a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
The forecasters say we will stay below freezing for a stretch of 3 or 4 days starting on Sunday— the coldest we have had in 10 years or so.
We will not have a White Christmas* here in the city of Seattle.
It is almost certain that it will be a white Boxing Day, though.
(The day after Christmas, celebrated in Canada but not in the US).
*Defined as at least one inch of snow on the ground, at 4 am on Christmas Day.
I was feeling invincible with my triple-triple word play of DIGAMIES (158 points- yowza!) .. but just then Zoey* swooped in with PRITHEE to come out ahead in this Scrabble game.
*Zoey is a Scrabble grandmaster bot.
Here’s a rundown of some of the words on the board.
VIZARD– noun (archaic) a mask or disguise.
DROIT– noun (historical, law) a right or due.
PRITHEE– exclamation (archaic) please (used to convey a polite request).
“prithee, Jack, answer me honestly”
NAE–
determiner
Scottish form of no (determiner).
“it’s nae bother”
exclamation
Scottish form of no (exclamation).
“He was asked if he was ever going back east. ‘Nae, son,’ he replied”
adverb
1. Scottish form of not (adverb).
“it’s nae as guid as whiskey”
2. Scottish form of no (adverb).
“we were just bairns, nae aulder than you lassies are”
QUERNS– noun (plural of quern) a simple hand mill for grinding grain, typically consisting of two circular stones, the upper of which is rotated or rubbed to and fro on the lower one.
DIGAMIES– noun (plural of digamy) a second marriage, after the death or divorce of the first husband or wife.
YAG– noun a synthetic crystal of yttrium aluminum garnet, used in certain lasers and as an imitation diamond in jewelry.
LOGE– noun a private box or enclosure in a theater; the front section of the first balcony in a theater.
PYIC– adjective of or belonging to pus; purulent.
PALI– noun (in Hawaii) a cliff.
VROWS– noun (plural of vrow), 1 : a Dutch or Afrikaner woman. 2 : mistress —usually used preceding the name of a Dutch or Afrikaner married woman.
I first wrote ‘Happy Winter Solstice’, but that would exclude my readers in the southern hemisphere (for whom it is Summer Solstice, of course).
In three short weeks, the Omicron variant has displaced the Delta variant.
The first case of Omicron in the Unites States was reported on Dec. 1.
GET VACCINATED. GET A BOOSTER SHOT. WEAR YOUR MASK.
The skies were a beautiful blue today, and I went out to Olympic Sculpture Park to take a few pictures.
Here’s 19th Avenue East on Capitol Hill, with the street lights already on at 3.53 pm.
There are patches of pale blue in the sky.
It’s the first winter in my not-so-new-anymore car, and I am definitely heeding the message on the dashboard for the cold weather: ‘Regenerative braking temporarily reduced’.
When starting out in cold weather, the car struggles to use regenerative braking as efficiently as in summer.
We also have people dressed in black, with black umbrellas, stepping into the pedestrian crosswalk, expecting drivers to see them. People. Wear something other than black if you’re going to walk the streets at night!
‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ was a slogan on a motivational poster produced by the British government in 1939, to prepare the country for World War II.
I walked by The Randolph* tonight. I like the stained glass with the name at the entrance.
*A four-story apartment building here on Capitol Hill, built in 1928.
Pussycat was a Dutch country and pop group led by the three Kowalczyk sisters: Toni, Betty and Marianne. They had a monster hit in South Africa with their song Mississippi.
The year was 1977. I was in high school, with no inkling that the year 1995 would find me living on the banks of the Mississippi (in St Louis, Missouri).
I had long scoured secondhand CD stores for music from the group —with no success. So it was time for the nuclear option: order one from overseas on Discogs.com.
This pandemic will end some time. We just don’t know when, yet.
GET VACCINATED. GET A BOOSTER SHOT. WEAR YOUR MASK.
From the New York Times:
At least 90 people were killed by tornadoes across at least six states Friday night and early Saturday morning.
The tornadoes were part of a weather system that was wreaking havoc in many parts of the country and hit Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.
In Kentucky, one tornado stayed on the ground for more than 200 miles.
My brother, visiting from California, made for the perfect reason to go and check out the Space Needle again.
The Needle had undergone a refurbishment inside and out, during 2017 and 2018, and I had not been up to the observation deck since that time.
The Consumer Price Index climbed by 6.8 percent in the past year through November, the data showed, the fastest in almost 40 years.
The headline below says inflation is pressuring Washington (President Biden and the Democrats, I presume).
It’s up to the Federal Reserve Bank and chairman Jay Powell, to decide when to raise interest rates to curb inflation, though.
I was at Bellevue Square shopping mall today.
The Microsoft store had closed down. The Apple store upstairs is still open, and the Tesla showroom is still there as well.
(Funny, how it felt like ‘old news’, looking at the Model 3 and the two Model Ys on display— now that I have had my own car for 6 months).
Bryan, Gary and I made our way down to The Chieftain for a beer and a bite tonight.
Yay! Vote canvassers will stop knocking on my door for a while, and stop harassing me when I walk along 15th Avenue.
The recall vote for controversial socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant finally drew to a close today. The vote counting started tonight. (We vote by mail, so people in Seattle’s District 3 have been voting ever since they got their ballots in the mail more than two weeks ago).
There was a flyer in the mail today from Amazon, offering $20 off on $50 of groceries —but with a Thanksgiving expiration date.
It’s worth a try, I thought, and ran out to the Amazon Fresh store for stuff I needed anyway. But no, there was a red error message on my smart shopping cart: the coupon had expired.
It was sunny and ‘cold’ (I guess one could say ‘brisk’) today with a high of only 42°F (5.5°C).
