Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: May 3rd through May 9th

May 2, 2020 JanF Community 100

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?

…

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!
 
– Page Three of Comments is HERE!
 

 

–

45 Comments

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

    Morning low of 50 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 70. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Sunday Meese
    55 degrees here in Kingston NY (my new town) going up to 75!

    Staring at piles and piles of boxes – will be unpacking for 6 months

    At least I have puter set up and the internet service here in town is much faster

    • Yay!!! for being moved (6 months is low-balling it 😁😁) – and for faster/better internet service. Hope being in town means you can get delivery service when you want to. Stay safe as you can. Healing Energy to your (new) household & {{{HUGS}}}

    • I was all ready to post your PR tweet in case you were still offline. Glad to see you are connected!! Yay for high speed Internet, boo for unpacking. I find unpacking less stressful than packing, though, because there is usually no deadline like there is for packing to move out – it is all in what you can tolerate or if you can’t find something you need. :)

    • Hi Dee…..hope you can take a well deserved rest today and settle into your new house one box at a time!

    • Glad you’re in, Sis! You have the Internet, that’s the important thing. If you unpack a box a day and put stuff away, you’ll be finished in early 2030. Isn’t that a cheery thought?

      Another earthquake for poor old Puerto Rico. It’s as if the island is being punished. For what? Is PR in the Ring of Fire?

      I hope the Boricuans survive until January 2021. Hope we all do, as a matter of fact.

  3. Slept in, now watching the news. Today: make next week’s breakfasts (overnight oats can “overnight” for more than 1 night), church online, and maybe a webinar or 2 for work to build in some extra time. It’s going to be in the mid-90s again, so I’m not gonna walk this afternoon. Yesterday’s Saturday Song Write yielded 2 songs, I don’t know if this link works if you don’t have instagram, but this song is really pretty: https://www.instagram.com/tv/B_s6PN0h-qq/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

  4. Sunday Sermon

  5. It’s 70 heading for 77 – Summer has gone back into the bottle for another week or so but we’ll still be in the 70s for the next few days (then 60s) – but a few days of 80s with overnights above 50 and not only have a bunch (like 5 😁) of my lettuces sprouted but this morning I saw several beans sprouting as well. We’ll have another couple of nights above 50 before we drop back into the 40s. I hope that’s enough to get everything “established” so it just goes on hold when the temps drop rather than dying. I hope. The lettuce should be OK but green beans are warm-weather plants so 🤞. We generated 20.5 KWHs and the m-t-d is 37.7 – on track as much as only two days can be said to be on track. Today’s cloudy and the next several are slated to be as well so we won’t stay on track long but it’s a good start to the month. We’re looking at thunderstorms too. I’ll probably pull the lettuce/green bean box back under the carport. Those sprouts aren’t strong enough yet for heavy rain. The tomato box I might or might not. I might instead just pull it further out into the yard to make sure it’s not hit with a deluge coming off the roof but still get rain water.

    Amelia’s covered for May. And needs to recover from the efforts to be so. She’s gonna target getting to the doctor (hoping for telemed to work) and get her meds. She might as well not make a to-do list otherwise because she won’t be able to focus enough to do any of them without her meds. Aji’s, well not in a good space financially as the sales have just dried up, not in a good space regarding her health, and not in a good space regarding Natives being hit so hard by COVID-19 while everybody pretends like NM has “flattened the curve” – well, yeah if you only count white people with Natives having over 50% of the confirmed cases. And dealing with it the way Aji does – anger and rants. Which are very valid – and energy intensive. I do what I can and try to stay out of the way. And doing what I can is going to have to change how I do it like right now. I got my credit card statement yesterday and discovered that as of April my “send to family/friends” money on PayPal using the credit card is treated as a cash advance – $10 fee plus 23% interest accruing immediately.
    Well, BofA is gonna get that for the month of April and that’s it. Tomorrow I’ll contact PayPal about some way to have an account with them without them actually being connected to my credit union. Something I can “load” from my bank account periodically. If that’s not possible I’ll call my credit union to see what works best. Either some kind of safety on it so anything thing coming from PayPal over a certain amount (like $50) has to be verified by me before being paid or setting up a separate account for PayPal only that isn’t connected to my other accounts so nobody can hack into them and a “mistake” by PayPal won’t eff me up for the couple of weeks it takes them to get around to fixing. We shall see what we shall see. But I’m not putting $11 or so into Jamie Dimond’s pocket every time I send somebody $25 for a bag of groceries/dogfood!

