for me to swallow. Shobhit definitely had more than I did, as he finished him much more quickly and then began to sip from mine.

Then we walked back down Broadway, and we stopped in at both Pagliacci Pizza, which had nothing that interested him, and then at Ian's Pizza, where Shobhit got a slice of their macaroni and cheese pizza, even though we had already had dinner and there was pumpkin pie at home. We took it to go, and I took several bites. It was very tasty straight out of the oven.

The walk we took Halloween evening last year was far more quiet than this one was, and it had made me expect less buzz and activity this year. Shows what I know! I realized later that, when it comes to clubbing, "weekends" typically kind of start on Thursday nights. Combine that with Halloween landing on a Thursday this year, and you get a rather hopping Capitol Hill for the evening, especially in the Pike/Pine Corridor, which was quite crowded. Imagine what it'll be like next year, when thanks to Leap Year Halloween will skip Friday and land on a Saturday. Capitol Hill is going to be nuts that night.

Shobhit still had some of the pumpkin pie when we got home, but I declined since I had eaten some of the pizza. I had to stop somewhere, right? I ate way too much crap yesterday. It was fun, though; like so many others, I do love Halloween. In email exchanges this morning, Karen said she wished it could be Halloween every day, and I replied that then it would no be nearly as special, now would it? So I guess I got my sage wisdom out of the way early today.

[posted 12:22 pm]