Monday, December 05, 2005

Yesterday Margaret and I went downtown Christmas shopping. Actually, that was just an excuse to visit Santaland at the Meier & Frank store downtown. We had never heard about it, but there was an article in the paper about this being the last year that the Santaland monorail will be running. Nice that we don't hear about it from the PR from the store but from a newspaper article about it's demise! Evidently the monorail has been running since the 1950's every year from Thanksgiving to Christmas. We went up and saw it and it didn't disappoint! It looked like something from an old Flash Gordon show, with retro-futuristic styling. The train ran around the outside edge of Santaland, where there were an assortment of elves working, etc., and Santa in the middle. It looked like a ton of fun for the kids to ride in it, waving at their parents below. Unfortunately, the train has a strict height policy and both Margaret and I were about three feet too tall to be able to ride! Man, midgets must have it MADE!

We did content ourselves to look at all of the crazy colors that you could get your fake Christmas tree in. They had the standard white, aluminum, and pink, but have you ever seen a chartreuse, beige, burgundy, or sky blue fake Christmas tree? The chartreuse one took the cake--they even had a matching wreath made out of chartreuse FEATHERS! Geesh! Nothing says the birth of Christ like a painfully matching Christmas tree that coordinates with the chartreuse curtains, sofa, and Fifi, the chartreuse-dyed toy poodle. I'm more of a traditionalist--give me an English manor decked out with evergreens, holly, Christmas trees, Dickens' carolers and enough servants to host a grand Yule ball over a burgundy-colored plastic Christmas tree any day! What can I say--I'm old-fashioned.

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