Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Sept. 16th to Sept. 22nd

September 15, 2018 JanF Community 168

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!

  • Page Three of Comments is HERE!

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67 Comments

  2. Good Thor’s Day morning, Moosekind! I hate computers. Can’t live without them, though.

    It’s a fair morning here in NoVa, with a current temp. of 64 F., going up to 79 F. Autumn is on the way! Good.

    Still can’t fierce or preview despite Jan’s latest update, but be assured you are all “fierced” in my mind.

    We learned last night that Younger Son and DIL are buying a new house AGAIN! OMG! They’ve only been in their present house for 2 years. This new one has 3,700 sq. ft. I did tell them the next time they buy a house to make sure it’s big enough for Grandpa and me. If Thing kills our Social and Medicare we’ll have to leave AP and move in with them. Told them I’d do the housework, cooking, and child care, so DIL smiled hugely and said, “Start now!”

    Thank goodness Elder Son probably will never sell his house until Youngest Grandchild is out of high school. Elder Son is in a prime location for our area. He could bike across the river to the White House if he wanted to.

    Feel exhausted trying to keep up with the Coathanger Kavanaugh goings-on. Collins deserves to be defeated next time around, the mean old harridan. My senators are both Dems, at least in name, and I’ve already called them.

    Let’s all remember Puerto Rico today and the tragedy that befell it a year ago. If there were a change of government on our side we could agitate for better treatment of our “colony.”

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

    • There were 4 other WordPress plug-ins which may or may not be related to your issue but I need to do full software backups before I run those updates, so it will have to wait until a weekend. It seems like it may be related to when the site rejected your password and made you get a new one. I wonder if it changed some sort of “right” to Fierce. I am not sure if I will have time this weekend – I have some deadlines and I am running out of September weekends.

      • Jan, please take care of what you need to do first, and worry about all this other stuff only when you have time!

        I’ll be out of town 8 Oct. through 13 Oct. and can’t even get the Moose Pond on my iPad, as far as I know. I’ll try again before we leave but have no great hopes.

  3. Good morning, Meesefolk; 61 now with a high of 75-82. My widgets and the tv forecaster are in disagreement about temp, but they’re all saying high humidity and afternoon rain. (Just noticed it’s raining now, so even that was wrong!)

    My burbling was fun while it lasted, but all things come to an end. Kiddo and SIL went to see the house yesterday and absolutely loved it; if anything, the pictures didn’t do it justice. They got a few questions answered, and with those out of the way, decided to put in an offer. No sooner had I gotten off the phone with my daughter and listening to her burbling, when I got a text from her….another offer came in on the house. Two+ months on the market with no offers, and no showings since the price drop 10 days ago, and then this bombshell. They still put in their offer at full list, but they did not put in an escalation clause; this is their best and final offer. If the other offer came in randomly, it may be low, but the other interested party will still be able to counter. If the seller’s realtor contacted other buyers who were mulling it over in the hopes of starting a bidding war, she’ll have succeeded, but the other buyers will win the house. They’ll know for certain by 5 today, but at this point, any hope is of the false variety. It’s sad (did I mention they loved the house?), and I’m sad right along with them. They both recognize how fortunate they are to have a problem that is so quintessentially First World, but it doesn’t negate their need to mourn for awhile. And it’s going to be tough to find anything that comes close to measuring up; I suspect they’ll put house-hunting back on hold until after the holidays, but start again before their pre-qual letter expires.

    Anyway, lousy night of “sleep” last night. Between feeling sad and stressed for The Kiddo and feeling disgust and anger at Judiciary Committee Rs, I did little more than toss and turn. May we all have a better day…

    • They will find their “right” house eventually. Either now or later. Prayers for positive result at 5 pm.

  4. Slept in, it was really great. Watching the news. I had forgotten what an awful human being Chuck Grassley is & always has been.

    We may actually get a cold front next week! Highs of — the mid-80s. Brr, I might have to wear actual shoes. Maybe today I’ll finally tackle that shoe shelf. Today’s music is courtesy of the lip sync video I did for the AIDS Walk — it’s Walk On.

