Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: June 30th through July 6th

June 29, 2019 JanF Community 81

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 (usually Saturday night with a Sunday date). 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!
 

29 Comments

  1. Good “morning”, Motley Meese! The week begins …

    Morning low of 70 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 88. Chance of thunderstorms.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Sunday Meese. 70 and sunny atm – rain and thunderstorms predicted for this afternoon in Saugerties NY.

    A big hug for Cory Booker

    And for the other Democratic candidates who have come to the defense of Kamala Harris

  3. Puerto Rico

  5. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s 8:45 a.m. and I’m already exhausted. Last night when we went to bed we had a celestial lightning show that must have brought rain in its wake while we were asleep, because at 5:30 a.m., when I took Monty out, I could see that it had rained heavily.

    It’s a fair morning here in Ashburn with a current temp. of 77 F., going up to 89 F. I wouldn’t be surprised if more thunderstorms boiled up tonight. Have just finished preparing three different breakfasts.

    Mr. Kindergartener is with us. At the moment he is mercifully silent as he’s engaged in coloring. Do all children that age talk incessantly? W e are supposed to watch the Formula I Grand Prix in a little while. (I hope it’s true that Mr. K. enjoys watching races.) After that we’ll take him home and exchange him for his sister, who will stay with us until we all travel to Williamsburg on Thursday.

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

  7. Slept in, watching the news. Got to get ready for a work week, even if it’s a short one. Tea is already made, this afternoon I’ll make dinner for the week.

    On the news, they’re talking about that picture, and the power of pictures to change the reporting of the news. This song is about the Syrian refugee crisis, but it applies here. Summer of Love. (the 1st time I heard this song, I cried because it is so beautiful & lush, then I listened really to the words & it made me cry again)

    I’ve been thinking ‘bout the West Coast
    Not the one that everyone knows
    We’re sick of living in the shadows
    We’ve one more chance before the light goes
    For a summer of love (summer of love)
    Summer of love (summer of love)

  8. It was 65 at dawn so baking wasn’t the problem I feared. It’s 70 now and heading for upper 80s which will be fine if the humidity goes down as the temps go up. We got 18 KWHs yesterday bringing the m-t-d to 518 and today for the last of June’s generation. It hasn’t been a great production month by any means but I got my SWEPCO statement yesterday and I’ve got over 400 KWHs credit so I’m doing OK. As long as I generate more than I use it’s golden.

    I baked I guess I’ll call it pumpkin cake since I don’t have any bread pans and so baked them in square cake pans. Still cooling at the moment. I’ll see what it tastes like shortly. LOL. I started with a classic pumpkin bread recipe but then of course used GF flour – the real changes were 4 oz almond butter instead of 3 sticks of dairy butter, 1/4 c blackstrap molasses instead of 2 c sugar, & added 6 oz Greek yogurt for some protein. Hope it’s edible – it makes 30 squares/servings which is breakfast and coffee break for 15 days. I might have to see if it freezes well so the 2nd week’s worth isn’t green and fuzzy. We shall see what we shall see.

    Good for Cory Booker and the rest of the Dem candidates standing up for Kamala. She’s been courteous, polite, and welcoming to all the Dem candidates even as she’s been very firm about her own plans and qualifications. I’m glad to see (most of) the others are reciprocating. Definitely shows a difference between our team (mostly) and the Rs. Who are out there being evil and pretending like it’s good. Well, I was taught way back when that good done in the name of evil is still good but that evil done in the name of good is the deepest of sins. We can’t do much about it until we get the power to do so. But we can work for our candidates – and the ones who are any good are already working on plans to put in place as soon as she’s sworn in. And staff to put in place once the votes are counted and the election’s certified. And we can contribute money and/or “boostage” to the NGOs out there doing their best to help folks survive until we do get the power to repair the damage.

