the lunching
Even less to report on today than yesterday, as unlike Wednesday, no major person in my life had a birthday yesterday and I had no phone calls with anyone last night. The evening was filled mostly with watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 with Shobhit once he got home from work, and that was better timed as well, both because his shift was a little earlier and he was home by 6:30, and because the movie itself is a bit shorter—the shortest in the entire franchise, in fact—at two hours and 11 minutes.
I've really enjoyed burning through all eight of those movies, and I think Shobhit has too. It's almost a bummer there aren't any more of them to watch. I have plenty of other movies to watch waiting in three different streaming platform queues though. Oh wait, I guess if I count Disney+ then there are four.
Beyond that, I suppose I could mention what I worked on after work before Shobhit got home from work—although I did work half an hour later than usual, staying in contact with Chris P in IT after taking over a certain process from Steven that he was having trouble completing from the Bellevue store that is opening next Wednesday. It was all stuff that needed to happen yesterday in order to allow for a process that has to be run today (you really don't know the dull and tedious details of what those processes are; suffice it to say it has to do with October ad promotions), and it was a system problem rather than just an issue with where Steven was when he was trying to do it. But, he's helping with store setup over there and I was in a better position to deal with it.
Once that was finally done, though, I finished creating a new Flickr photo albums collection: Washington State Parks. I would have created this earlier before now has COVID-19 not turned all plans upside-down; I knew it would wind up being necessary, in addition to making a collection specific to my Birth Week, to also make one specific to visits to state parks in Washington State. I'd have another ten or so from 2020 alone, had my Birth Week actually gone as planned. Thankfully I currently feel pretty confident that shifting that plan to next year should still work out okay, as I can visit state parks presently, and presumably restrictions will be at least a little further relaxed eight months from now. This past April, state parks weren't yet even re-opened; that opened them, somewhat frustratingly, in May right after my Birth Week ended.
As it happens, though, I've already made a lot more visits to state parks than I realized. There are already fifteen said parks on that list, three of them having been visited two or more times over the years (Riverside State Park in Spokane has four visits represented), stretching all the way back to the midnineties. There's one album from 1994; two albums from the 2000s; eleven from the 2010s (five of those from 2010 alone); and five so far from 2020 alone (four of those just from last weekend). The way things look right now, 2021 will add by far the most, by the time next year is over.
All three of the photos in today's DLU (Daily Lunch Update, this very post) are from last weekend's state parks, incidentally.
I'm actually posting today a bit later than usual because I just got off the first of what are now planned to be weekly virtual "Friday Office Lunch Meetups." I think I'm even going to include these in my Social Reviews, as they are explicitly designed for socializing; no talking shop per se. Although we did have some discussion about how we're all dealing with working from home.
Brent, from the Social & Environmental Responsibility department, acted as host, and although it seems fair to expect these could grow over time, at its peak, and sustained for probably at least 35 to 40 minutes, we had eleven people on the call. Brent had said we would break up into smaller groups if the overall number got too large, but eleven turned out to be pretty perfect, and I was able to contribute plenty to conversation, as was pretty much everyone else, so far as I could tell. My favorite was probably near the end when Sara from HR told the story of falling off her three-legged coffee table after standing on it while on the phone two days ago, trying to get to a bee that was inside her house.
Anyway. There were two new faces who have been hired since work-from-home started, so there were some introductions: a Molly and a Teresa. I kind of wish Tracy P, the woman I've gotten to know over email since she was hired in February, had been able to join, but, maybe another time. There were also four people actually calling in from working at the office: Zaira (aha! now I know that's who that is at the front desk every time I come to the office); Adrienne (the Executive and Board Admin); Molly (who works in HR) and Teresa (I don't remember what department she's in). I already mentioned both Brent and Sara, and also on the call were Brenna, Amy, Mary from IT, Rebecca, and myself. I took a screenshot, of course. I have way too many Zoom screenshots from 2020 already, of course, but I needed at least one from the first of these fun Friday Zoom meetups. Honestly it was nice just to see some familiar faces again.
I do have lots of work still to get done though so I'll get back to that now.
[posted 1:03 pm]