So .. how did this happen? (Broken rear view mirror on the 
driver side of my venerable 1996 Toyota Camry Driving Machine). Well, it really wasn’t my fault .. I had the car parked flush to the curb while I was at dinner on Friday night. When we arrived back at the car, I noticed the damage. The perpetrator left a note and a phone number on the windshield, though, explaining that she clipped the mirror while driving, and damaging it. (Which I really appreciated. It makes a big difference knowing it was an accident and the person is owning up to it, as opposed to me thinking it was a random act of vandalism). She will send me a check for the damage. The Toyota garage is ordering a new mirror and housing. There are only two such mirrors with metallic blue housings left in the country, said the spare parts guy. Which makes me wonder what I would have done if there had been none. The options would have been 1. Pick another color. (Maybe); 2. Go hunt in scrap yards for blue 1996 Toyota Camrys. (No); 3. Do nothing. (No); 4. Use it as an excuse to get a new car? The straw that broke the camel’s back. (Maybe!).
Monday/ US Federal Income Taxes at 100 years
Since I work for an auditing firm, the are graciously helping out with the preparation of my federal tax return. (They did send me to China in 2012 which very much complicates the federal tax return, but the help is still appreciated). I still have to fill out an intimidating questionnaire, since the 2013 federal tax code is very different, very much more complicated than the very first one issued in the USA 100 years ago in 1913, which was all of four pages. Check it out below .. pictures and commentary I got from a recent Sunday edition of the New York Times.
Sunday/ Dim Sum at the House of Hong
Four of us had a brunch at the House of Hong in Seattle’s International District on Sunday. We had dim sum : serving carts that are brought by the table with all kinds of plates with bite-sized food items, and the diners select what they want. We had turnip cake (mashed daikon radish mixed with bits of dried shrimp and pork sausage that are steamed and then cut into slices and pan-fried), shao mai (steamed pork dumplings), shrimp dumplings, buns with a Cantonese barbecued pork filling and gai lan. Gai lan is a leafy green vegetable that also goes by the name Chinese broccoli. The tea served is an important part of the meal as well. We couldn’t nearly figure out what kind of tea we had, then the waitress came by and explained it was actually a blend of three teas : Chrysanthemum, oolong and Puer (blank) tea.
Saturday/ the Museum of History and Industry
Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry is not new, but it has recently moved to a new location : from its University of Washington location to South Lake Union, occupying the historic Naval Reserve Armory constructed in 1941-1942. I never did visit the museum at its old location, so the exhibits were all new to me. I also learned that there was a Great Seattle Fire in June 1889 that destroyed 29 city blocks (the story is told in the museum’s exhibit for it by a very cute short film, set to music and animated old pictures).
Friday/ Chihuly Garden and Glass
The most recent exhibit or museum that has been added to Seattle Center at the Space Needle is the Chihuly Garden and Glass house. Here is the website http://www.chihulygardenandglass.com/. Dale Chihuly (71) is a native of Tacoma and has made a career and business out of glass art. I went to check out the exhibit with my friend Tony from Portland on Friday.
Thursday/ my new T430 is tops
The Lenovo Thinkpad T430 notebook has been available since July 2012
I have just gotten a brand spanking new notebook computer for work : a Lenovo T430, an upgrade from my T420. It’s all black and all business with a 14″ screen – large enough for work but not so heavy that I cannot run with it to catch that connecting flight. The keyboard on the new machine has gotten an engineering make-over as well. The T430 has ‘island style’ keys which have bigger flatter top surfaces. The intention is to provide a larger ‘sweet spot’ for those with clumsy fingers (mine) that have never had formal touch-typing training.
Wednesday/ and now there are four
Since I no longer travel to China – and will not for the foreseeable future – I had to make special arrangements to get this year’s ‘bearista’ bear issued by Starbucks. The Chinese zodiac bears are only sold in China*. So a colleague of mine that still traveled there got one on his last trip out, and put it in the mail for me when he got back to New York City. And there they are – four now – on my dining room table.
*Yes, they could be bought on Ebay, but most sellers cautioned that there might be delays at customs, and that the shipping would be expensive
Tuesday/ The Sequester is coming
As the year 2013 careens toward March 1st, the US Congress’s latest self-induced budget/spending/deficit/call-it-what-you-will crisis (oh, it’s called ‘The Sequester’) is about to kick in. What is it? It is $85 billion of spending cuts across the board. So everything gets hit proportionally : teachers and schools, work-study jobs, kids in Head Start, the military, law enforcement, child care assistance, vaccines for children, public health programs, nutrition assistance for seniors, the STOP Violence Against Women Program, clean air and water programs. It’s a very dumb way to cut spending – but the United States of America has to find a way to start spending less money and at the same time get more money into Uncle Sam’s coffers through tax reforms.
