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 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 (right before “Leave A Reply”) and use the Pages Tool, shown here with 3 pages of comments available.
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COUNTING DOWN …
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Good “morning”, Motley Meese! The week begins …
Morning low of 37 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 45. Wet snow is in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Snow already? Gulp!
Ha! And we’re going to be in the 90s today. I had to be sure to get my weekend walk/run in yesterday because our overnight “low” was in the 70s. Blech.
We didn’t get the snow unless it was in the middle of the night. Nothing was on the grass when I got up, in any event. It was cold though!!
Good Sunday morning Meese. 32 here in Kingston NY – brrrrrr, going up to 60.
Birthday wishes
Birthday
Puerto Rico
Vieques
Sunday music
Good morning everyone. I slept in & that was lovely. Eating breakfast & watching the news. Today: church & cooking. Got to make risotto for next week, I have already cooked mushrooms & onions in the freezer to add so that’s just 20 minutes of stirring the rice & spices mix. And I’ll cook spinach & broccoli to put with pasta for dinner. And I’ve got to make my tea for the week.
Good Sunday morning, Moosekind! Today when I woke up it was 36 F. and there was fog everywhere with fog-beads spangling one of the screens on the screened porch. The fog has now disappeared, the sunlight is streaming from a perfect blue sky, and the current temperature is now 43 F., going up to 63 F. later.
Yesterday we arose early and hastened to the polling place, arriving just a few minutes after 8 a.m. We joined a line of people waiting for the polls to open at 9. I brought a folding chair for Dearly. Having no idea how many people would be ahead of us, I packed a crossword puzzle, the front page of the WaPo, a thermos full of hot spiced cider and a bunch of snacks. Luckily a poll worker came along after the polls opened and offered to help Dearly when he told her he was 90 and would prefer not to stand in line. She brought him his ballot after he showed her his ID. I just went and did the regular thing. I must say it was extremely well organized, so much so that we were out of there in 15 minutes.
I’m so glad we voted early! Now, even if someone “accidentally” cuts a cable on Election Day, thereby depriving the voting machines of electricity, our votes are IN and will be counted.
Yesterday was an absolutely sparkling October day, one might even say exquisite. Not a cloud in the sky, clear air, red-orange trees, and just a slight nip in the air, enough to let us know it’s now October. On a scale of 1 to 10, 17 October 2020 was an 11. Today will be the same.
Hope everyone had a good Saturday! The worst part of our day was no time for covfefe. It’s a diuretic, so I didn’t want to be stuck in a long line if Nature called. Naturally, I had a headache all day from no coffee.
Funny thing happened to my daughter in Texas, who is working the early voting polls. After she had verified the voter’s name and address, she said, “What was the wait?” The voter said, “One hundred and thirty.” My daughter was surprised. “You waited an hour and thirty minutes in line? Wow!” “No,” the voter said, “I weighed 130 on the scales this morning.” My daughter burst out laughing and the voter did too.
I’ve got bread dough rising in the loaf pan on top of the stove. It’ll be ready to bake in 6 to 8 hours. After we arrived home yesterday from voting and running errands, we were too exhausted to do much. I basically slept and read yesterday. The WaPo this morning has opposing articles about Thing. One of them says, “Oh, we shouldn’t prosecute him for his crimes after he leaves office, it’ll cause backlash against the Dems! We should tell the Trumpists that we recognize their concerns and go from there.”
Humph! We know what their “concerns” are: the fact that there was a Black man in the White House for eight years made their tiny, reptilian brains explode. Trumpists need no accommodation. They’ve had everything their own way since 1776. It’s time for the rest of us to get a look in.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!
This is hilarious! I wonder if the voter felt confronted with a new voting requirement, a poll test where you must give your (accurate!) weight?
I caught a bit of the Twitterings over the opinion piece saying we must not seek revenge against the political party that blew up the economy – for the second time in 10 years – and led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, first in Iraq and now in America. No. Republicans never learned after Watergate because we did not punish them, heck, their ideological forbears never learned after the Civil War because we did not punish them! We can’t let them off the hook this time because they will do it again. Until there is no reward for giving in to their reptilian impulses, there will always be a chance that it will come back. We owe it to future generations to crush the Republican Party’s enablers and burn their party to the ground. If they want to reconstitute as Eisenhower Republicans or Margaret Chase Smith Republicans, fine. But the Nixon, Goldwater, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, and Trump Republicans should be eradicated like the vermin that they are.
