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?
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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.
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– Page One of Comments is HERE!
– Page Two of Comments is HERE!
Good “morning”, Motley Meese! The week begins …
Morning low of 59 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 68. Partly cloudy skies are in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Sunday Meese
62 going up a few degrees to 69 here in NY – cloudy and muggy.
NPR has sent reporters to Puerto Rico and USVI and are finally getting around to exploring Puerto Rican culture – better late than never I guess.
This morning am doing a review of the hurricane history and pointing fingers at those who are responsible for the deaths and mess.
I saw the “hold nothing back” tweets from NPR and I had to verify that it was the real NPR tweeting those out! Pretty scathing from a source usually scared about upsetting the federal government. It is nice to hear them go at it. NPR radio reaches a lot of people, including many in rural areas, and every time they say “Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens” they whittle away at the ignorance many people have about why we should care about them – and maybe why they deserve representation.
Am listening to NPR right now – they are talking about the death toll right now.
I suppose I should be elated that finally 8 months later that people are paying attention – for now – just because of Harvard (thank you researchers)
Sunday post up at Dkos
Yesterday I bought groceries & watered my plants. Pretty much it. Today: church, putting together next week’s fruit & lunch….. and that’s all I can think of. Here’s Lights of Home — I love the line “Hey, I’ve been waiting to get home a long time”, though I hope he waits much, much longer.
Good morning, 58 and cloudy in Bellingham. I was outside most of yesterday, and hope to do the same today. Being in the garden is a needed antidote to tRump outrage. The mess he makes careening through the day just exhausts me.
Best Sunday wishes to all.
Now that I have my temper back (Moose logged me out between “preview” and “post” again – I know, I know. I should have copied my post before I hit post) – basket left more like 45 minutes ago (it was a few minutes ago when I originally wrote my post) – he’s got a little over 4-hour drive to get to KCI to get his plane for home this evening. I fed him some chicken veggie soup and an open-face toasted cheese sandwich before he left so that should stay him a bit. The festival was fun. The music was great – very energetic, as one would expect of Ragtime and Scott Joplin music – although actually most of this festival concentrated on various genres that evolved out of Ragtime. Almost all of the “lectures” about styles and technical aspects could have been in Greek as far as my understanding is concerned. 😁 But the fingers and toes tapped the same, whether by a musical illiterate (like me) or a doctorate in music. We found a lovely Irish pub just down the street from the festival (they understood gluten-free) and a nice Mennonite coffee shop a few blocks further down. I totally enjoyed it – but enjoyed basket’s company more. 😍
76 heading for 81 – a cool front moved in last evening. Must have had some clouds – yesterday’s generation was only 13 KWHs, I’ve already got over 8 today. The m-t-d is 42 and we’re about to turn over 16 MWHs for the life of the system. That’s over 12 tons of CO2 kept out of the atmosphere. Gonna take it easy & try to catch up from being offline for most of 4 days. Aside from a quick run to the grocery store I’ll push my “Sunday Chores” off until tomorrow. Seriously, seriously, seriously holding the Good Thought/prayer/whatever about a quick end to the Ute Park Fire – channeling lots of rain, little wind, and NO lightning centering on Aji’s section of the state. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Monday Meese
52 and going up to a rainy 67 here in NY. Hubby is home today because he has laser surgery on eyes today. He went to work yesterday on his birthday – he was 67. A youngster:)
Puerto Rico
Thanks for the link to the bankruptcy case. I wondered what the status of that was. Up in a tab to read later.
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is 52 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 75. Sunny skies most of the day and a chance of rain later in the evening.
Busy week here so my time online will be sharply reduced. PLEASE stay out of trouble!! :)
See all y’all later!
We had impressive thunderstorms last night. Just, wow. Some flash flooding around, and one trailer home was knocked over. The couple were rescued, expected to be ok. I’m eating breakfast & drinking tea that will not be strong enough. A non-U2 earworm: Heal Me by Snow Patrol. A happy, poppy love song.
I am going to repeat my notes to Diana from last week in this week’s Welcomings so we can troubleshoot the iPad/Safari connection. princesspat said it worked for her!
