This makes four years now that I gave gone to the Seattle Festival of Trees, a 47-year-old annual fundraiser selling insanely priced, $4,200, pre-decorated Christmas Trees in support of Seattle Children's Hospital. The opening night, which this year was yesterday, also includes a $350 per person gala event to launch the fundraiser, which typically has the trees on display in the elaborate lobby of Seattle historic Fairmont Olympic Hotel. The gala is always the Saturday before Thanksgiving and the trees are typically on display through the first weekdays of the week following Thanksgiving.

In any case, four of those years, I have gone to see them—making it a pretty well established annual tradition for me now. This year, between that and the Seattle Christmas Market, I've now had not one, but two major Christmas events before Thanksgiving is even upon us. I used to be with the hardliners about saving Christmas stuff until the day after Thanksgiving, but hey, I can't help the events that happen before it, and I'm not going to skip them just because of that!

Who else I have gone with has varied slightly over these years, but so far, I've gone with Alexia every year. In 2022, Shobhit joined us. Last year, Shobhit and Laney and I went together and then I went back again with Alexia the next day.

This year, I was going to go with both Alexia and Laney after a movie, but Laney wound up changing her mind as she had an interview in the afternoon for a piece she was writing for GenPride. Shobhit wound up joining us all for the movie last-minute, though, and he came with Alexia and me to the Festival of Trees after the movie.

All four of us went to see Gladiator II, which was . . . okay. When the movie first ended, I was leaning toward solid B. The more I thought about it, I downgraded it to B-minus.

At first there was no plan for Shobhit to join us. Alexia was supposed to meet me at my building and then walk downtown with me, but she encountered significant traffic in Issaquah with only some of the traffic lights working after the storm on Tuesday, so she pivoted and said she would meet me downtown. I had actually left to start walking downtown by myself, and then Shobhit texted me that he was thinking of calling out so he wouldn't be working a shift yesterday after all.

I texted him, Well shit, you could have joined us for the movie!

After a few more text exchanges, when he asked me what time the movie was (1:45), whether there was a seat available next to us (yes), and I looked up whether a bus was soon coming to the stop at our building (there was—in one minute!), Shobhit went right downstairs, and managed barely to hop on the #12 bus. I booked his seat on my phone, using $15 in rewards points I had on my AMC Stubbs account, and then I hopped on that same bus when it caught up to me at Summit Avenue.

Normally Shobhit would have been doubly delighted, now that he would be getting a Social Review point. Laney is currently, even after Shobhit's and my trip to Phoenix, a couple of points ahead of him for the Fall quarter. But, I was already going to give him one: we had taken a walk earlier in the morning, to Volunteer Park and back, largely for this very reason.

So. Shobhit and I came to Pacific Place via our own route; Alexia came via car; Laney walked on her own and met us there as well.

Laney was last to arrive. Thankfully, she had her own code for them to scan her in. All the rest were in my AMC app, so Shobhit and Alexia and I all went inside because she wanted to get popcorn. We barely made it in ahead of this huge group of teenagers, a good 50 or so of them, with at least one obvious adult chaperone with them. I wondered if it was some kind of school outing or something, even though it was happening on a weekend. Most of them got in the concessions line, so it was good we got in ahead of them. They were all there to see the same movie we were, and they all sat in the lower, front section of the seating.

We all chatted a little bit outside the building on the sidewalk after the movie, then Laney walked home, and the rest of us walked down to the Fairmont Olympic Hotel.

We found that more of the Festival of Trees trees than usual were kind of standard in design—so much so that, with three or four of the trees, I didn't bother to take any photos of it. In the end, I kept 47 shots—46 photos and one video clip—of our tour of them. That's the second-lowest number out of the four years we've gone to date, but of course that's still pleny. I got a lot of really pretty and/or Christmasy shots that I was very happy with.

Shobhit, of course, always wants to rush through everything. It could be this, it could be driving to literally anywhere, it could be walking down the street. It was nice to have Alexia around to push back against that in her own way. Alexia and I both took the time we wanted to look at all the trees. Even still, we were not there for very long, as we never need to be: yesterday we arrived at 4:58, and we left at 5:25. Literally we were barely there for half an hour, and still I got two shots of Shobhit sitting in chairs waiting for us. (To be fair, in the first one we were both just waiting for Alexia to use the restroom.)

I had deliberately aimed for going yesterday specifically, at 5:00, because it was at the same time as the launch gala. This was because of my experience with it in 2021, having timed it by accident. But, when I was there in 2021, there were people giving talks at microphones, and a live musical performance, all out in the public lobby space and not just in the ballrooms where the gala was happening. The special event was definitely happening yesterday too, but all that same kind of stuff was not happening. I'm not sure I need to be pointed about going on the launch date in future years. I just want to be sure not to wait until the week after Thanksgiving, a mistake I did make once, only to find that some of the trees had already been bagged for pickup by the people that had bought them at auction.

And, although I found just a few of the trees honestly kind of dull this year, some of them still had their unique delights. You can visit the full photo album on Flickr to see.

Once we were done, we all walked back to Pacific Place, as that was where Alexia had parked, and then I gave her directions to drive us back to the PCC Central Office. When I had given her the tour there the night before, she had left her umbrella there. I figured it was likely right where she left it, and it was. I didn't even have to turn the light on at the Reception Desk area; Alexia clocked it as soon as we walked in the door.

Shobhit wanted to know if there were any samples I could take home. I found a couple bags of crackers for us to take.

Alexia was going to drive us home, but Shobhit wanted to save her the trouble of driving up Capitol Hill and back, which she appreciated—we saved her at least half an hour by doing that. She dropped us off on Alaskan Way just a few blocks from where we were able to hop on a RapidRide G bus within a few minutes, which shot us back up Madison to within three blocks of home. Shobhit even commented on how that bus route's dedicated bus lanes would mean we'd get there quickly. An amusing thing to hear, given the endless complains about those restricted lanes I've heard from him while he was driving his car. Once he's actually needing the bus, now he appreciates this new RapidRide route.

After that, I went to write my movie review, and then later watched a rerun of As Time Goes By with Shobhit, a show I still find delightful even though we've already watched nearly every episode of the series as PBS airs two episodes every Saturday at 8 p.m.

[posted 2:06 pm]