We will let President Joe Biden sing kumbaya for about 4 months, then when his initiatives are thwarted by Senate Republicans and red state governors, we will convince him that history will not punish the people who willingly turned the levers of government over to a crook and a con man – history is ignored by most Americans! – and that we need a dedicated prosecutor to investigate and bring indictments. Turn the Republican color from red to orange and #LockThemUp.
Very well said, Jan!
It’s 71 heading for 72 and sort of sunny at the moment. As in the sun is shining but clouds are moving in and it won’t be long before the sun is blocked. We’ve got rain in the forecast. Which we need. We shall see if we get it. We generated 8.9 KWHs yesterday. The m-t-d is 198 and hopefully, even with rain, we’ll be over 200 by end of day. And we’re still on track to get over 300. That’s definitely a we shall see what we shall see though.
I’ve got most of my Sunday chores done and so will head over to DK for #BlackMusicSunday. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 50 and raining in Bellingham. We cooking dinner for the family today and then we will all vote together. How can it be that Emma is now of voting age! We’re making roasted chicken lasagna and Caesar salad, with chocolate cupcakes for dessert. RonK made the sauce yesterday and will roast the chicken on the barbeque this morning so my part will be to fill the pan and bake it.
Our daughter trained with the Biden campaign to text likely voters and volunteers and yesterday her assignment was in Ohio. 300 texts were sent and the overwhelming response was, “already voted Blue” Yay! She is impressed with how well organized the texting operation is and a small bit of encouraging news is most welcome.
Best wishes to all.
I wish the phone/text banks would get their lists updated. I get texts addressed to the wrong names (“Hi, Cheryl”) and yesterday I finally picked up a landline phone call from WisDems who had been calling several times a day; I wanted to tell them I voted and that they could take my number off the list. The person they were trying to reach was not me! My phone number is unlisted and I never give it out to anyone who doesn’t need it so I am not sure how they got someone else’s name associated with my phone number. Creepy! I remember when phone banking for Hillary and Russ Feingold in 2016 that the lists were terrible. They should not be cumulative, the lists need to get pruned. I haz spoken!!
Great Mother, yes, Jan! I was phonebanking for Zack Space years and years ago, using the list that the Dems provided. One lady I talked to said she’d been called six times, including my phone call, and if she received any more she was not going to vote at all! Naturally, I apologized.
This is one of the reasons I HATE phonebanking. The lists are lousy and I feel I’m intruding on someone’s private time. A postcard or letter is much less intrusive, which is why I do them.
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is 30 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 41. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast.
I quickly scanned the news and put a few articles up in tabs but I can’t read until I get a few early morning projects done. I read an article about Joe Biden’s ads and that he has not re-upped the negative ads that he took down when tRump got sick. Biden’s campaign found that the positive ads were very well received – they are quite good – and decided to stay with them. Here in my battleground state we are seeing almost no tRump ads, lots of very positive Biden ads and only one or two PAC ads whhich are generally negative. One of the Biden-supporting PAC ads goes right at the Republican plan to kill protection for pre-existing conditions by putting a right-wing ideologue on the Supreme Court – “Call Your Senators”. I hope that one hits paydirt and worries Republican Senators who will have to face the voters in 2022 with 100 million Americans ticked off because they or someone they love had their healthcare taken away. Every single Mrs. Jesse Barrett vote will become part of a campaign ad that shows Americans who couldn’t afford treatment for their kid with cancer. I am sending that nightmare to them over the ether and hoping the universe amplifies it for me! I am working on a Samhain ritual where I invoke Ruth Bader Ginsburg – newly on the other side with the thinnest veil separating the two worlds – to intercede and visit those Senators dreams as well. The Senate vote will be October 30th, I believe, so it will have to be an early ritual. The goddess will understand why I have rushed the season a bit.
