Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Aug. 21st through Aug. 27th

Welcome to The Moose Pond! The Welcomings posts give the Moose, old and new, a place to visit and share words about the weather, life, the world at large and the small parts of Moosylvania that we each inhabit.

Welcomings will be posted at the start of each week (every Sunday morning). To find the posts, just bookmark this link and Voila! (which is Moose for “I found everyone!!”).

The format is simple: each day, the first moose to arrive on-line will post a comment welcoming the new day and complaining (or bragging!) about their weather. Or mentioning an interesting or thought provoking news item. Or simply checking in.

So … what’s going on in your part of Moosylvania?

NOTE: The comments page will now split off after 20 or so left margin comments with the most recent comments on the current page. To see the older comments, scroll to the bottom of the page and use the link.

19 Comments

  1. Happy Freya’s Day, Moosekind! (Hollow laugh.) Jan, you have 59F? I’m envious. Here it’s another hot day, already 74F. going up to 93F. Hot and rainless, that’s us.

    Had to Google last night to see where Chicago is in relation to Canada and was surprised to find that Madison was higher up than Chicago. (My notion of geography is foggy, to say the least.)

    My financial life is a continuing nightmare. That $2,500 hasn’t been replaced in my bank account yet, so the bank continues to slap $36 fines every time a withdrawal is made. Since my insurance and charities are withdrawn automatically, that’s a lot of fines. They also removed the $1000 in my savings and applied it to the overdraft. Today I’ll get $2000 out of the emergency fund, deposit it in my checking, and I’ve broken into my Roth to get the money to put back in the emergency fund. Dear Goddess, if I didn’t have bad luck I’d have none at all!

    Probably should have taken these measures Wednesday, but how did I know? Yikes, all this because I wanted to help two very nice people a little!

    OK, the pity party is over, so I’ll go back to loathing the media. Jan, thanks for the front page post. As Miss Pink Cheeks won’t be here this morning, perhaps I’ll have a chance to check out all the home page stories I’ve wanted to read.

    Wishing a good day to all!

    • When I get home tonight – where I’ll have peace & quiet – I’m going to do a meditation with money & peaceful intentions for you. Of all people on this planet, you deserve to have peace of mind. And what is wrong with your bank? Can you ask for a refund of some of the fines?

      • Thank you, sweetie! I’ll try. I’ve talked to my local branch manager, who said refunds of the fines are out of his hands, and to the customer service rep at HQ, who was pretty helpless until the money is actually back in there. We’ll see what happens.

    • Oh, my! What a horrible nightmare!! I hope that when the universe evens things out that you are somehow made whole. An act of generosity should never be accompanied by such pain. :( I don’t have any automatic withdrawals from my bank accounts because it terrifies me that something like that would happen; any recurring charges I have go to a credit card where a mistake can be rectified before the bill comes due. I learned that lesson the hard way many years ago when my mortgage company took my monthly payment out twice, overdrew my account and caused a number of checks to bounce. They made me whole but it was rather harrowing.

      We have been lucky this year with our summer temperatures. I have spent more than I wanted to on air conditioning bills but we have not had to water our lawn so that has helped keep utility bills down somewhat. I love days like this (it is 63 right now) and we will have many more as our autumn weather is generally very pleasant.

    • {{{Diana}}} – Definitely sending Good Energy to you for that financial nightmare. Hopefully the money will be back in soon and the bank will remove those penalties. Like Jan, I learned many years ago not to let anybody have automatic withdrawals on my bank account, all my charitable and political draws go to a dedicated credit card. Very sorry this happened to you and all the more grateful that you tried to help Aji and Wings. Moar {{{HUGS}}}

  2. I skipped the gym again yesterday. I may have to go back to walking before work, because once the alarm goes off, I’m up & might as well walk. After work is too easy to not do. Also — it’ll make that 5:30 am on Saturday feel like sleeping in.

    Brain still playing Discotheque. I love how they looked like they were selling out to pop & decadence but did really profound lyrics
    Looking for the one
    But you know you’re somewhere else instead.
    You want to be the song
    The song that you hear in your head
    Love, love, love, love.

