Category: Seattle

It is a long weekend here in the USA with Memorial Day on Monday .. so I could relax and not start preparing for my weekly trip to Denver.  We spent time on the Seattle Waterfront today, even though there was a steady drizzle all afternoon.

 

My new fence is up! Yay!  So this on the north side of my property.  It’s a little higher than the old fence.  And I have finally run out of excuses – like not enough sun – to put some ground cover thingies and other green in at the back, so I will have to get to that.  The green bush was a lot bigger prior to the work on the fence, and will grow back to fill up some of the space as well.

 

I ran some errands Friday morning, but then had I to go home and answer a dozen e-mails that came in from the Denver project.  Technology brings the work e-mails to my smart phone, but I cannot pull up full screen work sheets and applications on a tiny phone screen!

I made it in to my Seattle home at around 2 pm this afternoon.  The flight went well; Lufthansa took good care of us and I managed to sleep a little bit.   It’s just all those time zones we crossed to get here : my body clock has a lot of adjustment to do.

 

 

It rained on and off all day here in Seattle, and so when the sun came out and struck the new green leaves on the tree in the street, I went to the upstairs window to take a look. That’s when I noticed the rainbow. I ran downstairs and took a picture.  All rainbows appear opposite of where the sun is (so I am looking east), and they are actually are full circles! – but most observers just see what is to them, the upper half of the arc.

In the news from the home front this week for me: what started as a blockage in a downstairs toilet, turned out to have been caused by a serious blockage in the sewer line going from my house to the street (it was plugged up with several feet of a fine network of plant roots).

In the news for the USA this week : 1. Obamacare enrollment for its inaugural year ended Monday. The new law is a success: 7.1 million people signed up, exceeding the target despite the glitches in the healthcare.gov website all October of last year.   2. An Iraq vet being treated for mental health issues killed thee people on the Ft Hood base in Texas before killing himself.   3. The March jobs number is 192k, falling short of the 200k expected. Unemployment unchanged at 6.7%.    4.  Will the searchers ever find that lost Malaysian Airlines jet?

 

The Emerald City Comicon (‘comic convention’) is held this weekend here at the Washington State Convention Center.  It is billed as the premier comic book and pop culture event in the Pacific Northwest.  As I walked by there this morning (on the way for a quick stop at the office), I thought for a moment I should go – but later found out all three days are sold out.

It must have been a very tough day in the Oso and Darrington area in Washington State with 14 people now confirmed dead, and many, many more still reported as missing. Hopes that anyone may still be pulled out of the debris are fading.

Here is a before-and-after slider photo of the massive landslide.  The area received double the amount of the normal rainfall this season.

I walked down to Madison Park and the Japanese Garden here this afternoon.  It was a beautiful day with sunshine and blue sky, but it is still not short sleeve weather (got up to 53°F/ 12°C).  I was hoping to find cherry blossoms on the cherry tree from Mt Fuji in the garden, but it’s too early for that.  Washington DC is famous for its cherry blossoms as well, and I see the ‘peak bloom’ there is forecast for between April 7 and April 11.

Saturday brought news of a deadly landslide that happened east of the town of Oso here in Washington state.  Three people have been killed, more in critical condition in the hospital; 6 houses destroyed and 16 others damaged.  As of Saturday night a rescue effort was still underway to find more people trapped in the debris.  The mud and debris also blocks the Stillaguamish river, and people are warned to stay out of the downstream area.  The blocked body of water is increasing in size, and can break through at any time.

I ran out today for lunch with an old friend. He and his partner have a condo on the 28th floor in downtown Seattle, so of course I had to take a picture of the city from there.  I also took care of many little outstanding and annoying errands : new printer cartridge for my home office, new C-size battery for the alarm clock in the bathroom (yes, bathroom : so that I am not late for the cab at 4 am on Monday mornings! hurry up sleepy head!), food for the weekend, cash withdrawal from the bank, changed into some $5 bills ($20s are no good for cab fares* and tipping in Denver).

*I should try the cash-free slick Uber car service some time soon, and ditch the taxis that still want cash.

My Sundays go very quickly when I have to prepare to travel on Monday.  This one had an hour cut out of it, to boot : Daylight Savings Time is starting again in the USA, so we had to set our watches forward by one hour today.    I did go for a walk this afternoon.  The lawns and ground is soggy from all the rain, but the sidewalks were nice and dry.

I canceled my travel to Denver for the week, so there was no early flight to Denver for me this morning.  I’m much better but not yet able to fly.

We are in for a wet week here in Seattle. The up-to-date Yahoo Weather screen (very nicely done, the layout and all the information) even has an alert, warning of landslides in western Washington.   The temperatures are well above freezing, though (in Celsius on the pictures below).

I ran some errands in downtown Seattle on Friday, and stepped on a Seattle City Light manhole cover (below) as I waited for the traffic light to change. Ok, I thought : I recog- nize this American Indian style of art, but I’ll be darned if I can figure out of this is an eagle or a bear or .. what? Turns out it’s a Tlingit whale.

[From Wikipedia] The Tlingit are an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their name for themselves is Lingít, meaning “People of the Tides”. They are actually not whale hunters. Delineating the modern territory of the Tlingit is complicated because they are spread across the border between the United States and Canada, they lack designated reservations, other complex legal and political concerns make the situation confusing, and there is a relatively high level of mobility among the population.

 

Several rain storms are moving across the Pacific Northwest this weekend (bringing snow in the mountains, not rain). It has not been a very wet winter, though; we’re at about 75% of the normal precipitation so far.  But much further south on the west coast it is bone dry, for the third straight year. California is experiencing its driest year on record, dating back 119 years, and reservoirs throughout the state have very low water levels. Santa Clara county reservoirs are at 3 percent of capacity or lower.

in the South Lake Union area.

.. the sadly neglected old house with its corner turret here on 16th Avenue on Capitol Hill. It’s just a block from my house and I have walked by it many times.  I knew it could be gone by the next time I had returned from Denver, though – that excavator was an ominous sign!

(Hey! I see I have made 1,500 posts on this blog, how about that?). Saturday night’s snow had long stopped by the time I got up on Sunday morning .. but I felt compelled to go out and walk to Volunteer Park.  We don’t get snow that often here in the city, and some of those times I would find myself away from home.

It is snowing here in Seattle.  It started around 6.30 pm, just as we walked a few blocks from my house to the Thai restaurant on 15th Ave.  Earlier I understood from the weather forecast we could expect a few flurries and not much more, but the time we left the restaurant at around 8 pm, the snow had already started to stick on the streets. It is powdery and dry, and goes crunch-crunch-crunch as you step on it on the sidewalk.

The Seattle Seahawks are the Superbowl Champs!  Congratulations!  There was a little fireworks display at the Space Needle afterwards, and we could hear people cheering inside the apartments and condos and houses here in the downtown area.  It was the Seahawks from the start .. just 12 seconds into the game they had 2 points on the board.  In the game’s first snap* the ball flew by Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning and into their end zone for a a Seattle Seahawks safety (2 points). Confession : snap and safety are new terms for me.  It would be 36-0 before the Broncos got on the scoreboard .. but they never really were in the game, once it had started.

*the backwards passing of the ball at the start of play from scrimmage

Dan Wentzel wrote on Yahoo Sports just after the game : Seattle plays in the Pacific Northwest, far from the nation’s traditional media centers, lacks many household stars and is led by a coach in Carroll who is rarely credited for his coaching acumen.  Whatever doubts were out there, were unfounded. They didn’t need stars or gaudy stats. Seattle had a team – clearly the best team in the NFL.