I am hoping that this will be a quiet week; I am expecting to finally yield time dividends from moving on from a client whose systems were becoming impossible for me to manage and had become a stressful time suck. It took a while because the time freed up was instantly filled with all the things that had been set aside while I was in the time suck! I am tying off the loose ends of those projects and getting ready to settle into a schedule that I control and which includes more naps. :)
See all y’all later!
Great Mother, yes, Jan! I was phonebanking for Zack Space years and years ago, using the list that the Dems provided. One lady I talked to said she’d been called six times, including my phone call, and if she received any more she was not going to vote at all! Naturally, I apologized.
This is one of the reasons I HATE phonebanking. The lists are lousy and I feel I’m intruding on someone’s private time. A postcard or letter is much less intrusive, which is why I do them.
Monday Meese. 48 here in Kingston NY going up to 64.
Was elated to see this historic endorsement for Joe Biden
Good morning, Dee, glad to have a little bit of good news from Puerto Rico.
In from my walk/run. Did ok this morning despite it being 75 degrees & humid — not quite like running in a steam room but close. Going to dash into the office to drop off all my completed applications. I got risotto made yesterday, and vegetables to put with pasta for dinner, and all my overnight oats for the week. Today, I need to make tea — which doesn’t need a lot of actual doing, just when I put the fancy tea in the tea bags.
It’s 48 heading for 62 and damp. Overcast and drizzling at the moment. Not enough water to damp the dust but definitely enough to make things uncomfortable. I hope we get actual rain out of these dark clouds. We need it. Not as much as Aji and points west, but we still need it. We only generated 4.6 KWHs yesterday. Not on track for the day – or even what I use in a day – but with the m-t-d at 202 we’re still on track for the month.
My actual birthday is tomorrow but I seem to have been celebrating since about last Wednesday or earlier. LOL. Even my best friend forgets it’s the 20th and not the 19th. (I think it’s because her sisters’ are on the 15th & 16th & she’s adding 4 days from the 15th instead of the 16th.) For my actual birthday dinner I’ll be treating myself to an upgraded version of frozen GF pizza that happened to be on sale last week when I was shopping. Of course it’s so big I’ll be eating it for 3 days – I guess I’m pretty much celebrating hitting 69 for the entire 2nd half of October. 😁😁😁
As to the nation, absolutely we need a “truth and reconciliation” process. And most definitely need to hold the Rs accountable for the laws they’ve broken. It’s more that past time to hold them accountable. Jan’s right. If we’d held them accountable after the Civil War, did to them what Germany did to the Nazis, we wouldn’t be here now. And yes, Nixon was the beginning of the resurgence and that was the place to stop it. But that’s also why Nixon resigned so that his hand-picked successor would pardon him of any and all crimes before any investigation of criminal charges could even take place.
Everybody needs Healing Energy – some more than others. There’s a wildfire 30 miles south of Aji’s place. Last I heard the wind was blowing it away from them but that whole area is a tinderbox. Coming up with wintering over money is hard enough (over $3K of it because they couldn’t grow what they need), they need $15K on top of it to put in an irrigation system so they can grow what they need even in drought – but an irrigation system isn’t going to stop wildfires. Only rain can do that. As to Amelia…I don’t know. The more “the system” has bailed on her and she has to do for herself, the less able she is to do it. Prayers or whatever. Everybody else seems to be hanging on and safe at least for the time being. Not happy or comfortable, but safe.
I need to do some stuff both online and off so I’d best get to it. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good gray Monday morning, Moosekind! After last week’s glorious weather it’s disappointing to wake up to weather that’s warm and gray. Currently in Ashburn it’s 57 F. and overcast, on its way up to 70 F. The whole week is going to show a warming trend, which is a bit boring. I like October to be October, if you know what I mean.
M’Daughter in Texas is so excited about the election! Have a gander at what she texted late last night:
It’s a quiet morning here. Miss Pink Cheeks is using Grandpa’s office (in the window part of our bedroom) to do her school work. On Mondays she has “extras,” paid for by her parents, in writing and coding. She brought a book to read as well.
