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Monday/ Washington’s Birthday

Gravure of George Washington on the front of the one dollar banknote.

Presidents’ Day, officially Washington’s Birthday, is a holiday in the United States, celebrated on the third Monday of February. Its intent is to honor all persons who served in the office of president of the United States. (Tomorrow the 22nd, is Washington’s actual birthday*).

I would exclude some presidents—especially one recent one— from this honor.
Then again, Washington himself was a slave owner, and mistreated them.
‘Too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station and reputation’ said fellow Founding Father John Adams, of George Washington’s eight years as the nation’s first commander-in-chief.
That sounds awfully familiar.

*It’s actually vastly more complicated than just saying it’s the 22nd.
England was still using the Julian calendar in 1731 when Washington was born.
Then, when England (and its colonies) switched to the Gregorian calendar in Sept. 1752, the date Sep 2, 1752 (Julian) was followed by Sept 14, 1752 (Gregorian). There were 11 ‘lost days’.
Another thing: when England and its colonies switched, they also moved New Year’s Day from late March to Jan. 1 (except for Scotland, which was already using Jan. 1 for the new year).
So the calendar year 1751 (with Julian dates) was only about nine months long, going from March 25 to Dec. 31. This meant that anyone born between Jan. 1 and March 25 (Julian) had to start using a different birthday (Gregorian) and a different birth year (Gregorian), or continue using an ‘inaccurate’ birthday and birth year — even though the number of days they had spent on planet Earth was unchanged.
So depending on which calendar you are using for Washington’s birthday, he was born on both Feb. 11, 1731 (Julian) and on Feb 22, 1732 (Gregorian). They are the exact same day.

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Sunday/ gray skies

Here’s the view of Interstate 5 and the city skyline from Melrose Ave and Thomas St tonight.

Aw .. no visible sunset tonight. There was a little bit of fine hail on my deck this morning, and sprinkles of rain now and then.
Taking a closer look at how the two 41-story residential buildings at 1120 Denny Way are coming along. About 15 floors on the one, and 18 floors on the other to get their window panes. At completion these will have 1100 units and a reported 272 furnished corporate suites. 
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Saturday/ keep guessing

 

 

I solved today’s Wordle on the very last of the six tries I had.

I would have had it in three tries if I were luckier with my guesses .. or four, or five.

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Friday/ winter is not over yet

There will be rain tomorrow, snow in the mountains, and freezing temperatures next week.

Tire chains (for driving in the snow) are notoriously difficult to put on correctly, if one does not use them regularly.
[Cartoon from Look magazine, 1954]
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Thursday/ a new garage door

“Open sesame!” (French: “Sésame, ouvre-toi”)
– a magical phrase in the story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” in Antoine Galland’s version of One Thousand and One Nights.
It opens the mouth of a cave in which forty thieves have hidden a treasure.

My fancy new garage door & opener arrived today, brought by the technician that did the installation. It took five months after I had placed the order, but that’s OK.

I can do an ‘Open Sesame!’ in four different ways.
1. Press the button on the garage door opener (the one with a clip that I can put in my car);
2. Use the key pad on the outside (enter a PIN code);
3. Use my smartphone app to open it from anywhere (through my home’s wifi network);
4. If all else fails, use the emergency release handle on the door opener inside.

Just four panels, all white. (Yes, will have to see what the white looks like in a few months, but I can always paint it a darker color).
Four windows to let in a little gray Seattle sunlight in winter, and a bright LED light that jumps to life when I open the side door. There’s the rail and (top left) the torque spring that pulls or pushes the panels in the rail track. My old single-panel door had two coiled tension springs along the sides of the door frame, with brackets that had started to buckle— downright dangerous.
The door panels have insulated steel plating, front and back. The windows are plain and practical. There were rounded ones and decorative ones, and frosted panes to choose from as well.
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Wednesday/ vaccine status checks to be cancelled

Officials announced today that restaurants, bars, theaters and gyms here in the city of Seattle and surrounding King County will no longer be required to check the vaccination status of their patrons beginning March 1.

We are waiting for everyone’s beer to be brought to the table, at Thai restaurant Jamjuree here on 15th Ave tonight. They did check our vaccine cards at the entrance.
I get take-out food here sometimes, but the food always seems tastier and more enjoyable in the restaurant itself. So will delivery operators like UberEats and DoorDash hold on to any gains they made during the height of the pandemic? I doubt it.
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Tuesday/ more of the same

Even though I watch almost no cable news programs anymore, it feels as if the news is the same for many weeks at a time.
Are the Olympic Games done? No.
(So the Russian skater blames her grandpa’s meds for her failed drug test. Hard to believe. Shout-out to the IOC for their on-going mismanagement of Russia’s 2014 state-sponsored doping scandal. The Russians should have been banned for oh, 10 years).
Have the truckers in Ottawa gone home? No. Arrest them. Law and order, right, conservatives?
Is Russia going to invade Ukraine? We still don’t know .. but tomorrow is a new day, and time will tell.

