It's been quite an eventful couple of days, specifically related to work—and the very reason I never had time to share a regular blog post yesterday.
But, I need to go back to Wednesday for a moment, as that was when the Office Relocation Committee spent our regular Wednesday meeting time to have our first site visit since we went on Halloween Day, October 31, last fall. A
lot of work has been done, and I took
a lot of photos. Most significantly, I took 13 photos going up to the 12th-floor Rainier Tower Conference Center, which is the space we can rent for larger meetings we cannot accommodate in our ground-floor office space. It's also where the photo I took of the view above was taken.
As noted in my draft email I sent to the committee this morning, and will hopefully soon send out to the whole Merchandising team, though, there will be an important distinction to be made: the PCC Corner Market and PCC Office are located at the base of the 58-floor
Rainier Square Tower (built 2020; otherwise known as
The Residences at Rainier Square), but the Conference Center is located in the 41-floor
Rainier Tower (built 1977, the one with the distinctive, golf-tee-like tapered base). These are two separate skyscrapers on the same block, the entirety of which is Rainier Square—they have a connected lobby space, but separate elevator banks leading up separate towers. To access the Rainier Tower Conference Center (see p. 3
here), you must go to the Rainier Tower elevators and not those of the Residences at Rainier Square, the latter being the tower directly above the PCC spaces.
I forgot to mention in my draft, by the way—and I'm unsure now whether I will yet bother to add it—that there is also a "Board Room" space on the 40th "Sky Lobby" in the Rainier Square Tower building, apparently with much more restricted access but a possibility for very special events. Normally this space is reserved for
resident amenity access. And I came
this close to getting to see that space on Wednesday—there was a lot of confusion at first, because we went to the elevators in the residential tower when looking for the 12th-floor Conference Center, which turned out to be in the older, shorter Rainier Tower building.
On that 12th floor, though, a property management lady, who was clearly one of Lori's contacts as she guided our group through the buildings, was in an office whose door is right next to that of the Conference Center. Just before we were all about to leave, the lady actually offered, "Would you like me to show you the board room?" I was dying to say, "Yes! Please!"—but Lori immediately said, "No, that's okay." Sara later came to my desk Wednesday afternoon and contemplated the idea of maybe getting an escort up there to see it another day.
Depending on the size of the space, it could be perfect for something like an all-office holiday event, such as our "Foraged Feast" we do annually for Thanksgiving. There will be no space whatsoever for such a thing in the ground-level office space now, and although we could probably make it work in the 12th-floor Conference Center of the other building—it does have a full kitchen—we'd have to break up in between two different conference rooms, which would be weird. And the view would, obviously, be much better from the 40th-floor Sky Lobby of the Residences tower.
Anyway. I also got lots of photos of the current state of construction progress in the main new office space, as well as the new, "small format" PCC Corner Market store. I've now got
a collection of photo albums on Flickr that I'm calling "The Saga of PCC Downtown / Office 2022 - 2025." It has four albums so far, and will get at least a fifth once we actually move. I suspect it will in the end have at least six, assuming at least one more site visit before the move. Whether more photos will be in one or two separate albums will depend on how different things look between the two visits, presuming it will happen that way.
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So that brings us to yesterday, and the reason I never shared a DLU (Daily Lunch Update): we had our Quarterly All-Merchandising Team Meeting in the morning, 9:00 - 12:00; then what I'll call our Spring Social: we all went to Flatstick Pub—something Merchandising has already done once before,
in January 2019. When it was decided we would start doing regular social outings with the Merchandising Department, this was
the first one we did—I believe the original intent was to do something like this quarterly. We managed three events in 2019, but have never managed more than two in a given calendar year since. To be fair, covid really threw a monkey wrench into things there for a couple of years.
Noah noted that when we went to Flatstick Pub the first time, there was a lot of people here who aren't anymore. In the photos from that time, I count at least seven people who have since left PCC. This time around, we had two new staff members here who started just within the past few weeks, one of whom (much like Cathryn, who was also not at the previous Flatstic Pub event) was once a regular contact for me with one of our brokers.
Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. My
photo album for all that went down yesterday has 28 shots, but 10 of them are from the skin care demo during the three-hour meeting in the morning—four of those swiped from shots Gabby took (which were much better than any shots I got; I'm very jealous). She also took a "P3" [Pricing, Promotions & Project Management] team selfie, which is really fun except for whatever the hell I'm doing with my mouth in that shot.
I was wary of putting any of the facial stuff on my face. It probably would have been fine, but the last time I had a facial of any kind, well over twenty years ago, I had a painful skin reaction. It just seemed more prudent to put the skin care stuff on the back of my hand—which everyone else sitting at my table did as well: Gabby, Amanda, Cathryn. Gabby took the fantastically candid shot above, though, with Tracy getting misted with liquid to keep the clay on his face moist. I really love that shot; Steven and Adrienne are looking on, on either side of him.
I did pretty well with my cold yesterday, I think, except that nothing gets past Gabby. I got back from the bathroom during our first break, and Gabby said, "Matthew? Are you feeling a little sicky-sick?" I said, "I just have a mild cold," I said, which was the truth. She did not seemed concerned about anything other than whether I should be working, but I did not want to miss any of the stuff happening yesterday. "I would fully support you if you wanted to take a sick day," she said. "I'm not sick," I said, which was also true. "Okay," she said. I should note that she still came and sat next to me at Flatstick Pub when I was sitting at a table on my own in the miniature golf section later in our time there, and by then I was no longer even noticeably congested. This ebbs and flows, and I get congested for a short time after sneezing a couple of times, and then it clears up. I'm coughing here and there, but really not a lot. I went through far fewer cough drops yesterday than I expected to, and haven't even needed one so far today.
There's not much else of note to share about the meeting, and shortly after, Gabby gave Cathryn and me a ride in her car to Flatstick Pub. I wound up skipping dinner last night, there was so much delightful junk food to eat for lunch, in a buffet paid for by PCC: I had two slices of vegetable pizza; one slice of cheese; several onion rings; several little quarters of cut soft pretzels; and I also had some salad! Some of it I ate for no reason other than that it was there—such as my third slice of pizza. We even basically had an open bar for lunch, and I had a "Sassy Peach" hard cider. I could have had another, but I spent a fair amount of time nursing the one glass of cider that I got.
Once it was time to start playing mini golf, I was part of a six-person team, with Noah, Steven, Benny, Adrienne, and Peter. We actually kept score, and I came iin last. "Matthew, you're too honest," Kevin said to me. Well I'm not going to cheat!
The time at Flatstick Pub was scheduled 1:00 to 4:00, but people were making their "Irish Goodbyes" (as Noah noted them as) by around 2:30. I kind of hung out myself with the few stragglers left until close to 3:00. I had brought my backpack and shut down my computer before leaving, reasoning that if I would be there until 4:00, there was no sense in going back to the office. Leaving around 3:00, though, I could even have walked back to the office and had a solid hour of work before leaving as usual at 4:30. I really contemplated it, and even got half a block in that direction. But then I thought: fuck it. I have this week's three episodes of
Andor to watch! So, I walked home.
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I guess I will also mention real quick, since I did not share a post yesterday in which to do it, that Shobhit met me at Pacific Place after work on Wednesday, to see
The Accountant 2. Strange how it got slightly better reviews than the first one; Shobhit and I both felt the first was a lot better. Certainly more enjoyable. I did a rare thing and actually gave this one a C-plus.
We almost went for a walk to Salt & Straw for dessert late last night. We decided to make hot chocolate at home instead.
So, now we're all caught up. I had considered going to Steamworks tonight, but that was a tentatively scheduled idea from weeks ago, bumped at least to next weekend because I don't want to go with my cold still lingering, however mild. I still have plenty scheduled for the weekend, though: Happy Hour with Laney tomorrow, then Shobhit and I will meet up with Lynn and Zephyr in Everett early Sunday afternoon, for a picnic at Grand Park, a belated "viewpoint" for this year's Birth Week theme because they were unavailable last weekend. I'm glad I'm still meeting up with them soon after though.
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[posted 12:34pm]