For Diana, iPad notes:
– I tested the Moose on my iPad using Safari and did not have any problems logging in. However, since I had never logged in from there before, I did not have left over bits of saved passwords or cookies.
– Make sure you enter the web site as simply “motleymoose.net” (without the quotes), don’t enter the http or www or https. That will guarantee that you get what the Internet chooses for the Moose which should be http.
– I logged you out of all devices from the administrator console so you will be forced to enter a login.
– If your login does not work, it may be fighting with a saved password. You can clear the password you have stored for the Moose using the Safari settings. I found them in the Settings app, Safari, Passwords. According to my research, you can delete a password for just one web site. However, I did not test it.
If these do not work, keep track of what happened at each step and I will try to recreate it. If you are challenged that the web site is not secure, that is just a warning. There is no financial or user personal information kept at the Moose so you do not have to worry about your identity being compromised unless you use the same password on all your online logins in which case – DON’T DO THAT!
Good luck!
Jan, thanks very much for this, which I am saving to a folder on my hard drive. When time permits I’ll try it on the iPad. I may be traveling more this year—can’t say for sure—but will definitely appreciate the ability to check in!
Good morning, Moosekind! I’m ba-a-ck! Miss Pink Cheeks and I arrived at the airport yesterday evening to find ourselves in sprinkly fog, grayness, and a 30-degree temperature drop. When we left hot, beautiful Corpus Christi on the Gulf of Mexico yesterday morning, it was 90 degrees and sunny, with pale blue skies.
We had a wonderful time seeing our relatives and the reunion party itself on Saturday evening was just great. One cousin brought a little girl the same age as Miss PC, so she finally had someone to play with. This was the first time the relatives had ever met Miss Pink Cheeks, who is 9 going on 19, and they were charmed.
It was a lot of travel for one weekend, so today I’m not going to do much of anything. This morning is gray again and damp, although there are rumors that the sun will come out at some point. Currently it’s 56 F. in Ashburn, going up to 76 F. Have barely seen any news, although I gather that now Thing wants to be King Thing.
Glad PR is finally getting some notice, nine months late! Let’s hope it will get the help it needs. That was a really interesting article about hair, Denise. Perhaps I’ll let mine go curly, out of sympathy with PR. I get it straightened every week.
Wishing a peaceful day with no bad news to all at the Pond and Beyond!
Even when I try to avoid Thing, I can’t! I purposely did not open Twitter because I did not want to hear what he had to say and the news on my classical music station decided I needed to know what he tweeted out! No, no, no. His morning tweets are simply what he sees on Fox and Fiends and are not news and certainly not interesting. “I can pardon myself but I did no crime.” :::yawn:::
I do have SCOTUSblog up in a tab so that I can follow any news from the Supreme Court. This is June, decision month, and there are a number of cases (29) from this session which have yet to be decided. We don’t need to speculate on what Gorsucks will do – he will support every terrible thing that hurts people or destroys their rights. The wild card this term (in my opinion) is Chief Justice Roberts as we see how far he is willing to go to deny the right to honest elections. I wish the Founding Fathers had been wise enough to enshrine a right to vote in the Constitution. Instead we are left with a bunch of statutes and past decisions which the court has hacked away at. Soon there will be nothing left and “voting our way out of this mess” will become next to impossible as the gerrymandered states control will be locked in. :(
welcome back LadyD
The straightening hair thing in PR is all about covering up African roots :)
When I RT’d your tweet I decided I didn’t have “standing” to comment so I didn’t, but I’m delighted that they’re going “natural” – I know why they straightening their hair and it’s almost like Maria is given them a “legitimate” excuse to stop doing that. Which is wonderful.
58 heading for 82 and sunny at the moment at least. We got over 23 KWHs yesterday – first time in over a month – and the m-t-d is 57 which is not bad for 3 days. I’ve never managed to reach 600 in a month although it’s possible so I’m not gonna call it a goal, just an “it would be nice” 😁 but yeah, it would be nice to reach 600 this month.
