What I Learned Today...

 Today, Cathy and I went to Seattle to get the Saab worked on. While we waited for the car service to be completed, we walked to a T-mobile phone store, had lunch from (not at) Kona Kitchen, and generally mulled around a northern Seattle neighborhood.

Today I learned -

The new litter of 2020 is: 

Old Saabs are still expensive to repair. Still, better than buying another car.

T-Mobile has really friendly service people. I bought a new phone from Amazon, a Motorola Moto G8. Going for the really expensive Samsungs and Apple phones was never my style and most of the lessor brands work fine for me. Funny thing about this purchase which was bought through Amazon, all the system instructional information that pop up are in Spanish! Now, all the menus and labeling for the utilities and programs on the unit are in English. But, what the hell? Did I buy a phone meant for the Mexican (or other Spanish speaking country)? 

Anyway, the phone wouldn't activate using the SIM from the old phone. No problem, the support tech said when I called, we'll send you one free. Have a nice day. A week later, no SIM. I called back. Yes, the tech said, it was sent. Sorry it didn't arrive. Would you rather go to a store and get it activated. Sure! Great, have a nice day. 

Since a T-mobile store was a walk from the car service shop, we went there and the smiley happy T-mobile tech in the pink checked button down shirt sporting the T-Mobile logo said, it appears to be working fine (after putting the old SIM in the new phone). But, just to make sure it isn't an intermittent problem, I'll put a new SIM in. Great, thanks a lot. Have a nice day!

I get home and guess what is waiting for me in the mail box:

Contrary to most, there is a little bit of Hawaii in Seattle. Months ago, I heard about Kona Kitchen as THE place to go get Hawaiian food. Cathy heard about it when she read about the actor that plays Chosen in the Cobra Kai Netflix series, the follow up to the Karate Kid series now that the adults have all become older, more cynical, and grumpier. Honestly, I don't know - it isn't a series that I have an interest in watching. But the actor, Yuji Okomoto, has a connection to this restaurant and bar next door. It isn't fancy, just like the food they serve. But, everything was tasty and filling, just what we needed after hitting the four mile mark on our walk.

A bus stop bench works fine for having a picnic lunch. We all miss having a sit-down meal in a restaurant, and it'll be a while before we can return to our ritual of eating in with a bunch of noisy patrons, syrupy music playing over the clatter of plates and jangling staccato of knives and forks. We've been taking out food and either eating in the car or taking it home. What happens if you don't have a car? You just make do. Just on the other corner of Kona Kitchen was one of those clear plastic booths with a single bench seat for waiting bus riders. Fortunately, this was a morning only bus stop and all the buses have done their stopping for the day at that particular spot. We used it for our own picnic igloo, letting the partial sunny day warm ourselves while we ate.   

A mask makes a pretty good face warmer. During our walk on this partly sunny but cool day, many people were wearing masks while walking outside. Clearly, they were a significant distance to any person and posed no threat or had no viral threat from anyone else, but they wore masks. I applaud those that take the extra step to protect each other from this particularly sticky virus, but it did seem overly cautious. As we came upon others, we quickly put our mask on. By this time, our faces had been chilled by the cool day and putting the mask on brought quick warmth to our noses and cheeks. So maybe it wasn't due to (as one of the key phrases emerging from 2020 goes) "using an abundance of caution" and was more of a practical application of keeping warm. Now that mask wearing is more of an accepted practice, this may be more of a thing in the future when the pandemic recedes.