Jacaranda blossoms from a tree right here on the corner of my street in Capitol Hill, Seattle.
I guess I knew from previous spring blooms that the tree close to my house on the corner is a jacaranda tree, but I realized it again as I walked by it on Tue night. Man! Did you know that? Did you forget? I asked myself. Jacaranda trees are actually native to tropical and subtropical regions, found widely in Asia, and in Nepal .. and in South Africa as well. In fact, my home city for a few years in the 1990s in South Africa was Pretoria, which is popularly known there as ‘The Jacaranda City’. The jacaranda trees lined the street in front of my house there, and would produce carpets of purplish blossoms that had dropped onto the sidewalk.
More than a year ago, in Feb 2014, I reported that this beautiful old house on 16th Ave was being torn down. Well, here is what was built in its place : a modern eight 2 bed-2 bath townhouses. Four have already been sold. The list price is $660,000.
New townhouses at 341 16th Ave E, Seattle. Three of the eight units are visible. I like the dark blue color.
There was a bad house fire just a block away from my house on Thursday morning. The fire brigade was just clearing out by the time I got home by 7 pm on Thursday night. An elderly lady in her nineties died in the incident and her son had to be taken to hospital. I wanted to find out what had caused the fire, and The Capitol Hill Blog reported that it was improperly discarded smoking materials that ignited a chair in the house.
This is a till picture from a video clip by Adam Loving posted on the Capitol Hill Blog on Thu April 16th. This is on 16th Avenue and Republican Street on Capitol Hill.
We’re not used to heavy weather – thunderstorms with lightning bolts here in the Pacific Northwest. So tonight I thought a few times Whoah! that was close!, as the night sky outside lit up several times with white light, and the sound of thunder followed a short time later.
Here’s a picture from Highway 99 in the Seattle area sent in to King5 TV’s web site. (Yes, it’s OK to make a U-turn to get away from the storm, says the sign in the middle!).
A rendering of the 58-story tower Runstad & Co. hopes to build in Seattle. ILLUSTRATION: NBBJ/MOTYW
This proposed new 58-story office tower for Seattle’s downtown will cot $600 million. The property is owned by the University of Washington. The developers hope to lure tech companies away from neighborhoods such as South Lake Union to Seattle downtown (Hmm. South Lake Union is barely a mile or two away). Here’s the article in the Wall Street Journal of Wednesday that caught my eye.
My two colleagues from China were in Seattle for the weekend, and wanted to go on a Boeing factory tour. Let’s go! I said, since I had not done that either. The factory is actually in Everett, 40 minutes north of Seattle. (There is another factory that produces 737s in Renton closer to Seattle, and some 787 work is done in North Charleston in South Carolina). The tour starts with a short film, and then we were taken into two of the cavernous construction hangars, one for the 747 and 777 and another for the new 787 Dreamliner. We entered by the utilities tunnel and then go directly up with the freight elevator to the third floor where we look down on the floor.
The factory is very, very, very large, by volume the largest in the world. The 777 is assembled with a crawling assembly line, until the plane is in its weight-on-wheels (WoW) configuration; then it is tugged along and outside the building to be painted. In contrast, the 787 is assembled in one place, with its major sections flown in from all over the world (wings from Japan, center fuselage from Italy, landing-gear system from France, main cabin lighting from Germany main cabin lighting, among others).
Some 6 million parts go into a modern airplane. That is counting each little rivet as a part, though. Since the fuselage expands under pressurization, it cannot have welds. I was also reminded that the wings are actually gigantic fuel tanks (I will try to forget that again by the time I fly on Monday!) and that the skin of the fuselage is no thicker than that of a dime (yikes). We could actually check a section of fuselage out up close and it is shocking how thin the skin is.
So! .. while we’re all very proud of Boeing and its manufacturing prowess, being a fierce international competitor and providing some 30,000 jobs to local communities around Washington State, does it make for a good corporate citizen? The Center For Effective Government reported in 2014 that Boeing Company’s 2013 tax filings noted that it had claimed $82 million in federal tax refunds, despite $5.9 billion in U.S. pre-tax profits for the 2013 tax year. ‘This represents an effective tax rate of -1.4 percent. Boeing paid just $11 million in state income taxes, an effective state tax rate of just 0.2 percent’. Fantastic for the shareholders, but the company makes almost no contribution to the Washington State coffers for the use of its infrastructure, and pays no Federal income taxes in spite of being the second largest federal contractor in the United States.
