Sheesh! What a week! I just spent a good couple of hours writing a detailed photo digest of our Office Relocation Team site visit at the old Downstore yesterday, a good two thirds of which is being converted to our new office space we are scheduled to move into next year.
And yesterday was Halloween. It was a deeply rare occasion on which I did not dress in costume on Halloween Day. The only other time this has been the case was Halloween 2020, when we were all working from home and our work costume party was done virtually on October 30 because that was a Friday and Halloween landed on a Saturday.
That was the first year Alexia and I walked north Capitol Hill to look at all the Halloween houses. I did that again last night, making it now a five-year tradition.
But, this would have to be the first year I was both in town on Halloween and Halloween landed on a weekday, on which I did
not dress in costume. Much like 2021, when Halloween also landed on a weekend, virtually no one came in to work in the office the previous Friday. This year we're talking about a Thursday, most that's the day each week most of Merchandising is out visiting stores. And on my end, I might have still dressed up, except for the fact that the Office Relocation Project Team had the site visit in the morning, and I did not particularly want to be walking around no only the only person in costume, but dressed as "Gay D. Vance"—in spite of it being easily one of the best and certainly
most popular Halloween costumes I have had in my entire life.
What's even funnier about this is how I thought of it as far too much effort for little payoff to do it yesterday in particular—although I'm certain a good number of the 15-20 people at most who came to the office at any time during the day (I counted only 13 as of 8:30 a.m.) would have been utterly delighted by it. And even beyond that, dressing in that costume last Sunday with Tracy itself felt a bit like more effort than it was worth, given that we dressed in costume for . . . an event at a dark movie theater. I did get a couple of good compliments on it there, though.
It's too bad I didn't go to any actualy Halloween parties this year. I feel like I could have won a prize with it. Oh well.
So yesterday, instead, I just wore my
red and black shirt with little black skulls patterned on it, along with the Day of the Dead kitty-skeleton earrings I've worn every day this week (including today, since it's officially the Day of the Dead today).
Incidentally, I have
collection history of photos albums for Halloween photos separated specific to "Halloween at PCC." Most of these detail work costumes and Halloween office decor, but a couple deviate a tad: 2021, when I did come in a simple costume but no one else did; and this year, when I did not come in costume but did wear something relevant and at least somewhat festive for the holiday. These two albums are comparatively small: 13 and 9 shots total, respectively. I might not have even bothered with it this year, except that it's the final Halloween at this office location and I didn't want the year to get skipped in the sequencing, at least through this year, anyway. We'll have to see what, if anything, happens with holidays like this going forward at the new office location.
This year's "Halloween at PCC" album has arguably the least interesting content, but, oh well. I took a couple of selfies, took a couple photos of Halloween candy and a plate of sample pumpkin pie as those were the closest things we had to Halloween decor this year, and even included a few photos from the
Office Relocation Site Visit. I included one with Sara J in shadow because at first glance she looks like a demon ghost! And then two shots from the Rainier Square lobby, where we encountered a Halloween party happening.
Chris L from IT had offered carool services from anyone on the Relocation Team who happened to be at the office, so Jami from Store Operations and I rode with him. When we first gathered to leave, Jami commented on how surprised she was that I had not dressed in costume, and I then told them both about my thought process and reasoning. Chris was in a similar position, not wanting to dress up for this work outing to the store site.
Still, I told them about my costume from Sunday, and Jami in particular was delighted by it. That evolved quickly into a conversation on the ride down there about how terrified we are about the election on Tuesday. Fun!
So that's a good point from which to pivot to last night, when Alexia and Laney and I had made a plan to meet at 6:00 at my building and then do the traditional walk through North Capitol Hill.
Laney and I had exchanged some texts earlier in the day about the disappointingly rainy forecast. Truly I cannot remember it
ever raining on Halloween evening like it did last night, but maybe it did. It's been ages if it did, and it certainly never did for the previous four years of Halloween walks. (Mind you, Alexia and I had to walk earlier than Halloween night in 2021, as that year Shobhit and I were in Las Vegas over Halloween weekend.)
