It's beginning to smell/sound/feel a lot like Christmas

The "feel" portion, unfortunately, is that I am exhausted and just want to sleep all the time, a tendency rather exacerbated by the couple of hours at Benaroya Saturday night;  "Sleeping Beauty" was somewhat aptly named as I found myself all but dozing during it. The sartorial high point of the evening was beyond question Joshua Roman's remarkable houndstooth suit. (I was not the only one remarking upon it during intermission and now I'm just so pleased to have found out that it's a Mr Turk design.) We were underwhelmed by the new piece by Mason Bates that Mr Roman was debuting but this line in the program notes has been getting a lot of mileage around the house:

The young American composer Mason Bates is at home in two musical worlds: contemporary “classical” composition and the popular music of our time, especially the rhythmic variety known as “techno."

 Those kids and their "techno" mu-sic. Etc. In truth, I'd like to hear the piece again to see if it improves upon a second hearing.

Cookies: check!

Mongolian hordes and armies of light and darkness (aka peanut blossom cookies, pillowcase cookies, and windowseat cookies. Hmmm; even the "real" names for these cookies are a bit unlikely, now that I look at them).

Tree purchased and decorated: check / photos TK.

Christmas ships seen: check.

It was a gorgeous evening on Alki and yet another reason to so love living in West Seattle. The Christmas ship and its followers were quite lovely out on the water. The singing, not so much.

Children's choir heard: check.

The Endolyne Children's Choir, on the other hand, was charming and delightful.

I have yet to get serious about shopping and wrapping gifts but I'm sure I'll get to that. Eventually.