I've been doing these year-end photo retrospectives of my time at PCC every year for a decade and a half now . . . but of course, this year's will look far more different than any other before. You're going to see a lot of my bedroom. Don't get excited! It's just . . . you know, where the data maintenance magic happens.

January 11 / June 17

Those two shots at the top were taken when I was invited to join Scott and Noah to the shell of what would become our new Central District store—located 0.7 miles from my home, so exciting!—back in January, back when we thought this year would be normal, back when we thought this store's opening would happen in April. That's Lori and Noah in those top shots, taken when I thought I'd be returning two months later for "after" shots. All things considered, the store opening in June instead wasn't too terrible a delay—about two months. I still got my "after" shots, because I am a completist.

March 13

Date the entirety of the central office staff was asked to start working from home: Monday, March 23, when PCC leadership's hand was forced by statewide orders. Date that I started working from home, because I was freaking everyone out with my coughing after having returned from Australia all of four days prior with a common cold? Friday, the 13th. I put my receiving paperwork, my mobile laptop taken out of its docking station I really never removed it from prior to this, my wireless mouse and my wireless keyboard, and put them all into a tote bag I carried home on the bus. And then I finished out the work day at my dining table, with my two new assistants.

Speaking of the assistants: they were both super freaked out, and thereafter very clingy, by Shobhit's and my unprecedented two-week absence for our trip to Australia. Almost immediately, suddenly I was at home all day with them every day, and they were like, "Apology accepted."

March 28

Ever since working from home started, I have continued to go back to the office for a roughly fifteen minute visit twice a week, to file my processed receiving paperwork into their respective store folders, and pick up the next stack. In the early days, returning to the office almost totally empty was a bit eerie. And then there's this message, hung onto the windows in the IT section of the office, and which still hangs there today: Covid-19 non carborundum. I had to Google this, and discovered it to be a modification of Illegitimi non carborundum, commonly thought to mean "Don't let the bastards get you down." In other words, don't let COVID-19 get you down. A nice bit of uplifting messaging for our dystopian time.

April 11

It's funny how unsettling everyday life was for the first month or so, and how normalized it all feels now. This was all the way back in April, but I still took the time to sit with a London Fog tea latte out on our fifth-floor patio, just because I was missing our beautiful office space so much. (I have adapted well to working from home, but I still miss the office, which is why I actually love that I have to go back there twice a week, however brief the visit, just so I can feel a continued connection with it.)

May 5

Evolution of Matthew's Home Work Station in Four Parts, Part II: This was when I finally brought home my beloved PCC tumbler from which I drink my tea every day, back when I was still working every day at my personal home desk. At the end of every work day, I would close the laptop, and stack the keyboard on top of the laptop on top of my scanner/printer, seen at upper right in this shot. Just a couple of weeks after this, I was adding that stack the cushioned lap tray Shobhit got for me from Big 5, which I never used for my lap but used on my desk just to raise the computer a bit.

July 31

Evolution of Matthew's Home Work Station in Four Parts, Part III: In July, PCC gave all of us office staff a $200 stipend for improving our home work stations. I successfully maximized the potential of this gift, getting a new desk off of Amazon for about $150 and turning the end of my bedroom opposite my personal desk into my dedicated home work station. The desk came unassembled and I channeled my inner butch and spent about an hour and a half putting it together. The most complicated part was the keyboard tray, but luckily the instruction manual included a QR code in that section, which took me straight to a visual tutorial on YouTube.

Side note: the view is far better from the office, but I do love that I still have a skyline view even while working from home.

August 12

Evolution of Matthew's Home Work Station in Four Parts, Part IV: And then, nearly two weeks later, I finally got to put fully five months of only having my far smaller laptop screen to an end: I was able to check out the dual monitors that were at my desk at the office, and bring those home too, effectively recreating my office setup at my home work station I never felt like I minded being limited to the laptop screen so much—until I was able to set this up at home. And then it was like, holy shit! This is SO MUCH BETTER!

Shanti supervised.

August 14

In August, staff in the Social & Environmental Responsibility (SER) department started our weekly "Office Lunch Meetups" we have now had weekly for 21 weeks. The intent, which I very, very much appreciated, was to hang out with coworkers during a lunch each week with whom we often had time to chat in the kitchen when we were still all working at the office. I have attended all but one of those weeks (missing only the week of Thanksgiving, when I worked at a store), and a few others have been present at the vast majority of them; Rebecca, who is the "Zoom host" from SER, is the only one who has been present at every single one—beating me by one week. Featured here is semi-regular attendee Andrew, who often has the most fun virtual backgrounds, here being a video background of a dancing Napoleon Dynamite.

August 20

Here we have Health and Body Care Merchandiser Terry (right), with her wife, during what surely in a normal year would have been an in-office retirement party. This year she retired and moved with her French wife back to her homeland, and many of us still get updates of her new life via her Instagram account. The party, as it could actually exist under the circumstances, happened over Zoom, although PCC did have a parting gift delivered to them in their backyard as they were on the call.