At that point, Laney was still planning to come. At 5:09, Alexia texted me that she was running late and would not arrive until at least 6:30, which worked better anyway as Shobhit was going to join us but would not get off work until 5:30 and thus could not be expected to get home until 6:00 at the earliest—and in the end it was more like 6:15. I followed up with Laney and she was good with postponing and not coming until 6:30.
And then? Laney texted me at 6:11 that she had finished her supper 20 minutes earlier and now had a terrible stomach ache and thus was going to have to skip it. Crap! Fate keeps keeping her from coming on these Halloween walks, now two for two since she moved back to Capitol Hill (last year she had only moved in days before and was still settling in, and understandably very exhausted). She said she's totally going next year. I'm pretty sure she said that last year, but I remain hopeful!
I was sure glad Alexia was still coming. I think she's come every year except one since we started in 2020, and she was the one who had recommended it to me. She's likely to retire and move to Idaho in a year or two, so it remains to be seen whether she'll still be around next year. Probably more likely than not she will be. I really appreciated her coming all the way from Issaquah for this, especially on a rainy evening.
As you can see, Alexia brought an umbrella. I found her cloudy blue umbrella delightful. Shobhit brought an umbrella too. I was the only one who didn't, rationalizing that I should be fine with my rain jacket. It would also be easier to get out my phone and take photos without having am umbrella in my other hand.
And I will say: my
hooded North Face rain jacket did do its job rather well. That said, by the time we were headed back (after just over an hour or so of walking), the jacket was slicked all over the outside with rain, and I still got my gloves quite wet, and even my pants got wetter than I anticipated. By the time I got home later—TMI alert!—I was "turtling" so severely I was just about to grow a tail.
Nevertheless, I am really glad we went, and I got lots of great pictures, as usual—even with a lot of the houses being the same as past years and thus ketting skipped over with my camera. With a much smaller number of photos to include than usual, my overall
Halloween 2024 photo album this year has "only" 82 shots, 68 of those being from the Capitol Hill walk.
Let's compare to between all five years I've done these walks:
Halloween 2020: 111 shots overall; 96 from Capitol Hill walks
Halloween 2021: 76 shots if you combine the two, but only 42 shots from the Capitol Hill walk contained in my "
Halloween Time 2021" album as we had to take the walk early; 34 shots on Halloween day taken
in Last Vegas
Halloween 2022: 105 shots overall; 61 from Capitol Hill walk
Halloween 2023: 110 shots overall; 76 from Captiol Hill walk
Halloween 2024: 82 shots overall; 68 from Capitol Hill walk
. . . Well, look at that!
Two other years I actually took
fewer photos on the Capitol Hill walk! The only reason the overall Halloween album this year is smaller than 2019 is because of the unusually small number of photos taken at work.
Anyway. Shobhit had been on his feet all day at work and kept suggesting we drive closer to where we'd see the most decorated houses, but Alexia had already parked and did not want to move from the great spot she found. Shobhit then detoured us in search of a couple houses of people he knew on 16th, and when I told him it was taking us off the course I had already mapped, he got super passive-aggressive about it. We quickly moved past that, though, and shifted back over to 18th Ave E as I preferred. It was true that the best stuff was not until much further north anyway. The block just past Aloha actually blocks traffic, and even in the rain, a stunningly thick crowd of trick-or-treaters were swarming the area.
Honestly it was probably the best choice for Laney to sit this one out even beyond her stomach ache. She would have gotten soaked, many passages on sidewalks are very dark (although I did think to bring a flashlight this year and found it extremely helpful), and some spots probably would have been way too crowded for her. Moving back and forth between sidewalk and street in the dark had many mud puddle perils. Hopefully it's dryer next year and will make it a lot easier for her to join on the walk.
On our walk back, when we actually did finally shift over to 16th and we saw a few pretty cool houses not seen in previous years, Alexia declined Shobhit's invitation to join us for a stop somewhere on 15th for a snack, maybe an order of French fries or something. She noted that her shoes were soaked all the way through. I was sincere when I said, "Oh wow, that sucks! And you have a half-hour drive home still." She said it was okay, that she had on wool socks. I wonder how much of a difference that makes if they are soaked through?