    Weed-barrier cloths are not effective. Or at least not totally. There are 100s of little sprouting things in my gravel path beside the house. I spent some 15 minutes pulling them yesterday afternoon before the itching started – but my right hand is cramping still. I will have to find another way to deal with that. But all the irises are blooming – just all opened to the beautiful warm weather and sun yesterday – and that’s lovely. I’m putting off my chores due to right hand cramping (yes, it hurts to type – just not as much) and doing my internet stuff now instead. But more coffee. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody for your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

      • Yeah. Although it’s not really PayPal this time. It’s the credit card companies who’ve decided to treat gifts/donations made to family or friends as cash advances. I could send the same amount to World Central Kitchen or the Clinton Foundation and it’s just another charge. But if I send it to a person, an individual, it’s a cash advance. (R-deregulation of financial industry at work here.) sigh. {{{Diana}}}

  6. Good morning, 45 and partly sunny. I finished the masks for our son’s family, but didn’t deliver them because the girls were doing their schoolwork. So we’ll have a porch visit here today. I’ve now sewn over 40 masks, and have about 20 more to go. But the friends and neighbors piles are smaller and will go faster because I’m not customizing the fabric choices. It’s been fun to be creative with fabric for my immediate family but now I’m just making masks, with denim as a common fabric so there’s less thought involved.

    My neighbor’s lilacs are in bloom and he doesn’t care if I clip a bouquet so I’ll do so sometime today. The smell of fresh lilacs takes me back to my Nevada childhood and the lilac hedge planted along the fields by the old farmhouse. When it was blooming the scent filled the air.

    Best wishes to all on this now cloudy morning in May.

    • Lilacs do fill the air – so much so I can’t have them actually in the house – but they fill the neighborhood with sweet scent. Have fun with your porch visit. {{{princesspat}}}

  7. Good Sunday afternoon, Moosekind! Yet another gray and moist afternoon here in Ashburn. The current temperature is 69 F., inching up toward a high of 76 F. Yes, there will be rain and thunderstorms—even small hail, or so they say—but I managed to beat the start of it all. I’ve already been for my walk, so that’s OK.

    Speaking of lilacs, that’s one of the things I miss most about living in a house! At home we had purple, mauve, white, and pink. One of my greatest pleasures in the spring was to wander among them, breathing in the scent. I soon learned it was pointless to cut any blooms to bring inside: they died on one day.

    I did have a nice surprise just now. I went a different way on my walk today, toward the most recent pond and the dog park. When I reached the dog park what did I see and smell but lilacs, tons of purple lilacs! I walked along, counting as I went, and found there are 14 blooming bushes. What a treat to see and smell!

    Another nice thing was that today’s food delivery appears to actually be edible. Management has admitted that the snacks provided are not to everyone’s taste, so we’ve been invited to put them in a sack and leave them on our outside shelves for pickup on Thursday. The snacks will be distributed to staff members who have children at home all day and who are eating their way through their home pantries like a horde of hungry locusts. That’s a good cause, so I contributed some snacks to the usual collection point on the fifth floor and will put the others out on Thursday.

    Sunday is the day I cook a proper breakfast for Dearly and change the sheets on the beds. Today, although we previously lived by the adage “Cast not a clout ’til May is out,” it’s been so hot lately that our winter bedspread has felt oppressive. That’s why today I put summer sheets on the bed as well as the summer bed covering and pillow shams. In ordinary times I’d be taking the winter bedspread to a public laundromat to wash it and then put it away for the summer, but I can’t do that now. It’ll just have to remain unwashed until the day lockdown ends, if it ever does.

    I’m very concerned about Dearly Beloved. He’s lost seven pounds, won’t even drink the wine or beer he likes of an evening, refused a slice of toast and marmalade at breakfast today, and sleeps a lot, even more than he normally does. He’s asleep right now, in fact, although he didn’t have any lunch. I asked him if he wanted me to take over walking the dog but he said no, walking the dog is his only opportunity to get fresh air and exercise. Before All This happened, he used to exchange greetings with the people he and Monty met on their walks. Nowadays most people don’t speak, just lift a hand in greeting as they pass.

    Also, Dearly’s COPD is very bad just now, although he does have the proper medications for it. Arthritis hurts him so much he can’t even stand upright nowadays. Oh, dear. I’m thinking this doesn’t look good.

    Monty continues to importune me every 15 minutes, with the result that I am a shrieking banshee. I swear, the air rings with my curses and turns bright blue. I wish I knew someone who has a huge fenced backyard and wants an energetic, affectionate dog.

