back in the shit

— चार हजार नौ सौ छियासठ — Well, what fun! I'm back to being stressed and annoyed at work. I had been thinking 13 parks in 10 days was kind of exhausting and I needed a break, time to go back to work! And sure, today is my second day back to work, but it's sort of like it only just registered to stores today that I am back and now I am getting more annoying emails I struggle to keep up with while doing regular work, with 260+ emails I still haven't even been able to look at. This is mostly because the vast majority of yesterday consisted of keying a bunch of weekly floral skus I needed to send in an immediate batch in the morning because Cathryn had been too busy to get to them last week; and catching up on my backlog of receiving paperwork in the afternoon after lunch. This would all be so much easier if we still had only, say, 10 stores like we did six years ago. Then Cate the new CEO came along and she decided to expand rapidly, bringing in another five stores over the next five years. That's 50% growth, and it turns out dealing with 10 stores emailing me multiple times each day, which was hard enough to keep up as it was, is a lot easier than dealing with 15 stores emailing me multiple times each day. Okay, they don't usually all email me about the same thing, but you get the idea. Fuck, more than enough of them do. I'm tired of it! Whaaa, whaa, whaa. I'm such a whiner. How about I do it some more! This would also be a lot easier to deal with if I could keep the stresses of work versus the stresses of home entirely separated, which is impossible while working from home. Another thing I'm sick of, truly deeply, after months of being basically fine with it—now I am truly over it. I long for the days of an office job where I don't have to contend with yowling and/or puking cats, or a spouse pacing around the house shouting at his own work benefits insurance company. And, sure, there were annoying distractions in an open floor plan office as well, particularly when there would be three separate conversations going within ear shot at once. But at least at the office, if absolutely necessary, I could just move to one of the private phone rooms and get some peace and quiet. I don't have that option here. Also, it would be one thing if I could just attend to my backlog of work in peace. But no, I keep getting bombarded by email from POS at stores, tons of them for really comparatively unimportant things like updating sizes on shelf tags. Leave me alone! — चार हजार नौ सौ छियासठ — — चार हजार नौ सौ छियासठ — Should I mention the recent news that experts no longer expect the U.S. to reach "herd immunity," the magical buzzword constantly used in terms of endgame goals about a year ago? It's not like this isn't possible, mind you. It's because this country is full of gullible fucking morons who hear stupid shit from people who are not doctors or epidemiologists and so they resist getting the vaccine shots. I'm kind of in a mood right now. Can you tell? Granted, the details in the story behind these clickbait headlines are more nuanced: failing to reach herd immunity doesn't mean we won't still ease back into some semblance of normalcy. It still doesn't change the fact that resistance to both mask wearing, especially in the early days, and to vaccines, are literally what's making this entire pandemic last longer than necessary. And right now, truly the key to getting out of this is vaccinations, and we have people insisting it's "experimental" (it literally isn't) and dangerous (it's not). But then, I'm not sure what else when we can expect in a time when people who literally believe the Earth is actually flat are not just outlier whack jobs, but have found a community. Sometimes I wonder how truly dispiriting society will be, at this rate, in another 20 or 30 years, assuming I'm even still alive. It was an especially grim outlook when I thought President Fuckwit was going to win reelection. Biden winning was a huge relief, but really only in the sense that he'll generally implement policies which don't eradicate the effects of the abject stupidity we're talking about here, but rather will simply postpone them. On the other hand, maybe, this too shall pass? Who the fuck knows. It's bizarre to think about how shockingly effective simple propaganda can be, and then wonder, why don't we just implement propaganda tactics with actually accurate and scientifically sound information? It's good to remind ourselves that widespread and organized misinformation campaigns are not new or specific to the internet—and societies have weathered them in the past and come around to more rational thought. I wonder what, say, the 19th century analog would be to a Flat-Earther Facebook group