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Yesterday I attended not one, but
two potluck social events, which meant there was way too much food for both lunch and dinner. I probably should have at least skipped breakfast, but I didn't even think about that until I was just finishing my bowl of cereal in the morning.
Lunch was this year's PCC Office Harvest Potluck, formerly known for many years as our office "Thanksgiving feast"—whatever we called it, this year was
the 19th I have attended, the 20th to occur since I have worked here, and the 21st Thanksgiving holiday since I started. The two off years were 2008, when I missed it because it happened when Shobhit and I had gone to Las Vegas to see Madonna; and 2020, when pandemic stay-home orders precluded any gatherings at all. We've already had another two since returning to the office.
Last year, out of a then-total of 120 office staff, about a quarter of us attended the potluck. This year we have a total of 123, and
at least 42 people I've been able to count showed up—and that's 34%, just over a third. It's growing back at least, slowly but surely! Both last year and this year, the number of people who work from home was a clear factor, but a lot of people did seem to come in yesterday specifically for this event. I actually spoke with someone at one point about how there was a lot more people than it seemed once we were all in the kitchen and dining room. With only a third of us in the office at all, two thirds of the desks still remain empty, which makes it easy to underestimate how many people are actually here.
This, in fact, was the first time we had an office event since the pandemic so well attended that people actually spilled into the open large conference room for seating.
I wonder what the odds are that someone was in there with covid? Probably relatively high, actually. Even in light of the likelihood that everyone there was vaccinated. Very few fully up to date, though, I'm sure:
only 29.3% of eligible population in King County are. Shobhit and I are both among those, though. I would guess that percentage is higher among PCC staff, but not likely a lot higher. I mean, shit, Danielle is
a fucking nurse and not even she has gotten the latest booster yet. Just hasn't gotten around to it yet, she says. I think she has a blasé attitude about it because she works in health care and, miraculously, has yet to have ever tested positive for covid. That's one number neither Shobhit nor I can count ourselves a part of.
I feel like I know better than to get cocky about avoiding
re-infection since getting sick last April; my being up to date on boosters may be the reason, or maybe it's been sheer luck. I do feel more inclined to get cocky about not coming down with anything
else, however: no flu, no cold, still. I do feel like this in particular I can attribute to my continued obsession with frequent hand washing, always for twenty seconds every time without exception, especially every time I either enter the office or re-enter the condo at home. I even wash my hands again if I merely leave to throw garbage in the garbage chute, or just to check the mail. I wash my hands as soon as I arrive at the office every morning. And, critically: I continue to wear a mask on public transit and in all public spaces. But, not at the office, which is technically not a public space. Still, that was a pretty large gathering yesterday.
I didn't make anything to bring. I'm on the office events planning committee, I helped a little with setup yesterday (most of which Mel did themselves coming in super early yesterday morning; I get the distinct feeling they're quite the introvert on these matters—at one point Mel even stood on the edge of the room "to hide" during the chaos of setup just before the event started), and I took lots of pictures which gets even more widely appreciated now than it used to, so I feel like I still did enough. Mel even cracked that maybe we should add "photographer" to the sign-up sheet we use for people to RSVP and note whether they're making something and what, or helping to setup or clean up. I'd be happy with that!
The
photo album I have for this potluck from yesterday has a good 30 shots in it, the second-highest number ever for a "Giving Thanks at PCC" photo album—and that's only because last year's album featured 7 screenshots of the "Giving Thanks" kudoboard we did then but didn't do last year; plus two shots from when I worked holiday store shifts. Without those, last year's album would have featured only 25 shots—and I took a record 29 shots that I kept from the actual event this year.
I also included a shot of
snow on Capitol Hill this year from Wednesday night, barely more than a dusting. This was one of those scenarios where Seattle proper got just a bit of snow but the suburbs got a lot: Shobhit even called me out to the living room earlier Wednesday evening to see local news coverage of snow in Lynnwood, Everett, and at Snoqualmie Pass. They had anchors sent out to all of these locations to report live, which cracked me up: let's send people to the places best avoided! Always the practice with local news.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ उन्नीस —
— पांच हजार तीन सौ उन्नीस —
Anyway. As expected, there was a lot of good food yesterday, and several cool dishes not seen before at these events, including a
French onion soup, and a
layered potato, butternut squash and beets dish made by Adrienne that Shobhit would have loved because of the beets. It was very pretty, although she showed me a photo of her first run from Thanksgiving itself when she had more time to let it set to soak up the juices and that one was definitely better. Mel also made a cranberry shrub drink also mixed with apple juice, so I tried it, and was shocked to find I liked it even though I hate cranberry. I took a
rather artistic shot of the shrub drink through the glass of the spigot dispenser she had put it in.
I was maybe second in line to get food. People are always so ridiculously self-conscious about being first, but I am not. I sat next to Adrienne at the table, also near Craig and Noah sat across from me and one seat to the left, although we didn't actually talk much. Kelly sat right across from me. I took photos from my seat in both directions, and the shot at the top of this post was to the left, and is one of my favorite of the photos I took.
I went out of my way to take small portions and still could
barely fit everything on my plate. This is why I always stand by the argument that not
everyone needs to bring food to a potluck: if even only half do, you're good. Otherwise there is just way too much food.
