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.
…
Good morning, Moosekind! It’s pitch dark at a quarter past six, ugh. Current temp. in NoVa is 25 F., going up to 39 F. today. Nothing will precipitate, it’ll just be cold. School will start 2 hours late again, so Miss Pink Cheeks will probably be with us from 8:30 until 10:30.
Reading about time compression is very interesting. It is extremely stressful to have major news coming out all the time in this biff-bam-bong-zowie fashion. Makes me want to retreat into my shell.
Thinking of making a small cup of tea before I make the big cups at 7 to wake hubby up. Back later!
It is not easy getting a sleepy teenager out of bed in the best of circumstances but when it became pitch dark again at 6am, it became much more difficult.
I personally don’t mind – the early morning dark is when I am at my most productive. When I used to write, I would have all of my stories ready and queued before the sun came up. Now I use the morning quiet time for work projects and catching up on my reading.
I am trying to understand the imagery of the cover page of tRump’s budget. Is that a literal crack running through the presidential seal???
I was scanning yesterday’s comments and noticed that you had problems with the web site yesterday. I was not sure if it was me or global but I was getting 2 minute page displays most of yesterday afternoon. It seemed to clear up later in the day. The datacenter for our hosting firm is on the East coast so I wonder if they had issues related to the storms. It is extremely frustrating when we can’t read our peeps words, or worse, can’t leave them our pearls of wisdom!!!!!1!!
I noticed the slowness also. This morning is somewhat better (in spurts) then slows down again, but not as noticeable as yesterday for me anyway.
I am noticing the spurts today but I have not been doing much online other than a few Tweets. It was slow for YouTubes also.
Good Thursday Meese
Sitting here waiting to find out if it is safe enough to drive to school – still have piles of snow – and there is black ice on the roads. Ugh!
{{{Denise}}} – stay safe! I lost a car to black ice when i lived in Madison. I was lucky that I only lost a car to black ice when I lived in Madison. Warm is good, but safe is imperative. moar {{{HUGS}}}
Had a safe trip – two of my students had cars that spun out. We lost a car to black ice a few years back – lucky hubby walked out of it without any injury – one of the reasons we only drive Subarus up here.
Good – glad to hear it. The car I lost was a front-wheel drive. (I got some soft-tissue damage, but basically walked away.) Subarus are better.
I feel really bad for the rest of the country. We’re having really nice weather — it’s cloudy, but way nicer than anywhere else. I could have worn sandals today.
Good editorial on Ryan — though I think it’s a little too kind: And Jesus Said Unto Paul of Ryan . I really think Ryan is a sociopath, that he doesn’t understand emotions like empathy & does a poor job of pretending to have them.
The Pharisee Party of Paul Ryan truly sees the poor as lacking in virtue and deserving of their lot in life. The average working class American has $500 in savings to “tide them over” in case of an emergency. That is a direct result of the Republican Party’s massive shift of wealth to the have-mores. Minimum wage laws, Medicaid expansion, rent assistance, these are all initiatives that would help shore up the working class that the sociopaths, led by Sociopath-in-Chief Paul Ryan, want to crush. I notice that at some point he took “Christian” off his Twitter bio – it probably burned a hole in his screen.
Good morning, dear Meese!
I need coffee. Back soon!
Bring some back for me!! Oh, darn, she’s gone. :(
Next time I’ll bring you a cup. Cream? Sugar?
I spent my early years working late nights in data processing departments with only access to vending machine coffee. I learned quickly to enjoy my coffee black because the “cream” and “sugar” dispensed by those machines was gag inducing.
Yep, the “sugar and cream” from coffee machines is vile. Black it is then, Ma’am!
Oh, gods, yes! I gave up drinking workplace coffee even though it was free. Started drinking peppermint tea instead because it soothed my roiling innards.
