a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
I live in the wettest part of the lower 48 states (number of days with precipitation), and the last two weeks of November is the wettest part of the year. It looks like this year is no exception! The 24-hour totals at Bremerton west of Seattle is at about 4 inches, and one place on the Olympic peninsula had 6 inches of rain.
Here’s a little public ‘sticker art’ I found, drawn on a US Postal Service priority label and pasted onto a street sign in downtown Seattle. I’m done with my workout at the gym and standing at the traffic light. It’s only 5.20 pm but the sunlight is long gone. The sun sets at about 4.30 pm, and the days will grow even shorter for the next month or so.
I ran out to Macy’s in downtown Seattle to get a replacement battery for my Seiko watch ($10.95 for battery and labor, a bargain). My stop at Nordstrom’s was considerably more expensive, since I got away with a short and two pairs of pants. At least I did not buy the really classy indigo brushed-cashmere coat/jacket with a removable inner lining that the assistant brought me to try on. It was $1,400! Whoah, did you know it was this expensive? I asked her. (And thinking -Man! I’m not Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller*!). Seems it was just a simple mistake, though. She didn’t look at the price before she brought it to me.
*Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was an American businessman, philanthropist, public servant, and politician. He served as the 41st Vice President of the United States, serving under President Gerald Ford, and as the 49th Governor of New York. He inherited a vast family fortune and a family image that he had to live down in order to achieve his political ambitions.
It is just past 11 pm on Saturday night here in Seattle. In three more hours, at 2 am, we will turn our clocks back one hour to make them Standard Time again (except the state of Arizona, since they don’t observe Daylight Savings Time). Watch out if you walk around after dark with traffic nearby! A Carnegie Mellon University study found that pedestrians are three times as likely to be hit and killed by cars in the few weeks after the time change back to Standard Time.
The maple tree from next door is shedding its leaves the way it always does in fall. I run out and sweep them up every other day or so, when there is a break in the rain. I’m also keeping an eye on Hurricane Sandy that is moving up on the East coast. I am scheduled to fly out to Pennsylvania on Tuesday, to the projected eastern edge of the hurricane.
We went to Columbia City Alehouse in the south of the city tonight for some beers and food. Check out the cute white pup outside patiently waiting for its masters inside.
I stopped at Bellevue Square today. The Apple store in there has been moved into a bigger space. Weather-wise there was some nice sun breaks and blue sky to be seen today, but it was chilly outside, in the 50s (about 10 C).
Seattle City Light (electrical utility company) is moving ahead with plans for building a new substation in the city, the first one in 30 years. The site used to be a Greyhound bus maintenance facility a long time ago. Early planning is that 115kV or 230kV transmission lines will come into the substation. The three alternatives under consideration are:
– A downtown underground route, primarily along Sixth Avenue
– A route that utilizes the downtown Metro bus tunnel
– An aerial route that crosses I-5 twice and traverses Capitol Hill << this does not sound good! Yes, it’s cheap, but unsightly and not nearly as safe as an underground route.
Washingtonians vote by mail only. So we have no walk-in polling stations where get ink on your fingers and go into a little voting booth. The ballots arrive in the mail, and you mail it in, or go put it in a designated ballot box in your area. I got my ballot in the mail as well, on Thursday. I don’t think it’s legal to publish a picture of it, so I won’t. We have lots to vote for! Of course there is the President to vote for, but we also vote for a Governor, whether to legalize and control marijuana sales, whether to legalize same-sex marriage, and if charter schools should be funded by the state, among other things.
Alright : barring a cataclysm of some sort, some serious rain is finally on the way for the Puget Sound region. We have only had 0.03 inches TOTAL in 80 days! The air here smells dusty and of the dry leaves I swept off the garage roof and cleaned out of the gutters today. And is that smoke I smell in the air? .. from the wildfires on the other side of the mountains that are still not completely out. All of that will be cleaned out with the rain.
I like this sign across from the grocery store two blocks from my house for two reasons. 1. It has a vintage neon sign that looks really nice when it gets dark. 2. The ‘complete plant’ in the building (see it on the right?) actually points in a way to the 21st century where new buildings may very well have their own complete (power) plants. As power generation becomes more common from rooftop solar and wind generators, or diesel or natural gas generators inside buildings, the differences between distribution and transmission grids will continue to blur.
It’s the start of Halloween month, the start of the final 2012 quarter (will the Dow Jones crack or not?) and we’re into the final stretch of the 2012 US General Election (will President Obama prevail?). The sun is still shining brightly almost every day here in Seattle. I have all but given up expectations for any rain at all to fall down on Rain City this year (I’m joking, but that’s how it feels).
That is the question that Skanska* asks on this billboard in South Lake Union that made me stop and take a look at it. You can also express your urban planning ideas on a website they have set up. (I’m still mulling over my ideas). Amazon’s offices are just a block or two away.
*Skanska is a Swedish design-and-build construction and engineering company that is also doing some roadwork for Seattle’s Alaskan Viaduct replacement project.
It’s the Green Bay Packers 12, Seattle Seahawks 7. It’s the final play in the 4th quarter. Seahawks rookie quarterback Russell Wilson pass deep left to Golden Tate (blue #81 shirt) for 24 yards. It is ruled as a TOUCHDOWN (check out the animated picture from SB Nation). The replay assistant challenged the pass completion ruling, but the play was — upheld. Place kicker Hauschka adds a point. Seattle wins 14-12. There’s more : the regular NFL referees are still ‘locked out’ due to a contract dispute, so the replacement refs had to do the best they can. Today (Tuesday) the NFL admits an error was made but upheld the outcome of the game. Even President Obama weighed in on Twitter (see below). So we will see if the contract dispute with the referees get resolved soon. My view : the NFL is awash in cash. What is so hard about it?
This afternoon I went to check out our new and own little ‘London Eye’ Ferris wheel right here in Seattle. (The Great Wheel has been in operation since the end of June, actually. Also see seattlegreatwheel.com). The Wheel was a $20m investment (funded privately) and is designed to draw visitors to the Seattle waterfront, in part to address concerns that the construction of the waterfront tunnel nearby will keep visitors away.
I finally got my car back on Monday: brand new radiator, water pump, timing belt and all. Still, I walked to Volunteer Park by my house for a little exercise on Monday instead of driving to the gym. The conservatory there is 100 years old, says the signs on the lamp posts there.
The Wilcox footbridge connects the Seattle Arboretum (botanical garden) with the Capitol Hill neighborhood. It gets pedestrians across the busy Lake Washington Blvd. below. Weather-wise : still no sign of rain here in Seattle after a very slight sprinkle a week ago. The Cliff Mass Weather Blog states that the first rain-bearing Pacific front usually reaches us around the third week of August.
So .. what floats your boat? Are you a sailing enthusiast? It’s very romantic (romantic as in roaming, and adventure). Or would you go for a luxury motor yacht? To buy one outright will take a hefty chunk of money, and then a bite every time to fill up your floating home-on-the-water’s 2,500 gallon tank with diesel. Here are just a few pictures to give a taste of what was going on.
It was just too perfect a day not to go outside for a walk, and so I did. I walked down from my house to the Japanese Garden, adjacent to a much larger park called the Washington Park Arboretum. It’s no more than a mile or so. The pictures are all from inside the Japanese Garden.
I always look for the posters for Seattle’s annual music and performing arts festival called ‘Bumbershoot*’. This one was one a newspaper box on the street.
*Bumbershoot means umbrella! Bumber- (alteration of umbr- in umbrella) + -shoot (alteration of -chute in parachute). First Known Use: circa 1896. [source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bumbershoot].
