— पांच हजार नौ सौ सत्तावन —
Quite the unusual week at work this week: we had the all-Merchandising meeting most of the day Tuesday; and yesterday (Thursday) was mostly taken up by the in-person POS meeting, which was at the Redmond store. Both meetings precluding my posting a regular Daily Lunch Update (DLU), leaving only three regular weekday blog posts this week.
I was thinking, and even told the team, yesterday that I wasn't sure I had been to the Redmond PCC store since it opened in 2006. That would have been 20 years ago! Cathryn gave me a ride there from the office, and when we walked into the Redmond store classroom where the meeting happened, Cathryn said to Gabby, "Matthew said he's never been to this store before." I said: "That's not what I said!"
But, what I said was also wrong. I did a quick search on Flickr this morning, and discovered I was actually last there in 2018, when I partipated in the first of two "
PCC Store to Farm Bike Rides." There had been four of them scheduled, but I only did two; and the first one I did myself—I drove my bike to the Burien store and no one knew what the hell I was talking about, not even store staff. It turned out the ride had been canceled due to lack of interest and no one bothered to tell me. I went ahead and rode from the Burien store out to Bailey's Farm anyway, since I was already out there with my bike.
But, the first one went forward, largely because people felt bad that I wound up doing the first one alone: Jamie and Melissa
rode with me (I believe neither of them still work at PCC), and that one, in August 2018, started and ended at the Redmond store. If not for that ride, it probably
would have been 20 years since I last went there; my
otherwise most recent photos taken there were indeed from May 2006, when the store had its Grand Opening.
So, this morning I had to follow up over Teams with the P3 Team, clarifying that I had actually last been there in 2018. But! A new fun detail: I found
this photo I had taken of a sign on the men's room door on the day of that ride in 2018, which mentions how many blueberries we sold in . . . 2016. That exact sign was still up on the mirror yesterday, surprisingly undamaged for a sign that has been up at least eight years. I shared that over Teams as well, and Gabby suggested I send it to the Signs team because she suspected they would ask Redmond to take it down. I wonder how many other strangely outdated signs are up in weird spots all over our stores? Cathryn actually chimed in over Teams,
Also, odd sign to have in a restroom? Anyone else with me? A fair point.
Gabby had suggested I send the photo to Jack, Fran, and Lexis. Because I wasn't paying attention to Outlook's auto-fill, I accidentally sent it to Jack,
Frank and Lexis. Frank is one of the Grocery Merchandisers, no connection to either signs of this sort or the Produce department. Still, his first reaction was:
2016??? I mean, if the sign has been up since sometime between 2016 and 2018, that makes more sense. But in 2026, one might wonder why a sign references such an old statistic.
The sign also gives it a fun reference point: after noting that we sold 204,517 lbs of blueberries (in 2016), it adds:
That's the equivalent of 15 Fremont Trolls! So, two minutes after his first email, Frank replied,
How do they know what the troll weighs? He got briefly obsessed with this question. But really, how much the Fremont Troll weighs is an easy Google question (it weighs 13,000 lbs).
Side note: interesting that it would be at the Redmond store where this sign has been noticed, two different times, eight years apart. The Redmond PCC is 12 miles away from the Fremont Troll (and that's as the crow flies; it's a 17-mile drive).
Anyway. Cathryn had come to the office first for a couple of hours, so had an easy time of giving me a ride to the Redmond store. She lives in Kingston, though, so it totally made sense for her to want to drive straight back there. Rather than driving me back to the office, she dropped me off at the Lynnwood City Center Station and I took Light Rail back from there. This took me a good 75 minutes or so; it could have been closer to 60 except for things like waiting for the train to arrive. I had looked up transit options direct from the store, and there were no direct options. I did find a two-bus itinerary that was scheduled to get me back in about 75 minutes, but that's without any delays. It likely still would have taken longer to go that route, so getting the ride to Lynnwood was likely still the best option.
