Burlington

Garfield beat Mercer Island (the defending champions) in the final round of this weekend's state high school chess tournament, taking home the championship for the first time since the early 1990s. Time to get a bigger trophy case.

Somerset

This rich little hill south of Bellevue provides spectacular views of Seattle, at least on clear winter days like this one a couple of weeks ago. My office is close by so I regularly commute through this scene on I-90 (bridge on right), though I only seem to get up to this hill once a year when we drop D at the Junior Open.

The Seattle Fault roughly follows I-90, from the bottom right to the top left of this photo. But it hasn't done anything particularly interesting for over 1000 years.