a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
I am following the current discussions to make reforms to the broken US Immigration laws with interest. The 11 million illegal immigrants in the country will have to go ‘to the back of the line’, some people are fond of saying. Well, probably so – but that line is very, very long. Check out this chart that appeared in ‘Reason’ magazine in 2008 .. Legal Immigration Chart.
My lunch with my friend Doug on Wednesday was a chicken burrito from the Pesos Kitchen & Lounge in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood.
The place has a ‘cantina’ atmosphere and my Ranchero style burrito was delicioso. The outside sign and doors and windows feature some cool cast-iron artwork.
I picked up my squeaky new, squeaky clean passport full of blank visa pages on Tuesday. Since I rarely park my car downtown, and still had some time on the meter afterwards, I took a little walkabout to check out the architecture around Pioneer Square.
‘All first-class stamps will soon be ‘Forever’ stamps*’ said the guy at the postal services store here on 15th Ave. Yes, but will stamps be forever? I suppose so. We haven’t gotten rid of paper money – or of paper in the office yet, have we? Congress is supposed to take up legislation this year to improve the dire straits the Postal Service finds itself in.
*Forever Stamps are first-class stamps issued by the United States Postal Service with no explicit postage noted. So stamps are valid ‘forever’ even if the first-class postage rate goes up in future years,
Discovery channel’s documentary about the successful attempt to videotape a giant squid deep in the ocean aired last night here in the USA. It was quite an undertaking, as documented an this article on theverge.com (link below). The article points out that that’s not all — there is evidence of a squid even bigger than the giant squid out there, called the colossal squid. Whoah. How little we know about the deep sea.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/25/3912930/giant-squid-bait-patience-lots-cash-catch-a-monster
It was 47 ºF (9 ºC) and rainy in Seattle on Saturday, but not bad weather at all, considering that snow-and-ice storm Luna* is hitting the Midwest and Chicago area this weekend.
*The Weather Channel’s name. They explain that their goal with naming storms is to better communicate the threat and the timing of the significant impacts that accompany these events.
I took the bus downtown to 5th Ave to hand in my passport for an expedited replacement. I was almost late (you make an appointment), since the office moved 6 blocks and I did not know that beforehand. And inside the Department of Homeland Security does an airport-like security screening, but with guards with guns and dogs and all. Pretty intimidating, even though they were very friendly. Weird that these measures ‘protecting our freedom’ actually makes it feel as if you do not have any in there. Anyway, up on the 6th floor the agent – paging through my fully stamped passport with two sets of added pages – was impressed with all my business travel, and said ‘Wow. Do you not feel like retiring yet?’. ‘Oh, of course I do’, I replied, but I have to work at least ten more years’.
We completed our ‘blueprinting’ phase workshops in for our project today. Weather wise, the light snow of the last few days gave way to freezing rain* in the Salt Lake City area. There was so much of the stuff that the airport was closed for a few hours after a JetBlue plane skidded after landing (no injuries, and it stayed on the runway). It also made for a slow and treacherous drive out to the airport from Ogden.
*[From Wikipedia] Freezing rain is made entirely of liquid droplets. The raindrops become super-cooled while passing through a sub-freezing layer of air many hundreds of feet above the surface, and then freeze upon impact with any object they encounter. The resulting ice, called glaze, can accumulate to a thickness of several centimeters.
The snooze button is a standard feature on bedside alarms in the USA. (A big button on the top that stops the alarm and sets it to ring again at a short time later, most commonly nine minutes .. yes – nine, not ten, did you know that?). I don’t use the snooze button, though. When my iPhone alarm goes off at 5.15 am here in the hotel, I know : time’s UP. Got to jump out of bed now to make breakfast downstairs at 6.00 am! Last week I actually proved that I can speed it up dramatically; was woken one morning at 6.00 am by my colleague’s phone call, and made it down by 6.15 am! Of course, for that to happen there is no morning shower, no tidying up the room a bit – and certainly no ironing my shirt.
(Late post). I had to work on Monday (which was also Martin Luther King Day), but I did catch the highlights of President Obama’s Inauguration speech.