      • Yep, in Texas, “winter” is when I have to wear things with sleeves and shoes with socks.

        • Same here in MI…plus scarves, and hats, and mittens, and sweaters, and jackets, and long johns. But otherwise, totally the same.

          • Well, there’ll be week-long spells where I have to wear a coat & gloves. Followed by a week of back-to-sandals weather. Maybe 2 weeks of sweaters & coats. Never long enough to get used to it.

          • {{{ad}}} – that’s why it’s so very hard to get/stay healthy in TX. The weather changes so extremely from week to week. Healing Energy. moar {{{HUGS}}}

  5. Well, we now have proof positive of what I’ve always assumed about myself. I am a terrible prognosticator. THEY GOT THE HOUSE!!!!!!!

  6. 56 with a high of 91. I don’t have to fly anywhere today, which is good because I am still really tired. At least the visit yesterday was productive and I got to meet some former colleagues.

  7. Ran errands before I logged on so running behind – great that I got both the bad news AND the good news on Kiddo’s house at one time though 😁 – It was in the 70s and sticky this morning. Already closed up the house. Back to hoping I don’t have to turn on the A/C this afternoon/evening. sigh. But the weather’s supposed to break tomorrow (projected high for Sunday lower than today’s lows) and get back into Autumnal mode. Just in time for the Equinox. LOL. Anyway, got 12.6 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d 237.6 so we’re almost to what the 2.5K system did back in 2014. Not great but good. Ignoring as best I can what’s going on out in the world, except for periodically checking in so I can boost signals. Which I need to go do. But need coffee first. Healing Energy to everybody everywhere shaped to the needs. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  8. Good morning, 55 and cloudy in Bellingham. I was awake for what seemed like hours in the night so I looked at the years of photo files on my computer. It’s been a busy 10+ years, and my grown up grand children were adorable babies. My children and I were a bit younger in appearance as well :)

    I’m exhausted form tRump angst, resigned to Kavanaugh being on the SCOTUS, and weary to the depth of my soul re women being used so unfairly. So I’ll try to find something useful, distracting and fun to do today and carry on as best I can. Take care everyone.

  9. A few fluffy clouds in the sky with a temperature of 72. Still trying to get stuff done at work. I belong to the Canyon Democrats club (South Orange County). I’ve got my own precinct to walk. Got my flyers at the Tuesday nite meeting and now I need to assemble them into the bags they provided. After that all I have to do is make introvert me walk around and ring doorbells. I’m telling myself Sunday. I’ll start Sunday. Saturday I’m doing a precinct walk with the Canyon Dem group (we’re doing the areas where we have no members).

  10. Friday Meese.
    61 and cloudy here in the Catskills of NY going up to 71.
    Sitting here trying to cope with the 7 different eye-drops I have to take – some of them 4X per day. I had to find an app to help with the schedule and reminder alarms

    Unhappy about the lack of attention paid yesterday to 1 year post Maria anniversary – though I found articles this morning – not one headline at google news was about PR

    • I was in my car for several hours yesterday and NPR was doing some in-depth stories from Puerto Rico. None of the stories are on their front page yet (they are awaiting transcription, I think) but I did a search and found them:
      – Here & Now: Visiting Puerto Rico One Year After Hurricane Maria
      – National: One Year After Hurricane, How Puerto Rico Has Changed
      – Alt.Latino: Puerto Rico One Year After Maria
      – SHOT- Health News: Puerto Rico’s Tap Water Often Goes Untested, Raising Fears About Lead Contamination

      One of the segments (maybe the Alt.Latino) was about how the youth on the island is becoming politically engaged – that would be a very good thing! The current governor is a tool of the island’s colonial overlords and they need sweeping changes to regain control of their own destiny. I was shocked to hear that they import 90% of their food – much of which could be grown locally. It is almost as if they want the island to fail or at least be dependent on the largesse of the federal government.

      • If England could go from importing 2/3 of its food during the war to importing only 1/3 of its food, PR could do the same thing with the right tools. They need the infrastructure in place.

