Bowling for PTO

11242024-01

I'm trying to keep up with my daily events as I go through my Thanksgiving Week PTO. I hesitate to say Thanksgiving "Vacation" because this year I'm not actually going anywhere. last year was different because the whole week was that year's trip to visit Faith in Palm Springs, with Shivy flying in to join us, so I never had or made the time to post daily during that trip, as I quite rarely do during any travels. As usual, I just posted a travelogue email later adapted for this blog, summarizing the entire trip. This year is much more like 2022, the first of the now-three years I've taken the entire week of Thanksgiving week off of work, but that year there was no trip out of town and I posted, if not every day, then most days as appropriate as the week went on.

Shobhit and I had taken a trip to stay with Faith in Palm Springs in 2021 as well, mind you. And I took most of the week off that year as well, but I did work on Monday, really only because our flight out was not until Tuesday. That was the last year I worked any holiday shifts at stores, one each before Thanksgiving and Christmas as requested. This meant that even though I was "working" the Monday before Thanksgiving, as far as the office was concerned my PTO may as well have already started; I worked noon to 4:00 at the Central District store that day.

2022 began the first year when we could no longer cash out our massive balances of PTO, however, and we were to lose access to any balance over 120 hours at the end of the year. And the way I see it: what better time to burn through the PTO hours than over Thanksgiving? and the few days before Christmas? Christmas in particular this works out well for office coverage, because I am the only one who wants to take PTO before Christmas whereas other people tend to take theirs the week between Christmas and New Year. This has reliably worked out well with Amanda, Cathryn and Amy, none of whom take any PTO just before Christmas. What this has also worked out to is my managing to weasel out of holiday store shifts for either holiday for (so far, anyway) three years in a row.

When Noah left the office on Friday he said to me, "Have a good weekend." I said, "I'll see you a week from Monday!" And he replied, "Pretty much!" clearly thinking it was because we'd both be out working at stores this week.

"I'm on PTO next week," I said. Without missing a beat he said, "You bastard! Who approved that!" He even then made a joke about "having a talk" with Gabby about this.

One of these days, perhaps, I'll work holiday store shifts again. I have always deeply resented this being made an obligation for all of us who are working the days these get scheduled, and would be far more likely to volunteer were I not being "volunteered." I'm just working the angles here. (I know, some "Office Star" I am, huh? Well guess what? Store shifts are not office jobs!) I'm not certain one way or the other at this point, but I could see next year being a possibility, especially if any of these shifts become available at the new Downtown store. Being a small-format version, we'll see if they even do it there. Of course, the flip side of that is the point that remains and was there all along: I have to burn through my PTO, which I am sure as shit not just going to let go to waste, sometime. And in terms of scheduling with my actual office work load, these days around the holidays tend to work out well.

I slept in until nearly 8:00 this morning. I almost never do that, as I tend to be very much a morning person. But honestly, today, it was quite nice.

I suppose I could tell you a bit more about yesterday now though. That would be where the photo at the top of this post comes from: I went bowling! Tracy and Shobhit and I all went, and at Tracy's suggestion, we all went to West Seattle Bowl, which none of us had ever been to. Garage, which is only a few blocks away from us (actually more like half a mile) here on Capitol Hill, is more expensive, and there was even a shooting there earlier this year. Tracy only told me later she had actually looked it up and they charge $60 an hour to rent a lane. Holy shit! I didn't even realize you had to pay for lanes, that's how long it's been since I've gone bowling. I didn't even know until Tracy was driving us back afterward that she paid close to $60 for the lane she reserved for us at West Seattle Bowl—but they charge $39 an hour, which at least is notably cheaper than Garage, and she booked us ninety minutes. (That had been my suggestion, over text, but Tracy only asked which I prefer and never even brought up the cost.)

I am truly not even certain when was the last time I went bowling. Searching for "bowling" on my Google Calendar, which I have used since 2006, brings up nothing except when I went yesterday. I did a Google Advanced Search to find the word at the domain "machupicchu.livejournal.com," and the most recent hit that comes up is from March 4, 2003—a year after another time, the only one I could find any record of in my blogs—when I went with a bunch of choristers after our weekly practice. If that is indeed the last time I went bowling, then I last went 21 fucking years ago!

I want to say I've gone more recently, but these are the only records I can find.

The thing is, I am not even in a position to go bowling most of the time, because my fingernails are usually long, and bowling is guaranteed to break them. I told Tracy some time ago, though, that one of these days I'll wind up breaking a nail in a way that I'll be forced to cut them all down fairly short, and then we should go bowling! Well, I did indeed break a nail recently—on the way back from Phoenix. This is something that somewhat reliably happens when I am traveling.

So, I texted Tracy that I had to cut all my nails so we should go bowling. The slight challenge was that this is the holiday season and I have tons of stuff planned already, so I wasn't sure how easy it would be for us to find a day when we were both available, particularly before my nails just grew too long again. Well, we found that yesterday, a Sunday, worked. Shobhit wasn't even scheduled for a work shift yesterday either, and so he joined us.

We all had great fun. I turned out to be better at bowling than I realized or remembered. I got several strikes, probably more than Shobhit and Tracy put together, and at one point I got three in a row—again, what the photo at the top of this post refers to. I took the photo, though, because of the name Tracy put into the monitor for me: "Snobby Matthew." She put herself in as "Dick Tracy," and later felt a tiny bit awkward because about halfway through our scheduled time at the lane, a woman with a group of four or five young kids came to the lane next to ours and she overheard one of the little girls say, "Who's Dick Tracy?"

Shobhit ordered us some fries, which he offered to share with Tracy, and he came back with a beer for himself. I told Tracy I was a little annoyed he didn't come back with any drink for me. When she went to get a plate of nachos, and came back with a beer—for me. Apparently she had just told them to get another of whatever Shobhit had ordered. I felt a little bad because I don't drink beer. So, Shobhit got two beers.

I went to order a second plate of nachos, because Shobhit and I ate more of Tracy's than she did, and I decided to get a cocktail. On their special cocktails menu they had a "Peanut Butter Russian," which was peanut butter whiskey, kahlua, and cream. I asked, "Can I get the Peanut Butter Russian without the kahlua?" The guy looked at me very weird. So I said, "I don't like coffee." He said, "That's just peanut butter whiskey and cream." I said, "Sounds good to me!" I didn't even think until later that I should have asked for Bailey's instead of Kahlua—it's always what I do at home—but, oh well. The truth is, the peanut butter whiskey with cream was absolutely delicious on its own. The bartender clearly thought I was truly weird for being into that, but I don't care.

When we were done bowling, managing three games barely within the ninety minute time frame—and I won all three games! although Shobhit was ahead for much of the third one—we asked Tracy to take us over to the West Seattle PCC since it was close by and I still had some coupons a broker sent me to burn through. They don't carry the naan pizzas I like, though, so all we got was a couple of nut cheese products. Tracy, on the other hand, wound up shopping for an entire small Thanksgiving Dinner for her sister and herself. So she certainly made use of it.

Then she drove us home. It was a fun afternoon yesterday.

11242024-02

[posted 10:34 am]