I recently filled out a crossword clue that said ‘Source of milk for manchego cheese’. Answer: EWE.
As placed my Amazon Fresh order last week, there it was: sliced manchego cheese.
So I added it to my order, just out of curiosity.
Here’s the one-armed bandit opening his sliced cheese The slices are not squares, nor rectangles, though: they are little wedges. (Manchego is a cheese made in the La Mancha region of Spain from the milk of sheep of the Manchega breed. It is aged between 60 days and 2 years -Wikipedia).Voila! .. it still works on my toast with slices of tomato. It’s a firm cheese with a salty, zesty taste that is not overwhelming. (As for slicing the tomato: as long as the tomato is still firm, I can pin it down with my right elbow and slice it OK with my clumsy left hand).
This shot made by Pablo Carreño Busta (Spain, age 30) in his five-set match against Tallon Griekspoor (Netherlands, 25) at the Australian Open is perfectly legal but very rarely seen.
Busta won the match after 4 hrs 10 mins of play.
You are not allowed to touch the net, or to jump over the net to play a ball, to return a shot. You can run around the net post and play from there, provided your feet/ your racquet does not touch the inside of the opponent’s singles court.
It is OK to reach over the net to hit a shot, while not touching it, nor touching the inside of the opponent’s singles court lines.
Griekspoor (not in the picture) had hit an overhead and almost missed it. He had clipped the ball with the top edge of his racquet frame, giving it a severe backspin. So Griekspoor’s shot cleared the net on the near side (Busta’s side), and then it bounced backwards over the net to Griekspoor’s side. Busta, quick as he is, saw what was happening, followed the ball by running AROUND the net post, got his racquet to the ball, and made it bounce inside the singles court on Griekspoor’s side. (Griekspoor had no hope of getting to it. The ball went into the net on Griekspoor’s side after it had bounced once.)
It looks like the Omicron wave of the Covid-19 pandemic has crested in the Northeast of the United States. Recent numbers for the other regions show it is (at least right now) no longer increasing there.
A look at the recent numbers of cases for regions in the US. That number for Rhode Island is SIXTY times what we had at one time long ago, here in Seattle’s King County (7 per 100,000). [Graphic from the New York Times]Here’s Washington State: not looking good, but hopefully near the peak of the Omicron wave. King County is at 220 cases per 100,000, a number I never thought we would reach. [Graphic & statistics from the New York Times]
It’s Martin Luther King Day, the day when Republican politicians trumpet their hypocrisy on Twitter. They would have us believe they support civil rights and voting rights for all Americans. (They do not).
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr (born Jan 15, 1929; assassinated Apr. 4, 1968). [Artwork is from a blog page on Levi Strauss & Co.’s web site, called ‘Reflecting on the Significance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day’].
All right. You-Know-Who (The No-Vax One) has departed from Melbourne, Australia (reportedly flying to Dubai, and presumably getting to his home in Monte Carlo, from there).
It is Monday morning, 72 °F (22 °C) and sunny in Melbourne, so hopefully the tennis tournament can bounce back from the ugly run-up to its start.
‘Lucky loser’* Salvatore Caruso (age 29, Italy) finds himself in the main draw now, in the spot that held the world number one’s name.
*He lost in the Australian Open qualifying tournament’s final round.
I resubscribed to ESPN+ again, to catch the Australian Open tennis. Here’s a peek into the player entrance area and the hallway running out to the court in the Margaret Court Arena. Margaret Smith Court (age 79) is an Australian retired tennis player and former world No. 1 herself. She is unfortunately also known for her outspoken and disgraceful criticism of the LGBT community. (Shrug. It’s 2022 and not 1822 or 1922. So I don’t even know what to say about that).
ACT I SCENE I A desert place.
[Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches] First Witch: When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain? Second Witch: When the hurly-burly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won. Third Witch: That will be ere the set of sun. First Witch: Where the place? Second Witch: Upon the heath. Third Witch: There to meet with Macbeth. First Witch: I come, graymalkin*! Second Witch: Paddock* calls. Third Witch: Anon! All: Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
[Exeunt]
From ‘Macbeth’ (1606) by William Shakespeare
*Graymalkin is an affectionate name for a gray cat. During the Renaissance it was believed that Satan sent witches malicious spirits to help them carry out their evil deeds. These ‘familiars’ or ‘imps’ would appear in animal form. The familiar of the First Witch takes the form of a cat and the familiar of the Second Witch takes the form of a paddock, a toad. The familiar of the Third Witch is not mentioned in the first act but later in the play, it takes the form of a harpy, a nasty creature in Greek mythology with the head and body of a woman and the talons of a bird. -information from Shakespeare Online.
