I thought Mr Jay (Stellar’s jay, Cyanocitta stelleri) might be looking for earthworms on my lawn, but he caught one of the big black flies sitting on the lower leaves of my camelia bush (third photo).
Monday/ Memorial Day 🇺🇸
It is Memorial Day: the day for honoring and mourning the U.S. military personnel who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.
Sunday/ 👀 Tesla spotting
Three amigos went out to Bellevue South station to ride the 2 Line light rail train today, and to check out the parking lot at the Tesla Service Center nearby at the Tesla Service Center in Bellevue.in Bellevue.
This is on Bel-Red Road between Overlake and Bellevue.
The Cybertruck has a custom after-market matt black wrap on that goes well with the black trim and wheels of the truck.
Saturday/ tennis in Lyon 🎾
Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard (20, 🇫🇷 ) cut through tie-break tension to complete a dream week and lift his maiden ATP Tour title in the city of his birth Saturday at the Open Parc in Lyon, France.
Roared on by a vocal Lyon crowd, the 20-year-old wild card battled past sixth seed Tomas Martin Etcheverry 6-4, 1-6, 7-6(7) in a dramatic championship match at the ATP 250. Mpetshi Perricard was a point away from defeat at 6/7 in the deciding-set tie-break but held firm for a famous two-hour, 29-minute win in just his fourth tour-level event.
– As reported on ATPtour.com
Mpetshi Perricard, 20, will enter the top 100 for the first time on Monday at a career-high No 66 after his dream week in Lyon.
All eyes in the world of tennis now turn to Stade Roland Garros, Paris, where the French Open starts tomorrow.
Rafael Nadal (37-almost 38, 🇪🇸) is playing on Monday: against No. 4 seed Alexander (Sacha) Zverev (27, 🇩🇪). It may just be Nadal’s last match at the tournament that he had won 14 times in the past.
Update Mon 5/27: Nadal lost in straight sets against Zverev, but did not rule out after the match that he will not be back to compete here again. (Sooner rather than later, that is. The tennis matches for the upcoming 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris will be played in the Stade Roland Garros, and he should be able to represent Spain).
[Picture posted on https://openparc.com/photos/]
Friday/ coming up roses 🌹
You’ll be swell! You’ll be great!
Gonna have the whole world on a plate!
Starting here, starting now,
honey, everything’s coming up roses!
– From Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics for Everything’s Coming Up Roses, written for the 1959 Broadway musical Gypsy.
Happy Friday.
It’s Memorial Day weekend here in the US.
It’s been a while, but the little rose bush in my front yard has roses again.
Thursday/ another credibility implosion ☄️
So Nikki Haley* will vote for Trump, she said on Wednesday. She had called him ‘bad’, ‘unqualified to be President’, ‘do not trust him’ blah blah blah.
She didn’t bother to wait for the outcome of Trump’s first criminal trial— 34 felony counts over allegations that he falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 hush-money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. (Closing arguments for Trump’s case are on Tue May 28 and then the case goes to the jury).
*Former governor of South Carolina, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration, and the last remaining challenger to Trump in the 2024 Republican primaries until she dropped out of the race after Super Tuesday in March.
Cartoon by Michael Ramirez/Las Vegas Review-Journal for The Washington Post.
Wednesday/ rain ☔
We had more than a half inch of rain in the city yesterday, which is a lot for a single day in May.
A tornado struck the small town of Greenfield in Iowa on Tuesday, killing several people and destroying a large part of the town of 2,000 inhabitants.
Elsewhere, across the Great Plains and the US Midwest, there has already been extensive damage from tornadoes this year.
Tuesday/ stamp of the day ✉️
I bought this single stamp from a seller in Canada.
It’s the highest value stamp (10 shillings) in the series known as the 1927-1930 London Pictorials; the last South African stamps printed in London.
(After that stamps were printed in South Africa).
The Afrikaans-English se-tenant (joined) stamp pairs are very expensive (up to $200), but the single ones are $10 or so.
I’m still looking for an English one with ‘SOUTH AFRICA’ inscribed at the top.
Issued 1927, Mar. 1
Perf. 14 | Engraved printing | Wmk. Multiple springbok’s heads
29 16 | 10sh | Bright blue and brown | Cape Town, Table Mountain and Table Bay
[Source: 2016 Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue for Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps 1840-1970)
My notes: The prominent white tower might be Mouille Point Lighthouse— built in 1842 but demolished in 1908. To its right and further back would be Cape Town City Hall, a large Edwardian building built from honey-colored oolitic limestone imported from Bath in England, and located on the Grand Parade.
It was completed in 1905 and is still there today.
Monday/ a nice day for pickle ball 🥒
It was a beautiful day here in the city (65 °F/ 18 °C).
The amigos played a little pickleball on the tennis courts at Mount Baker Park.
Sunday/ no turns! ⬆️
I walked by the East Madison St – 14th Avenue intersection this afternoon where my Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) function made a boo-boo yesterday (just to check it out again).
The green light shapes are ‘Straight Ahead’ arrows, and there is a NO TURNS sign on the beam as well.
Even so, as the car approached the intersection from Madison Street, the FSD turned on the turn signal, and turned left onto 14th Avenue.
There was no oncoming traffic, and I should have tapped the brake or held the steering wheel (to override the FSD controls) to keep going straight.
