I forgot to turn
off my alarm last night, which is otherwise set to go off every weekday morning at 5:15. Except it still didn't go off, which is leaving me baffled. I need to be careful about this, because I am getting
really used to these days off—between the week I took off for Thanksgiving, and the week I'm taking off leading up to Christmas, I'm just about ready to adopt this as a new lifestyle.
I have long been a morning person, typically "sleeping in" on weekends until 7:30 at the latest. Over Thanksgiving week, I quickly fell into a routine of getting to bed after midnight and waking up closer to 8:00 a.m. The same is happening now, although I was woken up this morning at about a quarter after 7:00 due to Shobhit playing some video while sitting on the toilet with the master bathroom door wide open, apparently utterly clueless as to how incredibly loud the volume was.
I couldn't get to sleep after that.
I keep spending a lot of time on other stuff in the mornings before I get to my shower, and the same occurred this morning, even with the earlier start. I finished up the "Christmas in the Northwest (PART ONE" travelogue email and sent it out; I always get a little self-conscious about the large captions I write in emails with, in this case, 17 photos—but, I got two different very positive responses surprisingly quickly. And then, when I was looking through old Christmas photo albums on Flickr, I somehow ran across the video clip I had recorded, of Angel opening the "family fruitcake" we've been passing around since 1998—this particular one since 2016—in 2021. Eventually I realized I had saved the two photos Angel posted to the "Entire Family" last Christmas that she gave the fruitcake to Ricky—after having it for two years, having forgotten to pass it on to someone else in 2022. So this meant I had both a video clip and a couple photos of the fruitcake's history beyond when I made an original video collection spanning the thing's first 23 years, which I shared on Christmas Eve in 2021, the same year I had made a fruitcake-themed calendar for the family for 2022: "A BUNCH OF FRUITCAKES."
I was able to update this pretty quickly. I have been using iMovie on my MacBook laptop ever since buying it last year after the trip to Australia proved I really needed by own Mac laptop for travel, but I opened iMovie on my iMac desktop computer and the "projects" from the previous several years were still there. This made the "
A Fruitcake's Journey" video very easy to add the video clip and two new photos to.
I still needed the video to clock in under ten minutes in order to be able to upload this updated version to Flickr. These new additions pushed it to 10:20, so I had to spend a few minutes snipping a second or two here and there from video clips in the project. It wasn't too hard to do, and now the updated, new version of the video clocks in at 9:58.
Shobhit had gone to his Weight Watchers meeting and to get gas at Costco. I had to wait several minutes at different stages of getting the video exported out of iMovie and then uploaded to Flickr, so during those times I finally started getting ready for the day. I was ready to
share the video to my socials shortly ater 11 a.m. Shobhit was back by that point and accusing me of ignoring him when he was hoping to get help chopping some vegetables for the lentil and kale dish he was making for dinner.
I chopped an onion and the last of our celery and a whole bunch of kale from his p-patch garden plot. I honestly thought I might like it okay once it was done and prepared later for dinner, as I do tend to like his lentils. But, even chopped fine, the dish was very kale-forward. I guess you could say I didn't kale for it.
Anyway! I'm getting ahead of myself. Both yesterday and today were a bit more chill compared to Thursday, Friday and Saturday—I packed a bit less in. I still have a lot of year-end posts to work on, but I'll have to wait on worrying about that until after Christmas.
When Amy told Gabby and me on Wednesday last week, when we were at Miracle on 2nd, about the "
Christmas Dive Bar" I had no idea was right here on Capitol Hill, I was immediately dying to go. But: who to go with? I had plenty of time for it on Sunday, especially now that I knew that yet again Gina and Beth did not have the time for a Seattle holiday tour this year. Shobhit worked 11-7 yesterday, so he was out, and he wouldn't be all that into it anyway. I considered Alexia, though as a non-drinker she's really not the bar-going type (plenty of non-alcoholic options on the menu notwithstanding). I almost made tentative plans to go with Danielle but she was hoping to get some holiday time with Rylee so I didn't really bank on that, and Rylee would obviously and rightfully be her priority. I did text Tracy to see if she was free on Sunday, but she's busy taking her stuff to her dad's in Puyallup by the carload, as she's moving in with him at the end of January.
Finally, even though she's on a fixed retirement income, I texted Laney to see if she'd have any interest, especially since it would take up less time than the other idea I had, which was to have her over to the condo to watch a movie. To my surprise, she was all for it, and even amused by my telling her I was dying to see this place when she had already made plans to go there with a few people from Pride Place on the 30th.
Their website says they open at 5:00, so we made a plan to meet there at 4:45. Laney got there early and texted me that she was inside; they had opened at 4:00. Apparently the guy who checked her ID told her sometimes they open early.
She already had a table for two staked out next to
the giant santa against the wall to the far right from the entrance. We sat for a minute, but then realized you have to order at the bar, so we got up, left our umbrellas and jackets at our table, and got in line.
