a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
I went on a beer run today to track down some of my favorite German beer. (The grocery store was out of stock, and my own supplies were running dangerously low).
On the way back there was a break in the rain, and so I stopped at Denny Way and 5th Avenue to take a few pictures.
Washington State has published new dates and target groups that qualify for getting the vaccine. I’m not making the cut, yet.
President Biden has promised that there will be enough vaccine doses for all Americans by the end of May*. It takes a lot of logistics to get that vaccine injected into people, of course.
*For example, Merck and Johnson & Johnson will collaborate to ramp up vaccine production, with the help of the federal government.
I saw only today (it had been announced in early February), that the gay bar called R Place will not be able to renew its lease at its 619 East Pine Street location, after 35 years there. Apparently it’s not due to the pandemic. The owner of the Pine Street building had died and the estate did not renew R Place’s lease.
The managers of R Place vowed to find a new location, but the loss of the four floors at the Pine Street location is a very big one for the LGBTQ community.
It feels similar to the loss of the beloved CC Seattle complex’s entertainment venue and bars, at the corner of Madison & 15th Avenue. (This was in Sept. 2010, to make way for the office building called the Bullitt Center).
There is a lot of snow on the slopes of Washington State’s mountains this year, in some places already 10% above normal.
These pictures of the Paradise visitor center at Mt Rainier were posted on the Twitter account from the National Weather Service (Seattle) @NWSSeattle.
On Sunday, it will be 20 years since the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually earthquake that occurred here in the Puget Sound basin, on Feb. 28, 2001.
We’re soon getting a smartphone ‘shake alert’ system that will produce as much as a 30-sec. heads-up, that earthquake tremors are on the way (see diagram below). Thirty seconds or less — so this is not the time to panic and freeze.
My plan is to duck under my dining room table — or to run into the smallest room (the guest bathroom). The upstairs bathroom would be the plan for the second floor.
And if you’re driving?
US Geological Survey (USGS) recommends :
– Move your car as far out of traffic as possible.
– Do not stop on/ under a bridge or overpass or under trees, light posts, power lines, or signs.
– Stay inside your car until the shaking stops.
– When you resume driving, watch for breaks in the pavement, fallen rocks, and bumps in the road at bridge approaches.
Here’s the apartment building called 1005 East Roy, here on Capitol Hill.
It was designed by Fred Anhalt (1896-1996), officially a developer and never an ‘architect’. Anhalt moved to Seattle from the Midwest in the early 1920s.
This apartment building was completed in 1930 (one of about 40 by him), and the first one in Seattle to feature an underground parking garage.
One of the ground floor residents has two Sphynx cats (the hairless ones). They sit in the window and check you out as you walk by.
It was back to the dentist for me this morning, to have him replace a filling in one of my teeth (n.o.t. fun).
It’s still very quiet downtown, and I just parked on the street close the Amazon biospheres — only $1 for two hours.
It was dry and warm enough (49 °F/ 9°C) this afternoon, for a nice walk down to Denny Way, to take my customary pictures from the Interstate 5 overpass.
There was more snow this morning, and into early afternoon (maybe an inch), but that was it.
The official tally for the city, for Saturday, is 8.9 in.
Temperatures will now stay above freezing, even tonight, and slowly rise every day. The snow on the ground has already started to melt.
Here are some snow pictures from today.
I went to the dentist this morning. At 7.30 am on a Monday morning, there was virtually no traffic on the way in. That explains why local TV stations are still not bothering with providing traffic updates like they used to.
After my appointment, I walked around Westlake Avenue, to take a few pictures of the deserted street blocks and offices and store fronts.
There were no cars in front of The Parkhurst apartment building on 14th Avenue, as I walked by, just before dark.
So I snapped a picture, to check up on its history at home.
Here is what I found.
Superb Cleaners dry cleaners on 15th Avenue has gone out of business.
No wonder, right?
In a stay-home-pandemic, people do not need much dry cleaning — not for business trips, not for the opera, and not for a Saturday night dinner party at a fancy friend’s house.
We had a lot of sun today.
It’s January, though – the doldrums of winter – and the day’s highs only made it to 45 °F (7 °C).
These pictures are from Monday.
I felt like a change of scenery today for my walk, and went down to the Gas Works Park area on Lake Union.
It looks like my street block is getting some new utility poles.
We worked with the data for these utility poles on my project at Southern California Edison. That utility company covers an enormous area, and the utility pole database had some 5 million records (for 5 million utility poles).
The fun starts when you also carry joint-use poles in the database. These are poles owned by one utility (say, it is owned by Seattle City Light, and carries overhead power cables), which then leases space on it to other utilities (say, to CenturyLink for hooking telephone coaxial cable onto).
There was a welcome break in the rain today, so I went down to Second Avenue to check out the completed Qualtrics Tower.
My visit turned into a mini-architecture tour, once I started walking.
I had to wait until midnight to see the virtual Space Needle celebrations on TV, sponsored by T-Mobile and produced by Terry D. Morgan.
The wait was worth it. The creators used sky-mapping technology and video footage to create a spectacle accompanied by dramatic music. Below are a few stills from the video that was posted afterwards.
Looks like we’re going to spill over into the new year with rain every day here in Seattle (with a little break on Thursday morning). The yearly precipitation total stands at 40.71″ ( yearly normal 37.49″ ).
Does the New Year’s Eve rain matter? No. The annual fireworks display at the Space Needle, and gatherings at Gas Works Park had been cancelled a long time ago.
There will be a ‘virtual’ Space Needle celebration/ ‘fireworks’ display instead, on the local TV station channel. One could argue it’s more or less the same as watching real fireworks on TV — or is it not?
Washington State Ferries operates the largest ferry system in the United States. The system operates 21 ferries across Puget Sound and the greater Salish Sea (the body of water that crosses into British Columbia). The vessels ferry nearly 24 million people annually, to 20 different ports of call.
The new $187 million ferry terminal in Mukilteo opened today, without crowds or fanfare. The new facility replaces the old terminal and dock (constructed in 1957).
*Washington State ferries have double-ended hull designs: vehicles can be loaded on & off from both ends of the vessel. After loading, the direction of travel switches — so the ‘bow’ becomes the stern, as the ferry departs. [Graphic from wsdot.wa.gov]
