One of crew of two painters fell ill yesterday, and so I was down to a crew of one today. My car needed a wash badly, and I was off to the car wash after the painter had left for the day.
Friday/ wash those wheels 💦🚗
Thursday/ a new coat, just in time for winter 🧥
My house is getting a new coat of paint.
Luckily we still have stretches of warm and sunny days this year in the early days of autumn.
The painters tell me they paint outside until Oct. 15 every year, weather permitting, and then they call it quits and paint inside only.
The new coat is a slightly different green than the old green (in the picture), and the brown doors and wood window frames will become a dark gray with a green undertone. So the house will look different than before, but not radically so.
Wednesday/ the storm: an update 🌪
From the New York Times:
Millions of Florida residents faced a harrowing night as wind, rain and storm surge from Hurricane Ian pounded the southwestern coast and moved inland late Wednesday on a path toward Orlando, knocking out power to more than two million customers statewide.
The latest:
A storm surge of up to 12 feet submerged cars, knocked over houses and trapped residents near where the hurricane came ashore west of Fort Myers. Some places remained too dangerous for water rescues, officials said, adding that they were taking down addresses to deploy resources once it was safe.
Ian is among the most powerful storms to strike the United States in decades, and Gov. Ron DeSantis said it would go down as one of the strongest in Florida history. It was just shy of Category 5 status as it made landfall about 3 p.m., but had been downgraded to a Category 1 by Wednesday night.
[Google Streetview, 2019]
[Photo: Marco Bello/ Reuters]
Tuesday/ the energy crisis in Europe
These tweets are from @FortuneMagazine on Twitter.
An energy crisis the likes of which hasn’t been seen in decades is unfolding around the world.
1) Europe’s long-standing gambit on cheap Russian gas could backfire into one of the worst energy crises on the continent since the 1970s.
2) Before the war in Ukraine, EU nations relied on Russia for 40% of their natural gas—the second most common energy source in Europe behind petroleum oil.
Now, the limited supplies have more than doubled the price of natural gas and tripled electricity bills.
3) The situation is so dire that governments that previously renounced fossil fuels and nuclear power are desperately reopening coal plants and nuclear sites, and nationalizing utility companies to save them from going bankrupt.
4) But as bad as it is now, these might still be the good days for Europe.
With winter and higher gas demand on the way, even the slightest uptick in energy demand anywhere in the world could entirely shut down some manufacturing sectors.
5) Expanding natural gas infrastructure is expensive, demands years of investment, and the results likely won’t kick in until the summer of next year,
That’s why many countries focus mainly on saving energy to increase reserves for winter.
6) European governments have already implemented some energy measures:
💡turning of traffic lights at night
💡dimming lighting on historic buildings
During the winter, consumer use might also have to be restricted.
7) So far, most European factories have reduced their capacity.
But the worst-case scenario would be a shutdown of European manufacturing industries most reliant on natural gas—including glassmakers and steel companies.
8) Cutting back on industrial capacity could lead to lower economic activity, higher unemployment rate, and even recession.
9) If rising bills combine with a wave of unemployment and economic downturn, the crisis could spill out onto the streets (which has already begun in some countries like Germany and the Czech Republic).
10) “EU and members will work in solidarity, supporting each other .. or there is another scenario: everybody is for himself,” said
Fatih Birol, head of the watchdog International Energy Agency.
Monday/ here comes Hurricane Ian 🌪
There’s trouble brewing in the Gulf of Mexico: a monster storm system that’s 500 miles wide and at this point just about certain to make landfall in Florida. The trouble with the large natural harbor and shallow estuary that is called Tampa Bay, is that water being pushed into it, has nowhere to go. So the storm surge level could reach up to 10 feet in some places.
[Map from Pinellas County Emergency Management at https://kyz.pinellascounty.org/]
Sunday/ at the bookstore 📖
mo·tif
/mōˈtēf/
noun
a distinctive feature or dominant idea in an artistic or literary composition.
“The great search for a little happiness, is this novel’s delicate motif”
It was a beautiful day outside, and I walked down to the Capitol Hill light rail station for a run up to the bookstores in U District.
A translation of the flap text: ” .. the great search for a little happiness, a delicate Fallada motif, which is also echoed in this novel, and lures its hero, the adventurous young master von Strammin, on a journey into the unknown”.
Saturday/ views from Myrtle Edwards Park 🌅
These views are from the Myrtle Edwards Park and the trail that runs along Puget Sound’s Elliott Bay.
Through my telephoto lens I could see a lot of visitors at the top, enjoying clear views of Elliott Bay, Mt Ranier and the city.
Friday/ Roger Federer retires
I watched all of the Laver Cup* doubles match today, Roger Federer’s last official match on the ATP tour.
Age catches up with all of us, and Federer turned 41 in August.
He will still be around to play in exhibition matches and to be an ambassador for the sport that he had graced for so long.
*Somewhat similar to golf’s Ryder Cup: Team Europe plays against Team World (which includes the USA). This is the 5th Laver Cup. Team Europe has won all four of the previous ties.
[Photo: James Hill for The New York Times]
Thursday/ a very dry summer ☀️
So that’s it: astronomical summer here in the North is over.
It turned out to be the driest one ever recorded at the Sea-Tac rain gauge.
Only 0.5 in. of rain fell for all of summer (usually more than 3 inches).
Rainfall is still well above normal for the calendar year, though.
There was a lot of activity around my house earlier in the day: it was pressure-washed all around, to prepare it for a new coat of paint next week.