After 7 days in a row of having breakfast with basket, this morning feels weird. Right now he should be safely home (and probably getting up about now) and can start getting ready for his sister’s visit. I most certainly enjoyed his visit with me. 💖💖💖
I need to do my “Sunday chores” since I didn’t do them yesterday. Can’t face the noise of the vacuum cleaner just yet though. LOL. So I’ll check the internets a bit first. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 51 and partly sunny in Bellingham. I have a busy week planned so I hope my knees are up to the challenge! I’m going to the pool this morning, then desk work, and time with my grand girl later this afternoon. She’s so busy with school, dance and friends I don’t see her as often as I used to so driving her to appointments is a good way to visit. She will be 16 and ready to drive herself in July, which amazes me.
Best wishes to all.
Fk everyone who stayed home in 2016 over “purity”. SCOTUS has just ruled in favor of the butthurt baker in the Masterpiece Cake case. So religious “rights” trump every damn thing in the Constitution. Well done, berners, well done.
The ruling appears to be narrow but it should not have even gotten to that point. The majority felt emboldened by the presence of Gorsucks – who they knew would concur – and having a 5th left leaning Justice may have made a difference. From Ginsberg’s dissent:
Essentially the ruling was based on some ill-advised statements by some members of the Colorado commission charged with upholding the anti-discrimination law. But as RBG lays out, that is no reason to grant the right to Phillips to discriminate against the gay couple:
I hope the next generation of young people are smarter than those who followed the pied piper of both-parties-are-the-same into the ocean and drowned our democracy. There are only two parties, one wants to kill us and we must vote for the other one even if we don’t agree with everything they do. Period.
The ACLU called it a “non-loss”.
And Rick Hasen on the implications of this case on gerrymandering:
Goddess, I hope there is a silver lining!
Good morning, Meesefolk. I hoped this would be the day that I reported that costuming was done, and my life would return to some semblance of normalcy. HA! After working Saturday, I drove to OH, finished sewing a few pieces, and went to bed tired, but happy. Sunday was the costume parade/rehearsal, and it was then that I discovered I had left an entire garment bag of costumes in MI. Yes, really. I had one job…!
So now instead of being finished, I have to drive back to OH tomorrow evening for fittings of the left-behind costumes, and then turn around and drive back to MI so I’m at work on Wednesday. I’ll spend the rest of the week finishing those costumes, and then returning on Saturday to deliver them. The good news is that so far everything has fit, and the fittings have been nothing more than measuring hems. The bad news is that there’s no guarantee that my luck will hold, and I could be in for far more complex fixes. The good news is that this is part and parcel of costuming shows, and I picked patterns for maximum flexibility to make less-mundane fixes doable, even if a bit more time-consuming.
On top of all that, I noticed on Saturday that my brakes were grinding, so I was feeling pretty anxious about all the additional driving with no guarantee that I could get my car into the shop before then. Fortunately, the mom and pop brake shop .1 of a mile from my work had an opening this morning, so my brakes are being worked on as I type. That in itself is a huge load off my shoulders; I was seriously considering renting a car if I couldn’t get them fixed in time. And bonus…the cost is about $100 less than when I last had brakes done at Big National-Chain Brake Repair Shop. All in all, it’s turning out to be a pretty good day, and I have every intention of being in bed by 10 tonight, instead of the 2-4am that I’ve been doing for the past few weeks.
{{{DoReMI}}} – glad you got your brakes done & very glad you got to bed early. 😁👍 moar {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, meese! Tuesday …
It is 64 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 72. Cloudy this morning then the sun breaks through.
Herr Twittler canceled the planned White House visit from the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles when he caught wind that there would be fewer than 10 players attending his rally-round-the-flag photo op. I used to cringe at the optics of the faux patriotism of the Bush years but this is love-it-or-leave-it on steroids. The NFL owners, like all Trumpers, are chumps – they handed their enemy the murder weapon to kill their business. Anyone who doesn’t believe that Trump wants to destroy the NFL because of the long-ago insult related to the USFL has not been paying attention. As someone on Twitter last night said, they are shocked that Republicans are willing to give up professional football in support of their leader – I guess it is no more shocking than white right-wing evangelicals willing to burn their bibles. ‘Murica, dumb as shit!
