— पांच हजार दो सौ चौंतीस —
Quick review! My account of this year's Independence Day was posted last night, and can be read
here.
It was also
written last night, which means it accounts for the majority of how I spent my evening. I did recently find an old favorite eighties sitcom,
Night Court, on IMDb TV, and I watched a couple of episodes of that, after posting and before going to bed.
If I had known before last Friday that I now have to use all my PTO above 120 hours by the end of the year, I'd have taken yesterday off. I think I will do that every year from now on, when Independence Day lands on any day of the week between Sunday and Thursday. And it's not just because it will make it easier to make time to write an account of the holiday, but because we got home so late Monday night. I didn't get to bed until just after midnight, then had to get up shortly after 5 a.m. I was so, so tired nearly all day yesterday. I didn't even have time to upload photos to Flickr until after work last night.
The holiday event Monday evening yielded
31 shots (28 photos and 3 video clips), incidentally, which is roughly in line with the last two times I spent the evening of the Fourth with just Shobhit at Lake Union Park, in 2017 and 2018. I'm thinking about trying to find a different way to experience the fireworks next year, even if it means spending some money; the Lake Union Park experience is losing its novelty, even though I hadn't gone to the park itself for four years.
Danielle had accepted my invitation to have her come hang out with us at Lake Union Park, but then she texted me on Saturday evening that she was going to pass after all. That was disappointing, but, after being down there on Monday and seeing the tide-like movement of crowds out of the park toward downtown after the fireworks, I began to think she made the better decision, at least for herself. She had to work yesterday at 9 a.m., and the plan was for her to park at the Tukwila Station and take Light Rail into town. She'd have transferred to the South Lake Union Streetcar at Westlake, which would have been fine for on the way there earlier in the evening. But at the end, the crowds alone indicated that transit in the area would have been insanely off schedule and delayed, if she could even find where best to try catching it. She'd probably have ended up just having to walk all the way back to Westlake Station, which I suppose would have been okay, but it still would have extended the lengthy time it already would have taken her to get back home. I'll just have to find some other excuse to hang out with her another way soon. I only saw her once over the spring quarter, during my Birth Week.
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As for the email I sent out about Independence Day last night, considering how much less photogenic it was, and even how many fewer photos it contained, than most of my "travelogue" emails, it's already gotten an unusually large response: replies from Laney (who often replies regardless), Scott, and even Uncle David in Australia.
Of course I had to follow up with Scott, who left PCC in January, to tell him about this momentous news from Friday about no longer being able to cash out PTO and having to use all of it over 120 hours by the end of the year, or else lose it. I noted that I bet it's just added to the long list of reasons he's glad he left PCC. Parts of his response to that actually cracked me up:
That is pretty huge, a lot of folks will be pissed off. I know I have never managed more that 4 weeks in a year so I always had cash out
Next new hires will have a vacation actual limit I guarantee it.
It is part of PCC growing pains but it’s also what set PCC apart and in a few more years there will be little difference between PCC and Google corporately speaking
I don’t regret my move to be honest PCC was just getting boring
Never allowed to change or innovate programs
Now I create new shit everyday lol. The life of a startup
The part about PCC "getting boring" made me laugh out loud. I shared that with Tracy over text, and what she wrote back made me laugh
really hard:
Can't have a drama queen get bored 👑
I was also struck by his "guarantee" that new hires will next have a limit to their vacation. We'll see about that one. Interestingly, when Shobhit and I were talking to Alexia about this last Sunday, she noted that her company a few years ago changed their PTO policy so that there is
no limit. Given that the current, new policy at PCC is making me feel obligated to use up all my accrued PTO, I can see how having no limit at all would result in people actually taking
less, because then there is no obligation to take a certain amount, and people don't want to appear not to be doing their jobs. Alexia said the volume of approval is up to individual managers. This approach actually makes more sense to me than Scott's prediction.
— पांच हजार दो सौ चौंतीस —
— पांच हजार दो सौ चौंतीस —
Anyway. Last night was my one low-key evening at home this week. Monday was the fireworks; tonight Shobhit and I are meeting Karen for drinks at the Mountaineering Club atop the art deco Graduate Hotel in the U District at 5:45; tomorrow Tracy and I have tickets to see
Thor: Love and Thunder; Friday is my monthly Happy Hour with Laney, when I will do something unusual and take the West Seattle Water Taxi to meet her and hang out at Alki Beach. She's house sitting in West Seattle this week. Quite coincidentally, I will be taking passenger-only ferries again on Saturday, as I'll be taking the Fast Ferry to Bremerton, then transferring to the foot ferry to Port Orchard, where I will visit Claudia and Dylan at their new house. I don't have another day with no socializing scheduled until Sunday this weekend, although I will likely go to a movie.
I fly out to Denver the next Saturday. I already emailed Shobhit a full list of my currently scheduled time off through the end of the year yesterday:
Monday-Wednesday, July 18-20 [trip to Denver]
Monday-Tuesday, August 1-2 [return from Vancouver 8/1]
Monday-Friday, August 29 - September 2 [just because]
[Monday, September 5: holiday pay for Labor Day]
Friday-Thursday, September 23-29 [trips to Wallace & Leavenworth]
Wednesday, October 28 - Tuesday, November 2 [Shobhit's birthday & Halloween]
Monday-Wednesday and Friday, November 21-23 and 25: Thanksgiving Week
[Thursday, November 24: holiday pay for Thanksgiving]
Tuesday-Friday, December 20-23: Christmas Week
[Monday, December 26: holiday pay for Christmas Observed]
[There will also be holiday pay Monday, January 2 for New Year's Day Observed]
It's still a bit of a question whether Eric will push back on any of this, particularly taking the entire week of Thanksgiving off—which would get me out of working any Thanksgiving week store shifts that week. I had hoped to do the same thing the week prior to Christmas, but when I realized Christmas Day Observed is not until Monday the following week, I realized I would have to take 40 hours instead of 32 to be off the entire previous week, which does mean working Monday that week. I may get obligated to work a shift at that store, if nothing else. Eric has accepted my Outlook announcement for Christmas but not yet for Thanksgiving; I don't know if he's just been too busy to get to them all—I sent out calendar events for everything through the end of the year yesterday, so it was a lot—if it he's waiting to discuss in more detail during our weekly 1:1 meeting tomorrow afternoon.
I think Thanksgiving week may be the only sticking point though, and I'm still holding out hope that I can get away with it. Besides, these dates, every one of them, are also still strategically placed so that they result in the least impact on both my own workload and on people who will need to cover for me. The way it stands right now, I won't go any more than three weeks between PTO any time between September and December; the only break between PTO that will be any longer is in August, and even that is only three and a half weeks!
All that said, I'm more and more looking forward to having all this time off, honestly.
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[posted 12:26 pm]