The people in my office didn’t like me and made that quite clear, so my stomach was always roiling. Took early retirement the minute I was 62 and it’s been sheer bliss ever since. Mostly. :)
Live Now: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) rolls up his sleeves (ha!!) to explain, via PowerPoint, the real story of TrumpCare:
YAY! I got my Moose back! It went down in the middle of my check-in comment – which was something along the line of 43 when I got up going to 55 but overcast even though the rain chance has been moved until tomorrow said chance didn’t take the clouds with it. Not good for solar generation.
The WW2 analogy is still – 1st 6 months after Pearl Harbor – the hits are still coming so fast that time seems compressed although we’re getting a few Resistance wins here and there. It took us 6 months to resist, persist, work our butts off getting our naval forces in the right places to stop the Japanese advance at Midway. But we did it. We’ll do the same with this internal threat – it may take a little more doing since it is an internal threat, but we’ll do it.
Now back to work. Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
I got on a live chat with our hosting firm’s technical support and they gave me a number of things to try to speed up the site (the slow speed is contributing to the time outs). He made one quick change that appears to have improved our page loading and gave me some ideas for things I can try when the site is quiet, maybe over the weekend.
His change made us go from a grade of D in PageSpeed to a grade of B!
I will let people know the timing of the maintenance work when my schedule for the weekend gets sorted out. I may have to take the site offline for about an hour to do the database work. People would get a Site Maintenance screen if they tried to log in.
Thank you so much. Is this upgrade going to cost money? As in would a few donations be in order?
No, they are just “things to do” not “things to buy”. The Moose had a fundraiser back in January 2013 when dozens of ex-pat DKers needed a post-election home and we raised enough to pay for the hosting for a few years. After we changed from Soapblox to WordPress in 2015, the hosting cost went down substantially and that stretched our hosting funds even further. I think we are good through 2018 and then we will ask folks to click the PayPal button again.
One of the things I will do is database maintenance which should speed things up some. That process, among other things, squeezes the dead space out of indexes by rebuilding them – which in turn makes lookups faster. Think of an index as a list that you have been using to keep track of things to do. As you finish a task, you cross it out and then add new ones at the end. After a while, it takes longer to scan the list because you have to skip over the crossouts. So you create a new list with just the entries that you still need which makes it easier to read. The database maintenance will take from 10 to 30 minutes to backup, run, and backup again. I will probably do it early Saturday afternoon when things are generally quiet around the pond.
One other thing I am considering is a caching feature that will make more of the web site cached on each person’s computer rather than at the host. That may or may not help. I will wait and do that separately because best practice tuning recommends that you not make lots of changes at once because then you don’t know what has helped or what made things worse.
Thank you, JanF!
I brought your coffee :)
Thank you! I hope because it is cyber-coffee it never gets cold and I can drink it Saturday morning since I missed you in real-time.
Your Moose site ministrations seem to have helped. I’ve noticed, this morning, that I can Fierce faster :)
All good things to know and thank you again for all you do to keep the Moose Pond a safe refuge for those who need it and a “sally port” for those who want it. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 44 and partly cloudy in Bellingham. It’s good to see patches of blue sky. I had painful dental emergency yesterday, resulting in a tooth being pulled and the screw for the implant inserted. My coumadin level was high so I was up most of the night tending to gauze packs to control the bleeding. The pain is better now but my face is swollen and I have a course of antibiotics to nurse through my upset tummy. One damn thing after another!
Jan this article has a bit of good news from Wisconsin….
This is what it’s like answering all those phone calls to Congress
{{{{princesspat}}}} Relax and rest as much as possible and heal.
That is an encouraging article; thanks for sharing it.
Rep. Gwen Moore is a rock star. She was the first black woman sent to Congress from Wisconsin and she represents the Milwaukee area. Thanks for the link!
I hope things go better for you after this. {{{HUGS}}}
{{{princesspat}}}- Healing Energy wrap you warmly
It’s a sunny and cool 63 degrees here in Costa Mesa, CA.
Good afternoon, Meeses. Busy day today at work.
