Month: December 2021

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Sunday/ total destruction

From the New York Times:
At least 90 people were killed by tornadoes across at least six states Friday night and early Saturday morning.
The tornadoes were part of a weather system that was wreaking havoc in many parts of the country and hit Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.
In Kentucky, one tornado stayed on the ground for more than 200 miles.

Mayfield, Kentucky took a direct hit from what must have been at least an EF-3 tornado: one that produces winds of 136 to 165 mph.  The tornado sheared entire homes off their foundations and lofted debris more than 30,000 feet into the air. These satellite images via Bing and Maxar Technologies Damage assessments are based on available aerial imagery and are not comprehensive.
[From the New York Times]
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Saturday/ tourists at the Space Needle

My brother, visiting from California, made for the perfect reason to go and check out the Space Needle again.
The Needle had undergone a refurbishment inside and out, during 2017 and 2018, and I had not been up to the observation deck since that time.

There is a nice gallery of photos lining the walkway up to the elevator that goes to the observation deck. If 1962 was the future (during the 1962 World Fair in Seattle), we are definitely now in the future, as well.
The construction of the Space Needle.
A Space Needle in the Space Needle. (It’s made of LEGO bricks). We did our vaccination check outside and are now on our way to the ticket check and the free Space Needle photo with the fake background.
Here’s the picture with the fake background. My hair is a little windswept but that’s OK. That cityscape behind us needs a little updating, though. Multiple new skyscrapers to the city skyline had been added over the last 10 years.
Going up in the elevator. 100% fresh air says the sign; we have our masks on and we are also in the NO TALKING ZONE (!) says the sticker on the frame on the right.
Beautiful blue skies. I’m looking almost north, through a thick glass pane on the observation deck, out over Elliot Bay in Puget Sound. That’s the square roof of Climate Pledge Arena in the foreground. There is a reflection of the spire of the Space Needle in the middle of the picture, with the Christmas light bulb strands.
There is a staircase down to the rotating glass floor of the Needle. Eek. 
One more picture of the observation deck. It was cold outside, but great to get a break from wearing a mask.
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Friday/ inflation: spiking up

The Consumer Price Index climbed by 6.8 percent in the past year through November, the data showed, the fastest in almost 40 years.
The headline below says inflation is pressuring Washington (President Biden and the Democrats, I presume).
It’s up to the Federal Reserve Bank and chairman Jay Powell, to decide when to raise interest rates to curb inflation, though.

From the New York Times: In the 1960s, the central bank failed to take sufficiently decisive action to tamp down rising prices. Inflation soared, rising to double-digit levels during the 1970s, and Paul Volcker, then the Fed chair, pushed interest rates up sharply to get things under control in the early 1980s.
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Thursday/ a friendly reindeer

I was at Bellevue Square shopping mall today.
The Microsoft store had closed down. The Apple store upstairs is still open, and the Tesla showroom is still there as well.
(Funny, how it felt like ‘old news’, looking at the Model 3 and the two Model Ys on display— now that I have had my own car for 6 months).

The display window of the LEGO store in Bellevue Square. Let’s see what Santa is up to, right there on perched on the nose (Rudolph’s nose?) ..
Santa is enjoying a cup of hot chocolate with Mrs. Claus.
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Wednesday/ no check for proof of vaccination

Bryan, Gary and I made our way down to The Chieftain for a beer and a bite tonight.

There’s no one at the door to check for masks & proof of vaccination, and it was not done at the table, either. At this point, all bars and restaurants in King County with inside seating— no matter how small — must check for proof of vaccination. We let it slide .. the waiter wore a mask, and the tables are very far apart. King County is 75% fully vaccinated per the New York Times.
Many other counties in Washington State lag far behind, with numbers like 65% (Snohomish), 59% (Pierce), 57% (Yakima), 51% (Kittitas).  
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Tuesday/ a recall vote

Yay! Vote canvassers will stop knocking on my door for a while, and stop harassing me when I walk along 15th Avenue.
The recall vote for controversial socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant finally drew to a close today. The vote counting started tonight. (We vote by mail, so people in Seattle’s District 3 have been voting ever since they got their ballots in the mail more than two weeks ago).