Laney ordered a beer and a cheese ball and crackers plate that we shared. I ordered the "
Ho Ho Hot Cocoa," which, while perhaps not quite worth $15, was still a better price than the cocktails at Miracle on 2nd, and with peppermint liquor in it was super delicious—and, in a fun gingerbread house mug!
We didn't stay especially long. I had arrived at 4:45, and we left at 5:37. That includes the several minutes we took to explore the second
and third floor of this place, all of it absolutely plastered in Christmas decor, to an even greater extent than Miracle on 2nd. I will definitely mark this to return to again next year. I got
a 25-shot photo album out of it, even. I'm already at
20 albums for my Christmas 2024 collection, matching the record I set in 2022. This year we can blame Christmas pop-ups: I've done three (Miracle on 2nd; Gingerbread Mania; Christmas Dive Bar). And next year I plan to research and seek out
even more.
Anyway. Laney walked with me to QFC, where I needed to buy some milk and she needed to get some frozen pizza and cookies for the holiday potluck at Pride Place. Shobhit was off work at 7:00, and shortly after he got home we watched the series finale of
Dune Prophecy, which I enjoyed perhaps more than any of the other episodes. Then, around 10:00 when Shobhit was flipping around in search of a holiday movie to watch, I suggested
Bridget Jones's Diary, since it often gets included on "Best Christmas Movies" lists, even though its focus is kind of more on New Year's than on Christmas. But whatever, it's on Max right now, and Shobhit and I
really enjoyed it.
And that brings us back to today! I met Laney at her building at 1:30, so we could walk down to the Sheraton Grand Seattle Hotel . . . only to find that line was
way too long. We did not have the time to wait in it, but that also meant now we had over an hour to kill, before Happy Hour started at our next scheduled stop, Fonté Bar at Rainier Square. Laney suggested we walk over to Westlake, where we stopped and sat at one of the tables in the park for just a minute. We considered walking over to Pike Place Market, but then somehow the "
Man in Tree" incident came up, and I noted that the tree was just a couple of blocks away. Laney wanted to see it.
The tree is still quite tall, but looking a little sad these days. I was sure the "Man in Tree" incident—which I was utterly delighted by at the time—was just a few years ago, but I looked it up and discovered it happened in fucking May of 2016! Eight and a half years ago. At that time, we were all still convinced Donald Trump (excuse me, President Fuckwit) did not stand a chance at winning the presidency. Guess what, he was just elected a second time. Side note: a sad sort of concession I thought about recently, was how he was totally unqualified in 2016, but that can't truly be said this time. He
has been President before, which gives him some qualification. That doesn't mean he's not a fucking idiot, mind you.
We walked back into Westlake Mall and killed a good half hour looking at fun products inside the Fireworks store—the only one I can remember was there as far back as 1998 when I first moved to Seattle. I suggested we play an online game of Mad Libs and so we went to a bench against the wall of the escalators and tried that. The app was very difficult to figure out, and the Mad Lib I finally managed to finish didn't even turn out that great. But, we killed another fifteen minutes!
So then we walked back over to Ranier Square, and got to Fonté Bar with only minutes to spare before Happy Hour started at 3:00. Honestly, their Happy Hour price breaks are not much to write home about—drinks at regular price $14, are $12. I ordered a Blood Orange Margarita that was not even on the Happy Hour menu so it cost $17. It was pretty tasty, not really worth that much though, and whatever tequila they used gave me a sort of heavy almost-headache. We both ordered the Belgian frites that
are on the Happy Hour menu for $11 (regular price $14) and those were pretty good.
Fonté bar certainly has ambience going for it. We sat on a sofa facing the fireplace, though we sat posting in the chairs on the other side of the marble coffee table for our requisite Happy Hour selfie—I set up my phone with the timer. Our server came by just as we were finishing with that, and so she offered to take the photo for us. Of course, she took like seven photos. I liked
four of them enough to keep them.
Laney and I also did a rare thing and actually exchanged gifts. She had clearly forgotten that she said some months ago she'd like me to make her a calendar of photos from our Happy Hours, and that's
exactly what I did. Conversely, she got me—quite amusingly—
adorable Halloween earrings, of cute jack-o-lanterns with a little black cat crouched behind them. I will definitely wear these, far more than I will the spider earrings I have that are just
a tad too blingy.
When we walked home, we stopped by the Sheraton one more time to see if the line had gotten any shorter. And it had! By mayne 10 or 20 people. Still
way too long. I was bummed that Laney would miss out on it this year, as it's
spectacular this year, but she didn't seem to mind. It just occurred to me to suggest she try again on Christmas Day; she'll be home that day and is thinking of taking a walk downtown.
We walked the rest of the way up the hill, and we parted ways at the QFC on Broadway and Pike, as I needed to go in and get something I want to bring for the Christmas potluck in Olympia. I walked home after that, processed the whopping seven photos I took today (far less than I took any day since Tuesday last week), and then set about writing this very post. And here we are! Now I'm going to spend some time updating my No Doubt and Gwen Stefany playlists of favorite tracks on Apple Music. No rest for the . . . uh. Wicked? Festive? Super gay? Nothing works here!
[posted 8:16 pm]