Once I finished with my plate, though, I got another and
tackled the dessert spread. Some I was excited about and then was underwhelmed. Others I thought, I'll try this, and then was amazed. The green macaroons with chocolate filling were so good it's criminal; whoever made them should be arrested. I ate the last two of them still sitting out in the kitchen this morning.
One kind of curious thing about these events is the turnover, and how when I posted about them on Facebook I used to tag a lot of Facebook friend coworkers who were there. Yesterday there were only two people still around who I am also friends with on Facebook: Noah and Andrew. I didn't bother tagging them this time. Andrew already saw and liked
the post anyway.
So I moved to a different spot with my dessert plate, going to one of the small tables where Marie from IT and John from Accounting were sitting. I said I figured I should join them since I had convinced Marie to come even though she wouldn't be making any food (neither would I be!). We chatted for a while, and somehow we wound up on the topic of John's summer job in the nineties at the Oscar Meyer factory in Iowa. It sounded both fascinated and disgusting. Naturally my vegetarianism came up and he asked me what I eat every day. Well, counter-intuitively, not always vegetables, or even what I really should be eating a ton of. I eat a lot of breads, sandwiches, pastas. I'm a bit of a carbohydrate queen, I guess you could say.
After that I moved over to the craft station Mel set up for decorating little wooden mushrooms, which I wanted to do to help justify her effort. I decorated
one little mushroom. As such, I hang out with people for this event longer than most, which was why
yesterday's post didn't go public until 1:37, even though it was about Dad's prostate cancer diagnosis. I didn't get a huge amount of work done yesterday. I sure am grateful we are keeping these office traditions going though, notwithstanding how few people are left to have had a long history with them like I do.
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So then, last night was Action Movie Night at The Braeburn Condominiums theater and community kitchen. Our eight this year now. For this one, we
did bring food, mostly for the express purpose of guaranteeing that there be something for us vegetarians to eat. Our offering this time was easily one of my instant favorites: Shobhit's idea to make cucumber sandwiches, cut from Trader Joe's baguettes and otherwise stuffed with tomatoes and basil and some slices of parmesan cheese and the only condiment being cream cheese. It was super tasty, and we had four cut sandwiches leftover at the end of the night and thus I just had one of them for lunch here at the office today and it was still delicious. I'll probably have another one for dinner at home tonight.
One of the Chrises ordered a pizza from Mad Pizza, but it was last to arrive. I was satiated, but Chris went out of his way to point out to us that it was vegetarian and so Shobhit and I each had a slice. I was shocked by how good it was. He also got us to take the last of that home at the end of the evening too, a slice and a half, which I have saved for my lunch at work tomorrow.
Tony, our Resident Host, took his turn choosing the movie last night. It was
12 Monkeys, the 1995 Terry Gilliam film that as it happens is largely about a pandemic, and a surprising number of people had not seen it. Probably because several of them are in their twenties and thirties, some maybe not even born yet when it was 1995. Before the movie started, Tony told me it was from the nineties and I had probably seen it already. When it first started, I told him "I have seen this but it's been ages." Shortly after I remembered that I saw it more recently than I realized: I had gotten the DVD from Netflix
in early 2019—so, very shortly after I finally changed my Netflix account to exclusively streaming and stopped getting DVDs—and it was plagued with technical difficulties, probably both because of my rather old Blu-Ray player and how overplayed it already was by countless Netflix members.
Shobhit didn't remember this last night at all. Seeing that old blog post, it's odd to read about how invested he got into the story at the time. How much Shobhit gets into a story or movie so clearly depends on his mood at the time. He was all about watching the movie in 2019, but last night? I had to elbow him no fewer than three times because he started fucking snoring.
When the movie ended, I asked Tony if he had seen
Brazil, which is by far my favorite Terry Gilliam film but has a lot of thematic, tonal and aesthetic overlap with
12 Monkeys even though they were released 11 years apart. In fact I just took a break from writing this paragraph to send him the link at Prime Video. He can rent it for like four bucks, which was what he did last night to stream
12 Monkeys from his laptop. I have a feeling I'm one of few who will always try to play movies from the Blu-Ray player. There were no technical difficulties from Tony's laptop but the one from two Movie Nights ago was too much.
Also: we were back to large attendance last night. Fourteen people! That's the exactly number of movie theater seats in that little movie theater, and we filled it right at capacity. There were two new guys I didn't recognize and who were never introduced to me. I could have introduced myself, I suppose. The names I remember are thus Tony, Jake, Ben, Joe, Derek, Chris, Chris, Jesse. That leaves four whose names I am not yet confident of remembering, including the two I'd never seen before.
Shobhit gets off work at 5:30 and we're still learning how best to time the preparation of what we bring so we're not late . . . people are always there promptly at 6:30, and it was about 6:30 when we walked in, evidently the last to arrive. I did feel good, though, to have both Chris and Ben tell me almost immediately that "We heard you picked a great movie last week." They both expressed regret at having missed it, which was nice.
Tony last made the choice fourteen Movie Nights ago, and thus twenty-eight weeks ago, or roughly six months ago. Clearly whether your turn comes around faster than that depends on the attendance of other people whose turn it might otherwise be; it took me only seven cycles to get a turn. I should still only expect another turn in another six months or so, probably. That would bring us to around April. Maybe sooner, depending. I've already got ideas.
In the meantime, I've got other shit to do! I need to get back to work.
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[posted 12:47 pm]