Monday/ rooster sauce in space
Sriracha sauce is a hot sauce product by Huy Fong Foods, created by Chinese-Vietnamese founder David Tran. Now 68 years old, he came to the USA in 1979, started out in Boston, found little climate comfort in the snowy winters there and soon moved his family to Los Angeles. He created the sauce at first by grinding jalapeno peppers out by hand. The original sauce that he made of jalapenos, vinegar, sugar, salt and garlic, has changed very little since that time. His brand of sriracha – it is now a generic term like ketchup – has become shockingly popular in the USA.
So when I saw it on the grocery store shelf here, I bought a small bottle. I squeezed just a little dab into my rice for dinner tonight, and it’s very hot for my taste buds, but I will hang in there and try it a few more times.
Sunday/ the Oscars 2013
I am no Oscars-host expert, but I am sure Seth MacFarlane made a record number of non-politically
correct jokes last night. Some were downright offensive, I thought.
First Lady Michelle Obama made a surprise cameo by announcing the Best Picture award via a video link. Movie producer Harvey Weinstein is said to have arranged it. My first reaction was – oh my, is this not going overboard given that Argo* is about the US government, Hollywood, and the link between the two? And of course political commentators on the right made a lot of hay about the First Lady’s appearance at the Oscars. But as someone said today, she is everyone’s First Lady, the 2012 election is just behind us, she did not invite herself, and Ronald Reagan and other presidents have also made cameo appearances at the Oscars.
*[From Wikipedia] Argo is a 2012 American fictionalized thriller film directed by Ben Affleck. This dramatization is adapted from the book The Master of Disguise by CIA operative Tony Mendez, and Joshuah Berman’s 2007 Wired article ‘The Great Escape’ about the ‘Canadian Caper’ in which Mendez led the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran, Iran, during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.
Saturday/ to Seattle via Chicago
It was an early morning for me! Got up at 4 am Eastern time for the 7 am Pittsburgh to Chicago flight. On the way there I took a wrong turn and swung by Pittsburgh downtown – instead of taking the more direct route to the airport. The airport was very busy with check-in crowds even at 5.30am; it must have been all the travelers that could not get out on Friday.
There was still lots of snow on the ground in Chicago, but the runways at the airport were clear. The ground crews are well-equipped to handle snow, though : about 20 trucks with snow plows were lined up on the side of the runway.
Friday/ jigger from the Giant Eagle
It feels like I worked day and night this week, so I was happy to come back to the hotel and relax for just a little bit this afternoon. The weather here was really not bad at all – not much came of the ‘wintry mix’. I took my Chevy Cruze to the Giant Eagle (grocery store) for a dinner from their hot buffet, and then I strolled through the store’s vast beverage selection to check out the beers from all over the world.
Thursday/ a ‘wintry mix’
There is more snow in the Midwest : trouble for my connection tomorrow through Chicago, and United Airlines has cancelled my flight. There is an alternate routing through Houston available, but it gets me in so late on Friday night that it’s not worth it. So I will travel back home early Saturday morning. The ‘wintry mix’ – snow and ice and rain – will catch us here in Pittsburgh tomorrow (Pittsburgh sits under the pink MIX on the map).
Tuesday/ what’s that on the mug?
The mug is from Starbucks’s ‘city icon’ series (no, I didn’t buy it, too bulky and I don’t drink 16 oz of coffee at a time, yikes! ) .. but what is the icon on the mug, I wondered? Is it a tree? And why is it not one of the city’s nice steel bridges that’s on the mug, I wondered. Well : it’s a fountain, the one in Point State Park at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, forming the Ohio River. I’ll have to go check it out, but – it’s quite a drive to the city from the offices where we work, and the weather is pretty darn cold, dipping into the teens today.
Monday/ Happy President’s Day
Happy President’s Day! It was a travel day for me – I left Seattle very early at 6 am for Chicago, then on to Pittsburgh.