    Oh, well, enough gripes from me! I hope everyone will have a nice, quiet Sunday with an absolute minimum of news. I’m expecting two FaceTime calls today, so I’d better carry on with the other things I need to do. Alors, à demain!

    • Sending all good thoughts to your Dearly Beloved! And fyi, I’ve had my summer-weight sheets on my bed since mid-March. Back when I had money, I got those fancy moisture-wicking sheets that cool you off. When I have to start using a/c, I switch to them.

    • {{{Diana}}} Holding the Good Thought/sending more Healing Energy to/for your husband (& household). moar {{{HUGS}}}

  8. Good morning, meeses! Monday …

    It is 39 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 55. Mostly sunny this morning, clouding up this afternoon.

    I updated the site to WordPress 5.4.1 this morning, optimized the database, cleared cache, and updated the plug-ins. Right now the ULike feature – our Fierce and Unfierce – is not working well, it is a semantics issue that I have to grapple with when my brain works better. There are also animations that I am trying to track down – I really don’t need frowns flashing across my screen when I “unfierce” a post! They should be gone shortly.

    The Orange Orshole shat on the Lincoln Memorial again. That the Party of Lincoln is now the party of white supremacy and bent on helping the confederacy rise again is particularly ghastly but led by the singularly most unfit man sitting in the Oval Office claiming the mantle of Lincoln it is sickening. Republicanism is a virus that has devastated the institutions of our democracy, destroyed our government and is trying to kill our people. Sad for Lincoln’s legacy, sad for us as Americans.

    It should surprise no one that the federal government would declare Mission Accomplished by citing the recent openings by the Dixie Death Compact as evidence that “everything is fine”. That Mississippi is already planning to shut back down again after a spike in cases and deaths should also surprise no one except the part where Mississippi is actually admitting they may have been wrong. The tell will be in about a week when the first wave starts infecting the second wave and they begin showing up in hospitals. Ignorant fools.

    See all y’all later!

    • The Lincoln Project – those anti-Trump Repubs (I’ll take it ) have a new ad

      • Nice work by the Lincoln Project! I am not sure those guys are any truer to Lincoln’s legacy (they find nothing wrong with profiting from institutional racism and disenfranchisement of people of color) but they are exponentially better than the pile of human garbage and his enablers in the White House.

    • Thank you for doing the technical work that keeps the Moose Pond healthy. I hope you can get the “semantics” worked out but if not we’ll get used to it. Having a safe place to come, check in, and vent is the greatest blessing. Thank you again. {{{HUGS}}}

      • I had the Fierce and Unfierce backwards trying to match them to the Like and Unlike that is the standard. I am not sure why the ULIke plug-in did not remember my settings – it must have been a major rewrite behind the scenes. Anyway, I did finally get it sorted out and thankfully deselected the animation which was extremely annoying. We should be good for another 6 months.

        I also enjoy having a place to check-in, I have been checking in online for over 10 years on various blogs and would certainly feel cast adrift without it, especially in an election year.

        • Without a place to check in quarantine becomes isolation. Especially for those of us who live alone. {{{HUGS}}}

  9. Monday Meese. 53 here in Kingston NY going up to 63.

    The dogs love their new home. They have neighbor’s dogs, and children to bark at on the other side of the chain link back yard fence.
    Headed back to the old house to schlep more stuff to the new today.
    Though I’m not a Don Lemon fan …he did good

    Puerto Rico

    • Good comment by Don Lemon – I hope the drooling dotard in the White House saw it. Sadly, the comment doesn’t make up for him working for a cable channel that profits from a tRump presidency and is doing everything in their power to get him “re”-elected so that their ratings stay high (160% ratings improvement over last year). I won’t watch them – and avoid links to their actual web pages – since they refused to fire birther Chris Cuomo who questioned Kamala Harris’ citizenship.

        • Last year, Chris Cuomo amplified the notion that Kamala Harris was not a citizen because neither of her parents were citizens when she was born in Oakland. He never apologized and CNN did not kick his sorry ass off of their broadcasts for his attempted ratfking. Since then, I have shunned CNN and will not retweet their tweets (or tweets with links to their web site) or click on any of their web site offerings. It is unforgivable, after what the press did to Barack Obama, to give voice and microphones to the birthers. Add to that CNN’s part in promoting Donald J. Trump in 2016 by showing all his rallies live and working to make sure he was elected so that his shitshow would drive their ratings. Not off my clicks or eyeballs!!