      • They do want Puerto Rico to be dependent – dirt poor, no choice, peonage type dependent – on the federal government. That’s why the tariffs, the loans instead of grants, and so forth. They only “gave” Puerto Ricans citizenship so they could draft them in WWI. Basically Puerto Rico is one of the most beautiful “Native reservations” in the world – although of course most of them aren’t Native/Indigenous – with the same kinds of poverty, health issues, and laws to keep them that way. And as with Natives on reservations, wypipo are still after their lands and resources. But they could absolutely feed themselves – if the farms weren’t owned by (white) absentee landlords who order crops to be grown for export. Like Ireland during the potato famine – plenty of food being exported to enrich the land owners while the people living there starve to death.

    • Denise, sympathy about the eye drops. It’s so tedious! Not to mention messy if the eye dropper misses the eye in question. Sending love and healing energy to you.

    • {{{Denise}}} More Healing Energy and I’m glad you can at least do all the various eye drops. (There’s no way I could get more than one or maybe two – and I can’t guarantee I could do that daily, never mind multiple times a day.) Hurrah for being able to see again. 💖💖💖 moar {{{HUGS}}}

  11. Good morning, meese! Friday …

    It is 68 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 61. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast with clearing expected this evening. Tomorrow it will be 64 and sunny – a perfect fall day with the Equinox happening at 8:54pm Central Time (not today, as my old and befuddled brain declared yesterday!).

    I was in my car for several hours yesterday and when my classical music station got out of range, I had to switch to the NPR news. I enjoyed the Puerto Rico stories but then they started talking about the Kava-naught confirmation. I wanted to throw something at my radio (but realized that was dangerous) when they had the blogger hack for the Federalist Society, Ben Domenech on! Of course he called Dr. Ford “Miss Ford” and Koathanger Kavanaugh “Judge Kavanaugh” because that is how they roll. I could only take about 5 minutes listening to a man whose entire purpose is to destroy our democratic form of government and turn it into a plutocracy. I opted for white noise until the top of the hour.

    I hope that the hearing can take place next Thursday as is being reported. I was encouraged by the article suggesting that the questioning will be turned over to Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar – two longtime prosecutors who both have extensive experience with sexual assault cases (in the case of Senator Harris, sexual assault of minors). They need to pin Kavanaugh down about what he considers sexual assault – if his youth would give him a mulligan as suggested by Oral Hack. Even if they won’t get him to admit anything, he should be forced to go on the record with his opinions about the details of the described incident.

    Since I was out of my office most of yesterday, I am behind on just about every project I have going – work and personal. Time to get to it.

    See all y’all later!

  12. Good morning meese. I’m on my way to the airport yet again! This time for pleasure though, a weekend in Seattle.

    Currently 66 with a high of 91 in my part of CA, and 60 with high of 73 in Seattle. Rain is in the forecast for tomorrow over there, which makes me happy.

    • Bon voyage, basket! You’ll have a great time, rain or no rain. I adored Seattle during the very short time we spent there: there’s such a different feeling about it. I felt the City was saying to us, “C’mon, relax, bike through one of our parks, drink some of our renowned coffee, and enjoy life!”

      Here on the East Toast (and I use the term advisedly) everyone feels burned out all the time because of our workaholic culture. I don’t work any more, of course, but I have dark memories of the time when I did.

    • 🤗🤗🤗 basket 🤗🤗🤗 safe travels ✈✈✈and have fun. ✨✨✨ 💞💞💞 & moar 🤗🤗🤗

  13. Good Freya’s Day morning, Meese! She wouldn’t approve of this day, it’s cloudy again. We were supposed to have four perfect, sunny days beginning on Wednesday and lasting until Sunday. Yesterday started sunny but was quickly overtaken by cloud cover. Sniff.

    Anyway, right now in Ashburn it’s 70 F., going up to 78 F. It’s probably humid, too.

