votes cast
This is really borderline in my view, but I guess I'm going to grant Shobhit a Social Review point for our little walk this morning. I did always give a Social Review point for going for a walk, with the caveat that it excepted when we were only walking to run errands. And really, this was a pretty important errand we ran this morning: we walked down to Seattle Central Community College to drop off our ballots in the official drop box that they have down there.
The ballots arrived in the mail yesterday; I took notes on every single race and item while Shobhit was working last night; and we both filled out our ballots together after he got home. I'm certain it's by far the shortest turnaround time we've had ever since Washington State went all-vote-by-mail, in 2011. I hadn't even realized it's been that long already—apparently we were only the second state to do this, after Oregon in 2000. (Even now there are only five states doing this.)
Since 2011, the typical practice for me has been to have the ballot at home for potentially multiple weeks, sometimes getting it out in the mail just under the wire by Election Day. After Trump appointee Louis DeJoy fucked up the USPS in the conveniently timed months just prior to a presidential election in the middle of a pandemic, Shobhit and I both agreed it best to avoid sending them in the mail and just walk them down to the drop box for once. And now, just to clarify, I actually think if we sent these out in the mail today, particularly here in Seattle, the ballots would still have gotten counted well in advance of Election Day. But with so much riding on this election (which of course we've been saying every presidential election for over twenty years, but the amount at stake this time puts to shame all that was at stake in all those other presidential elections combined, since we now have a literal clown in the White House), you just can't be too careful. And we want to see our ballots counted as soon as possible, and dropping them off at a drop box will get them counted at least a couple of days sooner, maybe even longer, than they would after being sent through the mail. That particular point has always been the case, actually, which is why the drop boxes have been available every election since we went to vote-by-mail statewide.
So, in addition to that, Shobhit and I had a nice, relatively brief walk outside in the brisk fall morning. No rain, but overcast and a bit breezy; absolutely my kind of October weather.
Shobhit decided we would also go to Starbucks to get tea lattes. This was where, actually, things got somewhat unexpectedly weird. We walked to the Starbucks on Broadway and Denny: closed. At first I thought it was just their hours, but I looked it up and online maps mark the location as "temporarily closed." Yelp said the longstanding Starbucks at Broadway and Pike was still open, so we walked down there: also closed. The hell? That one even had a padlock on the door; both locations had boards placed over all their windows. I wondered if they had been damaged in one of the many recent protests.
Luckily, there was still one of the small Starbucks inside the QFC across the street, which Shobhit knew would be open. Third time was the charm, and I asked one of the two young Black men working there (and wondering what became of the staff at the other locations) if the other stores up Broadway had been damaged. The guy told me then that they were both actually closed permanently due to COVID. Whaaat!
Now, I'm finding corroborative information difficult to find. One random employee at a tiny Starbucks stand inside QFC is not necessarily the definitive authority here. Strangely, I can find nothing online specifically about these two Broadway location closures—although the guy at that stand said the distinction was that Starbucks was closing a bunch of their corporate-owned locations, but not franchise location (I had no idea they even did it both ways). I did, however, find this USA Today story from June about their plan to close 400 stores, which is clearly one possible explanation. It's just, both those stores on Broadway . . . seems like a lot. (According to Google Maps there is yet another location further north on Broadway; I have no idea if that one is actually closed or not.)
I mean, it's not like a corporate giant like Starbucks can't weather something like this. Somehow, though, it's still kind of a bummer.
And then, there's last night: not much to report, except for the filling out of ballots, which I already reported. Shobhit getting home at 9:00 was actually two and a half hours later than scheduled; he wound up having to close at the store, so he worked an 11.5-hour shift. That sucks. That shit never happens to me because I have an office job. I think Shobhit and I both wish he did too, especially since it would allow him to work from home. Honestly I like getting some alone time and I think if he were at home with me 24/7 it might get a little crazy-making. On the other hand, it would be far safer, and there would be some comfort in that.
That said, I've kind of settled into the idea that, so long as mask wearing on the part of all staff is consistent, the risk of COVID infection for retail staff is fairly minimal. To date PCC has still had eleven staff members stores test positive over the past seven months; the most recent one over two months ago. This is out of a staff of roughly 1,600, which means our cumulative staff positive rate is 0.69%. That's a damn sight lower than the current positive rate of tests statewide, which is about 3.4%. Now, PCC has plainly been far more on top of safety protocols than just about any other company for months. But, I still feel confident that as long as the staff at Big 5 (and at Total Wine) are generally as cautious and consistent, especially with mask wearing, Shobhit won't get infected. It's his coworkers he has to worry about far more than customers, virtually all of whom are brief interactions and thus not nearly as great a concern.
Anyway. Before Shobhit got home last night, I did ride my bike to the office and back right after work to swap out receiving paperwork. I found a delicious cookie in the Merchandising freezer and brought it home and ate it, only realizing that according to the wrapper the cookie was four servings of 200 calories each! Jesus Christ. I didn't want that to be my only thing for dinner though, so I had a veggie chicken patty sandwich—without the bun, which saved 200 calories, or 1/4 of the caloric value of that damned cookie. The fact that I was up all of 0.1 lbs this morning almost struck me as a fucking miracle.
I spent a lot of the rest of my time last night doing the research and taking notes on the ballot races and items. I also did a tiny bit more work on the calendars. I've got a lot left to do but I feel like I'm making very good time on them this year; far better than in previous years. I do like to have at least through November as options to choose from for photos to use in the next year's calendar, but many factors are changing that this year. I won't be spending time with any family between now and the end of November anyway.
[posted 12:20 pm]