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I've been thinking about the term "multitasking" lately, and how the very idea of it is now
regarded as a myth: the brain never focuses on two things at once. At best, it switches back and forth very quickly. I suppose this is why I often have to backtrack on podcasts I'm listening to while working on "menial" tasks at work.
But, in the more traditional sense of "multitasking," for much of my work day every day, it's the overwhelming majority of the way I spend my time. I field time-sensitive emails nearly all day, or at least until about 3:00 when most POS people at stores leave their shifts. But even after that, I can get pressing emails from a vendor or a broker. (Sometimes they regard it as pressing even though it really isn't. You know how it is.) In all these cases, I'm not really "multitasking" but shifting focus from the primary task at hand, to said emails.
Most of the time, this is fine. I suppose this newer way of looking at multitasking really should give us pause in regards to things like, say, talking on the phone while driving. Or especially texting while driving. I'll never forget the time in the late nineties when I had sent Gabriel a letter (like real, snail-mail letter; there was a good decade or so when I wrote many of them to many people) and he told me he read it
while driving on the freeway. Guess what Gabriel, you weren't multitasking! (He already knows this. Did he know it then? Oh, probably.)
Anyway. The truth is, these constant distractions at work are among the very few things about my job that are fucking annoying. I suppose I could start selecting specific time just to focus on email, but I seem to lean away from that idea; too often emails are more time-sensitive than that and need immediate attention, especially if they are coming from stores. (Although again, stores often send me stuff as though it's an emergency even though it really isn't. Correcting an item ringing up at the wrong price needs immediate attention; adding the word "Deluxe" to the description of a macaroni and cheese, not so much. I'm looking at you, POS Administrator at Ballard!)
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We did it again: Shobhit and I went over to Diesel for Happy Hour shortly after I got off work yesterday. They still didn't have any mozzarella sticks. Annoying. We got the onion rings again even though we really shouldn't have. That plus the grilled cheese sandwiches and more tomato soup than I really should have had for dinner, combined with another stiff cocktail, meant my weight was up rather than down again this morning. I need to get my shit together.
How busy Diesel was on an early Tuesday evening versus Monday was stark. There must have been fewer than 10 there on Monday, but yesterday we had to go behind the bar to find the one place with seats still not taken. It was kind of nuts, I thought—even though it was still slow compared to a weekend, or even a Thursday, I'm sure. I think a lot of businesses like this are "back" after the pandemic, even though there is no "after" yet; the pandemic rages on and case counts continue to go up. The difference is that they are climbing slowly, as opposed to the stunning Omicron spike from over the holidays. It's less scary, still cause for concern. And with new variants resulting in tons of reinfections, I'm beginning to think Dr. Eckert was right when he told me just to expect to get covid again in a few months. Unless I just go back to working from home indefinitely, and I just don't want to do that. Getting covid sucked, but my experience with it was not as bad as it could have been, especially earlier on and if I weren't vaccinated. I'm at a point where I prefer the risk of working at the office over the loneliness, isolation and irritation of working from home indefinitely. Besides, as long as Shobhit works retail, the risk is highest from him anyway.
We were only there about half an hour probably. Still qualifies, Shobhit gets another Social Review point! Also, he'll get a slew of them for our trip to Victoria next month—four points for four days.
I'm finding myself particularly excited for this trip, which is a nice feeling after the disappointment of my Toronto idea not working out; I wanted so badly to go there. And even though I've already been to Victoria
six other times in my life, two of those times I was so young I have only the most fleeting memories of them, and all the other times I only spent a day there, if that. Well, I did spend more like two days (but still only one night) with Barbara when she and I went in 2000, but a) even that was so long ago I can barely remember it anymore, even though I was 23 years old; and b) that's the most recent trip I've taken there that was not combined with another trip (either Vancouver, or the Inside Passage cruise). Furthermore, I have never spent more than one night in Victoria in a single trip, and next month we're staying
three nights, giving us two full days there, plus an extra evening the day we arrive. I've never had this much time to fully explore the city, but also more of the surrounding area than just Buchart Gardens.
Victoria has always kind of lived in the shadow of Vancouver, B.C. in both Shobhit's and my minds, which is still the case—Vancouver is objectively better—but that doesn't make Victoria
bad by any stretch, and I think it's been too long since I have it the attention that city and area really deserve. Plus, I've found plenty to do that we've either never done or that, if I have done it before, it's been since I was a kid. (I thought maybe I had done High Tea at the Empress Hotel on one of my childhood trips with Dad and Sherri, but I texted him this morning to confirm and he said
No could never get in. So this means I'll actually be doing that one for the first time! Which weirdly makes me even happier about it.)
