Fall Into Christmas

We've been pretty busy recently. This past Thursday was my birthday, but I couldn't think of anything to do, and figured it was one of the few days I didn't have to go anywhere. What do people do for their birthdays anyway, other than going out to eat? I think the last time I had a birthday party was when I turned eight. Not that I really want to, but at the same time it makes me sad to think of how there's hardly anyone I could invite. The day before that, we visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where we saw a lot of fall foliage, including in the bonsai room at the conservatory.

The rose garden had several non-rose plants, but there were a few roses still blooming.

They had a few things set up for the upcoming Lightscape, which we should be seeing next month.

On Friday, we drove down to my dad's house. His girlfriend's birthday is the same day as mine, and my nephew's is the next day (he's four now), so he invited us down there to celebrate. Not that we did that much celebrating, but I did see people I hadn't seen in a while. My uncle was staying there, and my brother and his son came over. My dad had also raised the possibility of going to Hersheypark, which I agreed to. This makes four amusement parks for Beth and me this year.

They had started up the Christmas Candylane thing, so they had some decorations around the park, and the Carrousel was playing Christmas music.

I always feel a little weird doing Christmas-related stuff before December, although I guess that's kind of an arbitrary time limit. It was more crowded than we would have thought, and also colder. In addition to the Carrousel, we rode the train, the Claw (a pendulum ride), Wildcat, Wild Mouse, Whip, Ferris Wheel, and Laff Trakk.

My dad, his girlfriend, and my uncle arrived later than we did and left earlier, but we did ride two rides together. We didn't really know what the Laff Trakk was, and the line was slow-moving, with funhouse mirrors on some of the walls the line wound past. It turned out to be an indoor roller coaster with cars that spun around sometimes.

That sure is a visible uvula!
It was similar to the Exterminator at Kennywood, but nowhere near as rough. The Wild Mouse was the roughest thing we rode that day. A lot of the rides weren't even running, although maybe the Comet could have been if Santa hadn't chosen to land his sleigh there. What were you thinking, St. Nick?

Come to think of it, Comet is the name of one of the reindeer. After leaving the park, Beth and I ate at the Cocoa Diner, where we'd also gone last year. We met my mom and sister for dinner the next day, and my sister-in-law was at my dad's earlier that day. As far as presents go, I got a Kindle Paperwhite from Beth, a stuffed Wiggler from my brother, and a book of Kirby art from Beth's Uncle John.

Yesterday, we had tickets to see the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. We went with Tavie, and none of the three of us had seen it before. My dad was talking about how he saw the show when he was a teenager. I expect it's changed some since then, but I don't know that the sensibility has; it's pretty old-fashioned.

The Rockettes came out in a few different outfits, the weirdest being a group of toy soldiers who were eventually shot with a cannon and...killed, I guess. It ended with them all slowly collapsing. Kind of dark, really. Another segment had a bunch of dancing Santas. We'd been previously alerted to the meta-referential nature of part of the show, with Santa saying at the beginning that he had to go to Radio City, and the set including a facade of the outside of the building. The whole "New York City is awesome!" angle makes it seem like it's mostly geared to tourists, which Beth and I would have been before 2015. There were a lot of projections, and a scene with Santa flying in his sleigh was in 3D, with glasses provided. Another oddity is that it was secular most of the way through, then suddenly at the end, they had a nativity scene and Wise Men. We were originally supposed to sit in the balcony, but when we got there they upgraded us to the orchestra, presumably because not that many people want to see the show before Thanksgiving. The angle where I was sitting did cut off the R when they had a light-up sign reading "Rockettes." Would the Ockettes be Dr. Octopus' dancing girls? When we got home after the show, we found out they were going to do work on the garage in our building, so I had to find a place to put my car until after work today. I drove around for a while looking for a space on the street, then Beth suggested I use a nearby public garage. I don't know how people who regularly park on the street manage it. I didn't even keep my car in the city until we had a permanent parking spot, except occasionally when I needed to drive and would sometimes spend over an hour driving around the streets, which I had to repeat if they were doing street sweeping.

Today has been pretty uneventful, which gives me a chance to catch up on a few things. Well, "catch up" might be a bit generous. I've had little time recently to play video games, practice guitar, or write posts; and I've done a little of all three this evening. I did have a birthday party in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and I'll try to participate in the Thanksgiving dinner if I have time. There's a mythology post I've been working on but haven't finished, and there are new They Might Be Giants and Tori Amos albums that I've listened to but haven't had the chance to fully absorb.