I don’t usually get a chance to closely observe construction sites. Just lucky, I guess. But recently in town, everywhere I look, I see buildings going up or getting torn down.
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Merry Christmas, Seattle! Or, er, Happy fill-in-the-blank with whatever else you’re celebrating! Whichever.

Just after the sun set, I looked out the window and saw the Christmas lights on the Space Needle all lit up against an indigo blue sky.

It seems freakishly warm outside, after several weeks of clear, dry, and (for temperate Seattle) cold weather. The rain has returned, and we’ve got cloudy skies and wet streets. This is my sixth Christmas in Seattle, and this feels just about right.

A good night for curling up on the sofa with my boyfriend, my cat, and a good bottle of scotch to watch A Christmas Story.

Congratulations to Shaun Alexander, who has tied Priest Holmes’ all-time single season touchdown record, at 27!

At 28-13, the Seahawks have also just secured homefield advantage for the play-offs, as well as tying the Colts at 13-2 for the season. It’s shaping up to be an interesting play-offs!

Okay, it might not be exactly Seattle-specific, but I’ve always loved NORAD’s Santa-tracking website, and this year is the 50th Christmas Eve tracking! So, through-out the day, load the website and see just where Santa is on his flightpath. :)

And for those of you not familiar, the NORAD-lore behind Santa tracking says that, in 1955, Sears-Roebuck placed an ad in a Colorado Springs newspaper telling kids to dial a number if they wanted to talk to Santa, but the number was a digit off. That digit off meant calls went to NORAD’s predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command. When that call came in, Col. Harry Shoup told an eager child he would check the radars for Santa.

So cheers to Col. Shoup, for creating an endearing tradition, and cheers to you all this eve – may you be blessed with the love of your friends and family this holiday season.

I stepped onto a nearly empty #5 bus on my way home from Fremont tonight, and in the very back seat sat a man playing an acoustic guitar. There was another man on the bus sitting across the aisle and back a couple of rows from me, and as I turned back toward the front of the bus we locked eyes. Both of us sort of smiled and shrugged at the other, and he leaned forward to say, “That’s just so Seattle, isn’t it?”

And yeah, it surely is.

As you may or may not have heard, earlier this week the FBI arrested six suspects in eco-terrorist crimes, including the 2001 firebombing of the University of Washington’s horticultural research center and a government wildlife research laboratory in Olympia. Well, the AP is reporting that one of the suspects, William C. Rodgers, committed suicide in his Flagstaff jail. Because nothing says innocence like asphyxiation!

Seahawks pride has spilled all over Seattle this football season, as the ‘hawks have become the best worst team in the league. This Saturday, they’ll host the number one team, the Colts, on home ground, playing a game that could clech home field advantage for the play-offs. Big, exciting news for a fan of either team…

…and now sadly overshadowed by the apparent suicide of James Dungy, son of Colts head coach Tony Dungy.

The ties that exist between Dungy and the Seahawks is more than the superficial of the upcoming Saturday. Seahawks defensive tackle Chartric Darby was a rookie in Tampa Bay the final season Dungy coached the Buccaneers, while Tim Ruskell, Seattle’s president of football operations, was Tampa Bay’s scouting director and then its player personnel director during Dungy’s Buccaneers tenure. Beyond that, Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren quietly calls Dungy a good family friend.

Dungy won’t be at Saturday’s game, and the family tragedy is going to cast a pallor over the game no matter how it plays out. Holmgren acknowledges it’s going to be hard to coach the game, with everything the Colts are enduring, but the game must go on. And so it will…just, sadly.

Loews and AMC Theatres are merging, and the nasty rumour that’s been growing from that merger has just been announced true: Loews will be selling the downtown Meridian 16 theatre. I can only hope that it’s actually bought by another chain (who’s left? General Cinema?) and kept in operation, or our downtown movie-watching options are about to get more grim.

Can you imagine donating your newly won pinball machine to a stranger? Well, Kevin Lessig, manager of the Rivoli Apartments, can. A few weeks ago, he walked into Cafe Casbah down in Belltown and learned about the fundraiser for Tamara Myers, a University of Washington graduate student* who was diagnosed with an atrial fibrillation two years ago. Things recently got bad enough for Tamara that she needed surgery, but the graduate student insurance would only cover a portion of the cost, leaving her with well over $3000 in out of pocket costs.

So, Tamara’s sister ad friends had a fundraising party, and other businesses in the area got in on it, too. And that’s how Kevin fits into this story: he didn’t have cash to give, but he did have a game. Lessig had just won a 1981 Barracora classic pinball machine in the annual Shorty’s Pinball Tournament, and he offered the game up to the highest bidder. It sold over the weekend for $680.

So far, almost all of Tamara’s bills have been paid, and she has been blown away by the kindness of friends – and strangers. If you ask me, it’s pretty damned amazing, and inspiring.

*In the interest of fair disclosure, I should note that Tamara is affiliated with my major, the program of Comparative History of Ideas, and that CHID has been a part of the fundraising effort.