The cake ruling turned out to be a nothingburger as far as it is precedent for anything. Essentially it boiled down to that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission was mean to the christian bigot and should have nodded more when he shared his deeply felt belief that he would go to hell if he sold a cake to gay people. RBG and Sotomayor refused to sign on to that nonsense but Kagan and Breyer decided to join the majority to help narrow the ruling until it could be flushed away without clogging the toilet.
File under “Health Care is Still a Big Deal”: a court ordered Maine governor Paul LePage to honor the views of his constituents and file the paperwork to expand Medicaid. Three more states are voting on Medicaid expansion this fall – Utah, Idaho, and Nebraska. We can still run on health care, and should!
Today is primary day in California. There are a couple of House seats where the jungle primary could end up with two Republicans rather than a Democrat with a chance to flip the seat blue. Polling is really hard for elections that have 10 people running and on a lot of the polls the undecided is over 10%, enough to sway a close election. Democratic Party activists are working hard to help people identify the viable candidates to set up the R v D election in the fall – I hope they are successful.
See all y’all later!
Tuesday Meese
53 here in NYS going up to a rainy 71.
Will be watching CA primary this evening. I am not an Eagles fan – glad to see that they are not going to be part of Trump’s clown show
Love that people revived the bald eagle Uncle Sam attacking him :)
Puerto Rico
I am not an Eagles fan either (but I preferred them winning over the New England Trumpers). I am sure this will be a huge disappointment to their coach who thanked “Jesus Christ, my Lord and Saviour” (his words), for the Super Bowl win – the godpeople are confirmed trumpers. The mayor of Philadelphia put it rather well:
A “fragile egomaniac obsessed with crowd size”. +1
It was downright cool yesterday — high only of 89! Back to normal today then to hotter than normal after that. Sigh. But, hey — Manafort is probably gonna have his bail revoked so that’s a happy thought. Did he think they weren’t monitoring his communications? I mean, he’s out on bond, there are conditions, didn’t he read them? Dude, It’s The Little Things That Give You Away, though I’d argue that attempted witness tampering isn’t actually little.
Good morning, Moosekind, and a beautiful one it is too. At the moment it’s 55 F. in Ashburn, going up to 76 F. later—not bad for a summer’s day.
When I checked email this morning I learned to my sorrow that my friend, the one who went to Memory Care in April 2017, died last night. She had been refusing to eat for some time, so I was not surprised. She had a wonderful life, though: refusing to believe the anti-Russian propaganda of the 1950s, she made it her business to travel to Russia no fewer than three times to meet and talk to real Russians. She even traveled on the trans-Siberian Railway. P. also earned a B.A. while working for a think thank, traveled to Europe, and did all kinds of other interesting things. Hers was a life well lived.
Today I have a post-op checkup for my Lasik enhancement a month ago, so afterwards will have lunch, Goddess willin’ and the creek don’t git up, with my darling niece.
Trying not to let politics get me down. The Virginia Democratic primary is a week from today, so I’ve great hopes for that. California is WEIRD—sometimes charmingly so and sometimes unnervingly so. This jungle primary business can’t be good.
Time to eat breakfast and get on with my day, which started at the appalling hour of 4:30. One of the curses of old age is the inability to sleep at will.
Hoping it’s a good day for all!
So sorry about the loss of your friend. Even when you know it’s coming, it’s still hard. All good thoughts to you!
{{{Diana}}} – it’s always a jolt when someone leaves for the Western Isles. Even when you knew they’d be taking off at any minute. When that minute actually shows up, it’s still a jolt. moar {{{HUGS}}}
So there’s a 2nd way to win tickets to the Apollo show. Also a random drawing — enter a picture of you in a vintage U2 t. My Unforgettable Fire shirt is my oldest one:
{{{ad}}} – weird – the tweet as it’s showing in the comment has most of you and definitely the entire t-shirt but when I click on it to RT (which I did) it crops the photo so it’s pretty much a “head shot” with the top of the “U2” just barely showing. Hope you win the tickets. moar {{{HUGS}}}
If I do, I’ll have to cash in some of the money market thing my mom left me to go, because I literally have no money. $500-ish round trip air fare & 2 nights of $250/night hotel might as well be a million. But you have to try, right? And a chance to go to the Apollo theater? Worth it.