— पांच हजार छह सौ बावन —
I started yesterday's post noting that I had a lot to catch you up on, and then completely forgot to write, as I had intended, about what happened yesterday morning! To be fair, I still wrote about everything that had happened over the weekend.
Yesterday was August 5. That means to significant things: my dad turned 69, and I had my 22nd work anniversary.
Side note about dad. When Father's Day rolled around, I remembered to text him a Happy Father's Day early enough in the day so I knew he would see it, but had to apologize for getting a card out in the mail way too late for him to get it on time. This time it was the other way around: I got a card out in the mail on Thursday (this is unconfirmed but those fuckers at the post office had better have gotten it to his house by yesterday), but then, after taking myself to a movie last night, I totally spaced calling him! Which I had intended to do. I had thought about him earlier in the day. He's retired, after all; I should have just taken a break and called him from work while I was thinking about it. I did manage to send him a text before the end of the day, but it was well after 10:00 and I would be $5 million that he was asleep. I certainly wasn't going to call at that time.
Anyway! So now let's get to my work anniversary, which Gabby is really going overboard about—to the point where I am literally getting called "modest" which is genuinely not in my vocabulary about myself, as a rule. (This is happening with general compliments I get at work too. I'm not one to resist compliments but people have leaned unusually hard on it lately, and Gabby literally said in a meeting, "Matthew's being modest." I'm not modest, goddammit! I just don't need misplaced adoration. I should be adored for the areas where I am genuinely exceptional, and they are legion!) Not only has she insisted on some kind of special occasion even though I generally have only saved those for anniversaries that are multiples of 5 and this year is merely my 22nd anniversary—she suggested a Team Happy Hour up the Smith Tower on Wednesday, though, and you know I would never have said no to
that—but, she had an e-card signed by no fewer than 22 store and office staff sent to me yesterday morning.
I have to back up a little now. Last week, Gabby sent out an email to two different aliases inviting people to sign this card. She remembered to remove me from the "Merchandising" alias but forgot to remove me from the "All POS" alias before sending, which means it actually came to my inbox, when it was supposed to be a surprise. This would explain why Gabby
sprinted over to my desk from hers, was clearly relieved that I was working on something else (side note: I was actually writing a draft of that day's blog post, don't tell anyone!—see how well I have duped everyone into thinking how great I am?), and immediately just took over my desktop and literally covered my eyes.
"Close your eyes, I don't want you to ruin the surprise!" she said. I was like, "What surprise?" She kept her hand over my eyes, kept telling me to close them because I kept opening them, rather taken aback by this sudden whirlwind of energy at my desk, and finally told me to just turn around in my chair. She then made an odd commentary on the state of my Deleted Items folder in Outlook, which made little sense to me as the messages in there have always been arranged in reverse chronological order, most recent at the top. Maybe she encountered more messages overall in there than expected? I always keep at least six months' worth of messages in there before deleting them permanently, in case I need to find something. But, once she deleted this email sent to the "All POS" alias, it would have been near the top in the Deleted Items folder anyway.
I did realize shortly after she had managed to delete the email that got accidentally sent to me that it must have had something to do with my work anniversary. I couldn't think what, although had I truly been thinking logically, I should have realized that something like signing an ecard would be the most likely scenario there. I already told Gabby that I did not want nor need a party, to her relative disappointment. I'll be happy to make a much bigger deal of it, even of my own volition, when I reach 25 years (that'll be in 2027), but 22? That seems a little ridiculous. Gabby's argument was, "I think any year after 20 is a big deal." Well, after she suggested the Smith Tower, I did suddenly decide to make an outing to a rooftop bar an annual work annivrsary tradition. Now
that, I can get behind, and Gabby was clearly happy to hear that.
In any case, the link to the card was waiting in my inbox when I got to work yesterday, and reading all the notes genuinely made my morning. Of the 22 signatories, 13 were office staff and 8 were POS Administrators from the stores (thus representing just over half of the 15 stores). Only one note, which referenced their own 18-year tenure here, was by someone who forgot to leave their name, and that's kind of driving me crazy. I did ask Noah how long he's worked for PCC and he said 18 years, but then told me he's "terrible at cards" and was not the one who left that note. Who the hell is that, goddammit!
