Last night was our Virtual Pumpkin Carving Party—the fourth in as many years! But, the
fifteenth I have attended overall, dating back to the first "Matthew's Friends Pumpkin Carving Party" back in 2004. Had there been one every year in the meantime, this would be the 20th! Holy shit!
But, after attendance dwindled intenably after the first decade, there was a solid five years with no pumpkin carving party, between 2015 and 2019. And, truth be told, I still haven't had an
in-person pumpkin carving party since 2014.
It was the pandemic that changed things, in 2020—and also shifted it to a wholly different set of friends, none of whom had been part of any of my previous pumpkin carving parties: a three-way Zoom with Gabriel, Lea, and Tess (and, more often than not, a friend of Tess's) at their house; Mandy at her house; and me at my place. Technically this was even in three different cities: me in Seattle; Mandy in Tacoma; Gabriel in Federal Way.
I don't remember whose idea it was to do a virtual pumpkin carving party in 2020, but I know I was delighted by the idea, especially as work was already holding a pumpkin carving contest. (That was the year I proudly carved my "
PCC SPOOKY MARKETS" pumpkin.) A fair amount of social distancing was still happening by October 2021, and Gabriel and Lea remained wary of too many houseguests even by October 2022, and we repeated the virtual-party format both of those years.
Although Gabriel and Lea still ask people to take covid tests before coming over, I'd still say things are a bit more relaxed as of this year. Many even broached the idea of doing the pumpkin carving in-person this year. But, here's the thing: doing this particular party virtually has many benefits even outside any lingering pandemic concerns.
We all live in an area with a radius of about thirty miles, after all. Gabriel continues to coparent Tess with Stephanie, and Tess goes back to Stephanie's house on Saturdays—thus far Tess has participated all four of these past four years of pumpkin carving parties, and that's only been possible because we held it on a Friday night. And I'm not eager to be driving all the way to Gabriel's house in Federal Way—generally a 45-50 minute drive, much longer during rush hour—on a Friday evening after work. Much less with a whole pumpkin and carving equipment in tow.
It's much easier to be able to set up, carve, and cleanup all at home, without any of us also having to worry about any guest's mess as well. Plus, once we're done, we're all already home! Honestly it's kind of great, and I'd be happy to keep doing this particular thing virtually for years to come.
Whether we'll manage to keep doing it every year is perhaps another story. It feels like an accomplishment that we've even done it four years in a row now—Mandy was pushing to nail down a date by early October, which I knew full well Gabriel would not be down for. Now, I did say even then that I had already selected Friday October 20 as a tentative date for this, but I knew Gabriel would never be able to commit farther in advance than a week or two, tops.
We finally did nail down a date last week, and when Mandy mentioned a cute idea she already had for her pumpkin, the clever, simple, and funny idea I had for mine came to me: eggplant emoji! Brilliant! Now, if I could just come up with a Halloween costume idea that's as easy and clever. Alas, I still have no clue what I'm going to dress as for Halloween. Gabriel, for his part, was already dressed as Ken from the
Barbie movie even last night.
A few days ago, Mandy texted the group to ask if there were any way to pick another date because she was offered a concert ticket for Friday night—but that if necessary she would stick with Friday because she had already committed. I could have rescheduled for tonight or even next Friday, but a) Tess would not be able to join the group tonight; and b) they also already had other plans Friday next week. I said I think we should stick with Friday so that's what we did. I got the sense that Gabriel was annoyed by the entire text conversation about it, perhaps because we had all already agreed to Friday October 20.
Back when Lea still worked for the University of Washington, she had a paid Zoom account so she had sent out a Zoom meeting invite with no time limit. I thought maybe she still had the account so suggested that she send out the invite again. They had some self-described "technical difficulties" at our planned meeting time of 8:00, but after maybe ten minutes an invite came from Gabriel. And, after we all got connected, we found ourselves up against a time limit at 45 minutes, evidently because none of us has a paid account anymore. Sheesh, I could have just sent out the invite myself! Gabriel sent a second invite for a 45-minute video chat once the first one was forced to end. I'm actually considering paying for an account temporarily next year just so we don't have to deal with that again. I suppose it depends on how much it costs, I have no idea.
Anyway! I was done with my pumpkin first, because it was the simplest design. The stem end of the eggplant was a little bit tricky as I only cut halfway down into the pumpkin for that, but the end result was still pretty great, I think.
As usual, I took a bunch of screenshots during the party. Between those, the few photos I took with my phone, and some photos shared by Gabriel and Lea, I wound up with
a photo album with 36 shots. That's roughly the same size as it was last year.
The album features everyone else's pumpkin as well, naturally. Among the others, Gabriel's was my favorite, with a fantastic cutout of a Barbie head-and-ponytail. Mandy's Pac-Man concept was great too, and I loved Lea's adorable little ghost.
Last year Gabriel and Lea and I hung out for a bit of extra time at the end, but that was not possible this year thanks to the time limit. Which was fine. Shobhit got off work at 9:00 last night, and by that time I had finished carving my pumpkin, and even cleaned up and moved my MacBook and pumpkin back to the bedroom, so that Shobhit could sit in the living room and watch TV once he got home. I hung out and chatted over Zoom the rest of the time from my desk in the bedroom.
With Laney moving back to Capitol Hill next week, she'll be much closer again next year. She had been part of several of the early years of my pumpkin carving parties—in fact, she hosted them at her house in the first five years. After that she only even participated again the seventh year, and never did again. Circumstances are different now, so I am really thinking about hosting an in-person one next year, perhaps in the Braeburn community kitchen (which I actually did in 2014). I could invite more people again (Shauna, maybe; she did a couple of them), and perhaps still do a dial-in virtual option. We wouldn't want it to get to big with too many people with that option, though. I'll have to think about this.
Or I could just stick to the Zoom parties with Gabriel and Lea and Mandy. We'll just have to see!
[posted 5:15 pm]
