Yesterday was an unusual one-two punch when it came to Halloween, because we also happened to go to the Día de Muertos Festival on the same day, and I give those their own separate photo albums. I have now gone to four in as many years, this year yielding a photo album with 27 shots, the smallest amount since the 25 I got in the first year. (The record 54 shots I got in 2024 would be because we also met up with Tracy there that year, and spent more time there.)

I figured Alexia might find this festival interesting, and convinced her to head over early so we could all go down to Seattle Center for the Día de Muertos Festival first, before doing our Capitol Hill Halloween Walk in the evening. Since this year was actually dry and not rainy—but, alternatively, surprisingly cold, even in sunny weather; I took care to add a hoodie under my pea coat for extra layering—Alexia agreed to come over from Issaquah for it all this year.

Her proposal, though, was that she arrive at 3:30, taking our offer to move our car to street parking (where we have free parking as residents in Zone 4) so she could park in our spot in our garage; head down to Seattle Center; and then straight back up to Capitol Hill for our walk in the early evening. I was totally down with this, figuring it would be dusk by the time we made it to the north end of Capitol Hill anyway, even if we took my suggestion of catching the #10 bus on the way back to take it easy on her knee.

Alexia is one of maybe two friends I have who are incredibly punctual, so she was indeed here right at 3:30. It was while I was waiting to let Alexia into the garage that I realized how cold it was and so we went up to the condo so I could get my hoodie. Alexia totally assumed Shobhit was not coming, because he was just still working on the "World of Dracula" puzzle she had brought us when she was here on Thursday. But, when we were ready to go, he put on his shoes and jacket and came with us. And Alexia was good with walking with us the mile downtown to Westlake Center, but then, as had been my suggestion all along, we took the Monorail the rest of the way to Seattle Center.

The first photo I took at the Día de Muertos Festival, which takes place in the Seattle Center Armory, was taken at 4:23; the last was at 4:43. We were not there long at all—even less time than usual. This year was the first since 1996 that I did not dress up as anything at all for Halloween, because there was really no incentive to: I had no costume party to go to this year, and because I took Shobhit's birthday off of work, I didn't even have work to wear a costume to on the last weekday before Halloween (the same is going to be the case next year). I thought about finding something simple to wear along the Halloween Walk, but it's usually dark and I don't interact with many people, so I didn't see it as worth the effort. Normally I would be really bummed about a break in annual consistency like this, but since there was no one else to wonder why I wasn't dressing up. it hardly mattered. Anyway, I say all this now because I did consider just getting Day of the Dead face paint done at the Día de Muertos Festival, and that could have sufficed for the rest of the day this year. But, I am already $167 over budget at the moment, and the line for the face painting was far longer than I think Alexia or particularly Shobhit would have wanted to wait for. Again: not worth the effort.

The closest I got this year was wearing my Day of the Dead Kitty earrings. Maybe I'll just add a photo of myself wearing those to my "History of Matthew's Halloween Costumes" photo album. I did wear something Halloween-related, after all—even though they are more specific to Día de Muertos. Whatever works!

I might have lingered a bit longer at the festival, but we did have other things to do. In years past, Shobhit and I have purchased a snack or hot chocolate or something, but we didn't do that this year either. I still got some good pictures, especially my favorite, which is the one at the very top of this post.

I should also note that the Día de Muertos Festival is part of Seattle Center's yearlong "Festál" series of cultural festivals, most of which are only for one day—but, they do Día de Muertos Festival for both days of the weekend they choose for it. Day of the Dead is actually November 1, so the better day, technically, would have been today to go this year, as it landed on the actual day. But, yesterday was more convenient for planning and having Alexia go and see it with us too.

They do have some nicely morbid humor sprinkled among all their Día de Muertos displays, although most of it just has to do with honoring beloved departed loved ones. The number of shrine displays and how elaborate they are kind of varies every year too, and I would argue this year's was a little less elaborate than others, which also contributed to the smaller number of photos. I'm still glad we went. I think Alexia was too, even though she wasn't quite engaged with it enough to make me think she'd jump to go again next year. We went through it all pretty quickly this year, and Alexia never gave any indication that she felt rushed; she likes to get to bed early, so I had a feeling she was happy to go walk the Hill as early as we did.