For those in warmer climes, let me tell you: 44 °F (7 °C) feels positively balmy when you’ve recently felt the bite of 19 °F (minus 7 °C).
There was fog this morning, and again tonight. This is 19th Avenue on Capitol Hill at 8 pm. Fog is made of tiny condensed water droplets suspended in humid air that had been cooled to its dewpoint: the temperature at which it can no longer hold all of the water vapor it contains.
My groceries were nicely packed; the milk & yogurt in plain paper bags were still cool to the touch. The ice cream was in a separate insulated bag. The fresh fruit were in recyclable produce bags. I’ll try to add a note to my next order to tell the picker/ packer not to use produce bags.
I ordered groceries from Amazon Fresh tonight, and they definitely have their logistics sorted out: 1. You get what you have ordered. If an item is out of stock the system tells you that when you order— not so with the Kroger/ QFC system.
(So would you prefer a smaller selection, and know what is available, and what not, or a much wider selection that is a little bit more hit-and-miss, such as Kroger’s)? 2. They have a two-hour delivery window, same as Kroger. As that window approaches, though, the online order status page shows a map with the driver’s whereabouts, and an updated timeframe for your delivery. Nice. 3. Delivery is free when ordering $35 or more (before sales tax). Oh, you have to be an Amazon Prime member to order, though. That’s $119 per year before sales tax.
A new word game called WORDLE* is all the buzz on Twitter.
It’s online and free, with a new word you have to guess every day, so I had to check it out.
*Launched publicly in October last year, the game was created by Josh Wardle, a software engineer from Wales living in New York, for his partner, Palak Shah, who loves puzzles. At first, the game was played by family, before it was rolled out globally, Wardle told the New York Times.
The rules are simple. You have 6 tries to guess the mystery 5-letter word. After every guess, a green letter says the letter & its position is correct. Yellow means the letter is in the word, but in the wrong place. Grey means the letter is not in the word. The little keyboard at the bottom is updated after every word. See my approach? I put frequently used letters in the first two words, and that thins out the possibilities dramatically, from the third guess onwards. On Tuesday, Julia Fine, a 33-year-old novelist in Chicago, went with what she knows: QUERY, as in the letters aspiring authors send while seeking a literary agent. She got five green boxes on the first try, a Wordle hole-in-one. Astounded, she posted her victory on Twitter, reasoning: “What can I do with this other than share?” – from the Washington Post
I bought a box of N95 masks on Amazon to use (instead of my cotton cloth masks— that are apparently no longer cutting it against the Omicron variant).
The N95 masks are more difficult to put on than ones with ear loops .. and then there is the question of how many times they can be used before they should be discarded. (They cannot be washed in the washing machine).
The short answer: it depends. If the mask was used in a crowded place, or for a long time (say, 4 to 8 hours), it should probably be discarded.
There are a lot of fake N95 masks out there. I bought mine on Amazon; the brand is from US industrial giant Honeywell, but the box they came in confirms that the masks were made in China (by the Honeywell subsidiary there). Are they fake/ substandard? Who knows. Like a reviewer on Amazon says: ‘Everything’s made in China – get over it’. Sigh. [Infographic by John Blanchard for The San Francisco Chronicle]
This is Apple Watch Series 7, black aluminum 45mm case (smaller one is 41 mm), with the sport loop band. Yes, that’s actually the time! -1.42 pm. There are 7 main watch faces that can be configured with countless colors, or the watch face can be a picture, and so on. For now, I switched off the other five spots on the watch face that show things such as outside temperature, today’s date, messages, start/ stop music, and news flashes.
I have had my Apple watch for a week now.
It is essentially an iPhone extension, and as such has definitely helped me relax a little.
I have fewer thoughts of the form ‘Where’s my phone?’ or ‘Go get your phone!’ (upstairs) or ‘Go check your phone!’ (for messages).