As for the machine workers that pop all those rivets, they should start learning to program and maintain the robots that are on the way to take over the work from them. This video is from Boeing’s web site itself, here.
Here is what a typical view inside the Everett Boeing factory looks like. (Pulled from the web; no cameras and no cell phones allowed inside the factory!). These are 777 jets. The green stuff on the fuselage is vinyl to protect the surface from corrosion and scratches until it is painted.This Antonov Volga 124-100 freighter aircraft sits right by the tour center. It has been contracted to help Boeing’s four ‘Dreamlifters’ that bring in parts for the 787. Everything is just-in-time these days and the strike at the West coast parts has delayed the shipping of some airplane parts that normally come in by container.
Flightaware showing the activity around Seattle-Tacoma airport, located at the south end of the Puget Sound. The KSEA is the airport navigation beacon’s identifier.
I’m home .. my flight went without incident. I sat in row 10 on the Alaska Air Boeing 737 the way I normally do. So why do we have a sound, and San Francisco has a bay? I wondered as we landed. Well. Did Wikipedia have an answer for me – and more :
In geography a sound is a large sea or ocean inlet larger than a bay, deeper than a bight, and wider than a fjord; or a narrow sea or ocean channel between two bodies of land (see also strait).
Now I know there is something such as a bight as well. A bight is a shallow sound.
The Alaska Airlines flight this morning from Seattle to San Francisco left out of Terminal A this morning – all the way at its very end where gates A13 and A14 are located.
This work of art is called Pantopol V (1972), and the artist is Ted Jonsson. There’s two Willems in the reflection.And there is the painting on the window panes, just lit up from behind with the sunrise.
It’s official (say I) : we had no winter here in the Pacific Northwest. Yes, there was a little snow in November, as I noted in this post, and a few cold nights and mornings in December – but that was it. Check out the gorgeous blue sky from this picture on Saturday, as I walked down John Street to the gym, the temperature approaching 60 °F (15 °C).
I’m on John St, approaching Broadway, with the new Capitol Hill Light Rail station’s construction starting to emerge above the fence around it. The lime green building on the right is Queen Sheba, an Ethiopian restaurant.
Seattle’s State Route 99 boring machine* (Bertha) ran into trouble while boring through sloppy old tide flat dirt and fill material. Some of the water and abrasive material made it past the seals designed to keep it out and into critical bearings for the cutters on the head of the boring machine, causing it to overheat. So a big hole had to be dug to get to the cutter head, lift it out, and repair it. (The stoppage occurred in December 2013, and the project is now some two years behind schedule).
At midday Thursday, the top portion of the SR 99 tunneling machine’s cutterhead broke through the southern wall of the access pit. It will be several months before boring can continue, and there is still a long way to go.
*A tunnel boring machine with a cutting head that is 17.5 m (57 ft) in diameter.
Only about 1.000 ft of the State Route 99 Tunnel has been bored (at the tunnel’s south portal) .. there is still a mile and a half to go!The pit to reach the boring machine’s cutter head is about 120 ft deep. Check out the inside of the wall on the left. The cutter head has bored through the hole’s concrete wall.The local alternative newspapers are NOT happy with Bertha’s troubles. A terrain sinkage of about a quarter inch in the immediate ares is also blamed on Bertha’s digging.
A ground plaque at Westlake Center in downtown Seattle asks ‘What started the Great (1889) Seattle Fire?’ Answer : a pot of glue that boiled over in a cabinet maker’s shop.
I had some business downtown on Friday, and managed to escape from my conference calls and work only at 4 pm. I hopped on the bus so that I could avoid dealing with rush-hour traffic (the bus driver still has to deal with it, of course!). We have balmy winter weather here in the Pacific Northwest, even as the brutal cold and snow storms continue to batter the Northeast of the USA.
It was clear and mild on Sunday for my little Capitol Hill walkabout. I like to check out the status of the numerous apartment buildings under construction. This one on Republican and 14th Avenue has been completed. Nice enough? The wood’s color is just a lot more striking than perhaps the architect intended. And will the varnish stand up against the wind and rain (when it inevitably comes?).
The Yardhouse is a new studio and one-bedroom apartment block on Seattle’s Capitol Hill... and just out of curiosity I pulled up the website. This artist rendition’s colors are quite muted. Maybe the website should put up a real picture now that the building’s construction has been completed?
Bryan, Gary and I went to the annual flower and garden show here in the Convention Center in downtown Seattle. The pictures are of some of my favorite exhibits.
