I had a really great time with Gina, guiding her around all the Christmasy stuff around town yesterday. It was supposed to be Gina and Beth, but Beth ended up unable to make it—a bit of an irony given how she was easily the most excited about this out of all of us. At first I thought she was actually sick, which made me a bit ambivalent about even Gina coming, but then I found out that wasn't it at all. It's not my place to share any further details about it, so I'll just say it was something personal.
There's always next year! I did wind up making
a collection of photo albums dedicated just to Seattle Holiday Visits with Gina. It turns out, this was the third, with Gina: she came by herself in 2011, four years before she even met Beth; and we had all kind of forgotten that Gina and Beth had come up once before, though even that was eight years ago now—in 2017. This time, it was back to Gina by herself. There were six years between the first and second holiday-season visits with Gina; eight years between the second and third. I suppose if we were to stick with a pattern here, then the fourt would have to wait until 2036. Fuck that! I'm hoping we can manage
one year between the third and fourth visits with Gina, and thus nine years between Beth's first and second. I'll just have to set a reminder again, for November next year, to follow up with them about making a plan.
I would have much preferred having them both come, but Gina and I also agreed that it was really fun having a day just the two of us. (Shobhit had other plans yesterday.) I'm not sure we've done that
since that holiday-season visit in 2011.
And we did a
lot yesterday. Much of it was playing by ear, but Gina drove from Olympia to park at Angle Lake Station, and her Light Rail train
pulled into Westlake Station at 10:16 a.m. She stayed until about 4:00, so we had nearly six hours together. I think next time we'll want to clear a Saturday evening so they can actually hang around town after dark when all the holiday lights are better seen. We came halfway close to buying tickets to go inside the Seattle Christmas Market at Seattle Center, but when it was made clear that it was much better at night we didn't bother. Gina was very tempted by the Christmas Dive Bar on Capitol Hill, and early on was thinking about maybe "being spontaneous" and waiting until they opened at 4:00, but she didn't want to drive home after dark and so she left at 4.
In the end, over the course of those six hours, we had six different stops as we roamed around downtown—an average of one per hour, I guess.
I had her get off at Westlake Station because I thought we could come straight out of Westlake Mall right at the Westlake Center Christmas Tree. Turns out, Westlake Center doesn't open on Sundays until noon. What the shit? I told Gina this and she said, "Even at Christmas?" I guess not. We found our way out of Westlake Station at the exit on Pine near 3rd Avenue, then walked over to Westlake. She did find
the tree to be beautiful, at least.
I don't think of that as our first stop, though. Instead, we walked over to the Sheraton Hotel to see the
Gingerbread Village—which I had already gone to with Shobhit on Friday, so I only added another 6 shots to that photo album from while I was there with Gina. As expected, though, being there with a new person did get met to see some details I did not notice before, such as
Operation made out of Pez candy, or
Winnie the Pooh's missing arm ("he had an accident!" Gina said).
We arrived there at 10:30 a.m. on a Sunday, which meant there was literally no line at all—we were able to walk right in, a rare example of that experience indeed. There were some other people already in the room with the Gingerbread Houses, but maybe five or six at most. It made taking some new detail shots very, very easy. And we were in and out of there in five minutes.
Rainier Square was basically on the way to the next destination I had in mind, so I thought I would show Gina the new PCC office, and maybe the PCC Corner Market store. She was relatively interested in the office, but of course no office is all that interesting to someone who doesn't work there, unless there's a spectacular view like we had at the old Belltown office. Of course there is no view here whatsoever. She was kind of impressed, though, when I noted the kitchen window—the one window this office has—is about 10 feet above the sidewalk on 4th, on the first staging block of the Pride Parade, so I will have the option of coming here to watch that next year.
I took her out the front entrance and into the atrium area between the office door at the store door to Corner Market—and it was closed. Right: shit, I forgot that Corner Market is our one store we do not keep open on weekends. I wonder if that will ever change? Perhaps—but not now. I knew this, but it's easy to forget as every other store is open on weekends. This has to do with Downtown foot traffic patterns. There was a grate pulled down at the main entrance from 4th Avenue, and the grate was pulled down over the store entrance too. The difference was that the store grate was the kind you can see through, so we saw people stocking product right on the other side of it.
