Holiday in the Park 2025

— पांच हजार नौ सौ तेईस — Last night was this year's Holiday in the Park at Volunteer Park. I went with Shobhit, who last came with me two years ago; I went by myself last year because Shobhit was working. This event has been happening annually since 2012, and I have been going since the beginning. There were three years in the intervening time I did not go, either because the event was canceled (in 2014 due to a forecast windstorm that never actually materialized; and in 2020 due to the pandemic), or because I was unable to go (2015 was the one year this occurred). Over the years, I have gone with different people: with Susan in 2012; with Laney in 2016 and in 2019; with Alexia in 2021 and 2022; with Jessica along with Lanbey in 2016; with Shobhit in 2017, 2018, 2022, 2023 and 2025. Shobhit is the one reliable companion at this event, actually—he even remembers it happens and asks me when it's scheduled. After Laney moved back to Capitol Hill two years ago, I really thought she'd come back to it with me, but this is the third time the event has happened since she's lived six blocks from me, and she still hasn't come back to it since 2019. Sometimes it's because she has other plans, and more often it's because she doesn't want to walk in the rain—and it was wet last night, though most of the time it was down to a light trickle. To be fair, back in 2016 and 2019, Laney lived on Capitol Hill then too but in an apartment far closer to Volunteer Park than either of us live now. There are three key elements of this event: a booth where volunteers offer visitors free cookies and hot chocolate; a program of four half-hour performances by local groups singing Christmas carols outside the front entrance of the Seattle Asian Art Museum; and the Christmas display inside the Volunteer Park Conservatory. I shall now make a particular observation about each of these three elements this year. 1. The cookies are back to packages of rows of them that we can just grab by hand, probably purchased at Costco. My chocolate chip cookie was nice and soft. When the event returned after covid in 2021 (indeed, when covid was still very much happening, or at least with greater severity than now; at least we were post-vaccines by then), they pivoted to individually wrapped cookies that just weren't as good. They were a bit better in 2022, but they didn't return to these kinds of cookies again until either last year (I don't have any photos of last year's cookies to confirm) or this year. The hot chocolate is a bit of a misnomer, because I think maybe they don't make it hot enough to begin with and/or they need better insulated equipment. They didn't have cups yet when we arrived about 15 minutes into the 2-hour event last night (it goes 6-8 p.m.) but they filled Shobhit's tumbler cup about three quarters full with it. It was barely warmer than room temperature, but other than that it was still tasty. Beggars can't be choosers, I guess. 2. The Beaconettes, the acapelle group of women who wear beehive wigs with Christmas lights weaved through them, close out the performances program just about every year. They were getting ready to go on when we finally left last night, but the previous group had gone on long. I'm sure I'll see The Beaconettes tomorrow at the Figgy Pudding Caroling Competition at Pike Place Market anyway, although they are much more fun to see after dark with their lights. That said, the group that was on before them, the Garfield High School Jazz Combo, were quite charming and talented—so much so that I actually took four video clips of them. Indeed, it was because of that group we even stayed as long as we did; at first I thought I might just take a couple shots of performances before heading home, in which case this year's photo album would have had 28 shots in it. In the end the album got 36 shots, the second-highest in my history with this event. 3. There was a pretty major disappointment with the Christmas display inside the Conservatory: the model train set, which has been set up there every year since the beginning, is gone! I asked the lady working the gift shop in there and she informed us the train had belonged to their Head Gardener, who has retired since last year. Bummer! I'm all for people retiring when it's time, of course, but maybe we can find someone else with a delightful model train set? The Conservatory was still very pretty with all the Christmas trees and other decor, but it really isn't the same without the train. I'm still glad I went though. It was a lovely evening, even with the wetness. — पांच हजार नौ सौ तेईस — — पांच हजार नौ सौ तेईस — In other news, Shobhit met me at Virginia Mason to see Dr. Wancat about my back at 9:30 this morning. I took off my shirt, she looked at it, and it