First frost of the year -- in November?!

In Seattle, I'm used to wearing my paper-thin jacket through Christmas -- but I stepped outside to this:

And thusly donned my heaviest Seattle jacket, which would not last for a second back in the Midwest. Strange weather all around the country. It was in the 60's in Columbus, OH yesterday where my sister lives and is supposed to snow in Chicago in the next few days.

Prop 1 Blog Roundup

Before turning out the lights on Prop 1, I thought I'd share some interesting blog posts I've found on the subject after its defeat in the recent election:

What's next: new legislation to select tolling

Seattle: Say Goodbye to Prop 1

Communication_issues for Prop 1

Prop-1 post-mortem

Response to Prop-1 post-mortem

Sneak Peek of a Green Building

I've been interested in touring a green building for a while now, and I recently had the chance to poke around the county building at 5th and Jefferson.


My favorite feature? Try to guess what it is:




These are two options for flushing a toilet. The wavy-lined button on the left is meant for "liquid only" and the button on the right is industrial-sized flushing. Notice the background tile is a soothing green. Ahhhhhhh. The bathroom also had aerated faucets (which reduce water use by 70% over non-aerated) and a few other features.


The building had useful, descriptive recycling.

And the magnetic key card readers were not made of black plastic with a blinking red light, but an earth-toned picture of a tree. Happiness.

Wednesday Waste-o-Meter Week 3

Quick tally:

A. How many bags of non-recycling garbage did I throw away last week? Two.

B. How many plastic water bottles this week? Three -- major backslide here after two straight weeks of zero water bottles.

C. How many styrofoam containers? Two -- another backlisde after one straight zero water bottle days.

D. How many plastic bags? Zero.

E. How many paper cups? Seven.

F. How many pieces of plastic silverware? -- Four. I only remembered to bring silverware one day.

See all the waste-o-meters.

Give it a Whrrl

I just signed up for a Facebook-like application called Whrrl. What makes the site unique is that it's more about connecting users locally than virtually. It is centered around a map and your mobile phone -- so (for example) it makes it easy to ask your network to meet up at a certain place and time and the meeting details are distributed to your friends' phones.

Whrrl has a feature for rating and reviewing restaurants. On the heels of my post Friday that Leschi, Madrona & Madison Park residents aren't as likely to connect locally online as Cap Hill residents, Whrrl confirms this trend.

Although there are 1,000 Seattle residents using this site and dozens (probably hundreds -- I didn't count) of businesses rated there was only one rated in any of those neighborhoods -- the tasty Meskel -- of which I wrote one of my only restaurant reviews.

New Real Estate Site suggests 98122 booming

A new site, CyberHomes, shows 98122 homes have steadily risen in average value over the last three years.

It's a pretty useful site, with information on demographics, schools, weather, etc. and has inforamtion on every homes as Zillow does. One graph I liked was house sales by age of home.

Some of the math is dubious. A house purchased in 2003 purchased for $400K near me is estimated at nearly $1.1 million, and the house has has little to no improvement. The house will not sell for that, so clearly they have some work to do.

Which Seattle Neighborhood Most Uses Facebook?

Facebook has a number of interesting widgets designed to help you connect with neighbors. One is the aptly named "Neighborhoods Widget".

Declaring myself a Leschi resident, I find 26 other residents who have downloaded the neighborhoods widget and declared themselves from Leschi.

By neighborhood:
Capitol Hill - 601
Leschi - 26
Madrona - 50
Madison Park - 57
Squire Park - 6

The far and away winner in 98122? No surprise, it's hipster mecca Capitol Hill. (New fun game -- HIPSTER BINGO.)

The Robots will make Seattle Beautiful

Just when you thought Seattle was getting too dirty, the friendly cordless robots will save us. Meet "Bobby" -- the Big Belly Solar Compactor

Here's the story on how I meet Bobby.

I was riding the 27 Monday morning, minding my own business, listening to my antique iPod mini until I arrived at my destination on 3rd and Pike.

I stepped off the bus, only to be confronted by a giant solar-powered, garbage eating robot: The Big Belly Solar Compactor, or as I like to call my new pal, Bobby. Here is a picture of Bobby.

Like an orchid, just give it sunlight (and instead of water, garbage) and Billy will be happy as a clam. If you want to see Bobby in action, here is a link to a Video Demonstration of Bobby in action. I HEART BOBBY.

Wednesday Waste-o-Meter -- Week 2

Joanna Cosgrove's prose in a 2005 article in Private Label Buyer crackles like a white-knuckle sea adventure when gushing over the potential of the private-label plastic cutlery business (emphasis mine):



Plastic cutlery profits enjoyed a 3.2 percent increase to $54 million [in 2004].... In an environment where cost rules the day for private label tabletop goods, Aspen Products' Schaefer challenges the private label tableware industry to remember the value of innovation.

