a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
I bought some Red Anjou pears at Amazon Fresh. They are not nearly as red as ones I see in pictures online, but that’s OK. They taste fine.
My favorite pear is still the famous bell-shaped Bartlett pears, though.
(Also called Williams’ bon chrétien pear. The origins of this pear is uncertain).
My mom served up for canned Bartlett pears with custard, as a quick dessert.
We had rainy weather and only 46 °F (8 °C) today, but the blossoms that have arrived with spring, are beautiful.
There is a Pallas’ cat in this picture.
From Wikipedia: The Pallas’s cat (Otocolobus manul), also known as the manul, is a small wild cat with long and dense light grey fur.
Its rounded ears are set low on the sides of the head.
The men’s semifinals of the Indian Wells Masters tomorrow will be very interesting.
Semifinal 1: 🇪🇸 vs. 🇪🇸
Semifinal 2: 🇺🇸 vs. [the country that shall not be named]
Specifically,
19* 🇪🇸 Carlos Alcaraz (age 18) vs. 4 🇪🇸 Rafael Nadal (age 35)
20 🇺🇸 Taylor Fritz (age 24) vs. 7 Andrey Rublev (age 24)
*This is the seed number for the player for the tournament.
On paper, the player with the lower seed number is favored to win.
May the best man win as far as the Spaniards go, and go USA!
We don’t want a Russian to win. Not this year, anyway.
Sat 3/19: Fritz won 7-5, 6-4, and Nadal won 6-4, 4-6, 6-3.
Sun 3/20: Taylor Fritz beat Nadal 6-3, 7-6 (7-5), the first American to win there since 2001.
Last night we had little chocolate cones after our beers and dinner.
The chocolate comes from Ukraine.
(Thanks to Ken & Steve for finding the intriguing chocolates!).
Inflation rose to 7.9% in February, the highest rate since 1982. It is still well below the peak of 14.6% in 1980. The Federal Reserve Board raised its benchmark interest rate by 0.25%, and will almost certainly raise it several more times this year, to bring inflation under control.
Jeanna Smialek writes in the New York Times of what happened in the early ’80s:
Mr. Volcker’s Fed rolled out policies that pushed a key short-term interest rate to nearly 20 percent and sent unemployment soaring to nearly 11 percent in 1981. Car dealers mailed the Fed keys from unsold vehicles, builders sent two-by-fours from unbuilt houses and farmers drove tractors around the Fed building in Washington in protest. But the approach worked, killing off the rapid price inflation that had festered throughout the 1970s.
So on Tuesday, with almost no warning and no debate, the Senate unanimously passed legislation to do away with the biannual springing forward and falling back that most Americans have come to despise, in favor of making daylight saving time permanent. The bill’s fate in the House was not immediately clear, but if the legislation were to pass there and be signed by President Biden, it would take effect in November 2023.
– From the New York Times
The annual Indian Wells Masters tennis tournament is in full swing (in Indian Wells, California, of course). Novak Djokovic is not there: no vax, no play. Just last week, Djokovic lost his No 1 position on the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) rankings list, to the Russian Daniil Medvedev.
Should Medvedev be allowed to play, given that his country invaded Ukraine, and now wages a brutal war there? (Brutal being superfluous: all wars are brutal). The ATP has banned Russia from team events (such as the prestigious Davis Cup), but also ruled that Russians can compete as individuals, just not under the Russian flag.
dope adjective
slang
excellent —used as a generalized term of approval
There are several Twitter handles that post pictures of products, usually personalized by their owners, that ask the question ‘Dope or nope?’ (Approve or disapprove?).
I found this blue Tesla with its orange highlights and matt black hood here on Capitol Hill’s 15th Avenue.
I think 🤔 it’s a nope, speaking for myself.
Metsker Maps of Seattle on 1st Avenue is a candy store for map lovers.
I went there today to buy a map for my friend in South Africa.
Expensive gas is in the news again.
I walked by three gas stations tonight and did a mini-survey.
It turned out that my average for just these three is spot-on for the city’s average.
Seattle is about a dollar a gallon above the national average, but a dollar or more below California’s prices.
(The New York Times: California’s high fuel prices are partly because of taxes as well as regulatory programs aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Together, they added about $1.27 to the cost of a gallon of gas last month, according to a calculation by the Western States Petroleum Association.)
| Company | Regular Unleaded [$/ Gal] |
|---|---|
| 7-Eleven | 4.899 |
| Shell | 4.999 |
| 76 | 5.179 |
| Average | 5.026 |
The extended 40-mile parade of Russian armored vehicles, tanks and towed artillery headed from the north on a path toward Kyiv has both alarmed and befuddled watchers of this expanding war. It’s not just its sheer size. It’s also because that for days, it has not appreciably been moving.
U.S. officials attribute the apparent stall in part to logistical failures on the Russian side, including as a result of food and fuel shortages, that have slowed Moscow’s advance through various parts of the country. They have also credited Ukrainian efforts to attack selected parts of the convoy with contributing to its slowdown. Still, officials warn that the Russians could regroup at any moment and continue to press forward.
-Reported by the Washington Post
– Origin unknown, but the saying gained popularity after Pehr G. Gyllenhammar, CEO of Volvo, used it after the global stock market suddenly crashed in Oct. 1987.
I was in the QFC grocery store at Harvard Market on Saturday, and about to put in my credit card to pay for my items at the self check-out.
‘Attention, customers!’ came an announcement. ‘For the next 20 minutes, no credit card, no Apply Pay, no Google Pay can be used; it will be cash only’.
The in-store transaction server must have keeled over or frozen up; maybe it had to be rebooted.
Lucky for me I had cash in my wallet, to let loose— and vamoose.
Russian attacks on nuclear sites could destabilize Ukraine’s energy supply
Russian forces attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on March 3 and are now reportedly pushing toward the South Ukraine nuclear power plant. These are Ukraine’s two largest nuclear power plants, together responsible for one-third of Ukraine’s electricity generation.
Ukraine has a total of four nuclear power plants consisting of 15 reactors that generate roughly 50 percent of the country’s electricity. After nuclear power, coal is the largest source of electricity generated in the country. Many of Ukraine’s coal-fired power plants lie in the Donbas region, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.
-From the New York Times, as reported by Lazaro Gamio and Eleanor Lutz
As evening fell, I was waiting by the Asian Art Museum’s camel in Volunteer Park for a sunset picture with a dozen or so other people.
Then I walked back home, by Uncle Ike’s pot shop on 15th Avenue.
There was a big, billowing cloud in the sky as I made my way down 17th Ave today.
South Africa’s Ambassador Joyini believes Wednesday’s meeting should have encouraged negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
-As reported in The Citizen newspaper (explaining why South Africa abstained from voting in favor of a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine)
Hey Ambassador: stop with the bullsh**.
This is not complicated.
Russia invaded Ukraine (again).
Russia is the aggressor.
There is nothing left to negotiate.
