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I had a quasi-surprise social event last night. This month's Book Club meeting had long been scheduled for 4:30 on Monday 11/28, but I totally spaced putting it on my calendar. So did Kara, apparently. And Mel forgot to send a calendar invite to the group to keep us all reminded, so they followed up with us all on the Teams group yesterday afternoon. And the core four of us—the last being Steve—still wound up meeting after all.
I deliberately did not order anything. "To be clear, I have the money," I announced, arguably unnecessarily. "I just don't want to spend it because I didn't budget for this." Steve later tried really hard to buy me a drink, but I politely but insistently declined, rationalizing that a vendor is taking several of us Grocery people out for drinks after work on Thursday anyway. I'll also be having a drink at Action Movie Night tomorrow. That's more than enough for this week.
The place we met at was new, called Buckley's on Queen Anne—our third try after our first two choices wound up being closed, one because it's Monday and the other apparently because of a "private event." The first was going to be a new idea, called Here Today Brewery, apparently a new place on Elliott Avenue. When that turned out to be closed, we fell back on the choice it's been every month so far, Queen Anne Beerhall. We all met there to discover it closed, so Steve suggested a pub two blocks away I had never heard of; that was Buckley's. They had excellent French fries and for that reason alone I would go back, even though it was a sports bar. At least it was not too loud, which itself was almost shocking.
I didn't order fries, but I know they were excellent because Kara ordered a side for the table to share. Then Mel did the same thing later, wanting more, and also said they were to share. Mel also ordered pretzels and cheese, these not being anywhere near as big as the famous ones from Queen Anne Beerhall, but they ordered those because they were hoping for pretzels when we thought we were going to Queen Anne Beerhall. I had one bite of those. They were decent.
We actually found plenty to talk about, including fun cities to visit and how good their public transit systems are. There was a good amount of discussion about Chicago, which Steve apparently lived in for a couple of years. When I brought up my love of skyscrapers and architecture therefore became relevant, he told me he had a good biography of Frank Lloyd Wright that he would loan me, and I could return it to him whenever, no matter how long it took me to finish. True to his word, he brought the book to me at my desk at work this morning. It's called
Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright and it was published fairly recently, in 2019. I may actually make it my next book I read.
The book we discussed was
The Library Book by Susan Orlean, which I read and truly loved last summer, and talked up so much that the Book Club took it on—I told Marie in IT about it a few weeks ago and apparently
her book club is now reading it! I didn't need to re-read it because I finished it so recently; Steve had read it once a few years ago but was happy to re-read it; Mel managed to finish it and Kara was about two thirds of the way through. She wasn't finished with the last book either when we met, and I'm wondering if maybe once a month is too frequent. Mel decided we would skip December for the holidays, which will make it easier for me to try tackling this Frank Lloyd Wright biography, but it was also to give Brandy more time to finish the book and hopefully actually join us for our next gathering in January. Apparently she's still been reading along all along, but hasn't had time to join for the meetings.
Shobhit got off work at 5:30 and texted to ask if I wanted a ride, so I said sure. I could have easily stayed to visit longer but I preferred the idea of getting a ride over taking transit home. And then, once he picked me up, I asked to swing by the Central Library downtown so I could finally return a DVD and pick one up that I had on hold, all of which we managed to get done with about two minutes to spare before the library closed at 6:00. It felt like a very efficient evening so far.
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— पांच हजार तीन सौ सत्रह —
We were a few blocks from home when I suddenly remembered: "Oh! Take me to PCC!" We needed to go to the Central District store because I was on the last can of cat food and still needed to buy more. After that, Shobhit decided we should also go to Trader Joe's, so we could get bread and cucumbers and cream cheese for our food offering idea for Action Movie Night this week.
Once that was done, we finally came home, unloaded the groceries, and had naan with a leftover cauliflower dish Shobhit made that I had to admit was edible even though it was cauliflower based.
He then spent the rest of the evening watching his news programs, so I was in the bedroom at my computer for the next couple of hours that basically closed out the evening. I updated my budget, caught up on social media, blah blah blah. Boring stuff.
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It snowed a little this morning. Just flurries, really. Still, it was quite cold by Seattle standards: right at freezing, 32°, by midmorning. There's been all this hoopla about preparing for snow this week, and I've consistently greeted it with skepticism. Old habits die hard, I guess: the last couple of times I didn't take the "snow threat" seriously we wound up with
real snow days. So far though, that's not happening this week, and as each day promising snow approaches, the high is always still in the upper thirties—very cold, but warmer than snow weather.
It looks like we may yet get snow on Thursday, with a forecast high of 35° and a low of 28°, and moisture coming in. That's kind of perfect for snow, actually.
Tomorrow we have our "Harvest Potluck," our traditional office Thanksgiving feast—we scheduled it this year for the week after Thanksgiving rather than before, which I was okay with since it's still November and we still have a separate holiday event scheduled in December—and the day is a break in precipitation forecast, which should bode well for attendance. I'm not making a dish but will help set up as I traditionally have every year. I'm really looking forward to it and am deeply grateful it's still happening at all.
There are several holiday work events coming up, in fact. Office Harvest Potluck tomorrow; a UNFI rep is taking some of us in Merchandising out for drinks at a place called "Miracle on 2nd," apparently a "holiday popup," on Thursday. Next week, on Wednesday the 7th we're having our "Holiday Night Out" for the whole Merchandising Department, with a pasta cooking class and free hors d'oeuvres and wine. The week after that, Friday the 16th, we'll have our office PCC Holiday Brunch followed by a White Elephant gift exchange.
That's just the work stuff. Lots to do through the end of the year, and I love it!
— पांच हजार तीन सौ सत्रह —
[posted 12:36 pm]
