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I might as well call yesterday Holiday in the Park Day, or more accurately, Holiday in the Park Night—we finally got the return of the annual holiday Volunteer Park event, which typically happens on the second Thursday in December. Put on by the
Volunteer Park Trust, a preservation society it's had since shortly after the park was designated a city landmark
in 2011. (I've been utilizing the park since as far back as moving to Seattle in 1998, having no idea then that the park had existed since 1901 but would not be an official city landmark for more than another decade.)
I don't know for certain how long the Holiday in the Park event has been happening, but there's obviously good reason to believe the 2012 one I went to for the first time was also the first they put on, given that the park only gained landmark status in November 2011, so December 2011 was probably too soon. In the ten years that followed, I have attended the event
seven times, two of the three years I missed because the event was canceled altogether: in 2014 due to a forecast windstorm that actually never materialized; and in 2020 due to, you guessed it, the pandemic. The event went on in 2015 but I did not go that year, even though I had intended to, and I'm not entirely sure why—except that I was probably just pressed for time, as I few to Spokane for my annual Christmastime trip to Idaho the very next day.
Shobhit likes to go to this when he can, just because he remembers that they offer free hot cocoa and cookies. Due to work scheduling conflicts though, he has only ever been able to join me twice thus far, in 2017 and 2018. He was eager to go this year, but then he was scheduled to work until 8:30 last night. I have gone with a plethora of different people over the years for this event, twice even just going by myself, but this year I had my neighbor Alexia to join me, who had never known about it and thus never been.
I had established with Alexia via text that we would meet in the hallway at 5:40 so we could walk and get to Volunteer Park just as the two-hour event began at 6:00. I had also brought home a pasta sample and a pasta sauce sample from work, and after again taking the hybrid walking/trains commute home via the Monorail and Light Rail, I found I had barely half an hour to make the pasta before I left, so I decided to do that. The only way I found I would have time to actually eat it was to get at least another five minutes, which Alexia granted without prompting anyway, as she texted me on her way from a delayed departure from work that she would be ready at 5:45. Perfect! I ate very quickly, washed the dishes, had leftovers ready for Shobhit (who still didn't get home until after I was back again anyway), and was out in the hallway at 5:45. I even had to go into Alexia's condo for a couple of minutes as she was still putting on her shoes.
We both dressed in warm layers, which was a smart plan, especially during the walk home when it was down to 39°. I had my hoodie on underneath my pea coat, and wore my stocking cap for the first time this year, all of which you can see in the photo at the bottom of this post. (We did
wear masks inside the conservatory; we just took them off briefly for the selfie I took in front of the perennial Conservatory Christmas Trees.) There are areas inside the conservatory that are at tropical temperatures, and yet miraculously I never got too hot in there. Probably because at any given time there were only maybe 15 or 20 people inside the structure, a clear COVID precaution never done before—but which worked out
incredibly well for me, as the absence of crowds made it easier for me to get better photos than I had ever gotten in there during this event. This year's
39-shot photo album is the largest I've ever managed for this event, largely because Alexia and I perused the rest of the conservatory before getting to the seasonal holiday section, and I got a bunch of really great shots of plants. I realized while I was in there that, the "
spooky specimens tour" I took in there two months ago notwithstanding, I had not been to
this event since December 2019, which was a month before I upgraded my iPhone to the one with the far better nighttime photo taking capability that I have now. So these are the best photos of this event I have ever gotten.
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Given the limited capacity, we did have to
stand in line for a bit before getting into the conservatory, easily longer than in any previous year, and of course they also checked our vaccination status. (This was when Alexia noted that at a restaurant she recently went to in Portland, they only accepted a physical vaccination card, and would not accept a digital confirmation of any kind—that was the first I had heard of that.) But, although that's all of seven photos into the photo album, it was not out first stop; first we went to the area in front of the Seattle Asian Art Museum where, as usual, they had a singing group performing. They had two on the schedule last night, and we never did see any of the second one, but the
group we saw was called STRUM: "Seattle's Totally Relaxed Ukulele Musicians." I found their singing capability to be barely adequate at best, but the strumming on the ukuleles really made it a pleasant experience, as we stood and watched maybe three songs get performed.
Then, we went over to the perennial cocoa and cookies booth. In years past the cookies were fresh baked and on plates you could just grab from, but, quite understandably, this year the
cookies on offer were packaged. They had chocolate chip; peanut butter, which was the one both Alexia and I took; and oatmeal raisin (blech!), which I grabbed one of for Shobhit. As for the cocoa, which we actually got first, they poured the cups themselves and handed them to us, rather than self-serve as in years past. And, the cocoa was like, legit
cold. That was a bit of a disappointment. But, it was free so whatever. Alexia pondered while in line for that whether she'd want to make any donations to the Volunteer Park Trust, which she had never heard of but clearly felt was an organization worth supporting. I'm continuing to limit my contributions to my monthly payments to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, and annual donations to the Seattle Public Library Foundation.
I got the bulk of my photos inside the conservatory—30 of them, in fact—and took just a couple more in the park as we walked back out of there after, getting back home at around 7:30. Alexia was really glad we went, and so was I. I'm now guaranteed a tie for my record Christmastime photo albums of ten this year, and will almost certainly break that record with 11 or 12. I don't want to keep breaking that record, though; I need to take it easy in years to come. This shit's making me far too busy! But, Alexia and I still have "Wildlanterns" to see at Woodland Park Zoo on the 21st, and we might stop by the Ravenna neighborhood's "Candy Cane Lane" on the way home from that, as she's never seen that either. If that gets its own photo album, by the time I create the one for Christmas itself, I'll have eleven albums for this year's collection.
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Shortly after Shobhit got home from work and I had last night's photos uploaded to Flickr (no time to caption them, really; so it goes with most photos over the holiday season), I decided to check out this Peacock Original movie called
The Housewives of the North Pole, which I had learned about from Alec Mapa's Instagram account. Well, I should have known better; as soon as it started, Shobhit was like, "This is like the Hallmark movies" which I am constantly mystified that he watches a lot of, and he wasn't wrong. The acting was bland, the writing incredibly dull, and Alec Mapa finally appeared about ten minutes in as some kind of corporate quasi-villain. I didn't like anything about it, so I said, "You want to watch
Maude?" and then we watched one episode of that before I went to bed.
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[posted 12:36 pm]