    It’s not a trick, you can’t learn it
    It’s the way that you don’t pay that’s okay
    ‘Cause you can’t earn it – love

    You know you’re chewing bubble gum
    You know what that is
    But you still want some
    You just can’t get enough of that lovey-dovey stuff

  3. 74 when I got up and overcast. Back to clouds but the rain goes around us. I’m hoping I don’t have to turn the A/C back on – I’m not generating enough electricity to run it so my “banked” KWH credit is going down every time it’s on. But the overcast also means the temps aren’t dropping as low as needed to really cool the house down (and the no rain means I’m going to have to water). sigh.

    Thanks for the C-Span link, Jan – I watched Hillary’s speech when I got home. My basic overall response is, “Damn! She’s good!” – she did the same thing with her Foreign Policy speech during the primaries, pointed out a serious threat to both America’s and the world’s security, explained just how serious it is with easy-to-understand illustrations of the consequences of following the course Trump is setting, and offered the better course. Basically America is refighting the “homefront war” of WWII – when FDR was making speeches about how strong America is/was because of not in spite of our diversity – but on steroids. (And while I’ll concede that Anderson Cooper has to pay is mortgage, too, he is a total waste of time as far as listening to him spew the concern-trolling version of Hillary Hate at the behest of his corporate masters.)

    I’ve just been handed a couple of emergencies on a day I thought was going to be quiet so I’d best get to it. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  4. Good morning, 68 and partly sunny in Bellingham. I slept in and now I’m procrastinating with another cup of coffee, but it’s time to strap on my knee braces and arrange flowers. I only have 10 to make and I’ve done all the prep work so as soon as I find my creative muse I should be ok. As I feared the dahlias didn’t look very good yesterday so hopefully a night in cool deep water has refreshed them. I’ll soon know!

    I’ll share a finished photo when I’ve got one.

  5. Good morning, meeses! Saturday …

    It is 64 degrees in Madison on its way up to 77. It is raining now and the radar shows that it is likely to storm off and on most of the morning. Sadly, I have to be driving in it.

    The presidential campaign is becoming unwatchable. There are no longer truth and lies, no longer reality and fiction … the media is so desperate to have a horse race to report on that they are making it a horse race by turning everything into bothsidesism. Hillary Clinton exposes the white nationalist movement that is part of the Trump campaign, Trump calls her a bigot – headline “Candidates insult each other”. Hillary releases a complete plan on how to help small businesses thrive, targeting Latino small business owners ; Trump goes to Las Vegas and tells a Latino group that the “GDP is low. I will make it big.” No explanation of how his plans do that or anything specific at all, it is simply reported breathlessly by the captive media. Trump flips then flops back on his inhumane immigration plan and the press reports it as a “softening”. This is why the ground game is so important – we cannot count on the press to report honestly about this campaign.

    In better news, France overturned the burkini ban, a judge issued an injunction against the University of North Carolina’s compliance with HB2, the discriminatory bathroom law, and the president just quadrupled the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii, further protecting 7,000 species of marine animals and the habitat of 14 million seabirds.
    .
    Thanks, President Obama!

    See all y’all later!

  6. By the way, Hillary gets it. For years, women of color have been pointing out that they did not win the vote in 1920. This Tweet is an acknowledgement of that with the phrase “many women”:

    Hillary Clinton @HillaryClinton

    On this day in 1920, the 19th Amendment was adopted and many women won the right to vote. Let’s break more ceilings.

  7. Up for workout group. Ugh. Back later. I’ve got to limit my nap this week — was 2 hours last week, way too long.

  8. Good morning, Meese, on another beautiful, sunlit day with clear blue skies. Currently it’s 76 F. with plans to climb up to 91 F. Ugh. Chinese Cold Sesame Noodles for dinner tonight, fer sure. Jan, please send us your cool, refreshing rain!

    Well, help is on the way. Yesterday I went to a branch of my bank that’s a few doors down from the acupuncture place, thinking I’d deposit my check and it would take five minutes. Not so! The lady who served me asked me to sit down at a desk. She gave me a bottle of water and proceeded, after hearing my story, to take all kinds of steps. She advised me to close my account, get a new PIN, and open a new account. She immediately filed a “dispute” claim regarding the penalty fees. She said it would all be sorted out by the time a week has passed and that they’d monitor my account every day until things were normal again. She also brought her manager over and apprised him of what was going on. She certainly was a lot more help than my own branch bank manager and the two customer service reps at HQ that I spoke to during the week!