became immediately apparently that it was a good thing I came back in for her to look at it. It's nothing serious, but part of the incision had come undone, basically leaving a visible divot in my back. It already looked markedly different than it had on Wednesday, when it was a lot more like the wilted cover of a burst blister—and the leakage was by far the worst on Wednesday; it was negligible yesterday; and barely detectable today by the time I was back with the doctor. The key difference is that Dr. Wancata gave Shobhit some gauze supplies and showed him how to basically redress my wound, ideally twice a day for the next week or so. Shobhit was so worried about this that he was trying to convince me to take my laptop home yesterday and work from home today, which I knew would never be necessary. If anything were even likely that serious, Dr. Wancata would have told me on the phone on Wednesday. So this is what's going to happen for the next week: Shobhit will press a tiny bit of gauze inside the divot on my back, then cover it with tape. Dr. Wancata says that over time the divot will heal up from the inside out, so Shobhit will have to stick the gauze less further into it each time the dressing is redone. In any case, this should work far better than the makeshift use of band-aids with folded tissue over it that I have been using for nearly a week now. It's now very unlikely that I'll be leaking gross fluid into the back of my shirt again. So that's a relief. — पांच हजार नौ सौ तेईस — I just had my biweekly Zoom lunch with Karen. I saw her at her Tulalip place on Thanksgiving last week, and our last Zoom lunch was the previous Friday, so this is a rare case of actually seeing her three times in as many weeks—two of them virtual, but still. Today, I must have spent the first half an hour catching her up on my Back Cyst Saga. I should have discussed the need to either cancel or reschedule upcoming Zoom lunches. Friday the 19th will be the first day of my pre-Christmas PTO. I'm back in-office on the 26th, though; that will be the one day I work that week. She has a lot of travel coming up. She's being given an Honorary Doctorate at a university in Brussels! She's never been there, but she will be in February. She's going to beat Shobhit and me there by six months. Anyway, that's enough about that for now. I actually have work to get done! So I'll get back to it now. [posted 1:10pm]

WildLanterns and Holiday in the Park 2024

— पांच हजार सात सौ अठारह — I have so much more to tell you about, and yet I keep doing other things, like work! and, okay, a bit of dicking around. I should probably stop dicking around! Alexia picked me up after work yesterday and drove us up to Woodland Park Zoo for this year's really fantastic "WildLanterns"—which she goes to more years than not, but which I had only gone to once before, also with Alexia, in 2021. It's kind of odd how I felt I was barely affording it with my budget back then, and the ticket prices remain comparable but I think it makes a huge difference that now I have a specific budget line item for all my paychecks throughout the year, to save for "Christmas events." It's just a matter of which ones I choose. I smartly did this after taking the rather expensive Christmas cruise last year on Argosy Cruises. Nothing I did this year was that expensive, which allowed me to do one or two more things. I'm really glad we went. I loved it in 2021, but I honestly thought this year it was distinctly better. I took even more but of the photos I actually kept, I have 79 shots from that event this year alone. (In 2021 I had 69.) The timed entry tickets were for 5:30. Alexia had managed to get to my office through traffic at 4:45. So, I worked an extra ten minutes. Still, I was smart to take the bus down to the Central Library and back during my lunch break to pick up a couple of library books rather than try to do it after work, which would have necessitated leaving early yet again. Yesterday was the one day this entire week I have not left work early. I will be again today. We actually arrived at Woodland Park Zoo at 5:15. The last photo I took there was at 6:49, so we would have left around 7:00. Longer than I might have assumed we'd be there. But it was just so, so cool. I can't recommend it enough. And particularly! Last night was very deliberately chosen, as it's one of two night's they are doing this season called "Night Owls," where all admission is 21 and over—no children, anywhere! I proposed this date to Alexia even though she doesn't drink, using the argument that it would be cool to go with no kids there. Also, at least at the time we went, it certainly cut down on the crowd numbers. I think Shobhit would have loved this as well, but alas, he had to work last night. There were