I am in Ogden for a last trip for now (but will probably come back in March). Here are some pictures from today. It is a little warmer than last Monday, but still well below freezing at night.
I ordered a vegan burger at our favorite watering hole and pub grub place here in Seattle on Saturday night – the Elysian Brewing Company. Soon after, the food server showed up with a burger with a strip of bacon on it. No, this is not mine, said I. What happened was that I said ‘vay-gen burger’ and the waiter heard ‘bacon burger’. I should have known something was up when he inquired ‘How do you want that cooked?’ .. I said, well how it is normally cooked? and he said ‘Medium’. Medium it is, I said (LOL). Veggie burgers are cooked only one way. Anyway, they replaced the bacon burger for me, the veggie burger was very tasty, and went very well with my Zephyrus Pilsner beer (it’s a German pilsner beer).
As the first class flyers were boarding in Salt Lake City on Thursday night for our flight to Seattle, a guy was let on board with a Great Dane service dog. I was in coach and we all thought ‘Well, this will be interesting : to see where the dog goes’. Turned out the guy had a whole set of three bulkhead seats in coach to himself, so that there was room for the dog to lie on the floor at his feet. This would NOT have worked with a full flight! Then as we approached Seattle, the pilot warned that it was foggy – and that he may have to do a touch-and-go landing if the fog was a lot thicker than they had anticipated. We could even have ended up at Portland airport 120 miles south. But all went well – even though the runway appeared suddenly out of nowhere – and so we landed and taxied to the gate.
The blue and red tails of the Delta jets are from Concourse C at Salt Lake City airport. One of them will get me out of Dodge*. The project’s workshops are done for the week. We did a tour through the plant where we are working today. It was bitterly cold as we walked outside, so our little group of 5 was all too thankful to duck inside each of the buildings that was part of the tour so that our noses and ears could defrost. One building has a furnace in. ‘Do we have to leave?’ we said when it was time to go. If you’re not in an office, that is where you should work in winter time!
*’Getting out of Dodge’ is an idiomatic reference to a phrase used in the TV series ‘Gunsmoke’. The villains were told to get out of Dodge City, Kansas. (Yes, there is still a Dodge City in Kansas, named for Fort Dodge nearby).
The last rays of the sun just caught the snow on the mountaintops in the Wasatch range as we drove back from work today.
I braved the bone-chilling cold late this afternoon to go out and take a few pictures – but man! I had to give it up after 30 mins. My thick stretch jeans was no match for the cold that seemed to come right through it. I did not wear my gloves, thinking it would interfere with my picture taking – big mistake. And I was very worried about condensate in my camera as well — I’m not supposed to use it in these low temperatures without a cover.
The mercury dropped to -22°C (-8 °F) this morning here in Ogden. Since mercury freezes only at -38°C (-36 °F), I guess the thermometers still work ! There is no snow in the forecast for the next week, but the stuff on the ground is certainly not going to melt any time soon.
This Sunday night finds me at Seatac airport for another trip to Salt Lake City. Only one more to go after this one – a good thing because I am not used to ‘solidly frozen’ temperatures. Seattle weather usually manages to stay more or less above 32° F (0 °C) for most of the winter (the average nightly low for Dec-Jan is 36°F). At least I remembered to pack my Cossack-style woolen hat that covers my ears and straps down under my chin, my gloves, and an extra scarf.
It was a frosty Saturday morning in Seattle, but a bright and sunny day. On Saturday night I spotted a Bavarian ‘Ayinger’ beer in my local grocery store, the exact same one that I saw advertised in Munich. So of course I had to buy one. (Confession : a nice colorful label gets me every time). It is a very tasty beer, making a nice foamy head when poured. Aying is a town south west of Munich – that is actually still in the Munich municipality.
I made it to the airport, driving very carefully. The hardest part was getting the 3 inches of fluffy snow off my Nissan Altima rental car. The snow is not so fluffy right there on the windshield and windows : you have to scrape the ice crystals off. (The combination brush-scraper Hertz provides does a great job). And I remembered from my winters in St Louis to brush off snow powder from the car seat and from my clothes immediately. The stuff melts and becomes icy wet water (of course).
