My name on my birthday card envelope written to show that it can almost – but not quite – be made to look and be read as a palindrome (reading the same back to front, as from front to back).
Monday is probably the worst day of the week for a birthday. But even though I left it very late to check in with my compadres, we did go out to a restaurant for a bite and a beer. The place is in the Madrona neighborhood, called St Cloud and bills itself as ‘contemporary comfort food in an urban neighborhood setting’. On the way in we spotted a distinguished guest inside the restaurant : our congressman Jim McDermott. We sat outside on a deck in what looked like a house’s back yard. I had the garlic-fried chicken with mashed potato and broccoli (very good) and a white Belgian beer.
My ‘Blanche De Bruxelles’ white Belgian beer sported the Mannekin Pis from Brussels on the label. How rude! (but I like it).
My block here on Capital Hill had its annual Block Party today. We block off the street and socialize for a few hours with each other. It was well attended, and of course I shocked some people on the block when I told them I have been living in my house for 11 years. (Well .. I travel a lot, and I use the back entrance, I say every time). So it was nice to make new acquaintances and renew old ones. I learned that the husband of a couple on the corner is from Australia. He survived adjusting to the Seattle weather, and they still travel to Australia regularly. He noted that Qantas hands out pyjamas to their first class and business class passengers .. which prompted me to search for it online. (It’s gray with a black Qantas kangeroo on). And I found a report from the Australian Herald Sun about a couple in first class that held up a Qantas A380 flight from Los Angeles : there were no extra-large pyjamas available for them. They got off the airplane and went out on a flight the following day. The pyjamas are designed by Akira Isogawa, one of Australia’s most prominent contemporary fashion designers. Got to have ’em!
A sneak peek out of my window onto the street below in front of my house. I spent a good two hours getting acquainted and re-acquainted with some neighbors on my block.
What the heck is quinoa? I wondered, but nevertheless bought a bag of rice with quinoa at the grocery store. I cooked it Thursday night for dinner. It’s good! and so I had to read all about it on Wikipedia. The plant was first domesticated by the Andean people some 3,000 years ago. It’s becoming very popular in the USA, China and Japan. In its natural state it has saponins, a mild eye and respiratory irritant. Most of that is removed for consumption outside of its indigenous countries, though. And finally, The United Nations declared 2013 is the International Year of Quinoa, in recognition of the ancestral practices of the Andean people.
This is from a news clip that was carried on CNN, and also posted on Yahoo. Chinese state media in the city of Luohe in Henan tried to pass off a big hairy dog as a lion.
The African ‘lion’ in a zoo in Luohe in Henan province in China is really a Tibetan mastiff. The big dog gave the ploy away when it barked at on-lookers. Aw. (Yes, that mane looks a little too manicured and mono-colored!).Here is a different picture of a red Tibetan mastiff that I found on-line, all fluffed up. A beautiful dog, but man! how much food does it need every day? The Tibetan mastiff is one of several ‘giant breeds’ of dogs. Some others that come to mind are St. Bernards and Great Danes.
It was 10 years ago to the day on Wednesday that the Eastern Interconnection Blackout left 50 million people out of power for some 48 hours. A series of uncorrected problems in northern Ohio (tree limbs falling on power lines, operators not getting information quickly enough and not acting quickly enough) developed to a point that a cascading blackout of the entire eastern grid became inevitable. So what is an ‘interconnection’, and have we started to address some of the vulnerabilities in the grid? Interconnections are collections of electricity utilities that are electrically tied together during normal system conditions that operate at a synchronized frequency. These interconnections can in turn be tied to each other with High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) power transmission lines, or with variable frequency transformers. The construction of the Tres Amigas Superstation was announced in 2009 and is about to be put into operation. The goal of tying together three major power grids is to increase the reliability of the national grid, and to make it easier to accommodate the transmission of renewable power from one region to another.
A diagram of the cascade sequence from the ‘Interim Report: Causes of the August 14th Blackout in the United States and Canada’, November 2003The Tres Amigas (‘Three Friends’) Superstation is located in Clovis, New Mexico.A rendering of the major elements of the Tres Amigas superstation.
