Murals, Cacti and Snow

Ahhhh, what a difference two days make!  We unwrapped the tender non-natives this morning and put the sheets and flannels away.  They're forecasting a low of 33 Monday night, so it all may be coming back out, but for the time being, it's out of sight.  Today it hit 70 and was quite delightful.

Yesterday we went to the Rincon Market for lunch.  For YEARS they have had a great salad bar, a steam table with cooked food ready to go, and on weekends they did made to order omelets.  You stood there and watched them cook and told them what you wanted in the omelet.  No more.  The place has been sold, and now all food comes from the menu.  You have to sit, order, wait and eat.  This will probably kill it for the large groups of cyclists who used to come in on a weekend.  I will never understand why someone buys a store with a good business plan, that is always full, and then they change it to something stupid.  So, they're dead to us now. 

Update to post:  Rincon Market was bought by the guy that owns Time Market in March, 2018.  Peter Wilke plans to bring Time Market’s attention to detail and quality of curated goods.  They're not getting good reviews.  Bad service, music is too loud to hear each other, incomplete food orders, higher prices.  Hopefully they read the reviews and react accordingly.

After that disappointing discovery we went to a high zoot plumbing store looking for a new shower head.  Nope, nothing but fancy sets costing stupid amounts of money.  We did see two new murals in the area.

This is one mural, split in two.  On the right are people wearing rabbit skins, cactus skins, hummingbirds and etc.  It's pretty cool.

On the left, more people wearing desert dweller skins.  It's very well executed, if not just a little weird.

This is our favorite.

Today we went to Home Depot and got a replacement shower head, new pruning shears and a new 16 foot extendible pole pruner.  Everything you need, and nothing you don't!  We also looked at the cactus.

I can't remember what this is called.  It looks like a grass, but has these interesting blossoms on it.  Update to post:  They're Kangaroo Paws.  They're from Australia, and would have to be overwintered inside to survive the freezing temps we sometimes get.  So, no, not going there!

A euphorbia that looks like things I have seen in sci-fi horror movies.

A member of the opuntia family.  It's a cheerful looking cactus.

And this looks like a microfiber duster.  It's also a euphorbia.  They're not cactus, but are very similar.



Seattle is expecting 7 to 8 inches of snow today, which will probably hit during the evening commute.  I got these off the local TV website this morning.  There is nothing much left at Trader Joe's.

From Google Maps, we see that traffic is indeed terrible as of about an hour ago.

I feel bad for the Seattle drivers.  It snowed when the new tunnel on 99 opened, so there wasn't much traffic.  On Wednesday the roads had cleared and they were having four mile backups.  The ventilation fans are not yet calibrated correctly, so people were smelling fumes as they sat in their cars.  It's been a tough week for moving around the area.

Representative John Dingell died yesterday.  He was the longest serving member of the House.  His seat is currently occupied by his wife.  It was previously occupied by his Dad.  He's the last of the old time FDR democrats.  Before dying, he wrote out his last words to the country.  They really bring home how rotten our political systems have become.  The op-ed can be found here on WAPO.  Here is an exerpt if you can't get past the paywall.

Impoverishment of the elderly because of medical expenses was a common and often accepted occurrence. Opponents of the Medicare program that saved the elderly from that cruel fate called it “socialized medicine.” Remember that slander if there’s a sustained revival of silly red-baiting today.

Not five decades ago, much of the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth — our own Great Lakes — were closed to swimming and fishing and other recreational pursuits because of chemical and bacteriological contamination from untreated industrial and wastewater disposal. Today the Great Lakes are so hospitable to marine life that one of our biggest challenges is controlling the invasive species that have made them their new home.

We regularly used and consumed foods, drugs, chemicals and other things (cigarettes) that were legal, promoted and actively harmful. Hazardous wastes were dumped on empty plots in the dead of night. There were few if any restrictions on industrial emissions. We had only the barest scientific knowledge of the long-term consequences of any of this.

And there was a great stain on America, in the form of our legacy of racial discrimination. There were good people of all colors who banded together, risking and even losing their lives to erase the legal and other barriers that held Americans down. In their time they were often demonized and targeted, much like other vulnerable men and women today.

Please note: All of these challenges were addressed by Congress. Maybe not as fast as we wanted, or as perfectly as hoped. The work is certainly not finished. But we’ve made progress — and in every case, from the passage of Medicare through the passage of civil rights, we did it with the support of Democrats and Republicans who considered themselves first and foremost to be Americans.

As I prepare to leave this all behind, I now leave you in control of the greatest nation of mankind and pray God gives you the wisdom to understand the responsibility you hold in your hands.