a farewell to turdy
Well, today is the last day for our Director of Public Affairs, Trudy. She's been here since 1992 and we had a retirement party for her yesterday. At least now I won't ever have to worry about how often I accidentally make a typo and write "Turdy" when trying to email her.
Someone hung a long history of Sound Consumer -- of which she was the editor for most of the years I have worked here -- on the staff bulletin board on the south end of the office, which was where everyone gathered when the party started at about 3:30. The publications that actually said PCC Sound Consumer as the header dated back as far as 1981; one newsletter out of the Greenlake store was dated November 1980. I realized just now that whoever hung them all basically chose only the first couple of years and the most recent few years; there were no examples of any from, say, the 1990s or the early 2000s. It should be noted, I think, that the Sound Consumer pre-dated Trudy by more than a decade. She didn't even have anything to do with those papers from 1981, actually.
Goldie probably did, though. She can be seen smiling and standing behind Trudy in the above photo. She mentioned to me that she retired from PCC in 2013. I could have sworn it was 2012 but now I can't find any confirmation besides making the claim myself in a post I shared on Facebook in 2016 after running into her on the #11 bus. So either I had it wrong back then or Goldie has gotten too old to remember it right. I'm probably the one who had it wrong -- I talked to Goldie for a bit yesterday afternoon (she had started working for PCC, initially running for and winning a position on the Board, at Randy's prodding, in 1973) and she's still pretty sharp. She mentioned to me that when she started she was 37 years old. In 1973! Her Facebook page says her birthday is April 25, 1937 so it must have been early in the year, when she was actually still 36. Whatever the case, she's about to turn 82. She was born the same year as Auntie Rose.
Anyway. Several "old-timer" veterans came to the party, although neither Marilyn or Elin were evidently able to make it, and I had kind of wondered if they would. Mimi and Janice carpooled in together, and so I got a wonderful shot of several veteran PCC woman, which is seen at the bottom of this entry: Mimi (retired 2017); Goldie (retired 2013); Trudy (retired 2019); Janice (retired 2016) and Nancy (not yet retired, but she has also been around forever).
I have to admit, I saw Mimi and Janice walking down the hallway together when they arrived, and was rather struck by how visibly aged they both were. Mimi is in need of knee surgery, scheduled for about a week and a half from now, and even though she was fine for the bike ride we took together back in October, right now she's walking with a cane -- apparently she's fine when sitting, but walking is painful. She told me she had the same problem with her other knee, with pain slowly building over ten years before surgery totally fixed it; this time it came on very suddenly with her other knee, but she knew exactly what it was. Anyway that explains how she was evidently fine in October but not fine now. But, with apparently chronic pain, she wasn't exactly looking her best. I assume she'll look (and of course far more importantly, feel) much better once she has had her surgery and then recovered from it.
I don't know what health problems Janice has, if any, but this was the biggest break I ever had in between seeing her -- she retired herself only about a month after the office moved to this waterfront location, taking us back to September 2016; she returned for both Randy's and Mimi's retirement parties here at the office, in September 2017 and December 2017, respectively. So, this time it had been about a year and a half since I last saw her -- and literally for the first time ever, she looked visibly aged.
I mean, I guess that's going to happen no matter who it is, if you don't see them for 16 months. But still, it was a little bit jarring, seeing them walking up the hallway kind of like two old ladies. I never think of them as old ladies. I guess that's kind of what they are, though. I don't often think of myself as "middle aged" either but that's certainly what I am, like it or not.
Anyway the party was pleasant enough, and several toasts were made, and Trudy was given the traditional wooden salad bowl with tongs that everyone gets when they retire. There was a mockup of a Sound Consumer front page about Trudy for everyone to sign, and I amused myself by writing something that could easily be read as totally innocent but was actually slightly passive-aggressive: You will not be soon forgotten!
There were also "London Fog" flavored cupcakes from a bakery in Georgetown that were phenomenal. I was going to settle for just the two mini cupcakes I ate, but then Sara insisted the "London Fog" ones -- with Earl Grey flavoring -- were worth the calories. I then found a half a one that someone else had left behind and decided that was perfect. Then, later, Mimi said she did not want to eat a whole one and would I split one with her. Oh, all right! It did not occur to me until just now as I was writing this that I could have suggested she just cut one in half and leave half behind. Obviously someone else had! Oh well. Shobhit later complained that I did not bring one home for him. I thought about that this morning though and realized it would have been tacky for me to take one. I left far before the party was over and the supply was limited.
I did make it a point to have some wine, though. I won't waste any opportunity for free booze! I totally would have had a hard cider instead but this time the cans were only beers -- yuck! I used to say "yuck" just as much to wine but somehow finally developed a taste for it. So I filled my plastic cup about 1/3 full with it twice over.
And once I was done with that, I rode my bike home, and waited for the text from Mimi that they were on their way to meet up with Shobhit and me for dinner on Capitol Hill. While Shobhit and I were walking the four blocks to Bai Thong Thai Street Café on 12th and Pike, I texted Mimi that we saw open parking on 13th between Pine and Pike. Once they got there, though, the spots had been taken. Shobhit and I walked back over there to meet them, got into her backseat, and then had her just drive across Pike down 13th one block to the south -- and instantly found a parking spot there.
So we all walked the one block from there to the restaurant, where we all had a very lovely, pleasant and super tasty dinner. Somehow the differing levels of risk between earthquakes in Seattle and earthquakes in Delhi came up -- oh, it was because Janice was talking about the story of meeting her husband, who she flew to meet in Seattle from her home in Austin, only days after the 2001 Nisqually earthquake. I wound up sharing the story of how Shobhit and I met too, partly because I had made reference to doing the Greenlake Paddle Boats with him during my nautical themed Birth Week, which in so doing would be a recreation of our third date. I had been trying to think of another friend I could do that with, and now I really like the nostalgic, sentimental aspect of this idea.
(Side note: when I was on that date with Shobhit, he had kind of a "whale tail" going on with a leopard print thong, which I have to admit made me judge him as someone who would wear something so dumb. He has way better, sexier underwear now. I did not mention this over dinner last night.)
Shobhit decided he wanted the Costco points and so he paid for his and my dinner -- usually it would be me. That helped my budget a great deal, actually, so I appreciated it.
We walked them back to their car -- it had finally just started lightly raining -- and made sure they got back out of their tight spot okay, and they were on their way. It was a really nice dinner and it was great to see both of them again. Shobhit and I walked back home and I set about updating my budget for today's paycheck.
[posted 12:29 pm]