    So. Close up the house to save the coolth. Check the pumpkin cake. Then coffee & snack while I read the various diaries/posts/tweets I attend to. Still have a sink full of dishes to do and other Sunday chores… Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  9. Good morning meese, it’s 68 going up to 89 on this Sunday. I had a blast at a 1 year old’s birthday party last night; besides the birthday girl herself, there was lots of good food, drink, dessert and then impromptu sing-along sessions with someone who brought a keyboard along. They were still going when I left at 1 am! I even got some leftovers including a dish made from chopped/grated Brussels sprouts.

    Today will be fairly low-key, just the monthly ragtime society meeting this afternoon. Have a good week ahead!

    • {{{basket}}} – glad you had fun. And got the leftovers. Enjoy your monthly meeting. Music is good. moar {{{HUGS}}}

  10. Monday Meese. 64 and sunny going up to 86 here in NYS.

  11. Good morning, meeses! Monday …

    It is 70 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 88 – heat index of 108! Mostly sunny skies with a chance for thunderstorms later tonight. We had some pretty nasty storms roll through here yesterday and apparently the forecast for the week is “expect more!”

    I have declared today June 31st and will use it to finish June projects that needed to be completed yesterday but which I ran out of energy to do. That requires that I defer any news reading until I have segued into July. I hope it is a quiet day!

    See all y’all later!

  12. So here I am at work. Voice sounded normal yesterday, though I never talked past noon….. We’ll see how it goes. Made maybe 3 week’s worth of dinner (or lunch) yesterday: quinioa, black beans, cooked onions, bell pepper & corn together, ro-tel tomatoes, avocados & cheese. A bunch is in the freezer. May have it for lunch next week. It was cool yesterday — I think the high was only in the 80s. Warm this morning though — mid-70s already at 6am. Listening to Shut Your Eyes (“shut your eyes & think of somewhere, somewhere cold & caked in snow”).

  14. Good Moon Day morning, Moosekind, and happy Canada Day! Funny that their national holiday is so close to ours, although I don’t think they get as hysterical about theirs. Today at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC, there will be a Mountie in full Mountie uniform standing out front. That outfit must be hell in this weather.

    Currently it’s 68 F. in Ashburn, going up to 88 F. with low humidity, which means a delightful day. We have partly cloudy skies and a light breeze as well.

    Grandpa is getting ready to take Miss Pink Cheeks to swim practice in her neighborhood, after which they’ll come back here to relax. Tonight Miss PC and I have a date to meet my friend-from-40-years-ago at the dog park. My friend has a “Morkie” named Molly, who weighs 7 pounds. We hope Molly and Monty will like each other.

    Feeling cheered that someone researched Kamala Harris’ background as California AG and found she’d cleared up the rape kits from the past eight years during her tenure. She’s a kick-ass kind of woman! I can just imagine what she’ll do to Thing and his minions, including the Barr-barian.

    Dee, ONE DAY we’ll have a Democratic Senate and president that will help PR, Vieques, and other places! Bfitz, how did it happen you made pumpkin bread in cake pans? Thought you usually make muffins? Not my biz, just curious. Hope it’s a sunny day for you. We’re supposed to have thunderstorms all week, starting tomorrow. Wouldn’t it be HILARIOUS if it pours on Thing’s Fourth of July takeover of the celebrations! I’m mean enough to enjoy the thought.

    Wishing a good Canada Day to all at the Pond and Beyond!

    • {{{Diana}}} – well, I call them muffins but I don’t have any muffin tins either – so I bake them in cake pans and cut them into muffin-equivalent squares. Basically I bake everything in cake pans. 😁😁😁

  15. Welcome to July, folks. Dawn temp was 68, it’s 72 now and heading for mid 80s so a little bit cooler today than it’s been lately. Long-range forecast says rain every afternoon for the foreseeable future – but they’re all 50% or less chances so we shall see what we shall see on that. Hope it’s not that irritating “cloudy but no water” that has been known to happen. (Aji got rain yesterday evening! At least .4″ as it was still drizzling when I logged off according to the weather widget I think is closest to them.) Yesterday we got 20 KWHs and finished up June with 538 – lowest except for 2017 when the system was down a week, but still banking so it’s good. Highest I’ve ever gotten in July is 568 the year I installed the upgrade so that’s our target for the month but 500 or over is very good.