    Our son-in-law from Austin came over for a meeting with Ashby Ponds personnel to see if there’s a place for his mother here in the Assisted Living part. She is in a nursing home at the moment, having suffered a crisis last weekend. Most likely she will end up in a retirement community much closer to her present house. We had a delightful lunch with him at the Acorn Deli here and a nice chat. We’re hoping to see both him and M’Daughter at Thanksgiving.

    I’m afraid there won’t be much opportunity for exercise today as I have a meeting at 10 (political book club), the Progressives’ Luncheon at noon, and the Writers’ Group at 3. Corey Stewart, the Trumpian candidate for U. S. Senator, will be here at 10. I won’t go see or hear him because of my blood pressure. I’d rather talk to the other members of the book club. The male members of the Writers’ Group are NOT going to like my little essay, titled “The Fifty-first State.” It’s about how all women live there: it’s the State of Fear. I can feel the poison-dart looks now!

    But that’s just rubbish. Yes, patriarchy heavily enforces the view that women are of lesser value. But that doesn’t mean we women hate all men all the time. Next month I’ll have been married to the nicest man in North America for 51 years, I’m the proud mother of two wonderful sons, grandmother of three equally wonderful grandsons, etc., etc.

    All this is a roundabout way of saying that whatever happens with Lardy Cake Kavanaugh, women are awakening to their powers and letting out a ROARRRR!

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and a very slow news day to those Beyond. :)

    P.S. Bloody old Safari updated itself and now the “fierce box” has reappeared! I can “fierce” again. Still can’t preview, though.

    • Another essay I hope you’ll consider posting here at some point; there won’t be a poison dart anywhere, but lots of fierces, I’m sure.

      And I overlooked your previous news about Younger Son buying a new home…voluntarily. There’s something to be said for being young, I guess, but now when I hear about people moving frequently (including my own daughter), all I can think is, “Ugh, all that packing…” We moved frequently in our younger days because of Hubby’s military service, but the Navy paid for all the moving and packing. That was a lifesaver; the only thing that could have made it better is if there had been an unpacking service too.

    • It’s a step in the right direction though. Maybe the next Safari update will fix the other problem.

    • I am going to have time later today to run the other updates on the site. I hope that one of them fixes the preview box!

  14. Thinking about going to a debate watch party tonight. It should be fun to watch Beto crush Cruz. Meanwhile, watching the news & drinking tea. Today’s music: Empress. Lyrics — I swear it’s about the Resistance.

    • I suspect Cruz, a seasoned debater of Debate Club-type training, will do better than most people expect, but I also suspect that Beto’s passion will shine through, formal training or not. Formal debate training has its advantage; it enables one to be nimble, logical, and readily apply facts and statistics. But Rs, including Cruz, live in a fact-free zone, so that’s not likely to be much help. Beto brings the fire: a passion for justice and doing the right thing which Cruz can’t come close to matching. I wish I could be at that party with you!

      • I think his smarminess will hurt, the more people who see it, the worse for him. It will remind people – even people who’ve voted for him before, that they don’t like him.

  15. Hi folks – woke to sprinkling and temps starting to fall. We had our high of 75 before sunrise. Got a bit of sun but mostly cloudy and is expected to start really raining in another couple of hours. The rest of the month is supposed to be overcast and rainy – we’re dry as a bone and the ground’s hard as a rock so we’ve got flash flood warnings. If we do stay cloudy I hope we can average at least 5 KWHs a day anyway to get the month’s generation over 300. Got 12.67 KWHs yesterday and we’ve just barely made 250 for the m-t-d with 10 days of production left.

    The koathanger kavanaw crap is triggering just about everybody I know and millions I don’t know. We’ve got to not just “blue wave” the Rs out of office, we’ve got to stay active and involved long enough to start dealing with the unfortunately not just R (and not just male) attitudes towards women and just who has rights to women’s bodies. (And work, but that’s a different although related issue.) Not gonna say deal with – that’s going to take generations – but we have to start somewhere and now is the always the best time. Not particularly easy when fighting off flashbacks, but possible if done in community. With our sisters’ support we can do this. (Part of the problem being finding which sisters are supportive – and which aren’t.) Healing Energy to everybody everywhere shaped to the need. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  16. Good morning, Meesefolk; 73 when I got up this morning (yuck) with a humid high of 82-85 expected (yuckier). But tomorrow is supposed to be a high of 63…my kind of weather.

