If you're feeling at all sorry for yourself or whiny about it being Monday and having to go to work and face the grind again, read this little bit about a hockey goalie who stopped 96/100 shots at a playoff game in Germany that took 168 minutes 16 seconds of gameplay (hockey games have 60 minutes of regular play; scoreless overtimes rack up extra time in playoff games where ties must be broken). That goalie, Robert Müller, is in his first season back from surgery to remove a malignant brain tumor. He still gets chemotherapy five days a month. And his team won.
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It's opening day for the Seattle Mariners and what really matters is the food. OK, not really, but the P.I. leads off their opening day story with a rundown of the new items fans will get to nosh on: The Sea Dog (a "hot dog for fish lovers"), cedar-planked salmon, catfish and fries, caramel popcorn, foot-long bratwursts, Auntie Anne's pretzels, French dip sandwiches, prime rib nachos, and Garlic Jim's pizza. Don't worry, you can still get peanuts and beer.
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Friday, March 28, 2008

Patti Lupone has completely bowled over The N.Y. Times' theater critic, Ben Brantley, with her portrayal of Mama Rose in the Gypsy revival on Broadway. After criticizing her Mama Rose of last summer's limited run, his praise is now effusive..."And yes, that quiet crunching sound you hear is me eating my hat."
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Seattle Times restaurant critic, Nancy Leson, has gone public with a photo and a blog. She's giving up reviewing. She's sticking with the topic of food & restaurants for the paper, but leaving the reviews to Providence Cicero.
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If the sniff and visible-mold test isn't palatable for your leftover food checks, the DaysAgo timer will count the number of days that have passed since you stuck that container or baby food jar in the fridge. It comes with either a magnet or suction cup attachment and a pack of two is about ten bucks. You can of course use it for all sorts of day-timing situations, watering plants, cleaning the kitty litter, anything up to 99 days. Here's a Gadgeteer review from last year.
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Thursday, March 27, 2008

Trivia to please the shock absorbers of Seattle cars: "Crews from the Seattle Transportation Department say they have set a record for the number of potholes they've filled in a week -- 1,589, which beats their weekly average of 1,335." They call 'em the "Pothole Rangers."
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Will a posh movie theater with $35 tickets actually succeed in the affluent community of Redmond, WA (home of Microsoft)? The Australian company that's opening this venture in the U.S. is taking over the location of the plain ol' movie theater that just closed. Someone has to explain to me the economics and lifestyle behavior of a community that can't support a regular ol' $10 ticket (plus snacks $) theater, but can support a $35 (plus gourmet food $) movie theater with a luxury experience. Will it be supported by parents who want a fancy night out without the kids but don't want to talk to each other over dinner? Or by companies who rent the theaters out for employee events (they only seat 40)? Maybe it's for people who just want to feel rich. The folks that can afford this treat regularly already have very nice home theaters. Or maybe I've just lost touch with what I'm supposed to be spending my disposable income on.
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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Is it a trend yet? Altec Lansing has decorated earbuds with crystals, essentially turning them into earrings.
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I was feeling a bit nostalgic for the ol' fashioned world wide web so I did some quick searches to find personal sites for: a sugar packet collection, a tea bag collection, and an eraser collection. Remember when the web was just real people with home pages? Oh, and their cats.
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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Wikipedia lists more than ten variants of Mahjong and I have no idea which one I was taught, though I have some idea of which ones I wasn't.
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For baseball minor leaguers from Latin America, developing the experience to get to the major leagues may be their main goal, but learning how to get by in American culture and the English-speaking environment of airports, restaurants, and baseball terminology is also important. It's deemed so critical by the Seattle Mariners' management that their new Latin American players and prospects attend mandatory classes on how to assimilate into the culture. Instructor Becky Schnakenberg teaches them how to navigate airports, menus, umpire calls, and even dating.
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Monday, March 24, 2008

If the falling dollar isn't discouraging you from visiting Europe, Rick Steves has a round-up of what's new in the old world. New museums, closed museums, changed museum hours, "rangers" at the Cliffs of Moher, new non-smoking laws (even in France!), faster trains, new funiculars, it's all in there. The ABBA museum opens in June, by the way, and you can book your tickets online now.
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Lots of fascinating marine animal data is showcased at the Tagging of Pacific Predators website. The different types of tracking tags are described halfway down the About page, and there are of course maps and data galore on the 11 species currently under surveillance. One of them is the juvenile white shark released by the Monterey Bay Aquarium in February who apparently high-tailed it down to Cabo in time for spring break.
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Friday, March 21, 2008

