cheers to ballard
Our new Ballard store opened today—just this morning, at 9 a.m., as a matter of fact. Two openings, six weeks apart. I think many people at the office can breathe a sigh of relief now; our next store is not likely to open until, my best guess is summer next year. Even that is probably overly optimistic, honestly. Still, by the end of next year, there will be yet another two stores: downtown Seattle, at the base of the brand-new, now-second-tallest-in-Seattle building, Rainier Square Tower (the store opening I am more excited about than any that has ever happened); and Bellevue. There are much vaguer references to yet another two stores in 2021, and I assume at least one of those is intended to be Madison Valley, but given that store was initially announced as an expected opening in 2017, I've basically settled on regarding that one as a perpetual myth. As for the other one's location, I have not been given the slightest hint to date so I have no idea.
Valerie, my dad's cousin I went to have dinner with along with Auntie Rose in Bellevue on Sunday, has pretty strong opinions about PCC. She has a curious aversion to our push for private label ("PCC") products, saying it's less clear where they come from. She was also discouraged by our plan to switch in 2020 from the monthly member coupon to a dividend program. Like Shobhit and me, it's going to result in far less savings, and she will be encouraged to shop more at other stores now.
I have no personal beef with something like private label. The only that that gives me pause, really, is our recent change from overly cautious to aggressive expansion, with one to two stores opening every year. I just realized this morning that we've had six new store openings since I started in 2002, and half of those have been since just last year. I have long prided myself on our customer service, and feel that the bigger a company gets, the more difficult it is to maintain the same level of customer service standard at every store. Staff gets bounced around between stores a lot more, new staff gets hired at a far greater rate, and focus shifts from customer service to just making sure all the cogs are running correctly. That part bothers me a little, but, I just continue to do what I can on an individual, personal level when I respond to customer comments, feedback and complaints over social media.
Shobhit and I made pasta and French bread for dinner last night—Shobhit made most of it, but a lot was yet to be done when I got home from work, so I actually contributed a lot, I would say. Shobhit made a spread to put on the bread based on something he saw on TV, which was sour cream based. I was willing to try it, even though I have never liked sour cream; I thought all the other ingredients might make a difference. I really didn't like it, though, unfortunately; it was still far too sour cream-heavy. I just scraped it off and still ate half of my bread; Shobhit saved the spread in a bowl for another time. The spaghetti, on the other hand, was delicious, made for a super tasty dinner last night and for enough leftovers to cover lunches for the rest of the week.
We watched Sunday night's episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, which was spectacular—seriously, you should watch it, or at the very least the main story. It ends with a fantastic musical number!
Then we watched three or four episodes of Cheers—the second of the two-part finale of season 9 that celebrated 200 episodes, which was very unusual with interviews with cast interspersed with clips from throughout the series; then the first few episodes of season 10. There's a total of 11 seasons, but they each have around 27 episodes so it'll probably still be several weeks before we burn through them all. Once we finally tired of Cheers for the evening, I went to get ready for bed.
I sure hope I'm not coming down with something. Just the day before yesterday, I spent almost the whole day feeling a weird sort of vague daze, in a way that's difficult to describe. It was kind of like when you first stand up after sitting a long time and feel sort of dizzy—it was like the very beginning of that feeling, except, all day. Almost like I had been drugged or something. It was very weird, although I will still able to think and do my job like normal, and it had mostly dissipated by the end of the day, whatever the hell was going on there.
Yesterday seemed pretty normal, but now today I have a sort of dry throat that also seems to need constant clearing. I really don't want yet another cold. I already caught one in Las Vegas and then spent pretty much the entirety of October with a persistent cough. It's too soon to fucking go through it again! Maybe if nothing else I should be sure to get to bed early tonight. Otherwise I seem to feel fine.
[posted 12:26 pm]