The first few days after my operation, I took pain meds every 4 hours, and it was easy to lose track.
I put tasks on my Google calendar, and the reminders popped up on my wrist every four hours.
I’m still warming up to using all the other health-related trackers on the watch (sleep monitoring, heart rate, even blood oxygen levels).
Looks like we will have to wait until Wednesday Australia time for the final word from Australia’s immigration minister, Alex Hawke, regarding the fate of No Vax Djokovic.
There are reports that his travel declaration form (travel before the trip to Melbourne) was filled out incorrectly. He had in fact, traveled to Yugoslavia and Spain, which was not noted in his declaration. Then there are Twitterati that got a hold of the (now publicly available) QR-code of his Dec. 16 Covid test, scanned it, and says the test result show as negative, not positive. If one can believe that.
Here’s Team Canada (Brayden Schnur, Félix Auger Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov) taking the Canadian flag and the 2022 ATP Cup* that they had claimed on Sunday, for a jolly in Sydney Harbor. *A team competition between competing nations to kick-start the calendar year for the Association of Tennis Professionals. [Picture from @felixtennis on Twitter]
No organic (nor regular) whole milk left on the shelf. The shopper texted me a picture of a fancy lactose-free Omega-3 whole milk, which I was OK with. Among the other items I requested was a SLICED loaf of bread, though, which was also not available. He substituted it with an UNSLICED loaf without checking with me. Maybe I will just break chunks off and eat it that way :).
A Sunday night grocery run was not possible, so I had groceries delivered to my house for the first time.
I used my QFC account that I had used for pick-up at the (previous) height of the pandemic.
QFC uses Instacart, which means an Instacart person picks your items in the store, and then drives it out to your house.
I added a generous tip online with my order, and said to just leave my items by the door.
A text message notifies the customer that the items had been delivered.
It all went fine, for the most part.
Still, next time I will try delivery by Amazon Fresh, and see how that goes.
From Yahoo Sports:
The Victoria state government allows medical exemptions for people who tested positive for COVID-19 in the last six months. That’s why Djokovic received a medical exemption to play in the Australian Open. The event is hosted in Victoria, one of six states in the country.
Border authorities, however, did not accept Djokovic’s previous COVID-19 diagnosis as an acceptable reason for a medical exemption, leading to Djokovic being detained and his visa being canceled.
My opinion: Djokovic should just go home. Bye-bye.
Reported by Tennis Channel: in spite of testing positive on Dec. 16, Novak ‘No Vax’ Djokovic attended public events— sans mask— the very next day and the day after that. I think he is obnoxious, and I am indifferent to his self-inflicted dilemma.
Mon 1/10 (reported by @MetroSport on Twitter):
Judge Anthony Kelly declared that the government’s decision to cancel Djokovic’s visa was ‘unreasonable’ on the grounds that he had not been given time to speak with his lawyers or representatives from Tennis Australia after being detained, and overturned the cancellation.
That means that the judge’s call hinged on a technicality, concerning the way in which the border force implemented the rules, rather than an outright declaration that Djokovic should have been completely free to enter the country all along.
Now the ball is in the court of Australia’s immigration minister, Alex Hawke, who must decide whether to personally intervene and cancel Djokovic’s visa himself.
Fri 1/14: Immigration Minister Alex Hawke’s decision to cancel his visa was announced at 6 pm Melbourne time. Djokovic’s legal team is challenging the decision.
Sun 1/16: The Australian Federal Court upholds Hawke’s decision to cancel Novak Djokovic’s visa. The court panel returned their unanimous decision just a day before the World No. 1 was set to play his first match of the Australian Open. Djokovic will now be deported and will not compete in the tournament.
The iPhone’s Left Hand Only keyboard helps a little bit (QWERTY keys squished towards the left). A quantum leap of help, though, would be an Afrikaans language keyboard/ dictionary option to pick for sending Afrikaans texts. Of the 11 languages used in South Africa (Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, Swati, Tsonga, Tswana, Venḓa, Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans, English), the iMessage app supports ONE: English. Apple! You’re $3T global company. Help us out, please.
My butter dish now resides on the kitchen counter, and not in the fridge.
A hard block of butter is annoying for two hands, and absolutely does not cut it for a one-handed toast butterer.