    • Glad the dogs are happy. I hope you and your husband (& anybody/thing else who’s a part of your household) enjoy the new space & situation. {{{HUGS}}}

  10. Good Monday morning, Moosekind and May the Fourth be with you. It’s very mild (61 F.) on this sunny Monday, but windy. Our high will be 69 F., and this is supposed to be the best day of the coming week.

    Yesterday the rain held off until quite late at night, 9 p.m., after which we were treated to lightning, thunder, and heavy rain. It was gone by this morning.

    I’m already dressed in case the dawg has to go out just when I’m about to enjoy my coffee. He usually does. About to eat breakfast and begin my day. Will today be the day I actually get something done?

    I’m pondering the weirdness of this spring. This is my 54th spring in the Washington, DC area but I’ve never seen dogwood trees behaving like this. Normally the white and pink dogwoods bloom at the same time, but this year the white dogwoods came out first and now that they’re transitioning to green leaves, the pink dogwoods are coming out! Why?

    As if we didn’t have more than enough to worry about, now we gotta stress out over Murder Hornets? Faster than a speeding bullet, able to sting through a beekeeper’s suit, possessed of venom that kills a number of people in Japan every year—is Gaia punishing us for destroying her?

    I for one hope the awl bidness never comes back.

    Time for breakfast. Hope all Meese will find something pleasant to think about today in the midst of the mess we’re in. Aloha!

  11. I got in 2.17 miles walking this morning. Had to get it done early because it’s going to be in the mid-90s again. I’ve logged in on my work computer & snagged 15 e-mails. Time to get to work.

  12. It’s 70 heading for 79 and the windows are open at least until the rain starts. The cats are happy. The sun came up with promise but now it’s so dark the lights are on. Sigh. Yesterday we only got 3.5 KWHs – definitely no longer on track – and today looks to be the same or worse. But 2 more green bean plants have sprouted so that part’s good.

    It’s dark which always brings me down. But there’s rumbly thunder so that’s nice. The world is in such a mess and there’s nothing I can do about it. Genocide overtly by the Rs and gee-dee-it covertly by some of the Dems – and there’s just nothing I can do. sigh. But I’ll keep on keepin’ on, just like the rest of us. There’s always something around the house to do. Cats make sure of that. (Dogs, kids, husband – whatever you got, they all keep things moving.) Think I’ll go get some coffee. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  13. Good morning, 49 and mostly sunny in Bellingham. Rhododendrons are blooming in our garden and all around the neighborhood and I never tire of seeing the beauty. Years ago, before I knew better, I planted small rhodies under windows and too close to the house. Now the mature plants want to be true to their nature and grow as small trees so I’m try to carefully prune them so we can see out of the windows. Every spring I vow to sacrifice next years blooms and do a more radical pruning, but that’s hard to do. So the rhodie by my sewing room door is now two stories tall and in full bloom. And I’m going to just let it grow as it wishes.

    Best wishes to all on this spring day in May.

  14. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 39 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 50. The weather widget says there will be rain this morning and clouds all day. On Friday, we have frost warnings with an expected overnight low of 31. That is why cautious gardeners in Wisconsin don’t plant until after Memorial Day.

    I listened to the first live oral arguments from the Supreme Court yesterday. It was a somewhat interesting trademark case (interesting because it was the convergence of trademark law and online branding/technology) but more exciting because it was history being made. My SCOTUS peeps tell me it was very oddly done with each person taking a turn to question rather than the more interactive back and forth they have in the courtroom. Even Clarence Thomas spoke – twice! – which was even more history making (I think CJ Roberts made him). The attorney for booking dot com was the supposed feminist woman, Lisa Blatt, who last year said we should not be mean to Keggernaugh just because he is a pig – one wonders if she did that to fluff him up knowing that she would be appearing in front of him. I wouldn’t be surprised. Keggernaugh is a blight on the court and I hope someday we have a Senate supermajority and can impeach and remove him. Anyway, it was interesting. I might tune in again for the Little Sisters Hate Your Birth Control case on May 11th and the Trump Organization tax returns case on May 12th. Those will be a little livelier, I suspect.

    COVID-19 is going to kill at least 200,000 Americans – many who would have survived if the tRump administration had not been built for the singular purpose of fluffing up the fragile ego of their boss – yet Joe Biden is only ahead in the national polls by 4%, within the margin of error. It is disheartening, to say the least. Of course, national polls mean nothing, the electoral college will decide this on a state by state basis but that a man who has made it plain that he doesn’t care about human life is popular with 45% of the country is horrifying. Goddess help us!

