It's my time?
Relatively quiet evening last night, while Shobhit spent two and a half hours of it on his laptop for the Project Management class. We did watch this week's episode of CNN's Lincoln: Divided We Stand docuseries in the space of the hour between the end of my work day and the start of his class. And then, I did some editing and uploading of old home video clips, these focused on Christmas 2003 (18 video clips added) and New Year's 2004, although in the latter case it was actually Grandpa McQuilkin's 75th birthday party (4 video clips added).
I did a fun, different thing with some of these video clips for Christmas 2003, by the way. 17 and a half years after the fact! This was the year when, after I maxed out my inheritance money in 2001 and then spent several months unemployed in 2002, I was especially broke those two holiday seasons, in 2002 and 2003. I can find no record of having given anyone gifts at all for Christmas in 2002, which makes sense given the year (not to mention what a truly bizarre year that was for our family, as Dad and Sherri were separated and Dad had actually been seeing someone else; I just re-read part of my Christmas Day blog post about that day and it was kind of a trip). But, in 2003, Andrea had offered me the idea of an inexpensive and very thoughtful way I could give everyone gifts: I got together with her five days before Christmas and we made homemade Christmas ornaments, out of applesauce and cinnamon. After seeing some of the video clips of people opening them as gifts on Christmas, I realized I totally forgot how good they smelled when they were first made.
Anyway, I got video of six different people opening theirs as gifts on Christmas morning: Sherri (this was for her and Dad, but she opened the package), Angel, Gina, Grandpa McQuilkin (gift for him and Grandma, of course), Jennifer, and Aunt Raenae. This basically guided how I split up the video clips, as I now have clips in each case which begin with that person opening their gift.
The cool thing I then did with all those clips is this: within the separate photo set I have of making the gingerbread ornaments with Andrea, I have one shot of all my ornaments that were made (including a couple Andrea made for me). I added "notes" above the six ornaments whose recipients opened the gift on video, so when you hover the cursor over the note, a link pops up to the video of that ornament being opened.
There's just a few other notes there linking to other photos, most notably a later photo of Barbara's ornament hanging in her apartment (evidently she did not come to Olympia for Christmas with me that year, although she did most years of the decade she lived in Seattle), and later photos of the two ornaments that I kept, including the famous "Silver Balls" one with the giant gingerbread cock, that I love so much. In fact, looking at all those old video clips, I kept wondering how many of the people I gave these to even still have them: aside from Barbara's a few years later, I never saw any of the ones I gifted away again. Even Barbara is relatively unlikely still to have hers, given it would be over a decade and a half old now, and she moved back to Arlington a full decade ago. I suppose it's possible one or two of them still have theirs, in a box somewhere, but it seems more likely than not that, after more than 17 years, these have all become garbage by now.
Not mine, though! Both my "Silver Balls" and my "Shooting Star" (a star with a gun on it, another one I love) have been hanging on my Christmas Tree every year all along. And I have to hand it to Andrea: I'm not sure I had any idea how durable things things would actually turn out to be. They have not crumbled or chipped or anything; they are as intact now as they were when they were first made.
Furthermore, I really appreciated Andrea having made this suggestion that year. To this day it means a lot to me, and it was fun to be reminded of how much people actually seemed to like them—their appreciation for them in the video clips seems to be perfectly sincere.
Anyway. I have no further insights, really, into the photo album for Grandpa's 75th birthday party, which was on January 1, 2004. Except to say that I had forgotten until I ran across it in my Flickr account, that there had been another birthday party for his 86th, 11 years later. That party wasn't nearly as big, and was four years after Grandma died. Grandpa himself died the following year.
Oh! Before I forget: I do rather like this shot that it looks like Dad took of me on Christmas 2003. I just wanted to mention that.
After Shobhit's class, we just watched some more TV before I went to bed: this week's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver with a pretty great takedown of Tucker Carlson and his insidiously white supremacist messaging; and an episode of season three of The Larry Sanders Show.
We were back up to 6 people on the Office Lunch Meetup today! This time on Microsoft Teams, which we are generally shifting over to from Zoom at work now. The six in attendance were all of the top six attendees over time: Rebecca (33rd lunch), Matthew (32nd), Noah (21st), Brent (18th), Adrienne (13th) and Katherine (10th). It was fun to catch up with everyone, and to discuss things like our sudden eligibility to sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine—even as office workers.
We got a notice via email yesterday of this. And although the email says "We will share appointment links noted below as soon as possible," leading me to believe we'll get a follow-up at some point today regarding more PCC-specific options, at Brent's suggestion I still signed up for notification at the City of Seattle website, which is separate from the Washington State "Find Your Phase" site. All I had to do there was click that I work for a grocery store and it accepted me as eligible, and will notify me when appointments are available. So now I have that going on at both the state and city level—but, as the work email seemed to indicate, I think I will also get something to sign up for that is even more directly specific and relevant to PCC staff.
I was pretty stoked and surprised to see that email yesterday, as I truly thought I had another two months to go at least, maybe a month and a half at best, before I even qualified. But, they lumped us all as office staff in with the store staff. I responded to Kerry, the Human Resources and Safety Manager who had sent out the email, that I felt bad about feeling like I'm kind of "skipping the line" considering I work from home, but I also know that even health officials advise that any opportunity to get vaccinated that comes along should be taken. She responded with, "It is your time!! Vaccinate 😊"
So, we'll see how that goes from here, but it's starting to feel like I may get vaccinated before even Shobhit does, which is the opposite of what I had expected. It would be great if I get my first shot before even Easter, in which case I'd have my second by my Birth Week, which will simplify a whole lot about it, as well as the weekend trips I intend to take in June regardless. In any event, it was very exciting news.
[posted 1:08 pm]