    Evil Ones being evil – no surprise. MSM of course has convinced everybody that twitler is the issue. Impeach him or vote him out and somehow magically everything gets better – as if there wasn’t a decades-old organization behind this evil that the entire R party is the political arm for. What will happen if twitler magically goes away (dies laughing after bein acquitted in the Senate for example) is the MSM will stop covering what’s going on. As long as the Rs are in power, Puerto Rico will still be forgotten as to aid it should receive although the vulture capitalists won’t forget, there will still be families arrested and split up at the border, there will still be concentration camps and genocide. The MSM just won’t cover it. And nobody will notice because they think it’s all twitler, that the evil will die with him as it were. Evil put him in power. Evil told MSM what and how to cover everything. Evil told McConnell to “sacrifice himself” if necessary to give cover for the rest of the Rs in the Senate. Evil will continue it’s progress in taking this country and quite possibly the world into a dystopian fascist nightmare if we don’t manage to stop it. People have died already – but if we have to start at the bottom rather than stop the slide a whole lot more will. So. Prayers & invocations we manage to stop them.

    The pumpkin bread/cake/muffins came out a little more “puddingly” than I like in texture. The flavor’s quite good. I think I’ll leave out the yogurt next time I try this. Anyway gonna get some coffee and do my internets stuff. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • have you tried avocado as a butter substitute instead of applesauce? I’ve seen it suggested in vegan forums.

      • {{{another}}} Never tried avocado in a baked good. Not sure how well it would work in a “sweet” – hmmm. I usually use almond butter as a butter substitute. Or peanut butter if the peanut flavor works with whatever I’m making.

  16. Good morning, 62 and sunny in Bellingham. Our extended family weekend has been fun, full of memories and family connections, and this matriarch is weary but pleased. We’ll meet the last travelers for breakfast soon, and then I’ll start the laundry so the 4th of July family visitors will have clean sheets and towels, whew!

    My sister’s rental is very sparse so along everything else we’ve been finding what she needs here and getting her more comfortably settled. Emptying the unattractive planters full of dead plants and planting red geraniums may happen today. Her deck has a bay view, but dead plants, dust, and dirty windows aren’t very inviting. We assumed “fully furnished” meant the bed linens would be more that a top sheet over the mattress, but oh well. Fortunately I’ve got what she needs, just have to dig deep to find it.

    Best wishes to all on this sunny Monday.

  17. Good morning, Meesefolk; 66 when I got up with a high of 86 or so today. We’re getting the heat but not the storms. Yay?

    Got all the paperwork for my car in the mail today, so now it’s just figuring out a time when Hubby can go with me to get it. We alternate on whose name goes on each car (so that we’re not paying the entirety of our annual registration, payable in before one’s birthday, in one month), and somehow we got off-track and his current car is in my name. So my car will be in his name, which means he has to be there to sign his life away. I could go anytime tomorrow, but he doesn’t want to go on a workday (he sleeps during the day), and when he’s not working, our salesperson will be on vacation. Sales guy is willing and able to turn everything over to someone else, but that’s far from ideal in my view. But it’s either that or wait until late next week. I suspect I will be learning patience…

    Patience would be a blessing right now, since I’m trying really hard not to alienate a whole bunch of friends by going off on them. I have a whole group of more-acquaintances-than-friends who decided their 2016 support for Bernie made them the true progressives, and they’ve been insufferable about politics ever since. They’ve moved on from Bernie and are mostly about Warren and Buttigieg, which would be an odd pairing if it wasn’t so transparently obvious that they haven’t spent a moment considering why those two resonate, at the same time they’re parroting “Kamala is a cop” and “Castro doesn’t even speak fluent Spanish.” I’ve been quietly working at being a fly in the White ointment, but I may need to change my strategy and go all-in on confrontation sooner rather than later. I don’t care if they don’t want to support Sen. Harris or Sec. Castro; I do care that they’re acting like pawns and repeating talking points that have suspicious origins.

