a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
The Indian Wells Open (BNP Paribas Open) tennis tournament is underway in California.
Friendly fans pitched in to help dry the court tonight, after a burst of rain early in the evening. I like those spongy squeegees— they will come in handy for drying up the tennis courts here in Seattle.
This poster on a lamp post calls for Peace in Ukraine, a cause which we can all support— but when one takes a closer look, it quickly gets very complicated.
Yes, the US should not have invaded Iraq in March 2003.
Does that mean the US should also not supply weapons to Ukraine? Only food and shelter with heat, now that all the cities are getting destroyed by Russia’s invasion?
I don’t think so.
The New York Times posted pictures shared by their readers in California, of the snow there. I like this one.
I tagged along with Bryan and Gary to Hansville on Kitsap Peninsula today.
We did the usual drive-around south of Puget Sound across the Tacoma-Narrows Bridge by Gig Harbor, and then came back across the Sound on the Kingston ferry.
The Space Needle picture was a telephoto lens shot (on my big camera, not the phone) from I-5 South, looking across Lake Union.
‘Early bird catches the worm’
– Proverbial saying first recorded in English in 1605
Mr Robin* found an earthworm on my front lawn this afternoon, and promptly made a meal of it.
Robins can actually eat as many as a dozen earthworms in a single day.
*American robin (Turdus migratorius)
I took the No 10 bus to downtown, and here are a few pictures.
Yesterday’s envelope with my stamps had this 1987 stamp on the outside.
It was dark by the time the mailman came today, but he dropped an envelope with a bunch of stamps I had ordered from a seller in California.
So it was all worth the wait.
Rivian has delivered some 1,000 electric delivery vehicles (EDVs) to Amazon since July of last year— for deliveries in cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Nashville, San Diego and here in Seattle.
This is only the start: the goal is for Rivian to deliver 100,000 of the EDVs to Amazon.
When I go to Elysian’s Capitol Hill brewery, I check the out the vehicles at the Electrify America charging station across from it.
Tonight there was a Volvo XC40 Recharge compact SUV and a Rivian R1T pickup truck (Montana plates) getting a charge.
The clouds have cleared, and there is a nice view of the Venus-Jupiter conjunction* tonight in the Western night sky here tonight.
Hopefully the sky will be clear tomorrow night as well, when they will appear to be even closer.
*Conjunction means two astronomical objects appear close to each other in the sky, as seen from our view on Earth. Jupiter is still some 400 million miles away from Venus (on average 416 million miles away).
It was a rough week in the US stock market last week, and today went better.
Still, the uncertainty around inflation and a recession in 2023 is not going to be resolved for several more months.
Writes James McIntosh for the Wall Street Journal under a heading ‘Markets History 101: It’s Time to Buy Bonds‘:
Even after their big falls, stocks still look very expensive compared to bonds. The optimism that started this year has faded, but investors continue to bet that long-run inflation will come back under control and profit margins will stay high. And many remain wary of bonds, even as yields approach 4% on the 10-year Treasury and are above 5% on six-month bills.
The central lesson of financial history is that, over the long run, U.S. stocks beat bonds. But buying stocks when they are expensive—at 18 times estimated earnings for the next 12 months, they have rarely been pricier outside the dot-com bubble and the post-pandemic boom—is a recipe for substandard returns.
There was an inch or so of snow on the ground this morning, but most of it had melted by the afternoon (42 °F /6 °C).
Here is a high-resolution scan of a little stamp, only 1 in. x 0.8 in.
It was on the envelope that had stamps in that I had bought from a seller in Canada.
Wars bring death and destruction, and this one seems to be far from over.
Check out cartoonist Martin Rawson’s depiction of the brutality that has been going on for a year now (published in The Guardian newspaper).
I ventured out of the house to get a little sun today, even though the high was barely above freezing (34°F/ 1°C).
These pictures are from Volunteer Park.
My neighborhood woke up to an inch of snow on the ground this morning.
Later on, it warmed up just enough (38°F/ 3°C) for the snow to melt.
There was fine hail on the deck at my house this morning, and a little more came down early in the evening.
There was no sun here— on this day that the Romans had named after the sun. There is going to be snow in the mountains tomorrow and Tuesday, and freezing cold towards the end of the week.
