spring social

— पांच हजार तीन सौ पचासी — I'm feeling a little overwhelmed today, with a full workload getting added onto with last minute shit all morning. Stuff I thought I might work on today otherwise will now be pushed to next week, when I have two-hour trainings every single day, and that is the last week before my Birth Week vacation. I guess all I can do is make the conscious choice not to stress about it. In the meantime, I can just tell you about yesterday's Merchandising Department social event, devised largely at the last minute, after an otherwise somewhat last-minute plan for last week had to be discarded. What we did for our "Spring Social" was actually fairly similar to the one from winter, in December, when we all went to Pasta Casalinga at Pike Place Market to make pasta. Except this time, we didn't book an outside place or hire someone; this was Adrienne's suggestion, and she picked up a bunch of "tamale kits" for us to make together, and then bring home to eat for dinner, from a place called Tamale My Life. A few photos were taken; only three of them by me—including the "portrait mode" shot of prepared tamales on a plate at the bottom of this post. Two were taken by Adrienne, who texted them to me last night; that includes the middle shot in this post. (I look so much like my paternal grandmother, it's almost distressing.) The best one was taken by Tristan, one of our newer Deli Merchandisers (who is, incidentally, from Australia); she actually took a shot where she called out to all of us to look at her and smile—the result was the best shot taken by anyone by far, which is the one at the top of this post. Justine emailed us all a couple more shots this morning, taken of the food prep: masa in one bowl, with an ice cream scoop; one of three fillings in another. — पांच हजार तीन सौ पचासी — — पांच हजार तीन सौ पचासी — Adrienne had told me she's be ready to start setting up in the kitchen for us all at about 3:30, for the scheduled event start time at 4:00. I told her I would be happy to help with the setup, so I met her over there at 3:30. The first thing I was tasked with was cutting the pouches and putting the masa and the fillings into bowls. There were three fillings, only one of which could I eat: pork; chicken; refried bean. Adrienne first showed us how to spread the masa on the corn husks, then put a spoonful of filling on that, then folding the husk around it. At first we were all spreading the masa with the back of a spoon, but then Benny had the brilliant idea of just pressing it with his fingers, which was far easier, and soon the rest of us were doing that. There was some concern at first about having enough pots to steam all our tamales in. Adrienne had brought extra pots but forgot that the convection oven does not work with all pots; they have to be solid steel or something. Someone found a crockpot or two though, so in the end we had three different containers in which to steam our three different flavored tamales, during which we all just hung out, ate snacks Adrienne also picked up, and drank either beer or sparkling water or wine. I had three glasses of wine by the end of it, and was actually a bit buzzed by 6:00. That only lasted a few minutes, thankfully, so it wasn't too bad. The bigger issue is that between the snacks and the drinks and the fairly large number of bean tamales I took home (several people didn't take any home, it seemed), I've gone up a couple of pounds over the past couple of days, and weighed in this morning at a disappointing—yet entirely unsurprising—162.5 lbs. I need to turn that back around; I was doing so well in the lead-up to our trip to Australia. So anyway, it was all quite nice and pleasant, if a decidedly low-rent version of a "team social" outing. I still think it was useful for getting to know each other and getting some work social time in, which I think is important. With a tote bag full of stuff, including leftover chips and salsa that I also brought home (salsa helped with the otherwise kind of bland veggie tamales; Justine had said the chicken filling was surprisingly spicy), I took the bus home, catching the #8. I reheated the tamales for Shobhit and me to eat, which he had with his leftover sambar from the other night. We discovered the first three episodes of the fifth and final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel were available on Prime Video, and we spent the rest of the evening watching all three of them. I had hoped to get to Wednesday's episode of The Mandalorian. So much for that! We'll see if I find time to watch it tonight; we have another movie night with Alexia. — पांच हजार तीन सौ पचासी — [posted 12:27 pm]