The teabag is a pyramid-shaped fine nylon mesh, and that’s roasted rice with the green tea. And check out the tag, designed to latch onto the rim of the teacup. How fancy is THAT?I haven’t tried the black English Breakfast tea yet. The cute little guy on the packaging reminds me of a ‘jelly baby’. (A gummy candy that has been around the UK and South Africa forever, but that never really caught on in the USA. I wonder why not?).
Check out my fancy pants green tea that I bought on Monday, along with some black tea. I’m trying to revive my liking and taste for green tea that I acquired in China. The green tea is up against serious competition as my favorite hot beverage : black English Breakfast tea and Starbucks’ medium-roast coffee. The green tea needs to be steeped for only a minute (or even for only 30 seconds). It’s fun to let it cool down, and then swallow it in three or four big gulps. Its roasted rice/ green tea after-taste sits on your tongue for a while.
Here is the news Coming to you every hour on the hour (Here is the news) The weather’s fine but there may be a meteor shower.. – From the song ‘Here is the news’ by Electric Light Orchestra (1982)
A shooting star! Quick, Snowy, make a wish! says Tintin. This is on the opening page of Herge’s Tintin book called ‘The Shooting Star’.
The Perseid Meteor Shower of 2013 (it comes around every year) is said to be more visible than usual with the moon out of the way. So late last night I did go outside and tried to see a ‘shooting star’ (a misnomer for a meteoroid), but with the trees and the clouds in the way I had no luck. I think it will help to have a powerful telescope as well !
Here is a spectacular picture of a Perseid meteor seen from the Mojave desert in California. (Twitter picture from Paul Dellegatto with credit to Wally Pacholka).
Here’s a live sand dollar with its deep purple spiny covering. There are plenty of sand dollar shells to be seen on the beach and in the shallow water after the tide had gone out.We were treated to a beautiful sunset in the western sky on Saturday night. This is about 8.30 pm and the sun has just disappeared below the horizon.This is on the way back. We’re about to drive onto the Kingston ferry for a short trip across the water to Washington State’s mainland.
We all went out to Paul’s ‘cabin-in-the-woods’ (it’s really a house) in Hansville on Kitsap peninsula and some of us stayed over on Saturday night. The peninsula is covered with pine trees – very green – and surrounded by water from the Puget Sound. So the tide comes in and goes out, and there are sea gulls, bald eagles, heron, kingfishers and osprey to be seen. (I need a long-range telephoto lens to have any hope of taking nice pictures of the birds, though).
Here is an outline of our trip. We went out on the Bainbridge Island ferry. Then it’s a 40 minute drive up north to Hansville (purple dotted line). On the way back we went with the Kingston-to-Edmonds ferry, and drove south on I-5 to the city (red dotted line). The Naval Base Kitsap is close by (round marker on the map), but we were not lucky enough to see any submarines come in or go out to the open sea.This steel bridge joins the north end of Bainbridge Island with the Kitsap peninsula. It is called the Agate Pass Bridge and opened on October 7, 1950.
Dr Tung – really? What a fortunate coincidence if the doctor selling tongue cleaners has such a name : ). I found this nifty item on Amazon.
Earlier this week Yahoo’s Daily Shot recommended that we occasionally clean our tongues. Check out Ali Wentworth’s very funny clip with a dentist here. Alright, I’m sold, I thought. I’ll go find a tongue scraper to clean my tongue with. Well, it’s not so easy. My local Walgreens (drug store, or pharmacy as it is called outside the USA) sells two dozen different kind of toothbrushes but no devices for cleaning a tongue. So I will try another store or two before I resort to the giant on-line store of Amazon that has everything.
Eden of the East is a Japanese anime television series, which was shown on Fuji TV throughout Japan in 2009.Here is a street scene, I think this is in Tokyo. The backgrounds are very detailed and realistic. Yes, animated movies from American studios have plenty of detail in as well, but they never seem to play out in real cities. It’s always in imaginary made-up places.