A cute ‘mushroom’ gnome cottage with a lane of daffodils leading to it.Is this garden shed (I think it’s a garden shed) too whimsical for such a practical purpose?The red tulips are striking in this display. Maybe these had been grown in a green house, since it’s still a while before the tulip fields in Skagit Valley north of Seattle will be in full bloom (in spring, around April).
It felt like spring here in Seattle on Friday with very mild weather (57 °F/ 14 °C) .. which was good because I had several errands to run. Lots of ‘new’ things happened. I took two new pairs of pants to the tailor to adjust them, and I checked into my firm’s newly refurbished office space (we just moved up 10 floors in our building in downtown Seattle). And while I was there – I picked up my new Lenovo notebook computer and a new ‘jet pack*’ network device as well !
*It’s a little device that uses the phone network to provide wireless connectivity anywhere in the USA. Yes, airports provide free wireless internet access, but many times it is just too slow.
Here’s a glimpse up north on Broadway at the Seattle Community College. The two sets of rails in the surface of the road is for a new street car (not yet in service). And check out the line of parking spots between the street car and the bike lanes. Better be VERY careful while getting out after one had parked one’s car!This picture of higher-or-lower-compared-to-hisrorical-temperatures is from Cliff Mass’s weather blog. There is a high-pressure ridge in place that assures the western USA of higher than normal weather. Meanwhile – in the east – there is yet more snow and very frigid weather expected.
It’s foggy and forty (5 °C), even here in the slightly higher elevations of the city where I am on Capitol Hill’s 15th Avenue. I took the picture at 10.00 pm on Friday night.
At the gate at San Francisco airport. Over at the next gate is a Sun Country Airlines Boeing 737. No, it’s not a foreign airline : the airline is based in Minneapolis–Saint Paul in Minnesota, and has a fleet of 21 airplanes.This is the C concourse of Seattle airport after my arrival. My first thought was the 3 means three days to the Superbowl! but no – it’s of course the No 3 jersey of Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson.
It’s been a tough work week for me, and I was very happy to drive out to San Francisco airport Thursday afternoon. Our flight was on time, and went without incident, which I am always thankful for. The guy right next to me brought a large pizza on board for dinner. A woman in front of me had her hair dyed in three colors. Hmm, I thought. The two shades of brown look great, but that reddish brown is one color too many. But none of my business, right?
Russell Wilson with the NFC trophy (shouldn’t the trophy be a little bigger?). The Seahawks will meet the New England Patriots in the Superbowl two weeks from now.
Oh, I cannot watch this any longer, I thought, as the Seahawks were down 0-16 at half-time. Let me get my errands done before it gets too late. (I fly out to San Francisco in the morning, hope my ear is going to be OK). Then in the 4th quarter I learned that the Hawks were rapidly catching up and going for broke. By the time I got home they were up 22-19. The Packers put in a field goal to even at 22-22. Time was up, and now it was into overtime. Three minutes in, Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson threw a perfect ball 35 yards down the middle to Jermaine Kearse for the winning touchdown.
Here’s a bird’s eye view* of the city of Seattle, looking south with the ’12th man’ (Seahawks football team supporter) flag atop the Space Needle. Other tall buildings sport the blue and green colors of the team as well. The action on Sunday at 12 noon is in the stadium at the top right of the picture, where the Seahawks play against the Greenbay Packers for a spot in the Superbowl.
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.
Should we read anything into this arrangement? There is no 4 in the artwork, and no cross/ plus sign. And it would certainly have been awful to accidentally end up with a something like a swastika in it.
The Poodle Dog Restaurant off Highway 99 was started in 1933, originally in railcars, and still serves classic greasy spoon diner food.I love truss bridges like these, but man! most were built shortly after World War II and are 50 years old. This is in the Tacoma area.The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is a pair of twin suspension bridges that span the Tacoma Narrows strait of Puget Sound, and connects Tacoma with the Kitsap peninsula. We’re traveling westbound on the older of the two bridges. The oncoming traffic’s bridge is new and was completed in 2007.Christmas Day, and we’re inspecting the seawall along the properties. Logs, rocks, seawalls – all help to stabilize the land .. but they interfere with the inter-tidal habitat of little creatures in the sand and on the coast. The new seawall along Seattle’s waterfront will try to mimic some of the features of a coastline with steps and terraces.There are little trails in the woods around Hansville as well. The trail was a little squishy but not too muddy.And of course, here is the sunset. The sun sets far to the south on the western horizon at this time of year.
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.