    I think I had a restful sleep – I did not wake up too early or too worried but I have no memory of my dreams which is unusual. Maybe they were working their cleansing magic quietly. I did wake up with a plan for today which I am more or less on track for so far. Best get back to it!

    See all y’all later!

  15. Good Tuesday Meese
    40 degrees going up to 60 here in Kingston NY
    Taking my husband for a third try at getting his MRI today – fingers crossed he can do it.

    Still moving odds and ends from the old house to the new – but things are shaping up – put what looks like hundreds of boxes into the garage – rather than clutter up new house.

    George Takei


    Mass stupid

    Powerful words from Tess Rafferty

  16. Puerto Rico: A group of artists come together to sing “Borinquen Preciosa”

  17. Got in 2.28 miles of walking. Sticky morning — 78 degrees even before dawn. But there’s a cold front coming, so tomorrow will be better. Time to log in on the work laptop.

  18. Good Tuesday morning, Meese. The dog is looking at me accusingly after I shouted at him. He waits until I’ve settled at my desk with a cup of coffee to begin checking in before he barks to go out. Sometimes he doesn’t even want to go out for business reasons; he just wants to eat dead worms and rabbit poop. I’m deeply grateful that I’m not a dog.

    The ugly gray skies have changed to sunlight and mackerel cirrostratus clouds as of 9 a.m. The current temperature is 50 F., going up to 54 F. The weather is the exact opposite of what was predicted for today, showers this morning and cloudy this afternoon.

    My tiny first world problems—didn’t get out for a walk yesterday because the wind was roaring away at 35 mph. This morning I got on the scales and freaked out. Today I must exercise some control over my eating. There’s a magic number that I accept as my outer limit but once it passes that, I’m doomed. This morning the scales showed I’d passed the magic number.

    No more chocolate, prob. salad for lunch again, bla bla bla. LOL, I’m not very interesting today.

    The dog has just emitted his fourth deep, outraged bark, so I’d better take off. Everyone have a good day!

  19. It’s 57 heading for low 70s. Started sunny but is clouding up again already. I can see blue sky to the west but the west isn’t where the sun is. I’m gonna have to turn on the lamp again. sigh. It did clear off midday yesterday – after a very short but intense spate of hail – and we got 13.8 KWHs before the rain came back. The m-t-d is 55 which is not on track for 500. The beans are looking good. The lettuces are there but don’t seem to be doing much. But then lettuce plants start much smaller from much smaller seeds than beans do. I think the tomato is recovering from being pot bound and will start growing soon. Well, maybe. As long as the night temps are above 50. Everything will go on hold again pretty much starting tonight and running through next Tuesday if the weather widget is right about the overnights dropping below 50 again (below 40 just before dawn Saturday – I’m worried about the beans for that). It won’t kill anything but it will stop the growth again. Late Spring/Early Summer – darker than “normal” but otherwise nothing new. I’ll be glad when the stuff in my boxes are big/established enough I don’t have to pull them in under the carport when we get heavy rain. (The hail – which a few miles north of me broke car windows – didn’t bother my irises or sage one bit.)

    I don’t “accept” what’s going on exactly but I don’t exactly not either. It’s evil. I’ve been saying these people are evil for years. I’ve been watching these people kill for fun and profit for years. I’ve watched them progress from “fringe” fanatics to mainstream to now in control of our government. And determined to keep it. Whether or not we’ve got one chance left to stop them or we blew that in ’16 I don’t know. I do know we have to try. I will never accept the “OK-ness” of this evil. I do accept that it is real. And that there’s not anything I can do about it by myself. So I do what I find to do, Help folks I can help. Pray a lot. Do my best to live my life in the reality of it, knowing the reality of it, knowing it’s evil.

    A spate of sunshine just snuck through the cloud cover. Always a blessing. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Some of our spring bulbs (on the north side of the house) didn’t bloom this year. They couldn’t overcome the warm to cold to freezing to warm to freezing, I think. The good thing about bulbs is that we will always have next year. I am thinking that “wait until next year” will become the mantra to get us through 2020.

  20. Good morning, 55 and partly sunny in Bellingham. Apparently small private gatherings are contributing to increased Covid infections in Whatcom County……

    That increase in cases — 29 for the week ending May 2 compared to 11 for the previous week — prompted the head of the Whatcom County Health Department to urge residents to stay the course and stay home.

    I was thinking it might be safe to share a Mom’s day meal with our Bellingham family but looks like a porch visit will be safer.

    I’m going to sew a few more masks today, and then I’ll put that project away and start a new one. It’s nice to have so many choices! Best wishes to all.

Comments are closed.