{{{basket}}} same here, but I’ve cleared some paper off my desk that had been sitting there depressing me for over a week – couldn’t do anything with it until I got some answers in the “who’s paying for what from where” category. Got them just before lunch today. Hope your day was as productive. moar {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, meese! Friday …
It is 34 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 45. Light rain this morning then mostly cloudy skies this afternoon. The freezing rain and ice pellets stayed north of us last night and I am grateful for that.
Don’t miss RonK’s superb posts from the Pacific Northwest on eelgrass:
– Eelgrass Meadows, the Tidelands’ Global Nursery
– Eelgrass, Part 2 – Status, Threats, and Restoration.
The restoration is probably one of the (many) things endangered by Unified Republican Government. Keep resisting!!!
The budget rollout exposes the empty souls of the Republicans and was a reminder, once again, that the enemy is not Donald J. Trump – it is an ideology that creates men like Paul Ryan and Mick Mulvaney – men who either can’t see people suffering and in need of help or who willfully ignore them. I have nothing but bad words for them. The good news is that the Trump budget will need 60 votes because the sequester is still in place and you can’t raise military spending by cuts in domestic programs. Plus, people like government programs and no one wants to be the guy on the 2018 campaign ad who voted to take food from elderly shut-ins and school kids.
I am purposefully ignoring world events because this is the part in the novel where the political leader, desperate to change the narrative from his disastrous domestic policies, starts a war.
See all y’all later!
Good morning. I’m on the train on the way to DC. Will check back in later.
Are you going to give ’em hell??
Sis! Are you going to give a lecture? Will you be in town the whole weekend?
{{{Denise}}} – safe travels and have fun, whatever you’re doing in DC. And may it be effective! :)
I’m skipping that part of the novel, and going straight to the alternate ending where the patriots stop the political leader from starting the war he was planning to start. It will keep my blood pressure down for the time being :)
And it’s going to be a war with North Korea (shudders). Kim Wrong ‘Un is just crazy enough not to care that if he launches a nuke at us, he and his country will be obliterated.
Apparently Secretary of “State” Rex Tillerson is in Asia right now saying that we will give nuclear weapons to North Korea’s neighbors to “protect themselves” from North Korea’s nukes. Er, it doesn’t work that way – nuclear devastation does not have borders, the entire region would be destroyed if those nations launched nukes at each other. And, apart from the awfulness of declaring the tRump administration’s willingness to break dozens of international treaties, such a thing would more likely lead to a launch right now rather than have any deterrent effect. Let’s see, do we wait for our neighbors to get armed or blow them up right now? Duh.
I brought soda bread with Irish butter in to work today. It’s a splurge, but Fridays suck here (one of the part timers switched her schedule, so we are always short on Fridays) & it is St Patrick’s day. Eating oatmeal, drinking tea. Stunned at the crassness of T & his people. Feeding poor, hungry people wasn’t “showing results”, so we’re cutting the budget. Besides that there actually are verifiable, peer-reviewed results for both food programs — really?? feeding elderly people has to show results??? And school children…. I suppose they should get a job in the mine or something? I saw a theory that’s it’s just a show of power. Here’s the thread:
https://twitter.com/HopeJahren/status/842489647930511361
the really chilling one:
Not letting the day pass without posting music. Luckily, my earworm is from my boys, so here’s Lucifer’s Hands, from their most recent album.
Good morning, Meese! Fair and sunny today, currently 24 F. in NoVa, going up to 46 F.
I dislike St. Patrick but love the Irish, so I’ll put on my snake earrings before I go out to lunch with friends—ha, the place they live is called “Greenspring,” how appropriate—and out to dinner with hubby tonight for corned beef and cabbage.
Shocked and awed by El Presidente’s proposed budget. Shocked at the cruelty, awed by the idea they think we, the people, will go for this.
Hoping that we won’t have to go anywhere much this weekend. Our tenant is going to make shrimp biryani for us tomorrow night—that will be nice! I have to think of no-brainer dinners for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, because by the time I get home it’ll be too late to cook.
