RedFin just posted a blog entry about archival photos of Seattle. Cool! I’ve previously posted about the Washington State Archive photos (see here and here), but hadn’t heard of the Seattle Municipal Archives before. Just checked it out.
There’s nothing showing our house directly, but as we have the West Queen Anne Playfield just across the street, they have a bunch of photos that show our house (albeit small). Here’s a sample - for all of them, see the Seattle Municipal Archives Photograph Collection
| 1965 http://tinyurl.com/3q2kva |
Jan 26, 1968 http://tinyurl.com/6hwhxk |
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If you notice on the top of these pictures, there’s a community center across the street. There are some awesome pictures from the late 1930s during the Works Progress Administration construction of said community center (or shelter, as they called it then)
| Dec 21, 1936 http://tinyurl.com/3pvdpr |
Mar 24, 1937 http://tinyurl.com/4kx2t5 |
Mar 24, 1937 http://tinyurl.com/3stwdj |
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Also, I found the Sherwood Park History Files, which has a pretty cool pdf of the old plans for the playfield - see http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/QueenAnnePF.pdf for it in all of the full glory.
And for final good measure, here’s a 1938 view of Queen Anne Ave (the main street by us) just a block or two from our house (i.e. right in front of Blaine):
| 1938 http://tinyurl.com/6elhdl |
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I love this old stuff - can you notice I am not working yet? Spending 15-20 minutes at a time surfing the web, and this is what I end up with :)
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A few thoughts on things we’ve learned after one week of having Molly as part of the family:
- Dogs are hairy! She definitely has a lot of excess hair that needs grooming, but she’s not quite trusting of us enough to allow much brushing. She’s totally cool with grabbing her skin and hand-removing excess hair, though, so at least it is cleaned up a bit. I think she’ll enjoy baths more than the brush, so hopefully that will help. We’re waiting to talk to the vet first though to find out more.
- String cheese is your friend. We took our first obedience class this week with Paws4Training, and they suggested string cheese as a great treat for training purposes (since they can taste without actually eating the whole thing), and for those rare cases when you need to bribe her to do something (i.e. get into crate)
- We have noticed one caveat: Once you’ve used it as a treat, Molly does not like when you grab another string cheese for yourself - she wants it to be doggy-exclusive! Joelle ran into this last night.
- She’s scared of most things, but getting a bit better for all of these, I think day-day. It is going to be a long haul, though:
- Men (she’s more okay with women it seems) - she’s okay with me though
- Major roads (Queen Anne Ave, etc…)
- Big buildings
- going into anywhere - the pet store freaked her out
- large dogs - she likes to sniff, but submissive urinates as soon as she’s around them, especially if they are fluffy and white
- buses and large vehicles
- getting into her crate - she’s okay once she’s in there during the day, but man is she hard to convince to go in - treats or not (we’re getting a daily dog walker, by the way - a local middle schooler is looking for work and is great with her dog - Molly and her get along, for everything but getting into the crate)
- She eats all up pretty darn quickly. We’ve been researching food quality guides - here’s a good link to a good grading system (similar reviews on other sites as well): http://www.thepetpedia.com/article_view.php?articleid=6
- Water she’s not so quick on. We need to figure out how to trick her into drinking a bit more.
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(By the way, I have today off from work due to President’s Day… hence the goal of getting a couple of blog posts in)
In my last post, I mentioned how nice it was for neighbors to get together and talk. There’s actually been a few opportunities for this recently, and it’s one of the main reasons why I am so ecstatic moving where we did:
- The leaf-blower discussion
- Breaking out the bbq due to the good weather last night (hint: if you make a dry rub mix, use a lot less salt than I did, especially on kosher/salted meat), our next door neighbor and his family came out to talk to us about the ‘hood and the changeover once the weather changes.
- Caucusing 2 weekends ago.
Caucusing (it was the first time either Joelle or I had participated), was something I was very much looking forward to (especially since the Washington Primary doesn’t count at all for Democrats this go-round). While I am still not sure I buy the full premise of the caucus (it does seem to disenfranchise voters who work during those hours), I do have to argue in favor of them just for the mass community spirit it brings out in everyone.
What I liked:
- We met at the middle school across the street from us (across the park across the street from us to be specific).
- Walking over there, we were amazed - the line was down the street, around the block. Democrats were everywhere!
- Turns out, about 8 different precincts voted in our same building, and it was actually really nice to see a bunch of people we knew already hanging out and waiting in line (and in some cases, registering voters and running their local precinct).
- People were excited to argue politics.
- Parents brought their kids to experience politics in action.
What I would have liked to see changed:
- Our particular precinct wasn’t particularly well run; others in the same room were having much better conversations and new what was going on.
- No one there knew that the King County Convention had received a date change. I wish someone would have - both Joelle and I would have been delegates!
And for the record, our precinct was 69-16 in favor of Obama.
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Joelle and I have been pretty lazy about cleaning up leaves that had fallen on our front lawn this past fall. To be fair: there’s a couple of reasons for this:
- Seattle’s been very rainy this fall/winter, and who wants to rake in the rain?
- I hate raking!
As yesterday turned into a gorgeous day outside (50 and sunny), we decided it was finally time to tackle the challenge.
So I pulled out the rake:
But then quickly realized, I still hate raking! Especially with the piles of wet leaves, this seemed like an impossible task, and I felt liking I was digging up the grass in the yard with each rake-stroke.
But, as a technologist ought to, I decided there has to be a better solution - so decided to make a quick trip to Home Depot and purchase a new Toro Super Blower/Vac. Highly, highly recommended. Not only did it do a much better job than the manual work. Actually made us want to finish cleaning up all of the leaves.
A couple of nice points:
- The blower was powerful enough to disrupt all of the piles of wet leaves and move them around.
- The vacuum swooped it up nice and easy.
- A nice neighbor lady stopped by to ask how well it was working; she was thinking of getting one. Anything that gets neighbors talking is a plus in my book.
And perhaps, even more importantly, it’s fun to use :)
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(And yes, I am finally blogging after a bit of a break. Decided there were some pictures I needed to get off of my camera, plus people keep bugging me)
A week or so ago was a weird weekend of weather in Seattle; a couple of days of snow, followed by the second worst rain-storm in the city’s history (more on that another time). As it was the first snow storm in the new house, Joelle and I decided to check out the snow.
Turns out the new neighborhood is fantastic for this - good hills, people like to sled, and since it’s higher up in elevation, it tends to snow just a little bit more.
All of the pictures are up at: http://picasaweb.google.com/ahaverbuch/SnowDay2007
My favorites of us:
My favorite “nature” shots:
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Ever since Joelle and I moved into our new neighborhood, we’ve seen quite a few racoons running around the streets. We haven’t thought twice about them, other than to avoid swerving into them on the road.
Saturday night, between Hannukah parties (Happy Hannukah to all by the way!) we stopped home for a bite to eat. As we walked up the front steps, we saw a racoon run around our deck. A second one soon followed, but this one decided to climb up our tree and hang out on our roof. Of course, not knowing what else to do, I immediately ran and grabbed the camera. It was a little dark out, so apologize for the contrast on the pictures below….
I still haven’t been able to find where the deck-bound critter ran to. Hopefully far away!
