a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
Yes – 2014 is almost gone. I made it out to the gym today, but had to bundle up. It was sunny, but only a few degrees above freezing (38 °F/ 3 °C) here in Seattle this afternoon. The outdoor art is located in the open space across from the gym, the site where construction on the city’s new Denny Substation will start in 2015.
Paul, Thomas and I set out for Paul’s ‘beach’ house in Hansville on Wednesday night. The wait at the Edmonds-Kingston ferry crossing was so long, that we drove the long way around south through Tacoma, and up north again to get to Hansville on the Hood Canal. Tacoma is sometimes called Seattle’s step sister-city, but she definitely has her charms : great views of the south Puget Sound and much more affordable living than Seattle.
Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson’s 
mug appears on some Alaska Airlines planes. He is the ‘Chief Football Officer’. Passengers with a No 3 Russell Wilson jersey are invited to board early with the frequent flyers.
And how are the Seahawks doing anyway, this season? Well, they look like the favorites to win their Division and go on to the playoffs. (The playoffs involve six teams from each of the league’s two conferences. The winners of the two conferences play in the Super Bowl).
We woke up to a dusting of snow here this morning in Capitol Hill .. just a half inch or so that stuck to the ground, but not really to the slightly warmer street and sidewalk surfaces.
It was Black Friday today (the infamous shopping day after Thanksgiving, with people trampling over one another and fighting over items that are on sale). It was wet and cold here in Seattle, and on top of all that, I saw on the news tonight that there was a ruckus in downtown (again) at the lighting of the Christmas tree there. Protestors, still over the Ferguson police shooting, crowded into the Westlake shopping mall, and tried to disrupt the proceedings at the tree lighting. So a good thing I ventured no further than the grcoery store here two blocks from my house !
On a happier note, I see our Cinerama movie theater has reopened after extensive renovations. It’s been many years since I’ve been there, and I should go check it out.
Here is a beautiful picture I found on Monday’s King5 TV on-line report. Check out the deep orange with Mount Rainier and Seattle’s waterfront. The picture was taken on Nov. 8 by Sigma Sreedharan.
From King5’s website : Sreedharan knew the proper equipment to use because she has photographed the Seattle Great Wheel in motion many times. To capture the image, Sreedharan used a 4- to 5-second shutter speed, ISO 50 and a f/13 f-stop on a Sony A7R Mirrorless camera. She says she then made few edits to brighten the shadows and enhance details in the darker areas in Adobe Photoshop.
If one does not pay attention to the time at this time of year, the darkness sneaks up and .. the day is gone! So when 4 pm came I knew I had to go for a walk immediately if I wanted to catch a few rays of sunlight. The sun sets at 4.30 pm already, and the days are still getting shorter.
One more update on the
mushroom from Friday – the last one, I promise. It’s just that I feel a little like Tintin in ‘The Shooting Star’ .. facing a mushroom that grows to be very big in a short space of time.
It’s (apparently) time for the mushrooms to pop out from the ground in my back yard again. The squirrels nibble on them as well, but they are 1. not too tasty or 2. the squirrel get a psychoactive mushroom high from the nibbles and cannot continue. I let the mushrooms be until they get really big and flat, and then throw them into the yard waste bin with the leaves I rake together.
I voted for the upcoming local elections for the City of Seattle and for King County tonight. (It’s low tech to vote : fill in oval circles with pen, fold up your ballot, stuff in an envelope, and send it in the mail. I guess it’s sort-of high tech when it comes to counting votes. They run the ballots through a scanner. Will voting ever become fully electronic? Maybe not, just the same as paper money that will not go away any time soon).
JAMES YAMASAKI
The leaves from the big maple tree next door are starting to 
come down in large numbers. If I sweep them every weekend, I can manage to get away with not buying giant yard waste paper bag at the home depot store. (I put them in my giant yard waste bin).
And luckily, the big dog next door that used to bark at me from the fence while I sweep the leaves, left with his owners when they moved out. Voertsek!*, I would bark back at it when I could no longer ignore the ruckus.