Well. Shobhit changed his mind and decided he wanted to try the new-ish Indian place on 15th that we had still never tried, called
Tandoori Flame & Indian Grill. It's on 15th and E Harrison, on the second floor of a building. We said our goodbyes to Alexia there, and she walked on to her car she had managed to park only one block from our building.
Shobhit had talked at first about just getting snacks, but in the end we got
a full dinner there, even though we had both had a small bean and cheese burrito out of the microwave at home to tide us over before leaving. I had thought I would actually just regard that as a light dinner and presumably have my weight go down this morning. Instead, we went to this Indian restaurant and got an appetizer (
paneer pakoras), two entrees (bhindi masala for Shobhit and channa masala for us to share), an order of naan and an order of delicious paneer parathas. I was very tempted to get the shahi paneer, but then I was like, "I don't have to get shahi paneer
every time." Then, when we were done and we noted that the food was just as good as Saffron Grill yet notably cheaper (Saffron Grill's entrees have gone up to $21.99; Tandoori Flame's entrees were between $14 and $16). This clearly means we have to go back to Tandoori Flame so I can have their shahi paneer and make sure
that is also just as good! (It's also, quite conveniently, much closer: they're all of about 6 blocks north of us on 15th Avenue E.)
Shobhit rationalized the dinner there because it also happened to be Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, their biggest holiday of the year. The timing of it gets determined by when the new moon occurs, something that makes sense with all the lights on a night when there would be no moonlight. It struck me that it was also a new moon on Halloween, aruguably making it "spookier" on a darker night, although traditionally people would be much more into it being a full moon.
Tandoori Flame didn't have a decor specific to Diwali, per se, but it certainly had a very indian flavor. In the middle of that, hovering above the register counter, was a
large bat balloon, clearly for Halloween. The juxtaposition cracked me up.
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Shobhit's mom sent him five photos of her altar for Diwali at home in New Delhi, over WhatsAp. I used his phone to text those to myself; I figured between those and the photos I took at the restaurant, I could create a last-minute
Diwali 2024 photo album. We did not go to the Diwali Festival at Seattle Center like we did last year, but I decided this would suffice. I only have nine photos for this year, but I still have
four Diwali albums for the past five years, in addition to other albums from 2019, 2017, 2013, and 2005. Maybe I'll look into the festival again next year.
—Oh. The Seattle Center Diwali Festival this year hasn't happened yet; it's happening tomorrow. But, Shobhit is working all day, so, so much for that. Last year, he got cotton wicks for special Diwali candle holders he also bought there. He tried to make wicks out of the cotton balls we have at home last night, but they were too processed and he could not make them right and so he gave up. He did still bring out
a silver coin he has, which I don't remember seeing before but maybe I have. Apparently money is part of the tradition with this holiday: you pray to coins for continued wealth. He had the coin out on the counter for just a few minutes before he put it back, after he could not make use of the candles. We should try being more proactive about this next year maybe, when Diwali will fall on October 20. I pulled the coin back out just to get a picture of it with the traditional candle holders. They have a name, a Hindi word I can't remember.
All of that was after we got home from dinner. At the restaurant, I pulled my rain jacket off, and practically peeled my soaked fingerless gloves off. My pants, and particularly my groin area, oddly, felt noticeably damp and cold all through dinner. Nothing to be done about that until we got home. I really rushed the walkin through those last six blocks, I was so eager to get out of those clothes and into some warm flannel pajamas. The rest of the evening was quite nice after that, as I processed photos from the day. In spite of the rain, though, and in spite of Laney not being able to make it in the end,
and in spite of the bummer of no office holiday celebration (side note: there was
one office staff person I noticed in costume later in the afternoon, dressed as a medieval knight), the whole day was still a lot of fun.
Days can be great fun even with setbacks if you just know how to do it!
[posted 12:50 pm]