I try to take out a DVD now and again at the 15th Ave video store close to my house .. while it is still there. It’s probably only a matter of time before it closes its doors due to all the streaming movies that are now available on line and on Netflix. Still, this store rents out movies that you would have to buy on Amazon to see. My latest pick was ‘Eden of the East’, a Japanese anime television series. This is not Disney fare, and don’t be misled by the ‘innocent’ wide-eyed faces on the cover of the Blu-ray box! There is violence, nudity, risqué humor, alcohol and tobacco use on display. The movie has an interesting plot : a mysterious Mr ‘Outside’ gives twelve young people almost unlimited power via a cell phone concierge, and the resources of a Power ball lottery winner (¥8 billion, some $US 100 million) to compete with each other and to try to address the general economic and social challenges Japan. (Exactly what constitutes a problem and what does not, is of course wide open to interpretation and political points of view. Here in the USA some Republicans now want to shut down the government because 30 million people can now get affordable health care. It is ‘ immoral’ and unacceptable that the government ‘meddled’ in the private health insurance industry with new laws). The movie also features 20,000 NEETs (young men with No Employment, Education or Training) and a hikikomori. This is a person, usually a young man, that refuses to leave the house and interact with society, preferring to play video games or program computers instead. Anyway : the plot thickens, stuff explodes, people die but then towards the end the plot falls apart a somewhat, and the conclusion of the whole complicated set-up was a little unsatisfying and a little too ‘easy’ and ‘simple’. But I really liked the art, the animation, and the issues that the movie raised as part of the plot.
Here is one of the agents using his super futuristic smart phone. Interesting that the phones are all of the ‘clam shell’ form. Smartphones no longer look like that! And the days are long gone since Japan was the land of uniquely advanced mobile phones with internet capabilities and lots of other features rarely seen elsewhere.
The Georgetown Brewing Co. is located just south of downtown Seattle. I see they signed their homepage ‘Manny and Roger’. Manny must be the Manny in Manny’s Pale Ale, and then Roger is the pilsner guy.
Here’s my coaster that matches the beer I had Wednesday night with my amigos in the Columbia City neighborhood. (No, I did not win the jackpot. So I will keep my job, write my blog and count my many blessings with regards to health and friends and family). Check out the GEICO commercial with the camel roaming the cubicles, asking everyone if they know what day it is.
‘Guess what day it is? asks the camel. ‘It’s hump day’, replies Julie in a quiet, resigned voice without looking up.
Here is what a Powerball lottery ticket in Washington State looks like. I don’t know what that 1 in 31.8 odds prize is, but it can’t be much ($100?)Here is how the odds stack up (against you). The table shows how many ‘white ball’ numbers should match the winning number. Of course, for the Grand Prize, all six numbers and the red ‘power ball’ must match !The Powerball web page. Not all states participate, but many do. Check out the ‘Current Estimated Jackpot’ at $425 million.
Whoah. The Powerball jackpot drawing of this Wednesday is up to a staggering $ 425 (Four-Hundred-and-Twenty-Five) million bucks. So have I bought a ticket? You betcha! Ok, I know I should not have, right? But I was curious to see what a ticket looks like. (And besides : previous times when jackpot fever had broken out here in the USA, I always seemed to be out of the country, or found myself in the wrong State, one that does not participate in the jackpot).
The odds of winning the Grand Prize is truly astronomical. Since the sun is about 92 million miles from earth, the odds of winning is similar to one mile against the distance from Earth to the sun and back.
On my walkabout Monday night I saw that the empty Chutney’s Grille on the Hill restaurant building here on 15th Ave is now clad in wood. The building is ultimately destined to make way for a new four-story, mixed-use apartment building.
The skeleton of the closed ‘Chutneys Grille on the Hill’ is clad with wooden pallet beams .. best I can tell, it’s meant as outdoor art until the demolition man comes.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 has a 41 megapixel camera, outrageous and unheard of! Is it a camera with a phone on? Is it a phone with a camera on?
I know I cannot hold on to my aging iPhone 4 forever, but I’m going to hang in there a few months longer. There’s always the iPhone 5 (to be replaced by the 5s or iPhone 6 come November; no one knows for sure). The Android phone universe has the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One. And Google has just demonstrated their upcoming Moto X phone, the product of their acquisition of handset maker Motorola. It seems to be a phone aimed at the masses – not a phone for geeks that want the latest Snapdragon processor and the sharpest display. What do I want in a phone? For me the camera specs are paramount. Soo .. should I spring for the Nokia Lumia 1020 with its monster 41-megapixel camera? A big drawback is that it’s a Windows 8 phone. (Interface probably OK, but still very few Windows 8 applications out there). Time will tell.
Google’s new Moto X phone has middle-of-the-pack hardware but some innovative voice command features.