Chef William Belickis is closing Seattle's famed Mistral Restaurant (we've actually eaten there), but don't panic, he has plans for a new place. According to a P.I. food writer, he's thinking of a place with different areas for different types of dining: short stops for a drink & snack, a relaxed meal with friends, fine dining, haute cuisine, and a place in the kitchen for the severely serious foodies.
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Baseball and peanuts go together like peanut butter and jelly. But peanuts don't go well with the 1.5 million Americans who are allergic to them. Peanut dust and shells drifting across the seats and floors of baseball stadiums provide no comfort to those who are at risk of anaphylactic shock from just a small amount of exposure to peanuts. A few major league baseball venues have been kind enough to set aside nut-free zones for a few games a season so that fans, often young kids, can enjoy America's pastime without worry. Skyboxes, executive lounges, or a section of seats are cleaned and set aside as safe zones. The Toronto Blue Jays, Minnesota Twins, San Diego Padres, and Washington Nationals are among the teams that have thus enabled parents to take their peanut-allergic kids to the ballgame.
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Thursday, March 20, 2008

How is managing a hospital like building cars? Ask the staff at Virginia Mason, a Seattle area hospital where managers were sent to study Toyota's "lean manufacturing" system. Since their first trip in 2002, the staff has implemented several process changes to eliminate wasted time and supplies, improve productivity, and of course provide better care for patients. Their improvements center around improving workflows, taking care of problems and communications immediately, and making sure staff and tools are used efficiently. The return has been impressive, productivity has increased by 93%, lab results get to patients 85% faster, and inventory costs have been lowered by $1 million. Hospital CEO Dr. Gary Kaplan pictures a future when a patient goes from the parking garage straight to their appointment, with no waiting room in between. I suppose that will allow for a savings in magazine subscriptions as well.
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On March 24th the Olympic flame will be lit in Greece. Between then and August 8th, the Olympic torch will travel the world, making one stop in North America on April 9th. The USOC chose San Francisco, location of the U.S.' oldest Chinatown and one of the largest in North America, home of many Olympians, and as yet unsuccessful bidder for Olympic host, as the sole visit for the flame. They claim to have "absolutely anticipated" the fact that San Francisco is also, as the Chronicle politely puts it, "known worldwide for its spirit of protest and dissent." But I'm not sure if they truly thought through how spirited this protest and dissent may be, as the USOC also said that no one has protested at a U.S. torch run before. The city is currently keeping the details of route and time secret and denying permits for demonstrations. They will instead set aside "free-speech zones." I think we'll be seeing torch bearers with a close security detail.
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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

I've uploaded all my snapshots from the Forbidden City to flickr.
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Ahhh March, time of the N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments. And ever-present at the games are the college pep bands. 30 musicians are allowed, no amplification, and the brass section rules. As the NY Times notes, the song sets have a heavy helping of the oldies. Along with the usual crowd-pleasers ("Louie, Louie" one more time, anyone?), UCLA has hung onto "Build Me Up Buttercup" (tuba solo!), and USC will likely never retire "Tusk," the Fleetwood Mac hit that featured their own marching band (and has become their anti-UCLA fight song). New songs are added to freshen things up, but the mainstays are reminders that cheering for the alma mater is a tradition that connects back into the alumni years.
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The tragic New York City crane accident reminded Bellevue, WA residents of the crane collapse in 2006 that killed one man. The proliferation of cranes continues in downtown Bellevue. We are still in the habit of counting them whenever we're at a stop light, often handing the task off to our 3-year-old whose tally gets more accurate by the day. The City of Bellevue actually published a news release this week that listed the 18 construction cranes and their associated projects. It includes a link to a PDF of 21 major projects under construction, 12 under review, and 7 in the pipeline. That's a lot of change to the city's landscape.
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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Today's Beijing shot is a video I uploaded to Vox: How I got down from the Great Wall of China. We went to Mutianyu which had a lovely older section of the wall which we hiked in the quiet morning hours before the crowds. Here's a better video someone on Youtube shot during their actual toboggan ride (and there's plenty more on Youtube).
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As I noted here a few years ago, the futuristic Eero Saarinen terminal at JFK Airport, former home of defunct TWA, will be refurbished as JetBlue builds a new terminal behind it. The structure's concourses and departure lounges, however, were removed to make room for JetBlue. The Port Authority agreed to preserve one lounge. So one was sawed off and moved aside. It has sat at the airport for almost a year, awaiting its fate. But everyone with a say in the matter has now agreed that the money needed to restore the lounge and incorporate it into the new terminal would be better used in restoring the old one. So, JetBlue is free to demolish it. The NY Times also recently covered the careful dismantling of the gigantic stained glass window in the old American Airlines terminal.
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Monday, March 17, 2008

