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Last night was Action Movie Night in the Braeburn Condos theater. It was actually supposed to be Shobhit's pick this week but he had to work and couldn't make it. The backup person to pick then became Sean, who came for the first time with his brother, Chandler.
Chandler, when introducing himself to me, commented on how often people say something about
Friends when they tell them his name. It hadn't even occurred to me. I never watched that show with any real regularity, and it originally aired from 1994 to 2004.
I don't know how old Chandler is—I didn't ask—but he said he also didn't really watch it much, "When it came to Netflix when I was in my twenties." I just double checked, and
that happened in 2015. Damn, I didn't even realize that one was that long ago. Eight years! I wonder if that means Chandler is over thirty. I'm kind of assuming so now.
Still, I was like, "
Friends originally aired when I was in my twenties." I didn't remember it was until 2004 until I just looked it up moments ago, but this means I was actually
eighteen when
Friends started—but, I was still mostly right: 80% of its run was in my twenties. I would have been 28 when the series ended, the same year Shobhit and I first met.
Anyway, I made pasta as usual. Also as usual, at least one person complimented me on it. I wasn't expectin a compliment this time, as the cheese I topped it with was generic Kroger brand that had been on sale at QFC, which I thought made it unusually bland. Someone brought two pizzas and one of them was tomato basil, which was bursting with flavor. At first I only had one slice but when there was only one slice left after the movie ended I was like, "Okay I'll eat it."
There were eight people this week, including Tony, Jake, Chris, Ryan, Derek, Sean and Chandler, and myself. Tony asked Sean beforehand, "What decade?" and he said, "This one." It was a Netflix movie from this year that I had actually been interested in but had not yet watched, called
They Cloned Tyrone. It had a lot going on, and some of it I found hard to follow, but overall I liked it and it was pretty funny at times.
When it first started, the closed captioning was on. Just like when I had my first movie choice and had captions on, Jake was like, "Can we turn the captions off?" I don't know why he's so annoyed by them. I was annoyed
not to have them on, as I then could not understand probably a good 20% of the dialogue. I'd have gotten way more out of it if I could tell what everyone was actually saying.
Shobhit has an earlier shift on Wednesday two weeks from now, so assuming nothing comes up to detain him that evening otherwise, presumably he'll have the choice of what movie to watch then. Last time he had a choice, he just chose something new he had already been planning to watch on HBO so we watched that. It turned out to be an okay movie. I am much more conscientious and deliberate about movie choices when my turn comes up.
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— पाँच हजार चार सौ छप्पन —
We had our latest All-Staff Town Hall this morning, and as has been the case since returning to the office after the pandemic, these have been hybrid sessions, with people at the office attending in-person in our largest conference room, but with both office staff working from home and many staff across our sixteen stores connecting via Zoom. Anyone who speaks in-person in the conference room holds a microphone so all the Zoom attendees can hear. This has tended to include a lot of technical mishaps, particularly with people not realizing the microphone has been switched off, but we manage. The upside, really, is that we have Town Halls accessible to people co-op wide in a way we never did at all before the pandemic. I can only regard this as a good thing.
The biggest reason I bring this up, though, is actually how it connects to the the Co+nvergence conference I attended in Saint Paul earlier this month. Every time we have a Town Hall, anyone co-op wide with a "milestone anniversary" (five years and up in multiples of five) since the previous Town Hall gets a shoutout and congratulations. Among those this morning was a woman I met at Co+nvergence named Ivy, the HBC Coordinator at our Bellevue store.
I met her for the first time at the conference, and we have each other's phone number because I texted her the
group shot Noah had texted me right after we took the picture. Come to think of it, Ivy is one of the most visible in that shot, as she's near the center, in the front row, wearing a bright yellow overshirt. (There's probably another name for that but I don't know what it is.) She has texted me a few times since the conference, most notably just last Tuesday to let me know Sunday this weekend is "National Cinema Day" which means most movie tickets all day are $4, which I did not know! This made no difference to me and my AMC Stubbs A-List monthly membership, but I already had plans to see
Strays with Laney that day, which I knew would be thrilling news for her. I told Shobhit, and he decided he'd like to go see
Oppenheimer. I actually had a $5 AMC Reward to use, so I was able to book him a seat for that using the Reward to cover it, and his showtime is only 10 minutes before ours (10:00 and 10:10 a.m.), both at the AMC Pacific Place.
She texted me again the next day that today is Free Car Wash Day at Brown Bear Car Wash. And today I texted her congratulations for her 20-year PCC anniversary.
There was also a woman named Misty, HBC Coordinator at Burien, who texted me a photo of a copper mug shot glass she saw at the airport on her way out of town on August 5 (the date that was, incidentally, my own 21st anniversary at PCC). I texted her later the next day after I ran into Sharon, HBC Coordinator in the Central District, at the Owamni restaurant in Minneapolis.
I work in Grocery and not HBC so there's actually many reasons I likely never would have connected with them like I did at Co+nvergence. At best I might have had email exchanges with them while covering for Amanda when she was out of the office for whatever reason. I just got to thinking today about how valuable that experience really was, honestly a bigger deal to me just getting to bond with other people from PCC in ways I never would otherwise, even if they work in different departments. I also had nice conversations with a couple of Grocery Coordinators there, although with them I did not exchange contact information (with Ivy and Misty it was just because they happened to be around when I had the photo to share): Veronica, Grocery Coordinator at Ballard; and Gavin, Grocery Lead at West Seattle.
Something occurred to me as I was thinking about it this morning: when I hopefully go back again next year, I'll be coming with far more familiarity, not just with the conference itself, but with several of the people there. I'll get to
re- connect in addition to connect with new people again. It actually really makes me look forward to it.
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[posted 12:32 pm]