Wednesday/ interest rates: shooting up ⬆️
Fed officials voted unanimously to lift their benchmark federal-funds rate to a range between 3% and 3.25%, a level last seen in early 2008. Nearly all of them expect to raise rates to between 4% and 4.5% by the end of this year, according to new projections released Wednesday, which would call for sizable rate increases at policy meetings in November and December.
– The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday/ the last days of summer
Monday/ O’zapft is! 🍻
Hey! Oktoberfest is back.
The festivities kick off officially on the second to last Saturday in September at noon when the mayor of Munich taps the first barrel at the Schottenhamel Tent, crying O’zapft is!*
*Bavarian dialect for “Es ist angezapft” – literally meaning ‘It has been tapped’.
In 1950, then-mayor Thomas Wimmer needed 19 strikes, ‘a sad record to this day’, reports Stern magazine.
Picture by Alexander Hassenstein / Getty Images]
Sunday/ for driving, bedazzled 🦄
I found this Audi A6 four-door sedan by Cal Anderson Park this afternoon.
Don’t ask me how one would wash it, or clean it— but now I am sure I am being wa-ay too practical.
Saturday/ the bridge is open
Yay! The West Seattle bridge is open.
From the Seattle Times:
SDOT closed the span March 23, 2020 because cracks discovered seven years earlier were beginning to accelerate at a dangerous pace, in four areas within the 150-foot-high central main span.
Stabilization and strengthening work, at a cost of up to $78 million, is expected to keep the concrete structure aloft until about 2060. And drivers will no longer need to make a six-mile detour that sometimes lasted 30 to 60 minutes, through the Duwamish River valley highways or streets.
[Picture by Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times]
Friday/ a king-sized rebranding is underway
The Wall Street Journal reports that the wheels have been set in motion in the United Kingdom for a vast effort to (eventually) replace the 29 billion coins and 4.7 billion bank notes in circulation that are carrying the likeness of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
The same will be true for stamps. The current definitive series first class mail stamps for the Royal Mail in the United Kingdom all feature the queen.
The Royal Mail has been around forever— well, almost. It was founded 506 years ago in 1516.
Stamps are a more recent invention: the first ones were printed in 1840.
[Image from royalmail.com]
[From wikipedia.com]
Thursday/ stamps, from South Africa
My shipment of stamps from a seller in South Africa that I had bought in July, arrived today— in a sturdy envelope covered with South African stamps.
(Very ‘meta’ to use stamps to send stamps .. and so much nicer than using a bland computer-generated postage paid label).
*Marketing hype, not? Is anything on Earth ‘forever’ or ‘indefinite’?
Wednesday/ inflation: stubbornly high 📈
‘Goodbye 50, hello 100’
– Financial analyst, commenting on the expected Fed hike rate next week (in basis points)
Inflation was still above 8% in August, and pervasive, found in service sectors as well as consumer goods. Gas prices were down, but not nearly enough to offset the increases everywhere else.
I took the Wall Street Journal’s quick survey to estimate my personal inflation rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has a CPI basket of 80,000 items which are grouped into categories broad (such as food) and narrow (like bananas).
The BLS revises what it tracks every two years based on the spending habits of volunteers who keep a purchase diary. Everyone’s inflation rate is a little different, of course, because we buy different things and services.
Look at chicken (up 16.5% year-over-year), cheese (up 13.5%) and milk (up 17%). Yikes.
Tuesday/ doing ‘social doubles’ duty
I was on duty again tonight as coordinator for the Seattle Tennis Alliance’s Tuesday night social doubles.
I had to put some skilled players with some very green ones on the same court tonight (a combination I try to avoid), but everyone seemed to be fine with it.
Monday/ what time is it? it is party time ⌚
Apple’s iOS 16 and watchOS 9 were released today, and I updated my iPhone and my watch.
The playful ‘marshmallow’ digit characters of the new ‘Playtime‘ watch face float around and float on and off the screen as the time changes (the time it shows is 8:20; presumably the wearer of the watch knows it is morning, afternoon, evening, or night time since there is no 24 hour display option).
Sunday/ ¡Bravo Carlitos!
Carlos is the winner, and became the youngest No 1 in the 50 years that the ranking system of the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) had been in place.
Yes, he is supremely talented and had worked tirelessly in his young career for this achievement, but as Christopher Clarey explains in the NYT, there was timing and extraordinary circumstances that also came into play:
At 19, Alcaraz is the youngest No. 1 since the ATP rankings were created in 1973. That is quite a feat in a sport that has had plenty of prodigies: from Bjorn Borg to Mats Wilander, Boris Becker to Pete Sampras, to Alcaraz’s Spanish compatriot Rafael Nadal, who also won his first major at age 19 (at the 2005 French Open).
But Alcaraz’s meteoric rise to the top has not been due simply to his genius — though the word, which should be used very sparingly in tennis or anything else, does seem to apply in his acrobatic case.
His coronation is also due to timing:
To Novak Djokovic’s refusal to be vaccinated for Covid-19, which kept him out of this year’s Australian Open and U.S. Open and four Masters 1000 events in North America.
To Nadal’s limited schedule because of a series of injuries.
To the extraordinary situation at Wimbledon, which Djokovic won again in July but which earned him no ranking points; the tournament had been stripped of points by the men’s and women’s tours because of Wimbledon’s ban on Russian and Belarusian players over the war in Ukraine.
[Photo by Matt Rourke/AP]