My mom's cooking made me very picky about Chinese restaurants, and now my Beijing trip has spoiled me on Sichuan and vegetarian Chinese food. At the Sichuan restaurant we went to, there were more spices than other ingredients on some of the plates (although that didn't hinder some of us from eating the chilis and peppers as part of the meal, while most of the, perhaps smarter, Beijing residents ate around them). We went to a vegetarian restaurant near our office twice for lunch and ate some amazing faux meats, concocted out of various vegan ingredients. It was a far cry from the places I've been to that just do the same thing over and over with gluten and tofu. Then again, I always wonder if truly dedicated animal lovers actually want to eat something that so closely resembles the real thing.
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You may be very familiar with that blue Valpak envelope that regularly arrives in your mailbox. Do you open it and look for deals? Or does it go right into the recycling bin? Valpak has been around for 40 years and now has 200 franchises in the U.S. and Canada sending 45 million homes that stack of coupons every month. They've opened a plant to consolidate all their printing in St. Petersburg, Florida, and they have a deal for online advertising with Google Maps. Instead of stuffing paper into envelopes like employees did in the early days, the printing plant's machines wrap the envelope around the coupons. And that blue color? It was what the female employees picked early on as the most enticing, and focus groups continue to confirm it.
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Friday, March 14, 2008

One of my favorite TV shows, and now a true homage to 1980's teen culture, Square Pegs, is being released on DVD in May. And I'm pretty sure we have the fame of Sarah Jessica Parker to thank for that, especially since the 3-DVD set hits the stores 10 days before the Sex and the City movie hits the theaters. (thanks PCJM!)
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Today's China shots are all about tech spotting: Sun and Microsoft (at Tsinghua Science Park), Google, and IBM's China Systems Center.
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Thursday, March 13, 2008

In seeing how much the Olympics related construction has taken over Beijing's landscape, it's hard to believe the actual event is only two weeks long. The buildings will of course function as valuable venues for years to come. With five months to go, construction is proceeding at a brisk pace (I saw welding sparks cascading down from the skeleton of a building late at night). Here are my moving taxi snapshots of: the unique CCTV building with its seemingly unsupported top section still being filled in, the "bird's nest" which is the main Olympic stadium, an unfinished tower near the stadium with its large screen displaying the familiar Windows desktop, and the completed Olympic Tower which is home to the organizing committee.
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A 16x16 grid of LEDs turns the Tenori-On into a light show, but this shiny metal tablet is an intriguing synthesizer-sequencer combo. Each LED is a button, and each button holds a sound. Ten function buttons on the sides provide access to different effects, octaves, tempo, and volume. Experimentation with programming and playback variations using the Tenori-On is meant to be intuitive and fun. And perhaps mesmerizing for anyone watching the lights.
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Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Beijing Photos: Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot (yum), Wangfujing Night Market's starfish and insect stand (not so yum).
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The world's tallest snowman is a snowwoman, measuring 122 feet and an inch. She has her very own webcam. Oh and a weblog of course. Her eyelashes are made of 16 skis and her arms are 30 foot spruce trees.
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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

A few months old, but new to me: Cat Cafe in Tokyo. "Visitors to (Cat Cafe) Calico pay 800 yen ($7) an hour or 2,000 yen for three hours in a big room where 14 well-brushed and shampooed cats hang out. After a thorough handwash, the visitor can play with the cats, read comics or just relax."
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Beijing photos for today: IKEA and Walmart. I took a picture of a Starbucks too, but it looks just like it does back in the U.S. Except it was slightly more expensive.
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Monday, March 10, 2008

As I edit down my Beijing photos I'll link to a few notable ones over the next week or so. Here's the first: Totoro bread in a Beijing bakery (wikipedia link for those of you Miyazaki deprived).
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I'm back from Beijing with 300 photographs (mainly from the 2 days of sightseeing I managed to get in around work and also the required photos of food), nasty jet leg (compounded by the ramming of Daylight Savings time into March), and a newfound appreciation for Beijing pedestrians (who have street-crossing fortitude beyond that of the expert Manhattan jaywalker). While I was in China, someone torched 3 luxury showcase homes in Snohomish (there's nothing quite so scary as hearing the words "terrorism, fire, Seattle" on the International CNN channel), Jennifer 8. Lee's book on Chinese (American) food The Fortune Cookie Chronicles was released, and my husband's blog was Slashdotted (and is now on BoingBoing too).
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