would be? I'm sure there was one. Or twenty. — चार हजार नौ सौ छियासठ — All right, enough of that shit. I left work half an hour early yesterday so I could get to Northgate Mall on time via transit, and get to my eye doctor appointment on time. I hadn't had one since August of 2019. I naively thought I could get off the bus at the Northgate Transit Center and just walk through the mall—ha! I had no idea how far along they already are with tearing shit up with the massive construction projects underway. It was a good thing I arrived as early as I did, as I tried three different entrances only to be met with construction barriers, which seemed like mixed messaging with all the signage saying "stores and shops are open!" Generally speaking, only select ones, and only ones with their own entrances. Anyway, I walked all the way around the south and west sides of the mall, for the first time walking under the Northgate Light Rail station set to open later this year (I'm still excited about that; and hey—Shobhit could start taking Light Rail to work! I just realized that, although it would still be like half a mile walk to his store from the station). I made it to LensCrafters right on time. It was the same eye doctor as before, a young woman I think may be of South Asian descent. I had nearly forgotten about her. My prescription is unchanged, so there's that. I had to go over to Big 5 to get the FSA card Shobhit still had in his own walled, drive his car back so I could make the payment with it before they closed at 6:00, then drive back to Big 5 again. But then when Shobhit got off work at 6 himself, he drove me to the PCC office so I could exchange receiver paperwork before we went the rest of the way home and watched the two-episode premiere of season three of Pose, which is ridiculously melodramatic but we watch and enjoy it anyway. — चार हजार नौ सौ छियासठ — [posted 12:31 pm]

Birth Week 2021, Day Ten: Green River Gorge State Park, Flaming Geyser State Park

So here it is! The final post about Birth Week 2021 and my final post about my whirlwind tour of ten Washington State Parks . . . which as of yesterday actually wound up going up to eleven Washington State Parks. And that's not even counting the county park I went to with Lynn and Zephyr or the city park I went to with Shauna, which means in the space of 10 days I actually visited a grand total of 13 parks. And a fourteenth will be added to that Flickr collection after Saturday next weekend, when I go to Whidbey Island to visit Fort Ebey State Park with Claudia, as postponed from within the Birth Week itself, but still connected to it. Anyway. Tracy, who would probably qualify as my newest friend—she started at PCC in February last year while I was in Australia, and we started getting to know each other first via lengthy emails in the immediate wake of starting to work from home—came to pick me up at 11 a.m. This made it only the second day of my Birth Week that a friend did the driving; every other day I either drove my rental car, or, as in the case on Friday, I rode shotgun while Shobhit drove his car. Come to think of it, I never did offer Danielle money for gas (though I did pay for the $10 day pass at Deception Pass State Park since both of us forgot to bring a Discover Pass), but after noticing Tracy had barely less than a quarter gallon left in her tank, I did offer to fill it up for her when she pulled into a gas station at one point. She refused the offer, telling me she preferred to be able to guilt her sister about filling her car, as she was borrowing her sister's car for the day. Apparently some other car in their neighborhood was blocking Tracy's, so she just told her sister she was taking hers, and having much more recently gotten it from their parents as a college graduation gift, it's a much newer and much nicer car. (Tracy's older sister, whom I have never met, lives with her, in their apartment living room.) We then set out for Green River Gorge State Park, a nearly hour-long drive to get to, not far from Enumclaw in the mid-southern portion of King County, really kind of out in the middle of nowhere. I had initially given her the option of choosing a park for us to go to, and at first she came back at me via text with five options. With very little prompting, though, she pretty quickly indicated her greatest interest was in Green River Gorge, so I was totally happy with going there, especially after seeing an aerial photo of the Green River Gorge Bridge, which clearly had spectacular views of the gorge. We got a little confused in getting there, though, as GPS directions brought us to a dead end with a sign clearly posted by locals who must have dealt a few too many times with lost tourists: GORGE???
