Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: May 13th through May 19th

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.

 

 
Page One of Comments is HERE!
 

 
Page Two of Comments is HERE!
 


 

21 Comments

  1. Another 99 degree day. And graduation traffic. Lucky I read Lin-Manuel Miranda’s good night thing:

    Gnight. Doubts may grow as shadows loom, when you’re alone with your thoughts.
    Plant music, art, pics of the ones you love in the darkest corners.
    Harvest the fruits of your daydreams and rest. Water and sunlight to the best in you.

    Time to remind myself that Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way.

  2. Good Friday Meese
    56 going to 71 here in NY

    I’m late – got caught up in putting up a quick diary at DKos

  3. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s another drippy gray morning here in Ashburn, with a 100 percent chance of rain. The current temperature is 62 F., going up to 65 F. I’ll have to go out at some point to buy more eye drops, but in a moment I’m going to totter off to bed. Yes, it was one of those nights: awake at 3:45 a.m., up at 4:30 a.m., and still keeping on.

    Have been in a state of teeth-spitting outrage because our TV screen “froze” on Wednesday night after dinner and refused to budge. My husband called Comcast, who whined that they couldn’t come out until Sunday. Sunday! The Wedding is TOMORROW and so is Preakness! I was bitterly composing hategrams to Comcast (and Ashby Ponds for putting up with this), and making plans to put the dog in day care, sleep at our younger son’s house, and watch his TV.

    However, Dearly Beloved, like a British bulldog, refused to give up. He unplugged cables, plugged them back in, jiggled wires and did lots of other things, and behold! The damn thing came on! We even sat through some of the nauseating ABC wedding “coverage,” we were so glad to see it working again.

    Yes, this is a first-world whine: after all, we have hot water, electricity, and food, all necessities that our fellow American citizens in PR are going without. I WISH we had a morally responsible president and Congress instead of Thug and Rethugs, so PR could get the help it needs.

    On the other hand, we paid a very large sum to buy into this place and are paying a monstrous monthly fee to be here. If the Comcast guy comes out on Sunday, it’ll be the fourth time he’s been out in the 8 weeks we’ve been here. ‘Nuff said.

    Today is the Progressives’ luncheon. I’ll be there. I had lunch with a Kossack and two of her Democratic friends yesterday. One of the friends poured cold water on my suggestion that we have postcard-writing parties so we could send postcard reminders to registered voters. She said there was tremendous backlash when that was tried. When I asked why, she said irate voters called up and said they’d been living in their house for 15 years but the postcard was addressed to the previous occupant! The voter registration lists were old, it appears. She did not, however, have any better suggestions.

    Was really happy to hear that phonebanks are considered passe, as no one in her right mind answers random phone calls any more.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!

    • You have every reason to complain about outages related to your phone/TV/Internet. We are an interconnected world and to be without is a real hardship! I have not had cable TV for years because I hated the outages, hated the customer “service”, and hated their bleeping attitude. I tried cable TV internet for my business and they were down 50% of the time and uncaring 100% of the time. With my business landline, I get business-class support and same day on-site outage response. Do you have the ability to hook an antenna up to your TV? When I built here, I had the guy doing the wiring put an HD antenna up in the attic and I pick up local stations including a 24 hour weather channel. Then, if my satellite dish is out due to the weather, I can flip to the external antenna and still watch radar.

      • H’mm. We did put up an antenna when we lived at Barky Manor, but I’m not sure how we’d manage it here. There’s a guy with a Tesla living in this building. Do you know how much he had to pay to get one of the pillars in the garage wired so he could charge his car? $15,000!

        I’ll complain to the Comcast guy when he comes out tomorrow and let him know how much better our other provider was. Myself, I could live without cable as long as I have PBS, but there is the matter of one’s husband. He likes certain sports channels that are only obtainable on cable.

  4. 60 with 100% humidity heading for mid 80s and sunny so far. Got 21.6 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 273 so we’re still truckin’ on. Pleasant news is that I attended grandson no. 2’s graduation ceremonies last night. That I didn’t know about until yesterday afternoon when my son called and asked if I wanted to come. smh. Of course I wanted to come. Also Aji’s picked up another patron and is a $10 pledge from meeting her initial monthly goal (it really needs to be higher to account for the fees).