*An Afrikaans word, from the Dutch ‘voort seg ek’ , commonly applied to animals. It means ‘go away!’ or ‘get out of here!’
It was a mild blue sky day here in the Pacific Northwest (72 °F/ 22 °C). So off I went this afternoon, for a little urban walk down hill and up to the Washington State Arboretum. That took about 40 minutes, and I then I hopped on the bus to get back to the house to get my laundry done and pack my bags for San Francisco.
Saturday was a beautiful cool cloudless 
day here in Seattle. I hopped on the No 43 bus that dropped me off on Denny Way, and then I walked downhill across Interstate 5 to the gym. There I read of the South Africa’s rap-rave group ‘Die Antwoord’ (the answer) that are quite a hit in New York City. (They have been here in Seattle as well, some time ago).
Well, it’s a good thing that people listen to the music and not the words in Afrikaans! Let’s just say they speak a different Afrikaans than I do.
Video Killed the Radio Star was the first music video shown on MTV in the United States at 12:01am on 1 August 1981. Well, now there is something that is killing the video (store) : streaming flicks over the internet with Netflix or Amazon Instant Video. On 15th Video held out for a long time as the last video store here on Capitol Hill, but it has now also closed its business. Even its collection of rare and weird cult flicks alongside the new releases and hits could not save it.
The weather is still summery here in Seattle, even though it is starting to cool down at night. Bryan, Gary and I walked down to The Chieftain on 12th Avenue : a place that is not fancy at all, but offers beer and reliably good pub food. They were playing a version of Billy Joel’s ‘The Piano Man’ and it sounded to us as if some of the people outside partook in the chorus :
Sing us a song, you’re the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we’re all in the mood for a melody
And you’ve got us all feelin’ alright ..
‘We’re very busy’, said the taxi driver that drove me home last night. There’s a cruise ship leaving, there’s a big conference in the convention center, and it’s Labor Day weekend. So today when I saw people outside the Washington State Convention Center here in downtown Seattle, I checked into who they are and that the conference is about. Well, it’s a gathering of computer gamers. The PAX Prime game conference is in its 10th year and now draws tens of thousands of visitors that discuss games, and partakes in game tournaments.
My door bell button was on the fritz after doing duty for some ten years. So : time for a new one.
The choices at the home depot store were somewhat limited, but I settled for the one shown in the picture. ‘A little frilly and fussy on the sides of the little metal plate, not?’ I thought today while I took the picture. But on second thought I think it goes with my old house nice enough !
Bryan, Gary and I went for a walk-about in the Pike & Pine streets on Saturday night as the sun was setting. Here are some pictures.
I need some new shirts and pants for work, and went out to Nordstrom’s here in downtown Seattle the way I normally do. I like the Nordstrom brand clothes best : not cheap, but still good value for money. It’s not long before a friendly salesperson comes up and offers to help, which is fine .. but I get my guard up when he/ she brings $220 shirts to the fitting room. The classic ‘up sell’ strategy, it seems to me. The price is never mentioned, just the brand and the quality of the fabric. OK. But the few tailored shirts I had made in Hong Kong when I worked in China – of good Italian fabric – cost $150. The store should come in way below that for a shirt straight off the rack.
I took a day off from work to go on a hike with my friends Bill and Dave. We hiked a trail up to Lake Twenty Two. (I’m not sure why this lake has a number! Most other lakes in the Mt. Baker- Snoqualmie National Forest here in Washington State have names!).
The drive out there from the city is about two hours. The trail length is 5.4 mi (8.6 km) round-trip. Most of the hike is through forest, but some sections of the trail are out in the open. The lake is at the high point of the trail, with an elevation gain of 1,350 ft (411 m) to the lake’s surface. It’s a nice reward after some 90 minutes of trekking uphill !
Across from the lake is Mount Pilchuck’s sheer northern face. The peak is at 2,400 ft (731 m), so about 1,000 ft (320 m) above the lake surface. Even at this time of the year, thin white waterfalls cascade down on the rock face, and two melting snow packs are still visible on the slopes south of the lake.