BACK TO
STOP SIGN
TURN RIGHT
GO 3 MILES And right under that the word GOOGLE with a large X struck through it: as in, GPS is wrong! Someone should write to Google about this. Maybe I will. I should Google how to contact Google about Google Maps mistakes. (Actually I was using the iPhone Maps app, but it was clearly making the same error.) The thing is, I really thought maybe there was a distinction between the Gorge itself and the Green River Gorge State Park, and perhaps the latter was further up that dead end road—except, when we drove back up that road on our way back later, we found signage saying the roads were private property. So: nope. In retrospect, I think that bridge, the Green River Gorge itself, and the hiking trails from a so-called "Green River Gorge Resort" (apparently long closed; the building is slightly derelict looking) are collectively regarded as the "State Park," even though there was no official "State Park" entry sign to be found anywhere—we just found a nearby parking lot, where we could get out of the car and walk across the bridge and get some great pictures. Getting back to that "Green River Gorge Resort" building, though, where a QR code was posted for electronic payment of $5 for access—except there was no cell service out there. The fence was only nominally held shut, literally with stretch of bungee cord from the top of the gate up to the roof of that "resort's" patio. We opted just to go right through and head down to the water, where we found some pretty incredible sights, including a cave right under one of the major waterfalls to the side of the canyon. In other words, thanks to that brief hike and visit to a waterfall cave—which really wasn't that hazardous; there were just some spots where, say, a hand rail may have been useful—I got some of my best photos and videos of the entire week from this one activity. I got a total 42 shots for the Flickr photo album, which then was later followed by an unscheduled 25-shot photo album of Flaming Geyser State Park, which was where we went to next. I wanted to find an actual park with real picnic tables at which we could eat the picnic lunches we had brought, and we saw on the map that this park was very close by: just eight and a half miles away, in fact; about a 15-minute drive. And although the "Flaming Geyser" itself as an attraction was a legitimate dud (though the signage did provide for a great photo op after Siri on GPS kept calling it "Flaming Geezer," which cracked us up), the park was still totally worth visiting. The Green River also flows through there, and there are other smaller brooks and streams; and at least one bubbling geyser that smelled much like the farty-smelling geysers at Yellowstone (even if those ones are all far more impressive). We stopped for our picnic at a table right next to the river first (pictured below), and it was quite pleasant. We had passed that large area with several picnic tables first as we drove into the park looking for the best spot, then backtracked to it. When we passed the first time, it was totally empty; when we returned a couple of trucks had parked there for two small families to get out and play with several remote control trucks all over the grass. We still had plenty of space to go picnic at a secluded table many yards away from them, where I could enjoy my delicious sandwich made at home, plus the chai I brought in my trusty thermos pack, and some very tasty cookies Tracy had apparently purchased in the Deli section of a PCC store. Hmm, let's see . . . how much time did we spend at each park, anyway? I just realized I can get a pretty good idea of this just from the time stamps on my photos. The range for Green River Gorge is 11:59 a.m. to 1:18 p.m., so, basically an hour and 20 minutes there. Then, Flaming Geyser goes from 1:18 to 2:57. So, about an hour and forty minutes there—bearing in mind a good 50 minutes or so of that was just hanging out at the picnic table by the river as we ate lunch and chatted. Which was quite pleasant in its own right, I must say. Thus, we headed back home shortly after 3:00, and once I finally had strong enough service to text Shobhit, I let him know our ETA was 3:52. So basically the excursion yesterday covered roughly five hours, spanning two state parks—even though Green River Gorge "State Park" was clearly in many ways left unfinished. Evidently for quite some time, too: according to the sparsely detailed State Parks web page, they've had a "Management Plan" since 1997, but I can find nothing regarding completion of it as a State Park since. I mean, whatever: that bridge alone is a massively worthy attraction, and going down the sometimes sketchy staircases and trails to the river water was fully worth the time and effort. Once I was back, Shobhit and I went out to run some errands, shopping for a good several hundred dollars' worth of liquor at Total Wine & More (including a new bottle of Seleccion Suprema De Herradura Tequila, the very thing a broker tried to gift me two years ago and we just wound up buying our own bottle which we haven't even finished yet, but Shobhit got this one with an employee discount and a further minor discount by purchasing a gift card first), then stopping by the PCC office to pick up my thick backlogged stack of receiver paperwork I need to start tearing into for the rest of this afternoon now that my lunch break is over. [posted 12:33 pm]