And, walk the Hill we did: we took the Monorail back downtown; walked over to Pike Street and hopped on the #10 bus, and then rode that to the north end of Capitol Hill from which we made our way south walking back. Usually we walk all the way up there from home, but again, the bus was my suggestion when Alexia said she needed to take it easy on her knee.

Last year and the year before both were rainy, and Alexia found it unpleasant enough after coming over from Issaquah to join us in 2024 to bow out last year when the evening turned out to be wet. Even Shobhit and I drove up to park last year, so we wouldn't have to walk all the way up there in the rain—although we also walked the evening before when it was dry, giving me a lot more photo opportunities. (Sachin joined us last year on the 30th, as he had joined us for dinner for Shobhit's birthday.) So last year, we walked between 5:47 and 7:17 on the 30th, yielding 65 photos; then on the 31st Shobhit and I drove back and I got 16 more photos between 6:09 and 6:36.

This year, it was dry and clear and thus very much light out for maybe two thirds of our Capitol Hill walk—I got 75 photos, while walking between 5:26 and 6:38. The first shot taken when dusk was finally getting into dark was at about 6:16. My full photo album for Halloween 2026 has 89 shots in it—bearing in mind that I made add a few more later, especially if I get some shots of people at PCC after the fact; and also bearing in mind that the Día de Muertos Festival shots are all in a separate album, even though this year they were taken on the same day—which is less than a lot of years, but still more than, say, the 82 shots I had for Halloween 2024. This really seems to fluctuate year by year, more than most holidays I think.

Anyway, I prefer to do the Capitol Hill Halloween Walk (which I have now done for seven unbroken years—kicked off at the suggestion of Alexia herself, but she has joined for four of them) entirely at night, but there was an advantage to doing some of it while it was still daylight. First, it's a hell of a lot easier to see where the hell you're walking; these streets have a lot of tree canopy and street lights do not easily reach a lot of the sidewalks. But also, some of the elaborate house and yard displays were easier to get pictures of this way. That said, some were also very much designed to be viewed at night so daytime pictures didn't turn out as well.

It was all still really fun as always. There's a few select houses that do a different variation on the same theme every year, such as "Canibal's Meat Market"; or the yard with a bunch of funny tombstones, only some of which are rotated to something new each year; or the house with varying displays of skeletons, some of them in cages (this year due to ICE). A couple of houses consistently have an elaborate theme ever year but totally new each year; my favorite was the "Jimothy's 2026 Odyssey"—The Odyssey being another unsurprising theme in the year that movie came out; another had a "Minion Odyssey," with blow-up Minions and a blow-up Trojan Horse.

Honestly this could not be perfect as a newer Halloween tradition, established in the 2020s. for many years I went to Dad and Sherri's in Olympia for Halloween, but that fell away when they stopped doing their Halloween Open House, and then the pandemic precluded any major gatherings for a couple of years. Enter this new tradition, which does not require me to leave town, is right in my own neighborhood, and is still more photogenic than Halloween tended to be any time in my life before it. I live only about a mile from where some of the richest people in Seattle live, and many of them seriously go all-out for Halloween, which makes for some delightful, free entertainment. We even passed by one house where Shobhit noted that the CEO of Amazon himself, sitting right at a table next to who I presume was his wife, handing out candy.

I am certain we skipped two or three blocks of stuff to see, but we still walked for a good 70 minutes or so and I got some great pictures as always. I'm still trying to figure out how to map out the most ideal walking route based on locations of previous photos, but that would have been moot this year anyway since we bussed to the far north end and then worked our way back. On the way back to our condo, Alexia was hungry and so we all stopped at Aviv on 15th Avenue, one of Alexia's favorite places, and had a light dinner there. Instead of buying a $16 dish, Shobhit just bought a side of 6 falafel balls, and two pitas for us to share. That only cost him $10 and it was still delicious. (That said, Alexia shared one of the eggplant slices from the dish she had ordered and it was amazing; I took Shobhit's advice and put it inside my pita.)

We were home by about 7:30, and Alexia went home. I was still up rather late because Shobhit and I proceeded to watch not one, but two movies: The Invite on HBO Max; and Disclosure Day on Peacock. It was the second and third time I had seen these movies, respectively. It was nearly 1 a.m. by the time I actually got to sleep. I'm glad we did "Fall Back" today!

[posted 9:06am]