    Not so pleasant news is my twitter account is blocked. 2nd time they’ve done this and this time they didn’t respond overnight to my “Appeal” request – their bot catcher decided I was exhibiting “automated behavior” as I was writing my usual nightly RT w/ comment & links to Aji’s blogspot tweet. The problem is that their 2-step security system requires I be able to receive a text message with a “yes I’m human” code to enter. So I have to email their support team, as I’ve done – twice – and wait. Meanwhile I can’t RT any of Denise’s or Aji’s tweets and I can’t tweet out Fineena’s YouCaring site or the diary for her basket wrote (it posted at 8 CDT). And the really not pleasant news is Fineena’s fundraiser seems to be stuck at $90 of the $3K she needs and the diary is getting no traction whatsoever. Sigh. Patience is not a virtue I have a strong grasp on. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • This has been happening with fundraising diaries more and more, and I just can’t think of a solution. The Village and Villagers have been doing yeoman’s work along with a few others, but if you look at Fineena’s diary, we are the only people commenting (and I assume, donating). Since the Village at DK is effectively only about 10 people any more, it’s just too heavy a lift for us alone. And DK is even more anonymous than ever, despite the addition of “groups” (was that DK4?), so I can actually understand people not jumping in to give to an internet stranger. I suspect that part of the answer is that those of us who are still [able to be] there need to start branching out, joining other groups, and building up our name recognition, so when needs arise, it isn’t just viewed as the “insular Village” asking for help. Beyond that, I got nothin’.

      • A very selective branching out might help. For myself, I wore myself out just reading and reccing more widely and had to back off, so I figure that participating in other groups would be tough for people with regular time commitments. Also, I’m not sure that fundraising is viewed as the Village, as most of the people on the list and in the fundraisers are not in the Village but are often in other groups. I’ve often thought that it would be cool if those on the list would participate in the Village, which could draw kossacks from their groups.

      • {{{DoReMI}}} – the fundraisers are only sort of associated with The Village – mostly because most of the folks doing them are Village folks. Dixiecollie is actually PWB Peeps, bless her, as is bmscott – but a lot of the Peeps have had to back out and keep quiet because of the internal politics of that community now. Community Fundraisers is its own community. I don’t know if they did it, not being able to get to kosmail any longer, but I recommended that the link to Fineena’s diary be send out via group kosmail (anybody can send a group kosmail) to a bunch of different groups. No guarantee than anyone would be checking their kosmails and see it, but it’s another route to reach a wider audience. All of the communities are shrinking – and becoming more isolated. That’s what DK5 is all about. But they haven’t shrunk so much that they can’t be reached – it’s a matter of how. moar {{{HUGS}}}

  5. Good morning, 57 and cloudy in Bellingham. I was awake in the night so I finished my book, and now I’m sleepy again. Time to find some coffee and go the the pool. Then I can justify a nap!

    Best Friday wishes to all.

  6. Saturday Meese
    50 degrees here in NY going up to only 54 with rain.

    Today is Malcolm X’s birthday – an important Black History date – however it depresses me to see supposed “progressives” who have relationships with Louis Farrakhan – who was implicated in Malcolm’s assassination. Some of us are old enough to remember – and not forget.

    Puerto Rico

    • {{{Denise}}} – those “progressives” are the flip side of the Deplorables. The Dispicables. RT’d your tweet. Sorry I couldn’t do yesterday’s lot – I didn’t get my twitter account unlocked until the evening.

  7. Good morning, meese! Saturday …

    It is 57 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 77. Cloudy skies with the sun popping through in the afternoon then thunderstorms this evening.

    The craptastic Farm Bill failed to meet the Republican standards for pure hatred of The Other and failed with no Democratic Party votes to make up for the Freedumb Cacas withholding their support because they wanted it to kill more people. Ed Kilgore:

    The big initial Farm Bill controversy has been over the GOP’s desire (lashed along by the Trump administration) to toughen SNAP’s already significant work requirements. Indeed, this became a signature cause for lame-duck Speaker Paul Ryan, and a sort of shriveled booby prize for his frustrated plans to clobber entitlement programs and “welfare” before leaving Congress. The SNAP provisions of the current Farm Bill guaranteed united House Democratic opposition, and also cost the votes of a few GOP “moderates.”

    Democrats and “moderates” alone would not have been enough to kill it but teaparty House members, realizing that they need some extra Hate to run on in the fall, held it hostage to get a “good” (meaning “awful”) anti-immigration fundraising vote on the books. The current funding does not expire until September so the can gets kicked down the road to make it a campaign issue. Votes to starve children will be added to votes to kill the sick in Democratic campaign ads. Please proceed, Republican Party.

    See all y’all later!

  8. Up, watching the wedding coverage, waiting for Joy Reid. I’ve got to disagree with the haters. It is good to see happy people in love, see people happy for them — Stephanie Ruhle & Katy Tur are giddy, silly & just perfect. After the horrors of the past couple of years, this is great. The sermon was perfect.