Hopefully there was still enough sunlight with the rain on Friday to keep the Big Belly compacting trash can operating !
1. Friday saw a 35-day day streak broken here in the city with a few welcome rain showers. (Per the Seattle Weather blog July was the driest in 50 years here! .. but we did have plenty of rain in April).
2. I spotted a new (new to me, at least) ‘Big Belly’ solar trash compactor on the corner of Yale and Stewart. It looks like a US Mailbox. It uses solar power to compress trash put into it, and electronically alerts trash collectors through a web-based system when its belly is full. The smarty pants trash can with the big belly comes at a price, though : they cost about $5,000 apiece.
Alright, I will have to ‘fess up. I went out to Antelope Island State Park on Wednesday, because I knew I will probably not be back in Salt Lake City for work for quite some time. We received word that the funding for our project had been cut. So Thursday was our last day at the site – at least until some time in 2014 at this point. So there is still hope that the project will be resurrected, but the work may be shifted to another site, and the current team members may no longer be available.
There was some cloud cover, and a few drops of rain fell as we arrived at Salt Lake City airport on Thursday to go home.
So here are ‘real’ pictures of the State Park. I jumped at it last night when we got back to the hotel, and drove out there. I only had my cell phone with me, but it was good enough to take some pretty spectacular pictures. It was very dry and very warm (99 °F/ 37°C), but there is a musty, salty smell in the air close to the water. There are ‘beaches’ and campgrounds in the park, and some hiking trails. I think one needs a shower after swimming in the Great Salt Lake, though! (The beach that I stopped at, had showers).
A roadside plaque explains the history of the causeway that was built to connect the mainland to the northern part of the island.This sign is on the island itself, after you have driven onto it using a causeway that connects it to the mainland.This is the view from the causeway, with water from the Great Salt Lake on both sides, and looking east towards Salt Lake City.This is a view from the causeway looking south. The Great Salt Lake’s water is very shallow here but makes for a giant ‘earth’ mirror.This is on Antelope Island .. that brown speck in the middle of the picture on the right is a bison! I couldn’t get much closer, and the cell phone has a wide-angle lens which makes it appear to be far away. There is about 500 bison on the island .... and the antelope that the Park is named after is a pronghorn antelope. There is a female antelope on the left of the picture, looking at me. She was waiting for me to drive on, and then she scampered across the road to join her mate on the other side. The island has some 200 of these antelope, about 500 mule deer, and 120 California Big Horn sheep.
Our Marriott Courtyard hotel is in Layton, between Salt Lake City and Ogden. It’s on Antelope Drive. We leave the hotel too early to get breakfast or even coffee in the morning, so we checked out the Starbuckses closest to the hotel. The two green balloons at the top right is where we are, on Antelope Avenue. That’s when I noticed there is an Antelope Island in the Salt Lake; turns out the whole island is a State Park. So now I have to find time to drive out there on the water with that ‘Syracuse’ road to go and check it out. Google Maps is always there to provide a preview, of course (and spoil the fun of discovering it for real a little bit. We live in the information age and nothing seems to be completely hidden away anymore!).
Our hotel is by the two green balloons at the top right. No Starbuckses on Antelope Island (I would HOPE not : the whole island is a State Park).The scenery on Utah’s Antelope Island State Park (courtesy of Google Maps and Google Streetview) reminds me of the arid Karoo region in South Africa.
It is 6 am on Monday morning at Sea-Tac airport and I am in the ‘Sky Priority’ lane to try to get in ahead of my fellow passengers.
How did I get to be a Delta ‘Sky Priority’ Platinum member, since I have flown mostly on United the prior year? Well, you apply for a ‘status match’ with your new airline. Your new ‘preferred’ airline grants you a temporary elite status* match for three months to see if you are actually bringing them enough flying to justify your temporary status. (If you don’t, your elite status disappears and you have to earn it the hard way with a full year of flying enough miles). So while my new Delta Platinum status did not get me upgraded to the luxe first class seats this Monday, it did help me get out of the middle seat in the back of the airplane to a seat further up to the front on the aisle, and with more legroom.
*Please don’t be too jealous of my ‘elite’ flying status. All it means is that I fly a lot, and that I sometimes Iuck out and sit in front of the plane !