    The House saga continues…yesterday’s good news was tempered a bit with the update that the contract won’t become official until their pre-qual letter is submitted, and it must be submitted by Saturday afternoon or the agreement is void. They went to see the house without it, at the urging of the [rather desperate] seller’s agent. They uploaded the documents needed for the letter right before their showing, all through SILs link; however the credit union wouldn’t process them initially, because The Kiddo didn’t take SILs name when they got married, and they wanted to ensure there was no data/document theft going on (Kiddo’s link had landed in her junk folder, so they didn’t even know uploading separately was preferred). Long story short, they should have the letter later today; SIL was on the phone with the loan officer a few times yesterday, so she knows what’s at stake and told him yesterday that final review was scheduled for 8:30 this morning, with approval likely by noon. She also told him unofficially that it was all good news, but until the actual document is available, there’s a part of me that is not quite breathing easily. Which is actually ridiculous; their credit union is the one I’ve belonged to for almost 40 years, and even when there’s been a hiccup, they’ve never, ever let us down. So what am I worrying about?

    The unabashedly good news is that their inspection is scheduled for 9:00am Monday, and they’ve invited me to come down for that so I can see the house. I managed to rearrange my work schedule so I can. I suspect part of my “job” will be to keep his rather high-maintenance mother at bay; she doesn’t just see the glass as half empty, she questions the choice, color, and size of the glass. But she is a gardener, so I’m hoping to drag her outside to help me check out and do a rough map of the landscaping. The existing landscaping looks new and professionally-done, which in my experience means nice shrubs and very few perennials. The backyard is quite shady, so that will probably just need some groundcover, ferns, and hostas, but the front beds need help.

    And this is what I’m focusing on for the time being. The Kavanaugh story and the related triggering of so many women has me so angry that I need a distraction so I’m not consumed by the rage. Designing gardens and working in my own yard will fit that need nicely.

    • Does that mean it’s a good day or a bad day?! I remember helping my mom with that sort of thing when she worked in a library. I loved it; she not so much…which may be why she let taught me what to do and let me help.

      • I’m certainly glad when it’s done. Not my favorite job. I can spend a couple of hours repairing 1 book. I try to make the repaired books look as new as possible. Mostly they are very dusty and they cause my asthma to flare up. Sigh.

  18. (And just like that…not only did the credit union provide their pre-qual letter, they also went ahead and approved the financing. So as long as the inspection results are good, all systems are go.)

  19. Good morning, meeses! Saturday …

    It is 43 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 64. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Happy Fall Equinox to you all!

    Entering the Quiet Time as We Leaf the Light Behind

    Diana gifted us with her “The Fifty-First State” post as DoReMI requested.

    The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Chuck Assley, would not accept the limitations that Dr. Ford and her attorneys felt needed to be in place for her appearance before the committee and he set the Kavanaugh vote for Monday. Fine. If he wants to move forward with his damaged nominee, he and his party will pay the political price (and no, I am not counting on Jeff Flake to block the confirmation – he is the very definition of “all talk, no action”.) I hope that Dr. Ford files charges in Maryland against Kavanaugh and that the Roberts Court – with four men in seats filled by presidents who did not win the popular vote and one man who used the Republican’s hatred of women to gain his seat – is further reduced in stature. There is no consent of the governed reflected in this Supreme Court and no respect owed it. Russia set out to destroy America’s faith in its institutions and thanks to a Republican Party willing to do anything to get tax cuts for the wealthy, they accomplished that. The presidency, the courts, and Congress, complicit in shredding our Constitution.

    See all y’all later!

  20. Saturday morning Meese.
    66 here in the Catskills of NY which is what it will be all day.

    Kudos to this family – speaking out against their right wing brother

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