Yesterday was the Ugly Holiday Sweater Brunch at work, the first time I attended the event while I was otherwise on PTO. (I've actually, stupidly, looked at my work email on my phone a couple of times, which has made me tempted to log on and take care of a couple of things while at the office today. I quite sensibly decided against that. Fuck that, I'm on vacation!) I took Christmas-week PTO last year too, but last year's Ugly Holiday Sweater Brunch was held earlier in the month, on December 16. In fact, I just looked at the full history of office holiday parties, and this is the latest we've ever held an in-person one. (Only the virtual Merchandising Holiday Happy Hour, in 2020, was held later, on December 22—and that wasn't even the all-office event that year, which actually occurred on December 3.)

Anyway! As I have done increasingly in recent years, I have added other holiday-related photos from work to the Ugly Sweater Brunch photo album. This year had quite a few sort of lead-up photos, a good 15 of them, before I added photos from the event itself: I took 21 event-related photos yesterday. Along with the one photo I had Shobhit take of me on Tuesday night, mixing the batter for the strawberry banana bread I made, that made a total of 37 shots for this year's photo album. That still didn't match the record 44 shots I took in 2021, but that's okay. Close enough!

Speaking of that photo I had Shobhit take, of me mixing the banana bread batter, I had him take that specifically so I could text it to Gabby, wearing the cooking apron she brought back for me as a gift from her recent trip to New Orleans. It has a lot of references to meat-centric New Orleans dishes, so I probably wasn't as enthusiastic about it as I could have been when she gave it to me. I thanked her, of course, I just wasn't super effusive. I kind of felt bad after the fact, and figured it might be nice for her to see me actually making use of it.

I had had a text exchange with her on Monday about how I didn't think I'd be making any food, as I don't always, and I never think what I make is all that great anyway. But when I texted her the photo saying, Well I decided to make something for tomorrow's brunch after all, she responded, Awww love the apron too 😊

Besides: Shobhit and I spend a lot of time cooking, and we probably could have used a cooking apron years ago. It actually was an immensely useful gift, which is not going unappreciated. How great to be able to wipe your hands on whatever you're wearing, but it's not your actual outfit. What a concept!

Gabby had thought she might not be able to make it to the brunch, but in the end she did, for about an hour. She even offered to take a photo of me with my weird-ass Kevita holiday sweater I've now worn three years in a row, but I declined, only because I've got enough photos of myself wearing this sweater. Kevita needs to send me a new one! If I had a new one to wear, I'd have taken her up on the offer.

Even after wearing it three years in a row, people were pretty amused by it, and regularly asking what the cartoon creature is—which I could swear I got an answer to last year from the broker but now I can't remember what it is. In any case, I don't think this sweater is "ugly" at all, and has quite a lovely color palate, but it is fucking weird, in which case, as far as I'm concerned, it counts. Plenty of other people had really great, often gaudy, sometimes even interactive sweaters.

The food spread was unusually well balanced this year, with several delicious, savory options and not just a bunch of sweets. The one downside to that was when I misread one of the food labels because that actual dish wasn't yet on the counter, so I thought it was referencing these cheesy little bread pieces. I commented at the table how good it was, and Amy, who had made the dish, said, "That has shrimp in it." Oh fuck. Dammit!

She felt really bad, but it wasn't her fault. Her dish had actually been labeled properly, the word "shrimp" clearly written. There were two trays, though, and the other label without a dish actually yet attached to it made me think it was referencing the second tray. I didn't finish that one little slice of bread with shrimp-cheese spread, even though there was maybe one and a half bites worth of it left.

The office assistant, Ryan, who had been hired all of seven months ago, had to return to the stores as of this week, because his position was eliminated. This is leaving Mel, once again, to spearhead the organization of office social events, something she's never super comfortable with. I asked her about it last week, and she seemed feeling a bit better than when she had to deal with all of this last year, and actually enlisted the help of social committees, which I had actually been on. I didn't get involved at all this year, and somewhat wonder whether I will again next year. But, as of last week, Mel said she's been assured she can get assistance on things she doesn't have time for from people in Marketing and Membership, so hopefully that pans out.

In any case, I am pretty consistently the one to suggest a group photo. To their credit, Mel never seems annoyed by this, and even openly expressed gratitude—because they don't often remember to think of it themselves. I even asked Mel to send me the group photos before I left in the afternoon, forgetting that Michelle in the Finance department had taken them with her phone. Mel had to email Michelle to request the photos, which Mel then later forwarded to me—and the resolution was terrible. That would not stand! I emailed Michelle to ask if she would text them directly to me, giving my phone number and saying "I'll love you forever!" Within a couple of hours she did indeed text them to me, along with the note, Ok...I want to be your favorite person in AP and the only one you love ♥️ ♥️ ♥️ ♥️ ♥️ ♥️ All righty then.

I got the higher resolution versions of the photos so that's what matters.

The potluck portion of the event lasted about an hour, and then we had half an hour allocated to the White Elephant gift exchange. Mel scheduled two hours for the whole thing last year, which turned out to be too long; she said this year that 90 minutes was about perfect, and I think she was right.

But, how the White Elephant segment of the event went down for me this year was wildly different from last year. Last year I drew the number 1 so I opened a gift first; this year I was #14 out of 18 total. I chose the pink bag as an amusingly (to me, anyway) regressive move because I'm gay. And then? The first thing I pulled out was a back of . . . dried mealworms. I literally said, "What the hell?" I finally understood when I then pulled out the hanging bird feeder that was also in the bag—but, frankly, that did not make the dried mealworms any less horrifying to me. Just holding that bag gave me the fucking creeps.

The VP of IT, whose name I forget, was sitting next to me, and she really cracked up. "I wish I could have gotten a picture of your face!"

So, naturally, when I got home I hung the feeder out on the balcony, loaded it with the mealworms, and took a selfie of myself looking at it horrified. This was a big hit when I posted it to my socials, and when Laney suggested I make it my new profile picture, I thought, why not!

After that, and after otherwise finishing with the processing of the day's photos, I then sat down and watched Maestro on Netflix, which immediately became my favorite film of the year. I really loved it, and plan to watch it again later today. Shobhit had a swing shift last night, and we needed to watch this week's Fargo after he got home anyway. But today: he really needs to see it. First, though, he and Laney and I need to go downtown to the former Cinerama, now called SIFF Cinema Downtown, to see Wonka.

[posted 11:14 am]