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I must have wasted upwards of an hour this morning, when I have far too much work to get done today, because a particular page from the PCC intranet I had bookmarked would not load. I restarted my computer twice, emailed IT, and ultimately found out the problem was the address I had bookmarked had changed; I should be navigating via links on the intranet "Sharepoint" homepage and not via bookmarks, because evidently the addresses sometimes change. So, I had only myself to blame for all of that shit. Fun!

What can I tell you about last night? Shobhit worked until 8:30, so I didn't see a lot of him yesterday—although he was home in the morning while I was working, until about 11:30. In the evening, I had a new experience: a SIFF-sponsored advanced screening, done virtually, since no local movie theaters are open. I had already planned on watching and revewing another movie that is Oscar-eligible but was released on Netflix on Monday; now I'll watch that one tonight. The SIFF screening I got to watch, which I could only do by clicking on an email link sent to me at 6:00 and then gaining online access at 7:00, was for a documentary called The Way I See It, solid-B film about Pete Souza, who had been Chief White House Photographer during all eight years of the Obama Administration. It was predictably, wildly biased, but it hewed strongly toward my view of things so I enjoyed it.

The plan to have Happy Hour with Laney at Volunteer Park tonight is clearly not in the cards: the smoke is not clearing out enough just yet, and we're looking at rain today anyway. Both issues likely persist tomorrow, especially in Chehalis, so I don't think the bike ride with Dad is happening either. I still sent out the calendar announcement via work for me to take the day off the 29th to go to Leavenworth and visit family at the house they're all staying at, just not spending time inside the house myself; I'm also now having to contend with a planned outage for Xfinity at home all day Monday for planned upgrade work, which means I will likely have to go into the office to work that day, for the first time since March, if I want to be able to work at all.

Anyway, for now Laney and I have moved Happy Hour to Sunday at 1 pm, early enough for me to get back home in time for the Emmy Awards. Even with all this constant rearranging, this weekend is shaping up to be pretty busy.

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. . . And, now I just finished Friday Office Lunch Meetup #7, which actually had a somewhat surprising number in attendance, even with usual-host Brent absent for the first time: seven people at its peak, including Rebecca, Adrienne, Molly, Brenna, Andrew, and first-timer Noah (who happened to be working at the office today, as were Adrienne and Molly), in addition to myself.

This means that now there are only two people who have attended every single week to date: Rebecca and myself. I noted this to her just before we were all signing off as the hour was coming to a close, and she said, "We'll see if it happens next week." Whaaat! Apparently there is some discussion about tinkering with this in some way. I really like getting this on a weekly basis though, even on a day like today when I have a shit ton to get done. I did actually work on my price optimization while on the call.

Adrienne, who is our Executive Assistant to the CEO/Board, did ask for suggestions as to how we could still make Halloween a big deal even if it has to be done virtually, as it has always been a big deal at the office. Some pretty good ideas were bandied about, actually. Any kind of replication of the "Holiday Potluck" that is basically the Office Thanksgiving, however, is pretty much going to be impossible. I hope we can come up with something, though, even if it's as simple as something like a communal online gratitude board of some kind. I think I'll send Adrienne that suggestion, actually.

For now though I really need to get back to work.

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[posted 1:08 pm]