    She said something similar had happened to her years ago and that the whole thing was unfair to me, since the mistake was completely unintentional. So that’s the story, thanks for listening, and I do hope I don’t have to mention it again!

    Jan, agree that the presidential race has become unwatchable owing to the false equivalence and the grade-school antics of the buffoon. We’re going to spend our time getting ready for our visit to England. It’s probably the last time we’ll ever fly overseas. We’ve been invited to a dear friend’s wedding in Australia but it’s at Thanksgiving, so that’s another reason we won’t be able to go. The good news is that my friend and her new husband will be honeymooning in New York, which she loves, so Dearly and I will drive up to see her.

    That’s all my news—wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!

    • {{{Diana}}} – good news on the financial front. It shouldn’t take a sympathetic person who’s been through it – all the bank employees should be trained to do this – but thank goddess there are sympathetic bank employees who’ve been through it, know what needs to be done, advise you appropriately, and does it. And please do give us a final update when it’s resolved. In process is good. Done is better. Moar {{{HUGS}}}

      Have fun in England. Due to an inner ear condition I can’t fly at all any more even if I could afford it, which I can’t, but always wanted to visit all those little big countries we Americans lump together under the heading of “British Isles” – also always wanted to visit the “Antipodes” – oh well, if wishes were horses we’d have run out of grazing land years ago. LOL

  9. 69 at dawn and 75 now – sunny at the moment which is good (got rain yesterday so only just over 5 KWHs, 2nd lowest for the month so far) as I need every KWH I can get at this point. I need another 40 to “just” be 100 less than August 2015. Because of the larger system and thus a really good Jan – April and a slightly better May, I’ll probably end the year with about the same as 2015 overall, but this has been a very cloudy summer.

    I’ve been ignoring the Media reporting of politics – and especially the Clintons – for years. It’s never true and always enrages me which is not good for my tummy or my blood pressure. If we ever manage to break up the corporate media “monopoly” we might get real reporting again, but that’s an unfortunately big IF. Meanwhile, I find out what my candidates are doing and saying by internet and that kind of source.

    Need to get a few things done before I head out to the Dem HQ. If things are calm, I’ll check back and also read other diaries that are so tantalizing when I don’t have time to read them. :) Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  10. Good morning, 65 and sunny in Bellingham. Yesterday was a full day of flowers, and I will soon know if the arrangements need stems replaced. I saved some lily and dahlia stems just in case. The next task will be to pack everything for safe delivery. The tall arrangements will go into buckets and then into a box. The table centers will pack into boxes of two or three each. And the smaller vases will go in their own boxes. Our son will be here soon to help me and he will deliver the flowers. There is a fairly steep hill on the way so gravity will mean some water will slosh around….just hope the arrangements keep their shape.

    It was a long day yesterday, but I’m happy with the results. In addition to sharing grand parenting with the girls Jim and Sandee were our boating buddies, so I used my collection of beach glass, rocks and small shells to weight the vases. And in honor of the 50th anniversary I added some sparkly gold rocks and a gold ribbon to each vase. It’s fun to personalize with flowers, but I’m glad I don’t do this work every day. Real florists work very hard!

  11. Morning all! Very hot here, and not much chance of rain this week, at least at this point. I had thought a tropical system was brewing that might bring us some drought relief, but it looks like no.

    Yes, this campaign is pretty unwatchable – I am following mostly in Twitter, plus a few MSNBC shows, especially any time Joy Reid is on, she is so terrific. And now that primary season is over, Maddow has gotten more watchable. But the level of farce now has gotten out of control – this “doctor” that attested to Trump’s health was interviewed on NBC last night, and OMG, he looked exactly like Jeff Bridges as the Dude in The Big Lebowski. Or maybe the scientist in Independence Day. He also sounded really high throughout the interview – it’s laughable that we are supposed to take this guy’s word for the state of Trump’s health. There was a lot of ugly stuff coming out last night as well about Trump’s new campaign “CEO”, the guy from Breitbart who turns out to be as ugly a customer as his association with that hatemongering organization would indicate, at least based on reports from his divorce proceedings. Ugh. So sick of all of it – can it be November yet?

    Looking forward to my opera today, it’s Pelleas and Melisande by Massenet, a lovely lyrical work, so I hope the cast is good. Everyone have a great day!

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