August 30

Get this: even in the middle of a pandemic, PCC opened not one, but two new stores in 2020! The second was the Bellevue store, and I decided to go check it out shortly after its opening while Shobhit and I were on our way to the Indian grocery store in Redmond. This might be my new favorite art installation—which every new PCC store gets—although the Ballard store octopus still provides some stiff competition.

October 24

From the Virtual Pumpkin Carving Party (the party was virtual; the pumpkins were real) I had with my friends Gabriel and Lea, Gabriel's daughter Tess and Tess's friend Kara, and Mandy. I had suggested this party for one specific reason: I already knew I was going to carve a pumpkin, for the first time since 2014, because PCC had a virtual Halloween party scheduled for a week later, and it was to include a pumpkin carving contest. Challenge accepted! As you can see, I am not at all above craven pandering in an effort to win.

October 30

My costume for the work Zoom Halloween Happy Hour: "Drunk Pence." If you live under a rock and don't know, the image went wildly viral during the Vice Presidential Debate when a fly landed on Mike Pence's head and stayed there for a pretty astonishingly long time. This happened in October itself, so, after months of having no clue what I would dress up as for Halloween this year, this inspiration hit me. And how perfect is this for a Zoom feed, anyway? This could never have worked as well for any in-person Halloween party; I loved being able to use the very same backdrop that had been used for the television airing of the debates.

I won the costume contest. And as for the pumpkin carving contest, only five people even entered, so the planned PCC gift card prize was just split between all of us. which means I got the most! My friend Gabriel thought my pumpkin pandering was far too over the top to work as intended; show's what he knows! "And then you won everything!" he later marveled.

November 17

My contribution to the "PCC Office Wall of Thanks" kudoboard, created (at my suggestion!) in lieu of our traditional November event, which is usually an office potluck a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. So, I took a picture of my Post-It gratitude list stuck to my home window with the Seattle skyline in the distance, and then included it in a collage of photos from past PCC Thanksgiving feasts between 2002 (my first year at PCC) and 2019.

November 25

My second year of "volunteering" (I use that term loosely) to work a shift at a store Tuesday and Wednesday of Thanksgiving week. Last year I worked at the Columbia City store, and at the time I was convinced the store I'd be working this year would be the downtown store—but, that store is the anchor tenant among the businesses on the ground floor of Rainier Square Tower, Seattle's new second-tallest building (850 ft, 58 floors) ever since being topped out in 2019. And of course, a lot of the largest consrtuction projects were significantly delayed in the pandemic, including this one, so even though it topped out last year, it is now not expected to open until next year. Besides, the Central District store, purchased after much of its interior was already constructed for another company that later backed out, opened far more quickly than usual, and also happens to be even closer to where I live than the downtown store will be (0.7 miles versus 1.2 miles). That's just far too close for me to have any really legitimate excuse not to work a shift to help out the store, so I went ahead and chose my two four-hour shift slots at my most desired store immediately, so I could still get what I wanted so long as I was going to wind up working at some store anyway. That said, hey, maybe next year I'll just go on vacation Thanksgiving week!

December 3

Okay, sure, it's true, five of the photos in this email (a full quarter of them) are from December alone, and most of them most of you have already seen , , , but, I have decided you can handle it. A year in review is still a year in review, even if the final month of it includes the most photogenic stuff! Like my face. (With Chef Lynne's beautiful "Stained Glass Gingerbread Cookies" from our 2017 Holiday Cookie Exchange as my new festive virtual background.)

From the "PCC Virtual Holiday Happy Hour," also scheduled—and delayed a few weeks from its normal time—in lieu of the usual Thanksgiving-time "Holiday Potluck," which could not happen this year, for the first time in the 19 holiday seasons I have spent with PCC. Very sad: but a fun virtual party! Next year we'll get back to the traditional potluck, I'm sure. As it was, I had a great time with this party, easily the most fun I had with any fun work event scheduled over Zoom. Most people stayed on the call for not much more than an hour, but I was one of four people who remained there, hanging out, until just after the two-hour mark.

Anyway, the image above is a screenshot of when we were all asked to show our pets. The only reason I did not hold up my cats is that I was too busy taking the screenshot, and I could not do both at once.

Deember 10

Seen in my office building's lobby on one of my twice-weekly trips there: the perennial blow-up reindeer, now with the face mask, in accordance with local public health regulations.

December 19

My personalized gift bag for the Merchandising Department Virtual Holiday Happy Hour that also happened in December, three weeks after the all-office one. I had made my own drink for the first one, though, and to my amazement and delight, my bag for the department party had three ready-made cocktails in it! (A cosmopolitan, a margarita, and an Old Fashioned, the latter of which I gave to Shobhit as I'm not a big whiskey drinker.) And, since I had indicated I love cookies, a tin of Danish Butter Cookies.

December 22

Everyone in the Merchandising Department, present for the Merchandising Holiday Happy Hour, with many a festive background, which delighted me.

For the Merchandising Holiday Happy Hour: I switched up my virtual background, to an image of my very own living room. I'm drinking the margarita that had been provided to me there.

Anyway, it wasn't the year we wanted, but some of us still succeeded in making the most of what we had to work with, and create some precious memories even amidst all the uncertainty and chaos. Joy is always there to be found if you know how to look for it. And here's to steady improvement in the new year!

[posted 5:55 a,]