Oh boy. People think that waving a flag while you’re doing something illegal, makes you a patriot.
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Monday/ a little rain

It’s been a ‘dry’ February so far, here in the city.
Only ¼ in. has been recorded, and February gets almost 4 on average.
There was a little rain today— of the kind that does not make the ground wet under the big trees.

A little bit of blue sky on 19th Avenue, at about 4.45 pm. It was just warm enough to go for a walk: 46 °F (8°C). I cannot put my right hand in a glove or in my pocket; best I can do hold it against my chest inside my jacket.
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Caturday

Here is a young Marlon Brando (31) with his cat, from a write-up in Look magazine from May 17, 1955.
‘I live in my cat’s house’, said Brando at the time.

Brando was nominated for an Academy Award seven times, and won the Award twice: for Best Actor in ‘On the Waterfront (1954)’ and for Best Actor in ‘The Godfather (1972)’.
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Friday/ another software update

Another software update for my car came through tonight.
I can drive my car, but just around the neighborhood.
No freeway driving or long distances until my arm & wrist is out of the cast.

Every time I see ‘Release Notes’ like here on my car’s display screen, I think of the Release Notes for the SAP enterprise software system that I had worked with for so long.
I can now change the color of the car icon on this screen to anything I want (a trivial update, and I guess I could pick black or white or gold .. but why would I?). Other updates are much more practical: regenerative braking will now activate at lower speeds, making for a more consistent driving experience.
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Thursday/ the puzzle that’s a puzzle

I found a puzzle (wonder what had happened), and R2-D2 depicted on a card, on my walk today.
I was too far from my house to pick either up/ clean it up*, and besides that: I only have one hand. 🙂

*If it’s on my block, especially on the sidewalk or street at the front of the house, it doesn’t matter what it is; I feel compelled to clean it up. Broken beer bottle, dead crow, dog poop, empty cannabis packets.

Was there a tug-of-war between two people, with the puzzle in the middle, and the box was torn open? Who knows.
R2-D2 (say Artoo Deetoo) is a fictional robot character in the Star Wars franchise created by George Lucas. He has appeared in eleven of the twelve theatrical Star Wars films to date.
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Wednesday/ the Gazpacho Police .. are coming for our mazel tov cocktails

Marjorie Taylor Greene loves to propagate conspiracy theories, even though she is actually a sitting member of Congress. She represents Georgia’s District 14 in the House of Representatives. Hey Georgia: you can do better than this. November 2022 is your chance.

New: House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene is railing against Pelosi’s “gazpacho police” — intending to refer to the Nazi Gestapo, itself a nonsense comparison, but instead referring to a cold tomato soup.
-Hugo Lowell @hugolowell on Twitter

Just to clear things up, @RepMTG
Gazpacho: a vegetable-based Spanish cold soup
Gestapo: Nazi Germany’s secret police
-The Republican Accountability Project @AccountableGOP

With the Gazpacho Police, every crime is a cold case
-Adam Blickstein@ AdamBlickstein

I hope all you Progressos out there are having a fun time
-George Conway aka Oficial de Policía de Gazpacho Conway @gtconway3d

I’ve met some members of the gazpacho police. They are consommé professionals.
-Danielle Decker Jones @djtweets

The Gazpacho Police have just chopped an unarmed tomato.
-Wajahat Ali@ WajahatAli

It won’t be funny when the Gazpacho police give you the burp walk.
-JoeReynoldsChief @JoeReynolds2020

Marjorie Taylor Greene, in condemning the harsh conditions facing the insurrectionists arrested on January 6, is comparing what they’re experiencing to what she read in Solzhenitsyn’s monumental work The Goulash Archipelago*.
-Peter Wehner @Peter_Wehner

*Greene contended that Washington DC jails are ‘DC gulags’.
The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, Arkhipelag GULAG) is a three-volume non-fiction text written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It was first published in 1973, and translated into English and French the following year. It covers life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet forced labor camp system, through a narrative constructed from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and Solzhenitsyn’s own experience as a Gulag prisoner.

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Tuesday/ will Putin, or won’t he?

Will Putin invade Ukraine?
President Biden is vowing to stop the start-up of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if he does, even though it’s unclear how much power Biden has to do this.

From the Washington Post:
What is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and why does it matter to Russia?
The project is a natural gas line from Russian fields to the German coast, spanning 764 miles under the Baltic Sea. The $11 billion line will double the capacity of the original 2011 Nord Stream, which runs parallel to the new project. The line will supply gas to Germany — a nation heavily dependent on gas and oil imports — at a relatively low cost as the continent’s production capacity decreases.

The new pipeline is entirely owned by Russian energy company Gazprom, which is majority government-owned. The company also owns 51 percent of the original Nord Stream pipeline. A group of European energy companies, including Shell and Wintershall, paid half the construction costs.