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Incidentally, I went down to the storage unit in the parking garage of our condo complex the other day, just to find the
Seattle Gay News travel article I had written about Victoria in 2000, the only written account I have of that trip—I took a photo of it so I could
upload it to Flickr and add it to my
Victoria 2000 photo album. Before I digitized all of my home videos last year, that photo album just had just 14 shots in it. But, the video digitization added three video clips, and photos I took of the article (including
one black and white newspaper shot of the Parliament Building that for some reason was left at the newspaper so I never kept the original) bumped the item count in that photo album to 2000. It's been fun to relive that trip that now seems like ancient history in two different ways, both through the video clips and through the (honestly, kind of disappointingly bland) travel article about it.
Three things I do remember about that trip in 2000. First, this was the one trip I've taken via the Victoria Clipper from the Seattle waterfront, and that boat is small and the sea is big, and I got very seasick, nauseated most of the trip there—my first time (of many) having that experience on a boat. Second, Barbara has a felony on her record from about nine years before that trip, which neither of us knew would be an issue, and they nearly didn't let her through customs when we reached the Victoria port. They allowed her to apply for a pardon and somehow that alone allowed her through—she was fretting with guilt about possibly derailing the trip up to that point, as I recall—and some weeks later she actually got a pardon letter "from the Queen," which then allowed her to come again when she tagged along on Shobhit's and my trip in 2008 when we also brought his mother. And third, the tourism contact we had at the paper from Victoria was upset when I did not mention the place we stayed, as it had been complimentary for us as was all the other touristy things we did that trip, for the purposes of the article. This makes sense to me in retrospect, but I had never written an article like this before and did not realize that would be an expectation; Mike B, who I worked with at the paper, probably should have known that but acted like they were being unreasonable by being upset about it. Ironically, I am now also irritated that the piece never mentions the lodging, because the video clips don’t either and I really wish I knew where we had stayed. Now I don't have a clue.
This time, though, Shobhit and I will be staying at, of all things,
a golf resort—but, it looks to be in a very pretty spot on a mountain; and it's halfway between the city and two particular points of interest I want to go see (
Malahat Skywalk and
Butchart Gardens, on either side of Saanich Inlet). So when Shobhit suggested that as the place to stay, I was all for it, because of its convenient location for our purposes on this trip. We can basically take one day to cover those areas outside of town and one day to explore the city itself.
And I'm very much looking forward to it!
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I nearly forgot to mention that a broker took me out to lunch today. Her name is Irasema, she's of Mexican decent and speaks English as a second language so she's unnecessarily self-conscious about her use of the English language, and she's the most recent fan of my email travelogues—I get regular responses with feedback from her after sending them out.
At my request, we met at a place called
Pub 70 on Pier 70, a very easy walk from work as it's just south of the Olympic Sculpture Park, which is between that pier and my work building. I got there quite a bit before her, because first she got stuck in traffic and then she had assumed she would meet here at the office and then walk over together. But, we never did discuss that; I figured we were just meeting there. Oh well!
It was really fun meeting her and chatting, and she sure made me feel good about myself—she talked a lot about how helpful I am, and how comfortable I make her feel when talking, I guess about anything but particularly when she has questions and I respond with very thorough answers. We only "talked shop" for maybe ten or fifteen minutes of the hour or so we were together; we talked about a lot of other stuff the rest of the time, especially about travels. She was curious about what other Birth Week themes I've done, and we talked a lot about travels—a fiasco she went through last month on an intended trip to Europe that she and her family got denied at the last minute because no one informed them until they were at the airport that they can't travel on a passport that will expire within the next six months; and of course Shobhit's and my plans to go to Victoria next month for our anniversary, and how that plan came about.
My favorite part of the lunch, though, we actually when Irasema walked with me back to the office. I told her we were going to take "my shortcut," which is just cutting through the Olympic Sculpture Park and thus avoiding having to cross the railroad tracks on foot, or even have to walk down Elliott Avenue. She was unaware of this park, and she kept saying, "Ooh, what is that!" while pointing at different sculpture pieces. It cracked me up. She was like a kid at an amusement park.
Also I got a free lunch. Can't complain about that! I didn't even mind waiting for her, it was so pleasant sitting at the outdoor patio seating I was at. I took
a couple of pictures.
Now I'm back at the office though and I've got lots of work to get back to.
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[posted 1:39 pm]
