let's get this party nonexistent
Whaaat! I'm more than halfway through my lunch break and I just realized I hadn't written anything for today's DLU yet!
Not that it matters much, I have very little to report. I spent the evening at home last night, pretty much just dinking around all evening. I did a little bit of organizing for packing for the trip to Las Vegas tomorrow. I wrote up a brief bit of kitty care instructions that I will message to Ivan before we leave. I did a lot of waiting, at my computer, for it to update to iOS 15. I didn't watch any movie or even any TV, save for a coupl of news stories on Rachel Maddow that Shobhit thought would interest me. (It did, moderately.)
I actually was going to go see Last Night in Soho, the new Edgar Wright movie, but I changed my mind. I'll see it next week, probably. The issue was that last night were the first showings and none were earlier than 7:00. I just wasn't into the idea of returning downtown for a movie at 7 and then having to be up too late writing the review afterward. Had there been, say, a showing at 5:00 then I absolutely would have gone.
It doesn't even have great showtimes today. Before 7:00, a showing at 4:00. That doesn't work. On Wednesday next week there's one at 5:10 which is truly perfect. Anyway, I didn't want to go see a movie tonight anyway, as I want to walk Capitol Hill for photos of Halloween decorations and displays; and, I want to do most of the packing for the weekend.
Shobhit texted me literally while I was writing this that he had checked into the flight for us. It takes off tomorrow at 11:55 a.m. Shobhit won't be as thorough about this as I prefer, but I'm going to double mask on the plane. We'll have to be masked anyway, and I want to take all the precautions I can. I'm bringing my remaining inventory of disposable masks, in addition to spare cloth masks.
As for today . . . honestly, work is a bit of a bummer. I decided to "dress up" for Halloween today, low-effort as it may be: I've got my CAPTAIN AWESOME mug and captain's hat, both of which the broker Heather gifted me for my birthday when she and her husband took me out on her boat during my boating-themed Birth Week in 2019. I figured I might as well get this hat used for at least one Halloween, and it will also be very easy to bring for use in Las Vegas. I'm even going to bring the mug, although I won't carry it around everywhere. Just to some choice photo op spots.
I am literally the only person who dressed up in anything even approximating a costume. I'm honestly surprised by this. Both Kwanteria and Marianne—the latter being someone who can usually be relied upon to come in a Halloween costume—are in football jersies, because it's a game weekend. That's the closest anyone else has come. I mean, at least the front desk is still nicely decorated.
The weirdest thing about this is that the office is open, far more so than it had been over Halloween last year, when we actually had high participation in a costume contest—and a pumpkin carving contest (both of which I won)—all of it done over Zoom! But, it had also gotten a lot of advanced planning. And the thing about this year is, most people continue to work from home, but large-scale virtual meetings of the whole office are far less frequent, because the office is now technically open for people to return to work at. The population of workers here really depends on the day, and today is a low turnout day. There might be somewhere between 15 and 20 people here today in the entire office, and our office staff numbers around 120.
But, whatever. I took some selfies. I got a picture of one of the cows in the cow mural with sunglasses on. A couple more photos of Halloween decorations. It's kind of depressing that, as far as I remember anyway, the office has actively participated in every Halloween since I've worked here, and this is my 20th Halloween with the company—but, not this year. That doesn't mean that I can't have my own single person party, though! In the past I would have felt defeated and embarrassed in a scenario like this, where I came in costume and no one else did and hardly anyone else was even here. Now, though, I'm still glad I did it. I got good photos! It'll be smaller than usual, but I'll still have a dedicated "Halloween at PCC photo album—which means, once Halloween itself is passed, my Halloween collection of photo albums for 2021 will indeed have a record five albums in it.
As for responses to my costume . . . I'd say they've averaged out at "mildly amused." Not my biggest hit, and I have kind of a reputation now for some good ones. But, that's okay. They can't all be great. And this way I got at least one holiday use out of this hat. I have so many one-time-use hats now, all for Halloween costumes, I should really get online, maybe in early next year, and try to give them away, save some other people a few dollars.
[posted 12:40 pm]