I also discovered that there is a Left Hand Only keyboard setting for my iPhone.
A year later, some 800 rioters and insurrectionists have been indicted for the events at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Some have been tried, found guilty, and have started to serve lengthy jail terms. The Mobster-in-Chief is still the de facto leader of his party, though (the Republican Party National Committee Chair said that he is the leader, in August).
History will not forget, though — whether the disgraced, defeated former President pays a price or not.
Front page of the New York Times from a year ago: ‘Trump incites mob’ and ‘It’s part of his legacy’. Further down on the page “Americans at the Gates: The Trump Era’s Inevitable Denouement”. Looking back now, was it a denouement? (Denouement= the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved).
Illustration from ‘Essential Clinical Anesthesia’ published by Cambridge University Press.
My wrist operation went without a hitch. My forearm now has a splint and a casing with a thick bandage on, with four fingers sticking out. The recovery period is going to be three months, all told.
During the preparation for the surgery, the anesthesiologist explained to me that they were going to do a Bier’s block. ‘Nothing to do with beer— it’s named after a German doctor August Bier’, said he.
The Bier’s block involves the injection of a local anesthetic solution (such as lidocaine) into the arteries of an upper or lower extremity, from which the blood had been squeezed out, or drained by gravity. The careful application and use of two tourniquets isolate the bloodless and numbed arm or leg from the central circulation system.
There was scaffolding all along the front of Engine House No 3 last April, as I walked by on the way to my first Covid shot next door.
The building now shows off a fresh coat of paint, and restored red lettering on the front as well.
Engine House No 3 on Terry Avenue is an official historic landmark. The building served as a home for the local fire brigade until 1921. Over the years, Harborview Medical Center gradually grew up around it. The hospital continues to use the old station building to this day. ‘Foot Note’: I thought those red crosses are Maltese crosses, but they are not. They are cross pattée (‘footed crosses’), a type of Christian cross with arms that are narrow at the center, and often flared in a curve or straight line shape, to be broader at the perimeter. The form appeared first in very early medieval art.From 1890 to 1904, the Seattle Fire Department’s Engine House No. 3 stood in what is now the Chinatown/ International District. In 1904, it was replaced by a new Engine House No. 3 (this one), at the intersection of Terry Avenue and Alder Street, in what is now Yesler Terrace. This 1911 photo shows Engine House No. 3 in its heyday. Three fire wagons, with their crews and horses, stand in the station’s doorways on a rainy day. Handwritten on photograph: 5-11-1911. [Photo and text from Wikimedia Commons]
I injured my wrist on the tennis court some time ago.
An X-ray (done in November) had revealed that the two bones at the base of my thumb (the scaphoid and the lunate) are no longer snug against each other, but separated. This means that the ligament between them is torn.
So I’m going in for an outpatient operation on Wednesday to have the ligament repaired, and I have to present a negative Covid-19 test. I will get the results of the test tomorrow. I should be good to go. Fingers crossed.
The scene at the make-shift Covid testing booth at 319 Terry Avenue, outside Harborview Hospital. They are taking scheduled appointments only, so the line was short. I appreciated that they checked us in outside, with the walk-up window where the nasal swab was done, just a few steps away. (On top of it all there was an icy wind about. Any cold, flu or Covid viruses were surely blown to oblivion).
We are out of the freezing temperatures, and it started to rain steadily this afternoon.
That should take care of the remaining snow & ice on the streets and on the sidewalks.
Here’s Jackson St and 23rd Avenue at 9.15 pm tonight. I am making my Sunday night grocery run, and there ‘s the Amazon Fresh store, on the left. I will make a left turn, park in the empty parking garage, and shop in the empty store. (All right, not completely empty. There will be 5 or 6 other people, besides me).
Here is a series of stills from the ‘augmented reality’ streaming video called T-Mobile New Year’s at the Needle. (T-Mobile is the second-largest wireless carrier in the United States, with 106.9 million subscribers as of the end of Q3 last year. They are headquartered in Bellevue WA and Overland Park KS.)
Look for Sasquatch, the Pike Place Market neon signs, Jimi Hendrix, an orca, drink coffee and stay strong, Kraken hockey players and The Kraken itself.