Whatever. Every note was lovely. And this was much more appropriate to me—in a non-milestone anniversary year, a simple ecard is a speed that kind of makes the most sense. When I get to 25, as I have with every multiple of 5, I will send out an email photo retrospective of my time here.
One last thing about my anniversary. Frank, the new Grocery Merchandiser, had a gift waiting for me at my desk when I got to work on Tuesday last week: a "Little Golden Book" style children's book of the 1979 film
Alien, one of my ten favorite movies of all time, called
A is for ALIEN.
There had been a Post-It note on the book, on which Frank had written,
Happy "22." The twos were a bit far apart though, and I could not make out his handwriting: for some time that morning, until I asked about it, I thought the note read,
Happy "a a". I was like: what the hell does that mean? Well, now I know!
— पांच हजार छह सौ बावन —
— पांच हजार छह सौ बावन —
In other news, I left work at 3:50 yesterday because I decided I would rather go to the 4:00 showing of the movie I wanted to see at Pacific Place, rather than having to wait for the 6:30 showing if I went to see it at the next-best time instead, which was at the AMC 10 in the U District. Going to the earlier showing was a lot simpler and easier, getting the movie out of the way earlier and giving me a lot more time afterward to write the review, which I spent a bit more time on than usual.
The movie was
Kneecap, and I really enjoyed it. I was astonished to learn only when the movie ended that the Irish rap band members the movie is about actually all played themselves in it—and quite well. The movie isn't perfect, its story arc pretty standard in a lot of ways, but within that context, it was incredibly well done and entertaining. I had noted a surprisingly high score of 77 on MetaCritic, and
still it exceeded my expectatons. Honestly this was probably more because of a bias against rap of any kind than anything else, even though I've heard plenty of rap songs I actually liked (it's just never been a go-to genre for me). Predictable though it was, the movie did a lot of things right, in ways it didn't necessarily have to but which still improved it, not least of which was the direct acknowledgment of the genre's forebears among Black Americans.
I rather wish Laney had seen it with me. I am certain she would have enjoyed it, and it would have been really fun to talk about with someone. But, she can't see
everything I do, and we've already got three movies on the schedule for next week alone.
I discovered a new TV show to watch while I was doing my online research for that movie. A woman named Josie Walker played the highly caricaturized, abusive policewoman in
Kneecap, and when I looked her up on IMDb, the page auto-played a trailer to a British series I had never heard of that she's in, starring one of my favorite actors, Ben Wishaw. It's called
This Is Going to Hurt, and Wishaw plays an overextended, gay doctor at an NHS hospital. (Josie Walker plays "Non-Reassuring Trace" in it.)
Ben Wishaw is one of my all-time favorites because a) he's genuinely talented; b) he's fucking gorgeous; and c) he's actually gay. I can't remembering him playing any gay characters before he was in
Passages, which came out last year; apparently the series
This Is Going to Hurt first aired in 2022. Its pilot episode is available online for free, so I watched most of it before Shobhit got home from work last night, but when I realized I'd like to watch the whole series with him, I moved to the living room and started from the beginning shortly after he got home, and went to bed after that.
As for the rest of the series, it's on AMC+, to which I do not have a supscription. But! I
can do a 7-day trial period, so once we have enough days to binge watch, I can just do that, probably starting on Friday. I suppose we might as well try and binge watch season 2 of
Interview with the Vampire while we're at it, though that may be a challenge.
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With the Seattle Public Library still picking up the pieces of their cyber attack from earlier in the spring, and still with no means of placing a hold on the next book I really want to read (
Dune Messiah), I have decided to re-read my all-time favorite book,
Brave New World, for the fifth time.
I previously read it only in my teens and twenties: in 1993 when I was 17; in 1997 when I was 21; in 2000 when I was 24 and again in 2004 when I was 28. Previously, I read it every three or four years. This time it's been a solid twenty years since I last read it.
And I still really, really love it. I only bring it up now because I am posting slightly later than usual for one reason only: I was reading the book out on the office patio and was so engrossed that I totally lost track of the time.
— पांच हजार छह सौ बावन —
[posted 12:45 pm]
