109 entries categorized "Seattle"

We answered the call and got the job done

KING 5: Hundreds rush to get COVID-19 vaccine in Seattle overnight after freezer failure

A total of 1,650 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine at risk of expiring Thursday night were quickly administered to more than a thousand people at UW and Swedish clinics.

SEATTLE — Hundreds of people rushed to Seattle University and University of Washington clinics late Thursday night to try and receive a COVID-19 vaccine before the doses expired.

Spokespeople for both Swedish and UW said that a freezer storing Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine broke at Kaiser Permanente, leaving 1,650 doses of the vaccine at risk of expiring.

Swedish and UW split the doses and began administering them.

"Teams worked vigilantly and in close partnership through the night and early morning to ensure all doses were used and no vaccination lost,” a Kaiser Permanente Washington representative said.

Swedish posted an urgent message on social media around 11 p.m. Thursday saying it had hundreds of appointments available from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. to use the vaccines before they expired by the morning. Hundreds of people answered the call and showed up in their pajamas and robes to receive their first dose of the vaccine.

Swedish Medical Center COO Kevin Brooks said the available appointments were filled within 35-40 minutes.

“We got a call from a partner hospital that they had a fridge malfunction and they needed to vaccinate 880 people,” said Brooks. “I pulled our team together, our vaccine team at Swedish, and we huddled on Microsoft Teams and came up with a plan, and 30 minutes later we came on site.”

I got the call at 22:00 and I was on-site by 22:40. We were fully operational barely 30 minutes later.

What an incredible experience. So glad I get to be part of it.


Media coverage of the Swedish community vaccine clinic at Seattle University

I’ve been working at this clinic since January 11th as a volunteer and patient registration lead. Long days leave us feeling pretty wiped out, but the sense of community and shared purpose is amazing, and the excitement patients express at receiving their vaccine doses is so wonderful to see.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of links to media coverage, mostly local, in chronological order. I’ll add to the list as I see new coverage pop up. Links open in new windows.


The most appropriately named menu item I’ve ever seen

Brunch at Skillet Diner in Capitol Hill today, a send-off of sorts for a friend who’s leaving Seattle for Florida to take a job offer and move closer to his family.

I ordered Serious Toast, which from the menu description sounded delicious:

Molasses custard soaked thick cut brioche, raspberry jam, local pit ham, powdered sugar, two eggs your way

About 15 minutes later our brunch items arrived and I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from my first time seeing the reality of Serious Toast:

Serious Toast at Skillet Diner, Capitol Hill


Things I remembered just by working from home

In no particular order.

  • I don’t particularly like working from home.
  • Flexie. The keyboard is not your resting place.
  • Drinking one’s own canned beverages? Feh.
  • Alamo!
  • These kitchen-table chairs UTTERLY BLOW for anything more than about 25 continuous minutes of use.
  • Seriously, Flex, go the hell away!
  • Yay whatever music I want to play, at whatever volume.
  • Remote access is simultaneously
    • cool
    • mind-boggling, even if you know at least the basics of the technology involved
    • irritatingly slow
  • Annie: The claws are not required for standing on my leg, ow ow ow ow ow
  • This neighborhood is almost freakishly quiet on weekdays.
  • The sofa, it calls to me....
  • GODDAMNED CATS

When I couldn’t work from home, in the days when my job didn’t offer it (retail is hard to do except at the store) and before the technology was fully baked (hail the days of Citrix on Decker Lake Lane!), I wanted to work from home all the time.

Now I can work from home pretty much whenever I want and I avoid it. I like keeping my home and my workplace distinct and physically separate, too easy to lose work/life balance otherwise. And no cats at the office, which makes it orders of magnitude more productive. Or at least far less cat-hair–covered.

Is this what it means to gain perspective, or (gasp!) to become an adult?


OH NOES

The iPhone, she is brokeThe phone, she is broke :-(

We joined friends for a matinee of The Producers in Issaquah. I was getting into the car on our way to the theatre when I bobbled the phone in my left hand and it clattered to the driveway for the fourth time I can remember, and this time it gave the unmistakable psht! sound of the glass giving up the fight.

Yay AppleCare+ — we’re waiting now at the Apple Store, University Village for warranty service. Should be all good in the next hour or so.


Families, Habitat for Humanity use housing bust to start anew (Seattle Times)

Nonprofit homebuilder Habitat for Humanity sees the national foreclosure crisis as an opportunity.

Habitat’s Seattle/South King County chapter recently purchased two foreclosed single-family homes in Kent’s East Hill neighborhood and is in the process of buying another. Instead of the typical building a new home from the ground up, Habitat crews have spent all winter refurbishing them, getting them ready for occupancy.

via Seattle Times; I added links

Another way Habitat for Humanity provides decent, affordable housing where it’s needed. Glad at least one good thing can come out of this national financial crisis.


