so much for that

— पांच हजार आठ सौ पैंतालीस — In the Office Relocation Committee meetings at work, there has been discussion about holding "open houses" with each department, to go and look at the current, nearly-finished new office space on 4th Avenue at Rainier Square. I was chatting over Teams with Gabby about this two days ago, and she said it was unlikely we'd manage a scheduled Open House for Merchandising: at the moment most of the department is ridiculously busy preparing for Corner Market to open (in the adjacent space) on Tuesday; plus, all the Merchandisers, spending so much time down there, have seen the space plenty already. So, she suggested I message Noah and see if he'd just let me in if I went down while he was still there. The first suggestion was that I go at the end of that very day. But, when my messages were met with no answer on Wednesday, Noah finally replied yesterday morning: he was doing store tours yesterday but I could stop by today if I wanted. But, then Gabby was going to be there herself yesterday afternoon. I then took her suggestion that I come down at the end of the day, she could let me in. This was how I learned a lot of valuable things about the new space: * The public bike rack is almost shockingly accessible, right down at the bottom of the parking garage entry ramp on Union Street. There's a booth for what's apparently called a "Dock Supervisor" (until now it's been referred to as "Dockmaster," but Lori told me yesterday it's Dock Supervisor), and the bike rack is along the wall to the left, right behind it. The best part of this is that there's a guy working in that booth all day, which will make this the first bike rack I have ever used regularly that has constant human supervision. As long as I actually lock the bike, I have no risk of having it stolen. * I had a couple conversations with Tracy about this bike rack. He talked to me about it right after arriving at the office in the morning, having ridden here from there. He said the Dock Supervisor had shown him the secure bike rack inside a locked room, along with lockers and even showers—Lori later told me the Dock Supervisor should not have been showing us these spaces. He did make clear that there was a monthly fee for access, and he didn't know how much it was but it was "reasonable," something Tracy and I both found to be a questionable claim since there is no reason to have to pay to lock a bike up anywhere. Either way, according to Lori, because of the fine print in the lease in our space as a retailer (we may be converting 2/3 of the original store space into offices, but the lease still regards it all as retail), we don't have access to those spaces as a "tenant" of the building—only reisdents and other offices do. The Dock Supervisor clearly didn't know that, but I'm sure glad I asked him to show it to me anyway. * The office space is cery close to finished. The only major thing left to happen is filling it with what sit-stand desks we will be moving from the current office to the new location, which is happening the last week of August—and during which the current office will be closed; everyone will be expected to work remotely; and I am just taking PTO that week to avoid having to do that. * The kitchen, while undeniably smaller than the one in the current office, is much bigger than I feared it would feel. And although there will be little to no natural light reaching any of the actual desks, the kitchen will have a large window overlooking 4th Avenue. This is also potentially where I can go next June to watch the Pride Parade. (Currently the store is planned to be closed on weekends. I feel like it's possible that could change by next year, but who knows.) * A genuine disappointment: According to Lori, the plan for gender neutral bathrooms at the new office were changed "a long time ago." Nobody said anything about this, so I did not discover it until I was there yesterday and saw that the bathrooms are separated by gender after all. Why we would give in to people whining about this, which kind of sounds like what happened, is a mystery to me, and certainly inconsistent with the fact that every new store since the late 2010s has been built with gender neutral bathrooms—including the new Downtown, Corner Market store, right next door to the new office! It makes my employer feel like an institution that no longer has the courage of its convictions, and it really bothers me. I honestly don't know if I have ever been this disappointed by anything at this company. Hmm, well, being asked to plan to work at stores if a strike happens (this was maybe two years ago now) is pretty fucking far up there, now that I think about it. I was willing to put my job on the line in refusing to do that if necessary, but in that scenario I still understood their position. I'm not sure I can say the same here. Well, anyway. I took 22 photos while I was there. Five of them I put into a new "Store Opening 2025" photo album, to which I am sure I will add more shortly after the store actually opens next week. The rest I added to the "Central Office Move" album that already had one photo added to it. These are both part of a collection of albums I have dedicated to "the saga" of that space, dating from the 2022 opening of the original store; through the closure of the store at the beginnng of 2024; and now both the new office and new store opening this year. — पांच हजार आठ सौ पैंतालीस — — पांच हजार आठ सौ पैंतालीस — I think maybe we are living in an era desperate for new icons. How many times are we going to try recycling the same ideas, and failing to update them with any satisfaction? I took myself to see the new Superman last night, and though there were parts of it I really liked, overall I was not a fan. And I seem to be in the minority here—reviews are officially "generally favorable," which isn't great, but in my view is far better than this movie deserves. It just makes me think no one has taste anymore. Or maybe I'm just pushing 50. Superman being rehashed far too many times remains a fact. I'm still a little bummed that Laney couldn't join me as planned. I have a feeling she would have had a much better time with the movie than I did, for Krypto the superdog if not for anything else. And that alone may have allowed me to enjoy the movie more. I then listened to The Big Picture podcast this morning, with Sean Fennesey and Amanda Dobbins both talking about how much they enjoyed it. Those two are about a decade younger than I am, and I have never felt the generation gap more. And they both also had plenty of complaints about it, but they both seemed to feel the cool stuff in it sufficiently makes up for the plethora of imperfections. I kind of felt the opposite. At least the movie wasn't overlong—I was on the same page with them being relieved about that. At 129 minutes, it's still overstuffed, but at least it didn't feel like a slog. Most of it, anyway. Even Sean and Amanda complained about the crap sequences in the "pocket universe"—and there's kind of a lot of that. They also talked a lot about James Gunn apparently transparently drawing parallels with his own high-profile frustrations and experiences in Hollywood, as well as with real-world invasions like Russia into Ukraine or Israel into Gaza. I never thought too hard about such supposed "nuances," because neither were they done very well, nor did I have the bandwidth to consider them much while wading through all the narrative idiocy. — पांच हजार आठ सौ पैंतालीस — [posted 12:57pm]