Saturday/ 44 years ago 🌋
Today marks the 44th anniversary of the 1980 Mt St Helens eruption.
‘We know that Mount St. Helens is the volcano in the Cascades most likely to erupt again in our lifetimes. It is likely that the types, frequencies, and magnitudes of past activity will be repeated in the future. However, neither a large debris avalanche nor a major lateral blast like those of May 18, 1980 is likely now that a deep crater has formed’.
– Cascades Volcano Observatory, Mount St. Helens, Nov. 3, 2023 (from the usgs.gov website)
[Photo and description from usgs.gov website]
[Photo and description from usgs.gov website]
Friday/ here’s Dow 40,000 📈
Happy Friday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 40,000 for the first time today.
Is the US stock market overvalued? I asked the AI chat bot Chat GPT.
Yes— by a lot, was the answer (with some caveats, see below).
Thursday/ mail from Great Britain 🇬🇧
Mail from Great Britain with Sherlock Holmes stamps on the outside, and South African stamps inside, arrived yesterday.
I am hounding down the last ones I need to complete my Union of South Africa (1910-1961) collection.
Issued 1993, Oct. 12
Perf. 14×14½ Phosphorized paper
Colors: blue, greenish yellow, magenta, black & gold
1785 1112 24p The Hound of the Baskervilles
1786 1113 24p The Six Napoleons
[Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue Part I British Commonwealth Volume 1]
Wednesday/ look Ma, (almost) no hands 👐
Tesla enabled a 30-day trial for me on my Model 3, of the car’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) ability.
FSD (Supervised) means the car can drive itself to almost any address with lane changes, fork selections, navigate around other vehicles and objects, and make left and right turns at traffic lights and four-way stops. The driver is still responsible for all driving and need to be able to intervene at all times, though.
Driving with FSD turned on is very impressive— and a little hair-raising at times. FSD is instantly disengaged if the driver taps the brakes or hold the steering wheel to override what the car does.
I have my hand on the steering wheel, but the car is driving itself at 23 mph towards an address on Roosevelt Way in U-District, sticking to the 25 mph speed limit and reading all the road signs and steering clear of obstacles and other cars. The car’s cameras picked up the pedestrian on the sidewalk up ahead in the shadows (shown as a speck on the left on the screen). If there were pedestrians in the cross-walk or about to enter the crosswalk, it would have stopped in good time. As I passed the white car parked up ahead on the right, a careless driver flung open his door into the street to get out of his car. My car gave him a wide berth, going into the open lane as there was no oncoming traffic. (It would have stopped or completely slowed down if there were oncoming traffic).
There are three general settings for the FSD function: Chill, Average or Assertive.
Average is probably were one wants to be. Chill might frustrate drivers behind you, or at intersections (the car will react with more caution, and wider margins of safety).
I am not sure how aggressive ‘Assertive’ is (shorter following distances, sharper braking), and I don’t particularly want to find out by driving the car with an assertive FSD attitude! 😱
Tuesday/ planet Mars 🛰️
Here is a new image of the Martian surface, taken by the Perseverance rover.
The atmosphere of Mars is much thinner than Earth’s.
The Red Planet’s atmosphere contains more than 95% carbon dioxide and much less than 1% oxygen.
Gravity on Mars is about 38% of the gravity of Earth, due to its smaller mass.
Monday/ the magic is back 🪄
Packets of zeroes and ones* started coming in through the fiber optic modem into my house again this morning (a technical way to say my internet service has been restored).
I can again watch TV & tennis & Netflix on the big screen downstairs (instead of on my phone).
I could download and install iOS 17.5 for my iPhone and iPad, and watchOS 10.4.
I regained remote control of the thermostat, the garage door, and the car in the garage.
It’s also sooo much nicer to use the 24-in. computer monitor upstairs to search for stuff on Amazon— or for stamps on Ebay.
*IPv4 was the first internet protocol deployed for production on SATNET in 1982, and on the ARPANET in January 1983.
It is still used to route most internet traffic today, even with the ongoing deployment of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), its successor.
Sunday/ Happy Mother’s Day
Saturday/ the northern lights
We were treated to a rare display of the northern lights here from Seattle on Friday night.
I took the first two pictures from my back porch around midnight on Friday.
The third picture was taken by my friend Thomas from Kitsap Peninsula. Look for the grouping of stars called the Big Dipper (a big ladle, left-of-middle, top of picture).
Friday/ lost in cyberspace 👨🚀
Happy Friday.
Joe Biden arrived in Seattle late in the afternoon.
I hope he raises lots of money for his campaign because he might (will?) need it.
I have had no internet all day, and it is still out. (There is an outage in my neighborhood).
Plan B is to use my mobile phone as a hotspot, which I did, until AT&T texted me late morning and said I had used 75% of my hotspot data for the month.
I guess I will go read a book now and go to bed early.
Thursday/ a jaunt to downtown 🏙
I had lunch at the Washington Athletic Club on Sixth Avenue today, and then stopped by the Seattle Public Library.
Fifteenth Ave E where I had planned to depart from is in rough shape, and the No 10 bus stop by Republican St is non-existent for now. (I walked down to the corner of 15th and John to the next stop).
This is the IBM Building at 1200 Fifth Avenue, designed by renowned architect Minoru Yamasaki in 1964. The 20-story building features twelve stone arches, an elegant spiral staircase and a glass-enclosed and newly renovated, modern lobby.
