— पांच हजार नौ सौ छब्बीस —
It happened! The 2025 PCC "Foraged Feast," for the first time at the new office—"new" being increasingly relative as time goes on, I realized when looking at
my Flickr history of these events. Until yesterday, I had a note in the history I wrote there of the dishes I have brought over the years that said 2016 was the "first in the new office." But, that referenced the Elliott Avenue location we moved to that year; we now have another new office. I decided to edit that list so it no longer references a "new" office, but rather the Elliott Avenue office, and now the Rainier Square office.
I should start actively counting the number of people present at these things. In my
photos from yesterday, I counted 36 people sitting at different tables, and a 37th sitting at Reception. There was also a smattering of people still working at desks, either sitting out the potluck or having taken food back to the desks they were working at, so I'm not quite sure how to delineate between the number of people "at the Foraged Feast" and the number who simply came to the office yesterday. Either way I would estimate the number at between 40 and 50.
We technically have more than double that number as "office staff," but of course we never, ever have all of them in the room at once—that never even happened, technically speaking, before covid, although we regularly got far closer to it. We never got close to it
after covid and the normalization of hybrid work, that shift of course bein a huge factor in the decision to move our office location to a much smaller space.
I'd say the number of participants in the potluck this year was comparable to that of last year. The key difference between 2024 and 2025 is that the Elliott Avenue office had far more space, allowing us all not only to spread out, but still exist in a space well removed from desks. These spaces are much more intimately integreated this year: Grant and Lexis set up six long tables, two sets of three on either side of the large pillar at the center, in the wide pathway that cuts through the middle of the central area of the office where the 79 desks are.
I counted a solid 30 people sitting at those tables. There's a taller projects table closer to the entry door to the office that four more people used; and I found another two using the small table by the front desk. That's how I got to 36 people seated at tables, and Cat, the Receptionist, had her own plate sitting at the front desk itself.
People are so weirdly self-conscious about being first in line at a buffet. I never have any problem with this and I went for it. The buffet was set up on the large kitchen island we have, with desserts concentrated on the bar seating along the kitchen / break room window. We then had to take our plates and drinks back into the main room where the tables were set up. I sat near the far end of the tables just to allow for more space for people filling in the closer seats.
All the tables usually in the kitchen were brought in to these tables, the rest of the spaces using unused chairs from nearby desks. A few people were amused by this somewhat incongruous combo.
As always, even as a vegetarian I found
plenty to eat: a slice of meatless roast; fried tofu; a sesame noodle dish; Cathryn's amazing "cheese coins"; mashed potatoes; macaroni & cheese (I took the very last of the leftovers of this for lunch today); a dinner roll. Shobhit made a fair assessment that I did not have any veggies or greens. In my defense, I'd have taken the salad if it weren't entirely kale based. Yuck. Later I went back for
five of the desserts, which included a "
pear upside down chai spiced gingerbread cake," which was a mouthful in both words and ingredients but was the most amazing of all; a peanut butter chocolate kiss cookie; a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie; a mini pumpkin pie; and what I brought: blueberry cashew banana bread. I wanted so badly to eat some of it when I baked it at home on Tuesday night, but I did wait—and was rather pleased with how it turned out. The darker the bananas are when you make banana bread the better, and these weren't even that dark yet. It was still yummy.
Among my own, "P3" (Pricing, Promotions and Project management) team, all of us were here except for Amy, who skipped both this and our later Happy Hour because it was her husband's birthday yesterday. Cathryn and I both brought dishes, but Brandy and Gabby did not, and Gabby even sat out the potluck, meeting up with her husband for lunch instead. She later indicated she felt bad that she didn't bring anything, which truly should not ever be a deterrent at a potluck: the best thing for a potluck is for maybe half the people to actually make and bring something. Otherwise you wind up with far more food than everyone can possibly eat.
And I ate a shit ton yesterday. My weight was up a whopping 2.8 lbs this morning. This is because I still had two more high-consumotion events to attend yesterday, one of them another potluck! I'll get to that momentarily.
I'm always disappointed when this event has to be pushed into December, as traditionally it has been a work Thanksgiving done before the Thanksgiving holiday—in the
last seven years alone, however, it's been scheduled
after Thanksgiving four times. And this year it's been pushed further into December than ever before, one day shy of a solid two weeks after Thanksgiving. I'm hoping I can nudge Grant into scheduling it before Thanksgiving next year. To his credit, he actually tried to this year, but wound up having to send out two different Outlook postponements after discovering calendar conflicts for all the other attempted date.
And, to be fair to everyone, this does get a bit tricky, as most people get super busy with stores in the lead-up to Thanksgiving itself. And although in the past we had a "Foraged Feast" in November and then a separate office holiday event in December, it would be unsurprising to go forward basically fusing those two things with a single December event in the future. I can only hope that at least going forward we can schedule it sooner after Thanksgiving than two whole weeks. The other thing that makes it tough though is that Wednesday is now basically the only viable day of any given week to do this, as it's when the most people work in-office already.
The bottom line? I'm just really grateful this annual potluck is still happening at all. It made me really happy.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ छब्बीस —
— पांच हजार नौ सौ छब्बीस —
By the same token, our Holiday "P3 Happy Hour" was scheduled yesterday too, since the majority of us were already planning to come in for the Foraged Feast—Cathryn and Brandy usually work their one day in-office on Thursdays, but they both moved it to Wednesday this week. This was how I wound up with this as the second of three high-consumption events yesterday.
Under any other circumstance, I might have actually ordered a snack from the Christmas Dive Bar menu, but I was so stuffed I only had a drink. But, okay, I also had a second drink. Gabby offered and I couldn't say no. I had a
Naughty Hot Cider and then I had a Yuletide Toddy. I enjoyed both as warm beverages, less sweet than the Mrs. Claus' Hot Chocolate just because I had already eaten so many desserts, but I can't say they were special. They came in
fun cups, though.