at least three or four different bars selling cocktails and beer around the zoo grounds. At the first one, I got the one hot cocktail they had available for me: hot cocoa with Bailey's in it. It was delicious. There was a lot of other cocktail options but I didn't want to be walking around in the late fall with a cold drink. I was slightly tempted to get another after about an hour but I decided there was no good reason to get a second hot cocoa. I had a great time. A couple of things added to our time there: we went in to see about half of an interactive animal presentation, where at first they had a snake out, and then Molly the porcupine. And when we got to it, we decided to pay the $3 each (I paid, since Alexia had paid for parking) to ride the zoo's "Historic Carousel" they've had there since 2006. — पांच हजार सात सौ अठारह — — पांच हजार सात सौ अठारह — Alexia was driving me home afterward, and she opted not to take the freeway since Maps said the alternate route had a "similar ETA." I realized, just as we were driving south on 15th past Volunteer Park, that this year's "Holiday in the Park" event was still happening. Alexia had caught a 9 a.m. flight home from Ohio from a work trip in the morning. That would have been 6 a.m. Pacific Time, and she was very tired, and so she wasn't interested on going to this second event in one night. She happily dropped me off at Volunteer Park though, so I went to roam around the event for most of its final half hour or so. The booth that usually hands out free hot chocolate (I would have taken a second one for free!) and cookies was already breaking down. Oh well. This made for my 10th time going to these events, although it was my first I wound up going to by myself since 2019. (I returned two weeks later just to see the Holiday Train display with Laney; I suppose that's still in the cards this year.) My photos are very similar every year because every year the event is basically the same: hot chocolate and cookies; live performances in front of the Seattle Asian Art Museum; walking through the holiday display, with a model train around Christmas Trees, at the Volunteer Park Conservatory. I don't care, though; I can't say I particularly ever tire of it. I really thought I might have to skip it this year because of the conflict with WildLanterns, but I made it anyway. I'd have preferred to go with someone but that's okay. Shobhit was still at work and I walked home, made some leftover shahi paneer for dinner, and commenced with processing the day's photos. I took either just under or just over 100 photos each day both Wednesday and yesterday. I don't have another photogenic holiday event again until . . . tomorrow! — पांच हजार सात सौ अठारह — I just finished with my usually-biweekly Zoom lunch with Karen—but, the last time we had one scheduled, she had a conflict she could not change and so it got canceled. I hadn't talked to her in four weeks, and we had so much to catch up on. And still we got sidetracked for several minutes, because she asked which earrings I was wearing today (cups of eggnog), which got us on a discussion of all the earrings I now have, and how I theme them generally by month. I sent her the link to my earrings photo album and she went through and was delighted by many of them. She also talked a fair amount about her house construction in Tulalip. It has gone through many delays, and currently is scheduled to be finished in January. That's next month though, so she's almost there! I can't wait to finally visit and go see it. I had started the conversation by saying I had so much to tell her about, which she brought up again at the half-hour mark. I had way more I could have talked to her about, but as soon as I told her Shobhit and I booked our anniversary trip next year to D.C. for World Pride in June, she was thrilled: she loves that city, and having been on the federal Accessibility Board and also gone to many other conferences held there, she's very familiar with it. I was really glad to talk to someone who was fully on board with my expectation to have a good time in spite of President Fuckwit being back in office, rather than these ridiculous notions of it being really dangerous (not in the least bit likely) or deeply depressing, or both. As I have said multiple times already, I won't let any bastards rob me of experiencing queer joy. I do plan to contact World Pride organizers about trans inclusion, though. That is especially critical now, and so far I see nothing specific to trans people on the World Pride D.C. website. Anyway, Karen has lots of recommendations for us. This took up the whole second half hour of the lunch hour. Now I'm back and I need to spend the afternoon trying to get some actual work done. — पांच हजार सात सौ अठारह — [posted 1:12 pm]