"Absolutely there is a need to buy right, however over time the significant returns of driving out cost diminish and we must refocus on creative ways to grow the top and bottom line," he says.



"New products have always been the life blood of retailing. Don't let new ideas and innovation get lost in ongoing cost-cutting efforts. Without change and innovation in our category we become susceptible solely to price comparisons when the consumer makes the buying decision."



This out-of-the box thinking by the top minds in plastic cutlery has allowed consumers like me the option to now buy plastic cutlery in lavender!!! Thank you!!!

What is scary is how much plastic cutlery one must sell in order to make $54 million in profit, especially when one considers that private-label plastic cutlery is a subset of the overall market.

Albertson's sells plastic cutlery for $2.29 for 50 forks. Assuming 10% margin on the plastic cutlery business and extrapolating fork data, the plastic cutlery business alone creates 12 billion pieces of plastic ware a year. Ok, that is utterly insane.

I've been doing my part to fill the piggy banks of Mr. Plastic's grandkids, mowing through a couple a day while eating my lunch at work so I don't have to lug a reusable eating utensil around with me. Ok, no more.

Without further ado, the weekly tally:

A. How many bags of non-recycling garbage did I throw away last week? Just one. Not bad, but potentially untenable.

B. How many plastic water bottles this week? Zero, although a caveat which I will address in later weeks: I've been using gallon jugs at home instead of tap for some time. A subject for later, but assume I'm leaving these out for now.

C. How many styrofoam containers? Zero. Hooray for me! Last week I had two and I've been eating lunch at a few styrofoam friendly places over the last year.

D. How many plastic bags? Zero here as well, although I've forgotten to bring bags with me a few places and look like an idiot trying to carry 4 wine bottles by hand as I did last night.

E. How many paper cups? 7 -- No improvement here. Still going through one a day with my morning Americano.

F. (New Category) How many pieces of plastic silverware? -- About 10 million. I didn't count, but clearly too many and it I'm going to try and remember to bring steelware with me to work.

G. How much does my garbage weigh? Leaving this off the list from here on out. Too much of a PITA.

Delicious Planet -- Much Much Much Better than Papa John's

In two months, my life will become a lot busier.

And as such, I've been looking for delivery services -- for fruit, dinners, etc. -- to ease up on the significant amount of cooking that goes on in the Leschi Manor kitchen.

I had been thinking about trying out Delicious Planet for some time, the founder was in the same Master's program at Bastyr as my wife, and took the plunge last night. Here's the skinny:

-- DP delivers on Fridays and Mondays, you place your order online the week before.

-- Food is delivered in pre-packaged containers in a cooler at your front door.

-- All food is organic, whole-foods based.

-- All packaging is resuable or compostible.

-- Their menu isn't just for veggie-freaks like me, they have organic beef & chicken, wild salmon, etc.

-- Tip: No need to order the "small" portions, just order the "large" much better value.

In other delivery news, Tiny's Organic stopped delivering this summer which threw us for a loop. Any suggestions for new delivery services that focus on local?

Getting Ready for Election Day

As I am getting prepared to vote against Prop 1 (here's why), I stumbled up an interesting site on Washington State History -- HistoryLink.org

Bunch of cool stuff here, and it jumped out at me that 129 years ago today Washington residents voted for statehood.

And in 1999 on this day Microsoft was declared a monopoly. Now that seems like a long time ago. Here are links to a couple of interesting articles that describe the stock market and the case.

Wikimapia-ing 98122

Wikimapia is a place where users can define locations by interacting with a satellite image map of the world. It's unrelated to wikipedia as far as I can tell except for riding the coattails of its name.

So far there isn't much tagged in my neighborhood, except for a few parks, the Shangri-La Apartments and a couple of businesses like All-Purpose Pizza, which is described as follows:

All Purpose Pizza
Great Sourdough Pizza. Friendly atmosphere. And basically everyone who works there is totally hot.

Well then. Maybe not the same editorial standards as Wikipedia, but at least I know where to send my single friends to grab a slice.

Where Have All the Trick-or-Treaters Gone?

Maybe the neighborhood was too scary...




But last night there were only 6 children... and 8 adults (?!) that stopped by the Leschi Manor for Hot Tamales and Nestle Crunch, a large drop from last year. Perhaps the apple juice in '06 (after running out of candy) wasn't such a hot idea after all. Or maybe it's all these steep hills around our house.

At least we recieved a visit from Spider-Man and from Yoda, who in this photo is conjuring Halloween spirits while uttering: "Halloween, is it? What know you of Halloween? For 800 years have I tricked and treated."