We then backtracked through the back entrance of the office and to the north lobby entrance of Rainier Square Tower, and I took Gina up to the Rainier Square lobby area, which
was open, even though Fonté Bar was not. We went over to the desk staff guy at the 400 University Building so Gina could get the code to the women's restroom in that lobby; she had to use the bathroom very regularly yesterday. Then, as I had already told her I'd made chai at home and brought it with me, we found a spot in the north corner of the Rainier Square main (second-level) lobby, where there are seats and currently a
lovely group of Christmas Trees, and we had our chai and shot the shit for a while. We talked a lot about respective childhood traumas. Fun!
We were there nearly an hour. Being the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, there was no one else around, and it was nice having that space basically for ourselves in which to spend some quality time and catching up.
Since we were already there, I also showed Gina the
Rainier Square terraces before going through the lobby to the south and to the next stop, which was right across the street.
That next stop was the Seattle Festival of Trees, which I
also already went to
twice: first with Laney on Tuesday; then with Shobhit on Friday; now with Gina on Sunday. I think I'm done with this one now. The visit with Laney yielded an unprecedented 76 shots; I added only two more with Shobhit; but then with Gina I took another 13. That took the
Seattle Festival of Trees 2025 photo album to a total of 91 shots, now by a fair margin my
largest such photo album to date. The previous record was last year's 70 shots.
Gina's previous two holiday season visits were both further into December, but a big part of my push to schedule this one earlier was so they (and now, just she) could see the Seattle Festival of Trees: this is a fundraiser where people purchase one of the themed Christmas Trees on display at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel for a staggering $4,500, and naturally they'd want to set it up in their homes for the majority of December. This is why the festival always launches the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and they start packing them up for delivery the start of the week after. Any later than yesterday or today, they'd already have some of the trees missing. In fact, the very cool
ski slopes tree display, which was still there when I went with Shobhit on Friday, was already gone yesterday. I should make a note of this for when trying to schedule again next year: try to get there with Gina and Beth no later than the Saturday after Thanksgiving, if at all possible. That way, hopefully, all of the Seattle Festival Trees elements will still be on display.
Before we left the Fairmont Hotel, though, we made our way up to the 2nd floor to see this year's
Teddy Bear Suite. Not before Gina had to use the bathroom again, of course.
I only took 9 shots while we were there, which would make that
my smallest Teddy Bear Suite photo album to date, but the season isn't over yet: it's very plausible I will return there again with at least one more person. I'd love to have gone with Laney last week, but the Teddy Bear Suite never starts until after Thanksgiving. Shobhit and I tried to go on Friday, but they close it at 5 p.m. and we were there at a quarter after.
In sharp contrast to our 10:30 a.m. arrival at the Gingerbread Village with hardly anyone there, we got to the Teddy Bear Suite at around 1:00 p.m. and in this case there was a line. It went very quickly, though: I think we were in the suite with all the teddy bears no more than maybe five minutes after we got in line.
Gina then asked if I was hungry, and I said I could eat. We thought about just getting some food at the food court at the Seattle Center Armory, but when we strolled through Pike Place Market after leaving the Fairmont Hotel, we saw the
Copacabana restaurant, which I have thought about trying for a while, because they have balcony seating that overlooks the Market. So, we went up there to take a look at the menu—and ultimately decided to buy a drink and some food.
The weather yesterday was spectacular. Gina even said that had it been raining, even she would have said screw it and canceled. I'd never let rain get in my way, but I was sure grateful for the weather yesterday, which was unusually up and down: it was 39° when I walked down to meet Gina at Westlake Station, and it was 39° again when Shobhit and I walked downtown again after 6 p.m. (I'll get to that). It was in the late forties when Gina and I sat for lunch, which is not exactly balmy, but it was so bright and sunny that the direct sunlight still warmed us. I had been dressed in layers and had already needed to take off my hoodie and put that in my backpack, wearing only the pea coat. For a few minutes at lunch, I wore neither, mostly because I got warm walking over there. Then, through most of lunch I wore just my hoodie.
The Copacabana restaurant has only a couple of vegetarian options outside of salads, but I ordered the "
huminta," a simple and cheap appetizer that's just "savory corn pie topped with melted cheese" but was also delicious. I had that with a Mule our server said was really strong and was actually weak as shit but at least it was tasty. I saw inside that they had a spiced hot chocolate for $9 (my mule was $16) but I had already ordered. I'd have much preferred the hot chocolate, but, oh well. We did also find out later that the chips and salsa she ordered were $9, which we both thought was a little nuts. (Actually they were chips.)
Oh, I nearly forgot: before stopping at Copacabana, Gina wanted to get some of the fresh doughnuts from Daily Dozen Doughnut Company. She bought a bag of 6 mini doughnuts for us to share, so we did have that before actually stopping for lunch.