    <blockquote>This love, this is the way of Jesus. And it’s game changer. Imagine our homes and families when this way of love is the way. Imagine our neighborhoods and communities when love is the way. Imagine our governments and countries when love is the way. Imagine business and commerce when this love is the way. Imagine our world when love is the way. No child would go to bed hungry in such a world as that. Poverty would become history in such a world as that. The earth would be as a sanctuary in such a world as that. We would treat one another as children of God, regardless of differences. We would learn how to lay our swords and shields down by the riverside to study war no more. There would be a new heaven, a new earth, a new world. A new and beautiful human family. The very dream of God Love is strong as death. Its flashes are flashes of fire. Many waters cannot quench love</blockquote>
    
  9. Enjoyed watching Royal Wedding since it exposed one of my favorite people – Bishop Curry – to the world.

    Plus gospel Stand by Me

  10. 73, 91% humidity, heading for 90 and semi-sunny so I’m generating electricity. Don’t know at what rate as my “dashboard” is having a problem loading. I remember I got just over 20 KWHs as of last night and the m-t-d is over 290 but I don’t think by much. Still, it should go over 300 sometime today. 500 still possible but gonna need a lot of sunshine to do it. Spent a lot of time at the Market this morning. It was pleasant and I visited with folks rather than just getting my strawberries, lettuce, and honey and heading for home. LOL. But I enjoyed myself which is part of the point.

    Got my twitter back last evening so didn’t do the RTs on most of yesterday’s stuff. sigh. But I’m on board again. Weirdness of the world – I got an email yesterday asking if I’d be will to come back part time if necessary. Apparently the new guy is not working out. I said yes but I hope it won’t be necessary. Aside from mucking up my own plans, including possibly travel plans, it would muck up the office dynamic. The faculty is still thinking of me as office manager – even if I’m back part-time just answering phones & letting the current office manager go to meetings and such, it’d delay their acceptance of the new reality. sigh. Oh well – got stuff to tweet and coffee to make. :) Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Yes, going back to work part-time would mess up the life you’ve planned for yourself.

      However (chortle), it’s great to know that NOW they appreciate what a jewel they had in you! Ha, ha, this happens all the time. People don’t know what they have while they have it, and when they lose it, it’s too late to get it back.

  11. Good morning, 61 and cloudy in Bellingham. I was awake in the night and my computer was still on so I watched the royal wedding and then went back to sleep. It was good to see and to hear the power of love on a beautiful sunny day in England. Made the miasma of tRump’s evilness fade away. Heide was snoring on her bed, RonK was sound asleep, and my world seemed cozy.

    Best Saturday wishes to all.

  12. Good afternoon, Meese! It’s a drippy, gray, completely soporific Saturday, so we’re just hanging out in our odiferous flat. Current temp. at 2:30 p.m. is 55 F.: it was supposed to go up to 69 F., but I doubt that it will.

    We watched the wedding, naturally, and even Dearly, no fan of the royal family, kind of got into it. Only those who have lived in England can appreciate what an utterly spectacular May day they had today. Quite often, mornings break beautifully and then by 11 a.m. it’s pouring with rain. Not yesterday and not today.

    Was pleased to see the African-American choir, minister who preached the sermon, the cellist, the prebendary who read the lesson, and Oprah, Serena Williams, et al. To me it was a beautiful, completely modernized ceremony that paid tribute to the bride’s dual heritage. She, by the way, was absolutely dazzling and that wedding dress was the apex of all wedding dresses, IMHO. We ate raspberries and cream, scones with strawberry jam and cream, and coffee with cream. Hate to get on the scales tomorrow!

    Well, Custom Design Lady, who visited us Wednesday, obtained a quote for replacing the smelly carpet with the same kind of imitation hardwood vinyl planks we have in the kitchen and hall bathroom. Guess what it was! $5,000? Keep going. $6,000? Keep going. It was—drum roll—$7,897! After we revived ourselves with smelling salts, I emailed our thanks for the quote. No way! Instead, as soon as 100 percent of the carpet has been exposed (by removing boxes) we will employ a professional carpet cleaner. If that doesn’t do the trick, I’ll buy half a dozen gas masks—two for us and four for visiting family.

    We’ll look hideous, of course, but at least we won’t have to endure That Smell.

    Hope we get better weather tomorrow as I’m supposed to take Miss Pink Cheeks and Mr. Preschooler to the Strawberry Festival down the road.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond.

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