STELLA

Alehouse restroom. Flashing back to the hospital gift shop in 2004, all those old-lady volunteers.

STELLA

Which is not to say the old-lady volunteers were in the alehouse restroom with me—nothing so scandalous.

No, one of them was named Stella. And every time I saw her, I’d do the “Streetcar” bit. And she’d smile tolerantly and encourage me to return to the cash register lesson.


Today’s earworm, and its source

Set the Way-Back Machine to today, 06:50ish.

I’m waiting at the 4th & Pike bus stop for the Sound Transit 545 to Redmond. I’m holding my freshly prepared (and still a smidge too hot to drink) small skinny vanilla latte from the Seattle’s Best down the street, watching the traffic roll past.

A good many vehicles pass that location in the usually five or six minutes I have to wait for the 545. Fair number of buses, many private vehicles and business trucks/vans/whatever.

One truck catches my eye. Smallish tanker truck, it looks like the type that might deliver heating oil in the suburbs. The company name emblazoned on its side:

BAKER COMMODITIES INC.

In no way remarkable, no idea why it catches my eye.

So then my brain goes into overdrive in something like the following sequence of thoughts, which probably requires all of 10 seconds start to finish:

  1. I wonder what they sell.
  2. I should look them up when I get to work.1
  3. Commodities. Oil, grain, coal, copper, ....
  4. “Commodity” and “commode” are similar words. Same root? I should check that.2
  5. “Commode”—toilet.
  6. Toilet—potty.
  7. “Get off the pot” hee hee.
  8. BAM earworm of “Beauty School Dropout” from Grease.
  9. Dammit!

  1. No idea why I didn’t just whip out my iPhone right at that moment.
  2. Yes.

Casually overwrought

I present in its unmodified entirety the severe-weather alert I saw for Seattle just now:

... SNOW POTENTIAL THIS WEEKEND AND IN THE WEEK TO COME... A COLD AND SHOWERY AIR MASS WILL SPREAD ACROSS WESTERN WASHINGTON THIS WEEKEND. SNOW LEVELS WILL FALL TO 1000 FEET ON SATURDAY AND THEN TO NEAR SEA LEVEL OR JUST A COUPLE HUNDRED FEET ON SUNDAY MORNING. IN SHOWERY PATTERNS... SNOW ACCUMULATIONS CAN BE HIGHLY LOCALIZED... DEPENDING ON ELEVATION AND HOW CONVERGENCE ZONES DECIDE TO FORM. LOCATIONS FROM SEATTLE NORTH TO THE ISLANDS AND SKAGIT COUNTY WOULD BE THE MOST LIKELY PLACES TO SEE ACCUMULATING SNOW... BUT ANYWHERE STANDS A CHANCE. LOCATIONS THAT GET SNOW COULD GET A FEW INCHES... WHILE MANY OTHER LOCATIONS WILL JUST GET FLURRIES OR LEFT OUT ALTOGETHER. THE CHARACTER OF THE EVENT WILL BE SIMILAR TO THE ONE THAT HAPPENED ON DECEMBER 29TH... THOUGH THE EXACT LOCATION OF THE HEAVIER SNOWS COULD VERY WELL BE DIFFERENT. MONDAY AND TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK WILL BE COLD AND DRY. STARTING WEDNESDAY THROUGH THE END OF NEXT WEEK... THERE IS THE POTENTIAL FOR A WIDESPREAD HEAVY SNOW EVENT SOMEWHERE IN WESTERN WASHINGTON. GREAT UNCERTAINTY INHERENTLY EXISTS IN A FORECAST WITH THIS MUCH LEAD TIME... AND IT IS POSSIBLE THAT A HEAVY SNOW SITUATION WILL NOT HAPPEN. CHECK BACK LATE THIS WEEKEND OR BY MONDAY FOR THE LATEST ON THIS POTENTIAL HIGH-IMPACT EVENT. IF THE POTENTIAL STILL EXISTS AT THAT TIME... THEN THE DRY WEATHER ON MONDAY AND TUESDAY WOULD AFFORD AN EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY TO PREPARE.

Definitely not pretty

“Mornings aren’t pretty”—truer words never spoken, though I didn’t sleep long enough to get a really grand case of bedhead. But I kinda feel like Mickey looks.

Definitely not pretty

And it can’t be pure coincidence that one French press = one giant coffee cup, right? No, it must be a greater statement of the proper order of the universe.


Happy new year :-)

Best wishes for 2011.

After the jump, photos from my balcony half a mile away from the Space Needle’s New Year fireworks show. Excellent weather this year, clear and cold with practically no wind—and the smoke from the fireworks moved west of the Needle so we had an unobstructed view of the whole show.

Continue reading "Happy new year :-)" »