    Good day to and for all!

    • The primary wars are a cross Democrats will always have to bear because we are passionate about politics. It is how we handle the primary aftermath that is a problem. In 2008, the losers bowed out gracefully and the last person standing went into full stump-for-the-nominee mode. Our nominee won the general election. In 2016, the loser was a peevish piece of petulant punyness and ginned up his supporters to stay home and seek “purity” by refusing to vote. Our nominee lost the election. That is why in my mind we have to defeat Bernie Sanders and #BernieOrBust’ism NOW and not let it gain a foothold – it needs to not be a part of 2020. An 18th place finish in Iowa would be a good start. My New Hampshire peeps tell me that Warren will likely win there.

      The only thing I will not countenance in the primary battles is the lefty birtherism – that Kamala is not a Black American because her father was the descendant of a Jamaican slave not an American slave. Those people should be shouted down and then shunned if they persist. Same crap happened to Barack Obama – son of a white woman and a man whose ancestors had not been enslaved. He is a Black American because he grew up black in America and lived that experience just like Kamala did. We are a stupid people.

  18. Good morning meese, it’s 67 with a high of 88 today. Will be a quiet day at work with lots of people taking off or working from home.

  19. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 73 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 82 (heat index 100). Chance of thunderstorms.

    Well, I guess if there was any question that the CBP attracts the worst of the worst – especially in the age of Trump when cruelty is policy – yesterday’s revelations should end the speculation. There is no way to clean it up until we get a new president because there is no one at Homeland Security interested in fixing the problem – and maybe no one with the power to override Stephen Miller.

    Polls are useless except for one thing – changing the narrative. Harris and Warren on the rise, Biden, Bernie and Buttigieg dropping. That white dudes with cash have sent loads of money to Mayo Pete is no shock, by the way.

    I can’t spend a lot of time on the news today as I have a few lingering June projects to complete. PLUS I need to clear the decks for the World Cup semi-final at 2pm CDT between USA and England. I didn’t remember that England’s last visit to the semi-final – in 2015 – ended in the 92nd minute with a 1-0 defeat “by” Germany after an own-goal. To say that they have something to prove is an understatement. I know we have something to say. Here is a powerful story about what our soccer women have done and the statement they are making:

    It’s time to discard, finally, the nagging, jersey-tugging, chronic, small-minded doctrine that we must “contextualize” everything the U.S. women’s national team does as “relative” to the men’s game, and therefore they must be smaller, lesser. Sweet kicking Jesus, what titans these players are. […]

    In a way, the tired old equity debates in women’s sports have always been misplaced, off point, anyway. As Germaine Greer has asked, “Equality — with what?” The lame idea of sameness is actually a “profoundly conservative goal” for women. Replicating male sports structures with their baked-in disenfranchisement of athletes in favor of “owners,” with their lousy assumptions and values, has never been what the women in the U.S. soccer program were really interested in. […]

    What they’ve really been after, all these years, is the seeding of a whole new generation of female heroes, who can turn a president’s criticism into a grass stain. Rapinoe “should WIN first before she talks!” President Trump tweeted. All she did in response was deck him in his golf gut with two breathtaking goals in the World Cup quarterfinals and pose for the thundering crowd like a Pavlova.

    As they say, read the whole thing!

    See all y’all later!

  20. Tuesday Meese.

    66 here in Saugerties NY going up to 84.

    Susan Rice. Blunt assessment of Trump

    Tish James too (I am elated to see black women taking him on)

    Puerto Rico

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