Construction was completed in September, and the pipeline has been filled with gas since late December. Before it becomes operational, though, it needs regulatory approval from Germany and a review by European Union authorities. The head of the German regulatory body said in December that a decision would not come until the second half of 2022 at the earliest.

Absorber columns at the Gazprom PJSC Slavyanskaya compressor station, the starting point of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, in Ust-Luga, Russia, on Jan. 28. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg News)
From the Washington Post: Ukraine and Poland vehemently oppose the pipeline. Ukraine has long been an energy middleman nation, with Russian companies feeding much of Europe’s gas supply through Ukrainian soil and paying the country transit fees in the process. Critics think Russia, in bypassing Ukraine, aims to weaken and isolate the nation.
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Monday/ Belgium’s new passports

Belgium’s new passports (issued as of today) have pages in that feature images from the country’s comic book heritage.

The characters making an appearance are Lucky Luke, The Smurfs (yes, the Smurfs were created in Belgium in 1958), and Hergé’s Tintin.

A passport ready for space travel? Sophie Wilmes, Belgian Foreign Minister, shows the new Belgian international passport with its drawing of the rocket from the Tintin adventures Objectif Lune (‘Destination Moon’, first published 1953) and On a Marché Sur la Lune (‘Explorers on the Moon’, 1954).
[Photo: Benoit Doppagne/ DPA]
Visa pages in the new Belgian passport with a background drawing by Hergé, from Les Sept Boules de Cristal (‘The Seven Crystal Balls’, 1948). The figures walking towards the chateau are Captain Haddock, Tintin and Snowy.
[Photo: DPA]

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Sunday/ sun and blue skies

It was a beautiful day here in the city.
At the highs of the day (52 °F/ 11°C) it felt a little like spring.

Madison Street is a bit of a mess. It’s getting a makeover, as the new ‘Rapid Ride G’ bus route from downtown to Madison Valley.
It will have Bus Only lanes and Bus Priority stops at traffic signals, new curbs, and curb ramps, crosswalks, sidewalks and bike lanes.
I like that storm drain filter sock in the foreground. It stops the worst of the construction contaminants to end up in the storm drain, and eventually in Puget Sound.
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Caturday/ bodega cat

bo·de·ga
/bōˈdāɡə/
noun
1.  (in the US) a small grocery store, especially in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood.
2.  (in a Spanish-speaking country) a wine shop or wine cellar.

Photos from @Bodegacats_ on Twitter.

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Friday/ the show that is called the Olympic Games

From the New York Times, as reported by Chris Buckley and Andrew Das:
In a climactic moment to end the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, China chose two athletes — including one it said was of Uyghur heritage — to deliver the flame to the Olympic cauldron and officially start the Games.

The moment was tinged with layers of symbolism — a man and a woman working together, a nod to China’s Olympic history — but it was the choice of Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a cross-country skier who the Chinese said has Uyghur roots, that confronted head-on one of the biggest criticisms of the country’s role as host.

The Chinese Communist Party state has conducted a mass detention and re-education campaign targeting Uyghur Muslims in the western region of Xinjiang that the United States has declared as genocidal. It was among the reasons that several countries, including the United States, took part in a diplomatic boycott of the Games.

Dinigeer Yilamujiang, left, and Zhao Jiawen, both Chinese Olympians, helped light the cauldron.
[Photo Credit: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times]
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Thursday/ a bridge too far?

The City of Rotterdam’s plans to dismantle the middle part of the historic railway bridge De Hef (‘The Lever’) later this year, to allow Jeff Bezos’s new superyacht* to pass under, is not sitting well with everyone (of course not).

The deck of the bridge can be lifted 130 ft, but that will not suffice for the tallest of the yacht’s three masts.

Bezos will reportedly pay for the dismantling and reassembly of the bridge deck. So what is the problem? 🙂

*A three-masted schooner made of aluminum and steel, the $ 500-million, 417-feet Oceanco Y721 yacht will be the largest sailing yacht in the world when completed.

My photo from the Euromast Tower in Rotterdam, taken in Feb. 2019 in the ‘Before Times’. I was paying much more attention to the Erasmus Bridge (‘The Swan’) and my namesake bridge Willemsbrug* (‘Willem’s Bridge’), but I see I did catch a far-away glimpse of the historic 1927 De Hef/ Koningshavenbrug (‘King’s Harbor Bridge’) in my photo.
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Wednesday/ 2.2.2022

There are lots of two’s in today’s date (with another one to come on the 22nd of February, of course).

My current Apple Watch face is the kaleidoscope. Every time you look to get the time, the watch face lights up from dim to bright, the image morphs for a few seconds into a different one, and then it stops again as the watch face dims.
This is just one of the standard patterns. I’m going to create a few custom ones with my own pictures.