a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
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).
These pictures are from the Twitter account of Pyonta the feline (ピョンタ・フロスキー@pyonta_F on Twitter).
From what I gleaned from translating the Japanese, his owner was a little boy when he picked up the bedraggled fur ball near the Arakawa river, north of Tokyo, Japan.
That was 10 years ago, and look at them now.
It has only been 8 days the announcement of the Omicron variant, but it’s clear that it has probably been spreading for several weeks (months?) around the world already.
Update Sat 12/4: Public health officials have confirmed 3 cases of the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus in Washington state.
[Map from the New York Times online]
[Map from the New York Times online]
The Christmas tree is up downtown at Westlake Center.
Ours is not quite as tall as the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree (in New York City), but that’s OK. Our tree is complemented by the star on the Macy’s building across the street behind it, and other Christmas lights nearby.
Hey, it’s December.
The sands of time for 2021 are running out rapidly.
Seattleites have to hang in there a few more weeks before the black nights that come so quickly, ease up and become shorter again.
It was already dark when I walked down to the Capitol Hill light rail station tonight.
From there I took the train to the U District stop to the Neptune Company record store, just a hundred steps away from the train station exit.
Top to bottom:
Northbound train at Capitol Hill station.
Southbound platform, U District Station.
Southbound train, U District station.
Capitol Hill station plaza.
Here comes the No 12 bus on 19th Avenue.
I’m on my way to the barber shop in First Hill.
It rained most of the day, but it cleared up as night fell.
I made a run down to the Space Needle to take a few pictures of the ‘Christmas tree’ on it.
I went up Queen Anne hill for a few pictures, as well.
It has been a soggy, soggy rain season so far.
Since Oct. 1, some 15 in. of precipitation had been measured at Seattle-Tacoma Airport.
Average for this time of year is 9.37 in. and the record is 16.6 in.
Hopefully it turns out that Black Friday meant the purveyors of products-at-a-discount ended up in the black, and not that the B.1.1.529 variant (Omicron) had started a really bad turn in the pandemic. (We will know in about two weeks if this ‘variant of concern’ can evade the antibodies produced by the current vaccines*).
Angelique Coetzee, chairperson of the South African Medical Association, says in The Guardian newspaper: ‘It’s all speculation at this stage. It may be it’s highly transmissible, but so far the cases we are seeing are extremely mild’.
*From the New York Times: The B.1.1.529 variant has a “very unusual constellation of mutations,” with more than 30 mutations in the spike protein alone, Mr. de Oliveira (director of the KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform, in South Africa) said. The spike protein is the chief target of antibodies that the immune system produces to fight a coronavirus infection. So many mutations raised concerns that Omicron’s spike might be able to evade antibodies produced by either a previous infection or a vaccine.
Wishing a Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.
If you’re going, go to Tacoma today, boyo, I told myself this morning.
Tomorrow will see bumper-to-bumper traffic on Interstate 5 for Thanksgiving (on Thursday).
And so off I went. I know of second-hand record stores on 6th Avenue, and mural artwork in the alleys there, and that’s where I stopped to spend a little time.
Several countries in Europe are in bad shape, in the grip of another spike of infections. Austria has started a 10-day national lockdown, which could be extended to 20.
A national vaccination rate of 60% —or even 70% —is just not cutting it. Too many people still refuse to get vaccinated. As someone noted wryly, many countries may have reached herd immunity: immunity from the truth.
