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I don't think I've brought this up yet, because usually I don't bring it up this early: on August 5, Friday a week from today, I will celebrate
twenty years working at PCC.
This actually came up last week with Eric—a week ago today, in fact—because he sent a reschedule of our Outlook calendar event for our weekly 1:1 that week, rescheduling it from our regular Thursday afternoon to Friday, August 5, saying he'll be in the office that day. I just replied with
Hey guess what that day (August 5) is my 20th anniversary at PCC. And that quickly turned into a discussion about doing something to commemorate the event, which I rather appreciated because the people who have gone out of their way to celebrate my anniversaries in the past—namely Elin and Scott—have since moved on from PCC.
Until this discussion with Eric, I was kind of figuring any special commemoration would be up to me—which is fine, and totally on brand: I'm the one who makes by far the biggest deal about my birthday every year, after all. (God knows I can't rely on Shobhit to do it, and I don't particularly want to anyway.) It was really nice having Eric clearly get into this idea, asking what kinds of desserts I like, etc.
We had our usual Thursday virtual 1:1 yesterday afternoon, and talked a bit more about it. He even asked me to send him some photos from my time at PCC. Last Friday itself, I already began to draw up the "20 Years at PCC" email photo digest I would be sending out no matter what. It's the fourth time I've done this specific kind of email, as I did one in 2007 (5 years), one in 2012 (10 years) and one in 2017 (15 years). I was even given a small party for my 10th in 2012.
As you might imagine, there's a lot of overlap with the photos I'm using in the email I now think I'll send out Thursday evening next week, and both the photos I saved on the W Drive to send to Eric (10 photos overlap), and historic PCC photos already used in previous emails (also 10 photos overlap, out of 21 I've embedded into the email—not just one for the number of years I've worked here, but one for each calendar year with which my tenure has overlapped).
The email draft I have contains a lot of content, because it's practically impossible for me to write brief captions anymore, and as I said, there are 21 photos. People will need a lot of time to get through it all. A lot of people won't even bother, and that's fine. I get how it is, and am not demanding effort from people who don't want to put it forth. I'll be sending this email to over 60 people I know or knew in one way or another through PCC, and only a fraction of them do I feel particularly close to. In fact, just this morning I had to comb through my email at work, as well as the Office Staff roster, to see which new people I might need to add to the list since, for instance, I sent out the 15th-anniversary one.
What this means is, next week is going to be an eventful week. I'm on PTO both Monday and Tuesday, Monday bein the day Shobhit and I drive back home from Vancouver, B.C.; Tuesday the "buffer day" I take off for dealing with trip photos but also when Laney will come over to watch the latest
Scream movie; I'll send out my 20th-anniversary email Thursday night; and get some kind of special event, which Eric is delighting in preparing for me, at work on Friday. And that'll be before I have Happy Hour with Laney at a park that same evening, and then Tracy's coming over to the Braeburn Condos Theater Saturday to watch
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Tracy's birthday is the following Wednesday, and her birthday commemoration with me will be the next day, on Sunday August 7, when we will hang out at Golden Gardens Park. Shobhit doesn't work that day so I might just bring him along too.
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— पांच हजार दो सौ अड़तालीस —
As for last night, I burned through the evening by riding my bike right after work straight to Pacific Place to see the utterly average and mediocre animated feature
DC League of Super Pets, once again just a movie to go to, but nothing special or memorable.
I got home around maybe 7:15, and it took a good twenty minutes for my computer to get started up and open apps that fully loaded to the point of usability, which drives me bonkers and I really need to get connected again with Apple Support about it one of these days. Then I whipped up the review and finished it very shortly after 8:00, so then Shobhit and I watched the last two episodes of
The Bear on Hulu, which stuck the landing pretty well, and the show overall is excellent.
After that it was time to start getting ready for bed. This evening I've reserved for trip preparation: I need to get the cooler up from the storage unit; wash the linens Eddie had slept on in the guest room; and pack for our two nights in Vancouver. I'm guessing we'll head out by about 9:00 tomorrow morning. Even though we got a great deal on our hotel by booking a room with only a tub and not a shower (bleh), I'm really looking forward to it. Although I visited to see Ivan over a wildfire smoke-choked weekend in 2018, Shobhit and I haven't been there together in five years, since our anniversary trip in 2017.
This will be the second time there has been a five-year break between visits there with Shobhit, and in both cases I visited with someone besides him in the in-between time. In fact, there was a four-year gap going with Shobhit in between those two five-year gaps, and I visited with other people in the intervening time then as well. I went with Shobhit in 2004, 2005, 2007, and twice in 2008; went with Susan in 2011; back with Shobhit in 2013; then with "Other Danielle" and her friend Andrea to see Madonna in 2015; back with Shobhit in 2017; then I returned to see Ivan while he lived there for all of three months in 2018. Even though this will be my 12th visit to Vancouver overall, ever since my first visit, with Barbara, in 1999, I love that city so much (clearly) that this will be a welcome return. It will be especially fun to be there specifically for Vancouver Pride, which I've wanted to do again for ages, for the first time in fourteen years.
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[posted 12:20 pm]