Anyway, the "Foraged Feast" was scheduled 12:30 to 2:30, but most people were back to business as usual at their desks by 1:30; by 3:45, though, Gabby and Brandy and I were all headed up to Capitol Hill in Gabby's Car, to Christmas Dive Bar. This is that Christmas pop-up's third year, though 2023 and 2024 it was in the space of a bar on 11th called The Woods, a place apparently now closed. It was owned by the same people who run Queer / Bar, though, and so this year it's that space, all of two doors down from The Woods, that Christmas Dive Bar is set up this year.
They were scheduled to open at 4:00, and we got there at 3:55, the door already open. It appeared we were their first customers for the day. The last photo I took, literally as we were walking out, was at 5:49, so we were there just short of a solid two hours. Longer than I expected, honestly; I knew Gabby needed to head straight home after so I didn't think we'd be there more than about an hour. But, then she offered us a second drink (which, I noticed, she did not order for herself) and it became clear we'd hang out a while longer.
This won't even be the last time I go to Christmas Dive Bar this year—I have plans to go back with Laney on Friday next week, even though she has
also been there with another friend once already. She went on Tuesday, when they technically were closed for a private event until 7:00, but the staff let them come in for an hour after 4 p.m. anyway, which was pretty cool. There is a sign for "Santa's Speakeasy" that I never did go check out last night, so I'll have to do that when I get back next week.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ छब्बीस —
Gabby drove Brandy to the Light Rail station, and I walked the four blocks home from there. Gabby actually asked if I'd be safe, and I was like, "We only have shootings every once in a while, I'll be fine!" I also noted that I walk to work virtually every day, so four blocks is nothing.
I thus got home with only half an hour to spare before this week's Action Movie Night. Shobhit already had the pasta he planned to make for it ready; I also brought home the leftover blueberry cashew banana bread—there was maybe a third of it left—to bring. It was easily polished up downstairs in the Braeburn community kitchen last night.
We had eight in attendance this week: Tony, Jake, Ryan, Ben, Derek, Daniel, Shobhit, and myself. This week was Ben's choice, and I was actually surprised by how into it I got, given its incredibly slow pace: a 2013 crime thriller called
Blue Ruin that I'm not sure I had ever heard of. I did check Ben's
history, though, and with only a few exceptions he tends to make very good choices. (He even once chose
Airplane!, the funniest movie ever made, thereby allowing me to scratch it off my own working list of planned choices.)
For a couple of years there after Shobhit and I became regulars, the typical cadence was that you'd get to make the choice every six months. My first choice was in November 2022; in 2023 I chose in May and November; in 2024 I chose in May and then in December. I didn't get another choice until July 2025, which was the only time I got to choose this year. We have more people regularly choosing now, and I am on track to get my next choice in
February—not even January! That is, unless some of these people on the schedule aren't around, and a lot of these guys don't come every time. At least I'm still all but guaranteed to get two choices in 2026.
There is one newer guy, I won't name him directly just out of both courtesy and self-interest, who I know isn't everyone's favorite there. He isn't mine. This guy takes up way too much space with all his crap, bringing multiple bags he'll fill one of the empty chairs in the back row with, all while
also bringing a second plate of food
into the theater to eat while the movie is playing. I wouldn't mind so much except that the movie last night is often very quiet, and he was only two seats over from me and I could hear the squishing of his chewing even though he was (mercifully) chewing with his mouth closed. He has also had moments of emitting an unpleasant odor, although to be fair that wasn't the case last night. Also to be fair, I have to admit he has excellent taste in movies, and all of his choices have been excellent.
By and large everyone is very polite to this guy, with the exception of one regular who really went out of his way to talk shit about him on a week he was unable to make it. I'm still kind of waiting for him to fall away in some way or another, maybe he'll have to move too far away one of these days or something. I know I'm not the only one. I feel kind of bad talking shit like this, because how do I know anyone there doesn't also think I have infiltrated the group? This started as so-called "Man Movie Wednesday" 13 years ago, after all, a name I have always found to be deeply regressive (they changed it when an issue with Tony tying up the theater on a regular cadence resulted in a compromise where he opened up the event to the entire complex), and Shobhit and I are indeed the only gay people who come regularly. That said, I feel like I am far better at picking up on even subtle clues of this sort, and this annoying guy is clearly utterly clueless on that front.
Shobhit can kind of occupy the space between. During the potluck portion before the movie last night, several TV shows were brought up in conversation, and Shobhit absolutely should have known better than to ask if anyone was watching
Heated Rivalry. I said, "I don't know why he's even bringing that up." Jake asked why, and I said, "Because it's got a bunch of gay sex in it." Jake was like: "Oh." And that was the end of it. Thankfully.
I do have varying feelings about all the other regulars as individuals as well, and some of them are a bit more annoyingly "bro-y" than others, but they're pretty much all basically goodhearted and welcoming guys. They're also very straight, though, and I think it's easy to assume none of them are going to have any interest in a soapy HBO show with tons of gay sex scenes. (Shobhit and I certainly do, for the record. Highly recommend
Heated Rivalry!)
Two weeks from now will be an unprecedented moment in the entire Action Movie Night history: this scheduled every-other-Wednesday event will land on Christmas Eve. It sounded like Tony will indeed cancel it on the 24th, which will make the next one January 7. Shobhit will miss that one as he'll be in India, so Shobhit won't be seen there again until January 21 at the soonest. I'll be there January 7, though.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ छब्बीस —
[posted 12:35pm]
