— पांच हजार आठ सौ पैंसठ —

I nearly forgot to write about yesterday's "Farewell 3131 [Elliott Avenue]" party here at work! I was all set to write only about Action Movie Night. I'll have to get back to that momentarily.

The "Farewell 3131" potluck was the brainchild of the Office Relocation Committee I'm on. We wanted one last social event in our large kitchen and on the patio with beautiful views, which we will only get to enjoy through tomorrow. Everyone is expected to work from home all of next week, but I chose to take PTO instead.

Side note: our committee meetings are usually noon to 1:00 (a time slot I was never a fan of, as noon when I like to have lunch), but yesterday we shifted it to 3:00 because we scheduled the potluck for noon. I really thought we would just replace the regular meeting with the potluck, but nope: we also had the meeting. And at that meeting, it was asked if we should meet next week (presumably over Teams), and I said, "Not me, I'm on PTO!" Sara chuckled and said she thought I had been joking when I first said I would do that. Nope. I'm serious about using up my PTO! And also about not wanting to work from home! Anyway, Frank took a page from my book and is doing the same thing.

Everyone is wanted out of the office next week so that movers can get the space needed to break down all the desks and other things they will move and reassemble in the new space at Rainier Square. And then, the following weekend is Labor Day Weekend, so there is no expectation of office work on Monday September 1 anyway. Thus, our first day at the new space will be Tuesday, September 2.

Lexis, who works in Marketing, had plenty of resources for providing games for people to play, and for coordinating what foods PCC would provide (namely, hot dogs, and veggie hot dogs for us vegetarians). I got a full photo album out of it, although admittedly I only took 20 of the photos myself at the party. I added one shot of the "Farewell 3131" vegan chocolate cake that Gabby took (even though I already had a still shot of it of my own, just at a different angle); and I included three shots I took on Tuesday night, of Shobhit making the samosas I brought as my potluck dish. Shobhit had already made a bunch for Alexia's dinner on Sunday last weekend, and had plenty of dough and potato filling left over, so I asked him to make more that I could bring to work for this.

In fact, in the photo below, you can see Sara (functionally kind of the chair of our Office Relocation Committee), at far left, with one of Shobhit's samosas in her hand. She snatched one before she got through the line. And this is kind of funny, because Shobhit kept thinking that not all of the 20 samosas I brought would get eaten. I was like, "People love your samosas. They'll get eaten." In fact, since Shobhit and I had already eaten four samosas each the night before, I didn't even take any of the samosas I brought, allowing as many people as possible to have one. It was not long at all before the plate I had set them all on was indeed totally emptied.

Indeed, it felt like a surprisingly large crowd attended yesterday—there must have been around 40. This is still a fraction of the total office staff, but a very good turnout in the age of hybrid office work. This is how it's expected to be going forward, which is a big justification (among many) for this move: we're wasting space here, while also paying for two leases unnecessarily. Within a couple of months, the Rainier Square space will be the only lease left between the two, and in that case it's one lease for both store and office space.

I have a feeling Wednesdays in particular will feel very full in that office. We'll see how it goes. There has been some concern about whether we'll ever have more people than the 82 desks will allow space for, but I really think we'll be fine. I'm not worried about it because I'll get my own desk since I work every day—and even if I didn't, I get to work at 7:30 before almost anyone, so I'd have my pick regardless.

It was a lovely party yesterday. A bunch of us played Bingo. I ate way too much—both for lunch and for dessert. In the later case, I had five of them. And then I later discovered the cream pie was actually a peanut butter banana pie, which of course I had to have, even though I was stuffed practically to the limit.

At the Office Relocation Committee meeting later, I said, "Does anyone else feel like throwing up?" I was talking about the food. When Grant, the Office Administrator, said yes, he thought I was talking about the stress of the move. Ha! Well, I guess there's that too. That's been more stressful for some than others. I just have the last of my desk supplies to take home today, then my laptop and headset and mouse tomorrow; I'll get a new keyboard when I come in on September 2. I'm basically good to go.

Did I mention this party wasn't even the only potluck I had yesterday?

— पांच हजार आठ सौ पैंसठ —

— पांच हजार आठ सौ पैंसठ —

Last night was Action Movie Night, and we saw what was possibly the worst movie I have had to sit through in the time we've been attending this biweekly event. It was called FDR: American Badass!, and you could kind of tell just from that title that it was going to be garbage.

It's about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Fighting werewolves. From which he contracted polio.

The movie was clearly made to be enjoyed as "so bad it's fun," but those movies only tend to work when the filmmakers aren't actually intending to make something bad. I chuckled a few times but the movie utterly lost me about 15 minutes in. I spent a lot of time scrolling on my phone, and I probably missed the 80% of the second half due to snoozing. Shobhit snoozed as well. It's kind of a miracle that, to my knowledge, neither of us audibly snored.

It was an unusually low-attendance last night, with only six of us during the potluck portion before the movie: Tony, Jake, Andrew, Derek, Shobhit, and me. Tony, in his usual email asking for RSVPs on Sunday, indicated two "beer passes" because he had so much beer on hand; both Andrew and Derek replied with "beer pass." Jake indicated at one point that he and Andrew had just eaten out before coming, which I suppose indicated why Jake also didn't bring food, even though he usually does. Tony, who provides the box of beers (I always bring a cocktail), doesn't always bring food either, and he didn't last night. This made for an unprecedented case of not only just one dish being brought, but Shobhit and me being the only ones who brought food at all. Shobhit made a pasta, which I only had a little of, as I was so stuffed from the potluck at work in the afternoon. At least this was useful in that there wasn't a ton of food to eat at this, like there usually is.

Several minutes into the movie, Daniel showed up. It was kind of unsurprising that this meant he didn't bring any food either. This didn't stop him from dishing up some pasta and bringing it into the theater to eat, something he does almost every time and is kind of an unpopular thing to do.

Thankfully the movie was only about an hour and a half. It was a relief when it was over. This movie was Jake's choice, and he had gotten it on DVD from Scarecrow Video. He told us all he knew nothing about it and had not seen it, and when the movie ended, the general consensus seemed to be that it was bad. Oh well. You can't win them all.

There was a moment during the movie that Shobhit whispered to me whether we should just leave. I honestly don't think we would have been judged for it—people leaving these movies is rare but not unheard of—but I just wasn't comfortable with it; I preferred to stick it out. Of course that just meant I continued napping.

Once we got back up to the condo, at least I had some time to work on the photo digest email I'm putting together and intend to send out tomorrow morning, a retrospective of the nine years we've been at this office location at work. Tomorrow is the final day working here.

[posted 12:33pm]