Hoping to work on the short story and the novella this weekend and perhaps get going with my online course in Minoan civilization. Wishing a good Friday to all!
Good morning, Meese!
MPLS/St Paul weather: High today of 45; I can live with that.
Speaking of St Paul, I just realized that today is St Patrick’s Day. (BTW: Happy St Patrick’s day, Meeses!) I work at the State Capital complex, which is on the edge of downtown St Paul. St Paul takes St Patrick’s Day very seriously and weapons-grade partying will ensue downtown early this afternoon. I’ll make a point of getting away from work and the partying as soon as I can today.
I work in the Capitol complex here in Austin. St Patrick’s day has been subsumed into South By Southwest, which drowns all other parties. For the first 2 1/2 weeks of March, you really just can’t go south of the Capitol except by bus or taxi.
Sounds like we have similar situations, only yours lasts for a couple weeks :)
beautiful picture from Dublin – the Ha’Penny Bridge lit in green:
https://twitter.com/DavidCostelloDC/status/842432318690209792
and Ireland from the Space Station
https://twitter.com/astro_kimbrough/status/842659361243697152
60 when i got up and looks to be that way all day. Something wrong with my PV website – it hasn’t updated since yesterday morning. I looked at the inverter last night and even with the cloudy day the system generated a bit over 8 KWHs, but nada on the website. I’ve emailed the installer to see if he can send out someone for a hardware/wiring check – catching the actual vendor is harder. The home company is in CA and the office times are off for me. They don’t have a toll-free line so I can’t call them from work. sigh.
I’m still hanging onto the comments by both Clintons – Bill “There’s nothing wrong with American that can’t be fixed by what’s right with America.” and Hillary “America is great because Americans are good.” – we’ve always had Deplorables by whatever name (KKK, America Firsters, American Nazi Party, Know-Nothings…) and they have held the power before, but we outnumber them and we’re getting better at Resisting them when they have power and getting enough back to block their Evil and even move forward a bit. Has been done, can be done, will be done.
On a happier note, over at DK weck wrote a fundraiser for bigjac last night that finshed the goal and covered the fundraiser site fees. So one more family the human chain of community got out of the quicksand and onto solid ground. Got my desk half cleared yesterday – to the point I can spread out the rest to see what needs to be done – so I’d best get to it after I check in at the Village diary. Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 37 and partly cloudy in Bellingham. Thanks to pain meds, ice packs, and the antibiotic I’m starting to feel better, but my face is swollen and bruised so my appearance is alarming. I’m going to the pool this morning regardless as just walking in the warm water will be therapeutic.
Wa State’s economy is vulnerable to tRump’s policies, especially agriculture. Yet, as the article details, most of the eastern part of the state voted for him. I’ll never understand why…..
Washington farmers tell Trump: We need more foreign workers
tRump doesn’t care about farmers – he cut money from the Ag budget and waited weeks to find a nominee for Agriculture Secretary. They are just useful foils in campaign speeches addressing Real America. And he has no clue how anything works – he has never had the slightest interest in anything other than himself. I am not sure what will happen to essential functions of government; at one point I thought Pence would work behind the scenes to make sure that the trains ran on time but he seems to be as disengaged from reality of governing as the vulgar talking yam.
Morning/afternoon, Meeses. I’m kind of withdrawing from checking actively (at all Villages and FB/Twitter) because I feel overwhelmed and drained.
That’s understandable, basket. Take care of yourself and relax, rejuvenate however you can. Stop by at one of the spots whenever you can. Your presence is appreciated :)
Take care of yourself, basket dear! You’ve traveled a very long way and need time to just recharge. We’ll welcome you back among us when you feel ready to rejoin. :)
{{{basket}}} – sorry I didn’t check back in here earlier – you’ve been out from under the stress while you were visiting your family and you’ve had a very long flight. You’re starting to get back in the rhythm of being here instead of there, but the constant tension of America under this regime is a greater stressor than you realized until you were away from it for a bit. We are living in a “black alert” war zone.
