Category: Seattle

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Friday 🍁

Happy Friday.
December is here— hard to believe 2023 is on the way out.

The last of the fall leaves pave the sidewalks on Capitol Hill’s Harrison Street.
I had business at the post office on Broadway.
I also stopped by the Capitol Hill library and ended up taking out a double album of really weird German electronic music from the 70s and 80s.
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Sunday ☀️

We had our first dry Thanksgiving in eight years.
In fact, the sunny-but-cold weather here in the city will continue until Thursday.

I’m standing on my usual spot for ‘surveying’ the leaves on the trees that line 19th Avenue East (across from Stevens Elementary School).
The leaves are almost gone, but not quite yet.
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Black Friday 🛍

Seattle is reportedly dead last on a list of large cities for spending on holiday gifts, per person. (The city’s 10.25% sales tax and relatively few shopping malls are given the blame.)
Nevertheless— I trust that the the profits from retailers had moved from the red to the black by this Black Friday.

It is sunny but chilly here in the city this weekend (high of 46°F /7°C today).
Here’s looking west towards the Olympic mountain range from Republican Street and 13th Avenue East, a few minutes before the sun set at 4.24 pm.
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Sunday/ a murder of crows 🗡

A wake of buzzards
A confusion of chiffchaffs
A chattering of choughs
A commotion of coots
A murder of crows
An asylum of cuckoos
A curfew of curlews
A trembling of finches
A swatting of flycatchers
A prayer of godwits
A crown of kingfishers
A parcel of linnets
A cast of merlins
A conspiracy of ravens
A worm of robins
A parliament of rooks
An exultation of skylarks
A murmuration of starlings
A hermitage of thrushes
A volery of wagtails
A museum of waxwings
A chime of wrens
An orchestra of avocets
A mural of buntings
A water dance of grebes
A booby of nuthatches
A quilt of eiders
A mischief of magpies
An aerie of eagles
A wisdom of owls
A quarrel of sparrows
A wisp of snipe
A kettle of swallows
An invisibleness of ptarmigans
A committee of terns
A descent of woodpeckers
A pitying of turtledoves
A banditry of titmice
A circlage of house martins
A scold of jays
A charm of goldfinches
A fall of woodcock
A deceit of lapwings
Source: countrylife.co.uk/nature

The corner of Galer Street and 16th Avenue East on Capitol Hill this afternoon.
Maybe the earthworms came out for some air after the rain had stopped. There are more than fifty crows in this picture, and at least fifty more further down the street  that I did not get into the frame.
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Saturday/ twin peaks 🗻

It’s been crisp and clear these last few days, but there will be rain tonight.

Here’s a gorgeous picture, looking out towards the west, and taken from the Ravenna neighborhood north of downtown Seattle on Tuesday.
Those are The Brothers peaks, top center, part of the Olympic mountain range.
Then comes Bainbridge Island/ Kitsap Peninsula, with Puget Sound in front of it.
Phinney Ridge separates Green Lake in the foreground and Puget Sound in the background.
[Photo credit: Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times]
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Thursday/ the Eastside 🏢

Here’s looking east from East Mercer Street and 24th Avenue East in Montlake today.  Sunset is at 4.31 pm, only 30 minutes away.

That’s Bellevue downtown on the Eastside (a collective term for the suburbs and cities in the Seattle metro area that are located on the east side of Lake Washington).
The backdrop of mountains is the Cascade Range and the red beam at the bottom belongs to a giant construction cane.
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Sunday/ at the bookstore 📖

I learned my lesson today: if you’re going to walk somewhere and want to make it home before dark, don’t wait until 3 o’clock!
Direct sunlight is now long gone by 5 (sunset is at 4.44 pm).

I spent an hour or so at the Elliott Bay Book Company (at 1521 10th Avenue on Capitol Hill, highly recommended) and then realized the light was dwindling outside— and that I need to go and pay for my book and vamoose.
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Saturday 🍂

It’s the end of Daylight Saving Time— we have to turn back all the clocks back by an hour.

After lots of rain and a thunderstorm this morning, the afternoon turned out to be calm and clear (61 °F/ 16° C).
Here I am back from a walk down to Capitol Hill train station for a jaunt I had intended to do, up to U-District, but it was not to be. We first waited for 10 minutes on the northbound train to depart, during which the lights went out, and the ‘NORTHGATE’ display as the final destination changed to an IP address (IP.80.0.0.80 or something).
Then an announcement came that there was mechanical trouble. The next northbound train will actually pick us up on the southbound track. The train that had a delayed departure had been full already, though. So when the next northbound train arrived (on the southbound track) also almost full of people, I decided the overcrowding wasn’t worth the trouble for me, and came back home. There is always tomorrow to try again.
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Monday/ long live forests 🌳

Happy Monday.
It’s Seattle Forest Week— a yearly campaign by Seattle Parks to promote the city’s green spaces, healthy urban forests, and encourage the planting of native plants.

Hello to you, too!
We don’t have these furry creatures here in the Pacific Northwest. I had to do a picture search to find out that they are tree-kangaroos, native to the Huon Peninsula of northeastern New Guinea island, in Papua New Guinea.
It is an endangered species with only an estimated 2,500 left in the wild.
[Picture posted by Woodland Park Zoo @woodlandparkzoo on X]
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Tuesday/ rain ☔

Uncle Ike’s pot shop on Capitol Hill’s 15th Avenue East.

There’s a steady rain here in the city tonight, and the first winter snow headed for the Cascades (more than a foot expected in some places).
I will grab my scarf from now on as I head out the door.
The daytime highs have dropped to 50 °F (10 °C) or so.

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Monday/ a Cybertruck spotting ⚡️

A Tesla Cybertruck was spotted here in the city yesterday, at Pike Place Market.
It is not known if it will stick around for a while, or move on. This one was spotted in Northern California and in Oregon as well.

The picture is a still from a 6-second clip posted by S.E. Robinson, Jr. @SERobinsonJr on X on Oct 15.
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Monday/ at the roastery ☕️

Here’s the scene at the Starbucks Reserve Roastery on Pike street.
We didn’t get to see the roasted coffee beans spill from the roasting barrel into the giant cooling pan, but the place was packed with tourists and locals (a guy wearing a shirt with an Amazon Web Services logo on, for example).

Coffees from Sumatra, Malawi and Viet Nam were being brewed, and we picked Malawi. (My friends that are visiting Seattle, are from South Africa).

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Saturday/ setting sail 🛳️

Here’s the Norwegian Bliss just leaving the pier in Seattle and setting sail for Sitka, Alaska, shortly after 5 pm this afternoon.
She will go as far as Juneau and then to Icy Straight Point 30 miles across the Alaskan Inside Passage, before turning back to Seattle.

The Norwegian Bliss was built in 2018 and can accommodate 4,900 passengers.
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Wednesday/ Mowich Lake 🏞

This morning, I dropped off the hiking party of two (my friends visiting from South Africa) at the Mowich Lake campground on the slopes of Mount Rainier.

Mowich Lake is where they will start out on Thursday morning, on the Wonderland Trail/ Northern Loop Trail for an eight-day hike.