Monday, January 14, 2008

Fearless Raccoons(?) in North Beacon Hill

Some critter crawled into the Pac-Med parking garage and was checking out my car today. I rarely see raccoons in the daytime, or in structures, but I can't think of who else could have done this.

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Sunday, January 13, 2008

Public Service Announcement

Today's Seattle Times has a cover story on Maria Federici, a woman who lost her sight and most of her face four years ago when her car was struck by a board that flew out of someone's unsecured U-Haul truck. Since then, the state has passed "Maria's Law," which made it a crime to carry an unsecured load.

Jesus Christ, people. I don't ask much of you, but before you get on the interstate, please tie down all that loose crap in the backs of your pickup trucks.

Yesterday I was driving north on I-5, and suddenly in front of me, there were these 8-foot-long sections of pipe bouncing up and down, like 10 feet into the air. Lucky for me, they settled down before I got up to them, but I still had to swerve wildly on the wet pavement to avoid running over them at 60 miles per hour. I somehow came out fine, but I swear to God, I was just seconds away from having that shit come right through my windshield.

I don't know if they came from an unsecured load in one of the zillion Saturday afternoon pickup trucks on the road ahead of me, or if they came from an unsecured load from a vehicle on the overpass above me (it must have been the latter, given the height of the bouncing), but it's clear to me that Maria's Law isn't really working.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Airport Way Open for the Rest of the Weekend

It was closed when I was there this morning, but it reopened at noon and will stay open for the rest of the weekend. It will be closed again next weekend.

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From Sabey:

Hey all: Just to let you know, our work for the weekend was completed
this morning and Airport Way was re-opened at Noon for the rest of the
weekend. Our final closing of Airport Way will be next weekend. This
weekend's closure allowed folks to see what it will look at next
weekend.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Where on Beacon Hill Am I? #1

I thought it would be fun to take photos around the neighborhood and ask you guys to guess where the photo was taken.

We'll start with what I think is an easy one. Where was this shot taken?

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Tuesday, January 8, 2008

The 1992 Washington State Caucus

I just posted about the locations for the upcoming Democratic caucus. And I got all mad about it because I hate the caucus system.

I've never actually participated in a caucus. I was out of town for the 2004 caucus. I was registered in Oregon (which has a meaningful primary system, as Washington should) in early 2000 and in 1996. And I was shut out of Washington state caucus in 1992 -- the first year that I was old enough to vote in a presidential race -- because I had to work.

I'm less indignant about it now, but I remember at the time, I was outraged that young/poor people like me who had to work in the evening had no opportunity to cast a vote.

And it's not like I didn't have an opinion. I was so intensely excited about Bill Clinton's candidacy that I attended all his rallies, which were like super-crowded rock shows. I'd transcend my claustrophobia and politely push my way to the front so I could be as close as possible to him. And when he got close, I'd thrust my hand out and hope he'd grab on, preferably with both his hands, preferably with a local photojournalist capturing it for a feature story in the paper several days later.

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11th District Dem Caucus Locations Announced

As The Paper Noose noted today, the 11th District Democrats have posted the locations for the caucuses on Saturday, Feb. 9. The 11th District encompasses most of the west side of Beacon Hill (though not north of Holgate); you can find your 11th District precinct on this map.

If you're not in the 11th here on the hill, you're in the 37th, which seems to cover everything north of Holgate and most of the hill east of Beacon Ave. The website for the 37th says they'll be posting their caucus locations tomorrow. You can find your 37th District precinct here; you can find all the district maps for the county here.

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Flat Tire in Georgetown

January in Seattle is glum. It's wet, it's cold, it's dark. It's an especially lousy time of year to get a flat tire and have to pull over into a pawn shop parking lot to deal with the spare.

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Grr!

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Since my web search on them comes up nil, I'm assuming that dairy no longer exists. Hope they didn't go out of business because of milk crate theft.

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I like to think I could do this on my own if I ever had to. If we ever get a flat on a warm summer afternoon, maybe I'll volunteer to try to change the tire.

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Beautiful Georgetown. So hip, so happening.

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He's kneeling on a Goretex jacket I last wore in the 1990s. I figure it's a good thing to have stashed in the trunk.

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Those are called lugnuts.

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The first time either of us has even verified the existence of the spare.

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Ta-da!

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