I’m glad you are still checking in here so we know you’re OK. Ease back in – or don’t – as you feel like it. But do please continue checking in at the Moose Pond. We’d worry about you if you didn’t. (Actually, I’ve already been worried about you since you haven’t been visiting the Villages.) Hydrate, eat good stuff, rest. We’ll be here, waiting for you, at whichever place you wish to visit. moar {{{HUGS}}} and Healing Energy.
Good Saturn Day, Meese! It’s pitch-dark at 6:09 a.m. here in NoVa. Can’t tell what kind of day it’s going to be, but the current temp. is 46 F., going up to 56 F. Couldn’t sleep last night, it was too hot even with the fan on.
Decided to get up to see what fresh horrors El Presidente has in store for us today. Think I’ll go downstairs and make a small cup of tea just to wake up properly. Went out to lunch and dinner on St. Patty’s day, so now feel stuffed.
(Yawning) Back later!
Too hot?!?? I sleep with the windows open because I enjoy the night sounds and I can’t stand being stuck breathing only inside air. In the dead of winter they are closed but as soon as the temperatures start climbing, up they go.
We may be at war with Korea but we don’t know because the Secretary of State did not travel with any press or issue any press releases. We did hear from South Korea, a democracy where they still have media access to their government, that Secretary Tillerson got tired and had to take a nap. Hillary tweeted about it!
Good morning, meeses! Saturday …
It is 36 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 39. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast.
I am going to stay away from the news for a while this morning until I get a few projects done. Saturday morning is quiet time – no incoming client email or phone calls – and I don’t want to waste the moment.
Yesterday’s Twitter follows on the visit of the Leader of the Free World (Angela Merkel) to the White House was instructive. tRump hates wimmins, part bazillion, won’t even shake Chancellor Merkel’s hand. tRump forcing world leaders to endure the griftery that is Trump Inc. by including Ivanka in every state visit meeting. It was refreshing to know that foreign journalists, who don’t have to kiss the orange shitgibbon’s ass to gain the holy grail of Access, ask questions that we all want answers to: “why do you lie about the wiretapping charge?” Good question! Is it because his NPD won’t let him admit to a mistake, will never let him apologize? Or is it because he literally does not know the truth anymore, being a Fox News viewer? There was a study done a few years back that found that a person watching NO NEWS was actually better informed than someone who watched only Fox News.
The Democratic Weekly Address is the Senate’s turn and they don’t have a nice web site like Nancy Pelosi’s where they have the videos and transcripts so I will find something on her web site for the Weekly Fighting Back post. Thanks, Leader Pelosi, for thinking of us bloggers!
(Update: I found a Senate Democrats YouTube channel and chased down a transcript of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) giving the Weekly Address!)
See all y’all later!
Since I can’t watch any tRump except in tiny bits, and only when they are accompanied by mockery, I check-in with Wonkette. They did not let me down!
They reported on the presser: The ‘WTF DUDE?’ Look Angela Merkel Gave Donald Trump Today Will GIVE YOU LIFE
And recapped two days of Foreign Leaders Wishing that America Had Elected Someone Who is Not a Freaking IDIOT: German And Irish Leaders Agree: GET THIS F**KER TRUMP AWAY FROM US!
Thanks for the posts and links, Jan! Will read them later. Going back to bed. After that awful night and getting up at 5:30, je suis useless.
Good morning, dear Meese.
MPLS/St Paul weather: 31 with a high of 44.
This from Jeffery Wright https://twitter.com/jfreewright
Well, it did result in a woman being Leader of the Free World – sadly, it was not Hillary Rodham Clinton but I think Angela Merkel will do just fine.
Yes, she will.
She is a physicist by education (PhD thesis on Quantum Chemistry). It must grate on her to have to stand next to the most ignorant man in the world and pretend that he has anything useful to say.