The votes in favor of recalling Sawant is leading with a significant margin. The last-day votes (those that came in today) are said to typically be from younger people, that would vote against the recall, so there is still a little hope for Sawant to prevail. I am not a fervent Sawant supporter, but it will be a step back the progressive movement if she is recalled. It’s just that things got out of hand last year with the Black Lives Matter protests, on top of the pandemic, all against a backdrop of a swelling homeless population in the city. The challenges to the City Council and law enforcement are substantial, and the solutions are not obvious.
Update Wed 12/8: Another batch of vote counts was released, and the YES and NO votes are now essentially even (separated by a few hundred votes).
{Tweets by Brandi Kruse @BrandiKruse on Twitter]
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Monday/ a late night grocery run

There was a flyer in the mail today from Amazon, offering $20 off on $50 of groceries —but with a Thanksgiving expiration date.
It’s worth a try, I thought, and ran out to the Amazon Fresh store for stuff I needed anyway. But no, there was a red error message on my smart shopping cart: the coupon had expired.

Nary a soul in sight in the parking garage by the Amazon Fresh store on 23rd and Jackson. There are people in the store, of course. A human checked my ID for the beer I had bought (why? Amazon must know my age; the credit card company certainly does). The smart carts are not allowed out of the store, so I put my two heavy bags in a regular little cart to get it to the car.
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Sunday/ sunny and ‘cold’

It was sunny and ‘cold’ (I guess one could say ‘brisk’) today with a high of only 42°F (5.5°C).

Here’s a few minutes after sunset (4.18 pm), looking towards the Space Needle from the corner of 14th Avenue & Thomas St. Those are the Olympic mountains in the distance (on the Olympic Peninsula). The two peaks towards the right are The Brothers*, with the south peak at 6,842 ft (2,085 m) a little higher (by 192 ft/ 59 m) than the north peak. There are no official trails to these summits, but the south peak is considered a non-technical climb (meaning no equipment such as body harness, rope, crampons, or ice tools are needed). Good to know, but no thank you!
*Not the highest peaks in the Olympic Mountains; Mount Olympus peak is at 7,963′ (2,430 m) elevation.
[Information from Wikipedia]
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Caturday

These pictures are from the Twitter account of Pyonta the feline (ピョンタ・フロスキー@pyonta_F on Twitter).
From what I gleaned from translating the Japanese, his owner was a little boy when he picked up the bedraggled fur ball near the Arakawa river, north of Tokyo, Japan.
That was 10 years ago, and look at them now.

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Friday/ here, there, everywhere

It has only been 8 days the announcement of the Omicron variant, but it’s clear that it has probably been spreading for several weeks (months?) around the world already.

No cases discovered yet in Washington State. The first case detected in the USA was a traveler from South Africa that had returned to San Francisco. There are several other cases in the USA through community transmission, though (persons that have not traveled outside of their state or even their county).
Update Sat 12/4: Public health officials have confirmed 3 cases of the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus in Washington state.
[Map from the New York Times online]
And here are the countries that have reported cases of the Omicron variant. Almost all (99%) of cases in the USA are still the Delta variant, but that is expected to change. Many, many communities in the States still sit at 60% vaccinated, which is not good enough. There is evidence that the Omicron variant can reinfect people that had a previous Covid-19 infection, and no vaccination.
[Map from the New York Times online]

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Wednesday/ it’s December

Hey, it’s December.
The sands of time for 2021 are running out rapidly.
Seattleites have to hang in there a few more weeks before the black nights that come so quickly, ease up and become shorter again.

I find it hard to resist taking a picture of a neon sign. I love this 3-D one by Broadcast apartments on Madison Avenue, with all its circles.