Sunday/ hug the tree
It was nice enough today at 46 °F (8 °C) to go for a walk just before the sun set at 5.37 pm, and that’s what I did. My Capitol Hill neighborhood has a lot of apartments due to extensive construction early in the 1900s through the 1950s – and right now several new ones are under construction as well. Average studio apartments here now goes for $1,200 per month,
one-bedrooms for $1,500 p.m. and two-bedrooms for $1,950. Not cheap, but hey – we’re not San Francisco or New York City. Check out the New York City apartment map from below from http://www.nakedapartments.com.
Friday/ Seattle’s old Fire Station No. 7
I often walk by the old Fire Station No 7, on 15th Ave in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. It now houses a video rental store. It is usually cloudy and rainy (especially this time of year). So on Friday afternoon when I looked at the doors, I thought ‘Man! Did I know the doors are that violet (and violent!) blue color? I guess I know now!’.
Thursday/ guns in the home
So – what to make of the shooting death of South African Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius’s girlfriend? I’m just catching up on all the background information.
The facts : there was a domestic disturbance at Pistorius’s home inside a gated community at 1.30 am Thu morning, and gun shots were heard at 3.30 am. His girlfriend and model Reeva Steenkamp, was found dead with gun shot wounds to the head and arm at the property in Pretoria shortly after that.
So Pistorius is now in custody, charged with murder by the State. He and his family say it was a tragic accident.
Here is what the British ‘The Guardian’ says about guns in the home in a report they title
Fear and Self-arming in South Africa
Despite efforts by the government to limit it, the level of private gun ownership remains high in South Africa, with some estimates putting the number of firearms at almost 6 million – or 12 for every 100 citizens. South Africa ranks 17th in a world league of gun ownership. In 2000 the government introduced a Firearms Control Act, introducing a competency test to restrict gun ownership. But anti-gun groups say that domestic shootings remain an inevitable outcome of allowing gun ownership. “For many South Africans having a gun in the home is about protecting them against the stranger-intruder but data both in South Africa and elsewhere shows that you are four times more likely to have a gun used against you than to be able to use it successfully in self-defence,” said Adèle Kirsten, spokeswoman for the anti-gun group Gun Free South Africa (GFSA).
Meanwhile, here in the USA we have Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association (NRA) writing in an on-line op-ed called ‘Stand and Fight‘.. no wonder Americans are buying guns in record numbers right now, while they still can and before their choice about which firearm is right for their family is taken away forever. After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia. Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all.
So La Pierre is tapping into the survivalist and ‘Obama-is-going-to-take-your-gun-away’ sentiments of his supporters – and totally distorting what really happened during Hurricane Sandy. Yes, there were reports of looting. Yes, there was no food, no water and no electricity. But there were no marauding gangs of criminals, and no deaths attributed to crime, only due to drownings and the storm.
Wednesday/ Von Trapp’s in Seattle
A group of nine of us went out to Von Trapp’s tonight : a new German-style bier and bratwurst hall right here in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district on 12th Ave. The inside of the place is cavernous and comes complete will some bocce ball* courts as well. *closely related to bowls/ lawn bowling
I washed down my bratwurst and sauerkraut with a pils (of course : it’s my favorite type of beer), and also had a roasted beet salad with it. We all agreed that the food was not outstanding, but definitely worth coming back to. The place was packed with people and noisy! .. but I suspect that’s what patrons of these establishments like. The noise makes for a buzz of excitement, to go with the buzz from one’s beer!
Tuesday/ the State of the Union is .. still divided
President Obama gave his State of the Union speech and I liked it a lot. Late Tuesday night the left-leaning New York Times already had an editorial out on line that opined ‘While many of the president’s proposals were familiar, and will probably be snuffed out by politics, his speech explained to a wide audience what could be achieved if there were even a minimal consensus in Washington’. Some of the proposals were : background checks for all gun sales and banning assault rifles, raise the minimum wage to $9 from $7.25, withdraw 34,000 troops from Afghanistan by this time next year, universal public preschool in every state, a tax code that encourages manufacturing, immigration reform, and improvements in the the voting system (yes, that means especially you, State of Florida*).
*Voters spent up to 8 hours in line at the November elections. Chris Matthews of MSNBC pointed out that he was in South Africa for the historic 1994 elections and that the longest
time South Africans spent in line anywhere in the country was 4 hours.
Senator Marco Rubio ‘The Republican Savior’ addressed the nation with his response to the President’s speech saying ‘More government isn’t going to help you get ahead. It’s going to hold you back. More government isn’t going to create more opportunities. It’s going to limit them. And more government isn’t going to inspire new ideas, new businesses and new private sector jobs. It’s going to create uncertainty.’