Our final stop was Seattle Center, and there was a bit of debate as to whether to go there. Had Christmas Dive Bar opened earlier than 4 p.m., Gina made it clear she would have chosen that instead in a heartbeat. But, she changed her mind about staying longer than dusk, and opted for Seattle Center instead. And because a round trip ticket on the Monorail would cost eight bucks, she took my suggestion that we take a RapidRide bus instead. We weren't sure if her Sound Transit day pass would work on the bus reader, and it didn't, but I knew she'd be fine just getting on anyway and she was. Fares work the same there as on Light Rail and only get checked randomly by Fare Enforcement officers, which did not happen.
I have
a dedicated photo album to Gina's visit, containing 84 shots, but with a lot of shots cross-posted to other holiday-event photo albums. A new one was created for
Seattle Center Winterfest, a solid 30 shots at that stop alone, by far the most I took at any location I went to with Gina. That's also
a record just for Winterfest, albeit by only one shot.
I actually try to reign in how much I kind of overdo it with Christmas events, I swear! But, a lot of factors upped the ante this year, not least of which was showing Gina around. I'd have been fine with skipping Seattle Center Winterfest this year otherwise, but this is a very cool thing that's free and I thought she should see as she never has—especially the "Winter Train & Village" display in the Armory, which is mostly what I took photos of. And again, with Gina there, she pointed out details I would have otherwise missed, which led to only more picture taking. In the end, Seattle Center Winterfest accounted for 36% of the photos I took with Gina yesterday.
We did have a bit of a walking trek from the RapidRide D bus stop, which was on the other side of Climate Pledge Arena from the Armory. On the upside, Gina got
her own photo of the statue of Seattle Storm player Sue Bird, along that walk.
By the time we were done with the Winter Train & Village, I had noted that the Monorail one way was only $4 and would take her straight back to Westlake Station where she could catch the train back to her car. She took that option, and then she opted for the Senior ticket, even though she's technically not quite old enough yet, which only cost $2. "This is where the gray hair comes in handy!" she said. I noted that she could have done this round-trip for only $4, but oh well. She said, "I enjoyed taking the bus. And this paid for the chips!"
My Orca pass works on the Monorail, my favorite innovation with the pass since 2019, so I rode back with her, and took her down the elevator to the mezzanine of Westlake Station. We hugged our goodbyes and I saw her off on the train at around 4:00.
I chose to walk home from there, even though it suddenly dawned on me after I was about three blocks away that I could have caught the northbound train to Capitol Hill Station from right there at Westlake. Oh well. I needed the exercise. I was surprised Shobhit wasn't home yet, but he was shortly after I got home. I spent much of the next couple of hours processing the photos from so far that day.
The day still wasn't even over yet though! Shortly after 6:00, Shobhit and I walked back downtown together, to the 5th Avenue Theater, where we saw
Elf: The Musical. Shobhit had scored free tickets through TPS, so I jumped at the chance. And this is another reason I've got more holiday events than anticipated: things coming up due to Shobhit's connection with either Theatre Puget Sound or SAG-AFTRA. It's why we also got tickets to
A Klingon Christmas Carol on Friday December 5; and although in this case we did buy tickets, it's also why we're going to the event at Theatre Off Jackson on Thursday next week, December 11: "Revelry! A Night of Drag and Other Shenanigans." It's a fundraiser for Lambert House, a local queer youth organization that has been around forever, at least since I worked for the
Seattle Gay News 26 years ago. I never even knew about this event until this year, though.
I'll have to make a list of things to
remember to skip next year. I can't do everything all the time!
Anyway, back to
Elf. It was charming enough, roughly solid-B quality. I really liked the guy who played Buddy the Elf (who is actually human), and Shobhit didn't, but I think it's been too long since he's seen the movie because the performance was very much in the spirit of Will Farrell's performance in the movie. The guy who plays his dad was a bit blah to me, and Buddy's love interest was just nowhere near as dynamic a performer as Zooey Deschanel from the original film.
When I posted about it to my socials, I almost said it was charming especially for $0 when you're married to someone with connections. I changed my mind and just said it was a charming evening at
Elf The Musical. I'm kind of eager to rewatch the movie now though, because the film has really gained in fondness for me over the years, and it was way better than the play. I've seen the film at least three times, and somewhat to my surprise, it's already been five years since the last time I did. I think I'm going to add it to my list of Christmas Movie Watches this year. God knows when I'll find the time to watch everything on this year's list. I'm going to too many events to have time for movies at home!
But, I'll find a way. I always do at Christmastime!
[posted 12:33pm]
