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So, all of today's DLU photos are from last night, when Katy from UNFI, our largest distributor we work with (which has been the case in all the 20 years I have worked here—although apparently Katy has only worked there for six years), took several of us out for drinks. She took us to this "
Miracle on 2nd," a so-called "Christmas pop-up" that turns out to be just an uber-Christmas-ized
Rob Roy. I guess I should say UNFI took us all out rather than Katy herself; I'm pretty sure she used a corporate credit card to pay for us all. Every one of us had at least two cocktails (Noah had two beers and one cocktail), and the cocktails averaged around $18 each. That's nuts pricing to me, but not when a corporate vendor is paying for it!
Apparently Katy took Steven and Amanda, the HBC team, there last year. This year she invited them as well as Grocery, including Shelley, Noah, and me. Oh, and Mackenzie, who also works in HBC although she's technically in Category Management. (Not sure why she didn't invite Beth or Kevin, who round out the Category Management team.) Last month we all decided on 12/1 as a date that worked for all of us. Then, Shelley came down with covid this week, and the snow in outlying suburban areas precluded Steven joining us. This means Katy herself and Amanda were the only ones able to make it both last year and this year. Katy asked around yesterday to see if we all wanted to reschedule, but neither Shelley nor Steven ever chimed in as to whether the 12th or 13th—the only other dates proposed—would work, and the rest of us said we could still stick with 12/1, so we went ahead and stuck with the plan yesterday.
So, it was five of us: Katy, Noah, Amanda, Mackenzie and me. The place is maybe half a mile away and I totally planned to walk, but I guess Mackenzie's husband Chris was giving her a ride over there and she offered to give me a ride too. We all rode in a rental minivan because I guess Chris had his car smashed into. He showed me a photo and it looked like something he could have barely escaped alive, but they were all much more interested in talking about driving something as large as a minivan around. Chris overshot the mark by nearly two blocks, and it was fucking freezing just walking that far to the door of Rob Roy.
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Mackenzie and I were the first to arrive besides Katy, who had beat us all there and was kind of saving a space in couch seating by the front window; I was the only one to sit in an actual chair, set between two couches at their ends. This worked for me well as I had both my shoulder bag and an umbrella and could just set it all under the seat.
It was so cold, I really only wanted hot drinks, and there were only two on the menu. I didn't want the mulled wine, so I went with the hot buttered rum—served in the winking Santa mug seen in the photo at the top of this post. I just had that very same drink at home during Action Movie Night on Wednesday, but, this place gave it some very tasty seasoning. Maybe I should find some nutmeg or something to start putting in it at home too. When everyone else was having a second (and I think Katy had a third) cocktail, I went ahead and just had a second hot buttered rum. Amanda had one as her second cocktail and Noah also ended with one after two beers.
Katy mentioned more than once the adorable clamping koalas she remembered from last year, and so she asked about it when none of our first cocktails featured one. That's how she wound up with this cocktail shown in the photo above. All of the actual glassware used for cocktails were very festive with Christmasy imagery on it and with
Miracle printed on it.
I took a good
14 shots while I was there (even including
a brief video clip, thereby justifying its own photo album on Flickr. That was kind of a last-minute addition to my working
Christmas 2022 photo albums collection, which already, on only December 2, has five albums in it! I really figured I would have fewer than last year's record 13 photo albums for the year's Christmas collection, but if I wind up doing everything as planned, now there will indeed be 13 this year as well. Possibly only because I created a dedicated album this year for 2023 calendar photos, but whatever.
Shobhit had asked if he wanted him to pick me up on his way home from work, but we met at 5:00 and he got off work at 5:30 and I didn’t want to rush out of there. The five of us hung out for a couple of hours and I had a very good time. I had a lot of notable conversation in particular with Mackenzie and especially Amanda, who sat directly to my left; a little bit with Katy, who asked some questions about where I live. Not quite as much with Noah, but we already talk plenty at the office anyway.
When we all left, I walked to 3rd and managed to get on a Rapid Ride E to Pike, and then within minutes got on an 11 bus going up the hill, so that worked out great. I got home, had a leftover cucumber sandwich from the night before (which I had also had for lunch), and then set about processing the evening's photos.
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[posted 12:29 pm]