The POS meeting itself was scheduled for four hours, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. But, Cathryn and I left the office at 9:00, and I got back to the office at 3:45. This left me all of about 2 hours and 15 minutes combined to actually do work in the office yesterday. I did bring my laptop with me this time, though, so I did check email a few times during the meeting, and responded to a few; I actually did a few more on the train, using my phone as a wifi hotspot—a fantastic tool, I must say (this also allows me to work on travelogues while traveling home from trips by car or bus).
— पांच हजार नौ सौ सत्तावन —
— पांच हजार नौ सौ सत्तावन —
Having not posted yesterday, I can now offer a record of my Wednesday evening, which was this week's Action Movie Night at the Braeburn Condos theater. The movie choice this week went to Joe, the only other regular at Action Movie Night besides Tony and Shobhit and me who actually lives at The Braeburn, and he chose the 2002 Hong Kong film
Infernal Affairs.
Most of us clocked within minutes that this was
very similar to the 2006 Martin Scorsese film
The Departed—both the best film of that year, and Jesse's film choice for Action Movie Night in April 2023 (so, less than three years ago). I quickly found confirmation that
The Departed, while having a lot of other extra details and elements added, was indeed an American remake of
Infernal Affairs, the premise of which is a cop and a mobster infiltrating as moles simultaneously in each other's groups.
The Departed is a far better film, I must say. I didn't find
Infernal Affairs all that exciting, and I found a lot of its overactive cinematography a bit pretensious. I was relieved to find it was a far shorter film;
The Departed clocked in at two and a half hours, and
Infernal Affairs is an hour and 41 minutes. It was far from the worst selection at Action Movie Night, but I've also seen better.
Most interesting was that Joe, when he chose it, had no idea about the
Departed connection.
I suppose I should mention who all was present this week, as I always do. This was a truly rare occasion in which Tony did not make it. I wonder if we'll find out next time why? Totally none of my business but I'm curious anyway. So: this week there were eight people, including Jake, Joe, Chris B, Andy, Derek, Daniel, Shobhit, and myself.
Shobhit and I brought homemade pizza made on flatbreads we bought at QFC—three flatbreads each covering two different cookie sheets. I'd say about half of all that pizza got consumed; someone else brought a medium pepperoni pizza which got completely gobbled up. Andy, for the second time, brought his waffle maker and some batter and made Belgian waffles. This time, however, he was super bummed to realize he forgot both butter and maple syrup. We had plenty of both upstairs, though, so I went to fetch them—even though I had to
take the stairs thanks to the East Building elevator being out of service since Friday. The frequency with which the elevator goes out of service is pretty annoying. I should start warning prospective buyers. Don't waste your time and money! (To be fair, I still otherwise really love living in this building. So long as the fucking elevator is working. Most permanent wheelchair users would be smart enough not to live in any upper floors to begin with, but what if any resident has an injurity or something? It's ridiculous.)
Andy had also made butterscotch chip oatmeal cookies. He said he made a bunch of them at home and could not stop eating them, like 12 of them he said, so he brought the rest to get them out of the house. I had oly one and it was delicious. I still ate too many slices of our pizza plus an entire Belgian waffle. It's very hard not to overeat at Action Movie Night.
I was otherwise glad the movie was on the slightly shorter side, so Shobhit and I could get back upstairs and watch another episode of his Actor Awards screener of
Pluribus. We watched another two episodes last night, in addition to this week's
Fallout, plus I went to the bedroom to watch this week's
The Pitt. Shobhit is leaning toward waiting until the season's 15 episodes have aired so he can binge them all (an understandable thing to want to do, since each season covers one of 15 hours of a single 15-hour shift). But, I have podcast coverage to listen to and I can't wait. I would much rather be able to watch it on the TV in the living room but whatever. Once Shobhit gets caught up on the other shows he's catching up on, maybe he'll change his mind and catch up on
The Pitt.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ सत्तावन —
[posted 12:30pm]