I have to make an unpleasant phone call, which naturally I’m putting off as long as possible. Why do people do this to moi? Unithyth, the company I used to work for, sent me a very snippy letter on Saturday complaining that I have not updated my address. They threatened to cut off my pension. Guess how the letter arrived? Not by a Harry Potter owl. Not by a tiny little parachute that landed neatly at my feet. Not by an autumn wind that blew right into the mailroom of this building. It arrived by MAIL at my current address! Now, these are the people who never sent me a form 1099-R for tax year 2019. I went ahead and paid my income taxes because the amount they paid me last year was exactly the same as they paid me in 2018. But they never sent the actual form despite two phone calls and two letters.
This time, when I talk to them, I’m going to RECORD the conversation so I can use it as evidence (plus the two letters) when I contact The Honorable Jennifer Wexton and the IRS.
And that’s quite enough from me this morning. Hope everyone will have a good day!
I worked at the Lakeway voting station a couple of times back when I worked for Elections. They were always very nice. So proud that Texas is voting so heavily.
Good morning, Meesefolk; 39 when I finally turned on my phone and going up to a cloudy, probably rainy 46 today. The rest of the week looks warmer, but there is also an increasing likelihood of rain as the temps go up. Mother Nature obviously lost my order for sunny and 60s!
Just finished going through want ads and found nothing to apply for. The days of Sunday being the big want ad day went away with daily newspaper delivery, but I am a bit surprised at the complete dearth of new postings. I probably shouldn’t be, given what the pandemic has done to the economy, but this wasn’t even a matter of no jobs appealing to me; it was that there were less than 10 new postings altogether. And yet folks in my immediate area still support D[eny], the Anti-Science Guy, Trump. I will never, ever understand.
Good morning, 54 and cloudy in Bellingham. It was so nice to be together again for dinner last night. The lasange was tasty, the planned cupcakes became a German chocolate cake, we voted, and the dogs gathered under the table and on the sofa watching their people try to behave. Hope our family germ group stays healthy!
I’m going to stay off my legs this morning and hope my knees will allow me to do some sewing this afternoon. Best wishes to all.
Two weeks from now, we will be looking at the first 2020 general election returns from the two hamlets in NH and wondering what they mean.
Tuesday Meese. 54 going up to 69, clouds all day. here in Kingston NY.
Will brighten my day celebrating Kamala Harris’ birthday.
She is delightful in every way!
Puerto Rico
I don’t understand why, if Puerto Ricans are American citizens, they can’t vote in the presidential election. Seems like a contradiction in terms.
Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …
It is 30 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 46. Cloudy skies this morning, showers and rain this afternoon into the evening.
Wisconsin Gov. Evers’ order regarding gathering sizes in Wisconsin is back in place. Another Circuit Court judge overruled the first one who had declared it “tyranny” and pointed out that the plaintiffs, the Tavern League of Wisconsin, were not harmed by the order because they didn’t comply with it and didn’t plan to! He decided that you can’t be harmed by an order you are going to ignore. Good point! The thing with the order – and the masking order – is that it gives business owners who are not murderous aholes an out “sorry, I can’t open/can’t seat you/need you to leave because of the governor’s order.” Most businesses are in favor of the orders for this reason. In Dane County and the City of Milwaukee (and close-in suburbs), where local governments care about the people who live there, there are strong orders in place that are being enforced. Most of the rest of the state is represented by Republican legislators who have not met in over 4 months and are hoping that “herd immunity” takes care of things – because they are anti-science like their president. What is more likely to happen is that hospitals state-wide will overflow, more people will die, and Governor Evers will be blamed for not insisting that the terrible people in our state legislature stop being terrible.
In other Wisconsin news, Foxconn admitted that the factory that they built near Racine with taxpayer money – and land grabbed by homeowners in the area- is a bust. It will be turned into a warehouse which will probably employ about 13 people rather than the 13,000 promised by Scott Walker and his party. If we weren’t so hideously gerrymandered, we would vote them out to punish them but we won’t have any chance to fix that until the redistricting – which Republicans have already promised to use the courts to remedy because when Republicans govern as the minority party, they have to use the judges that they bought in order to stay in power.
I will ignore the rest of the news for now and go eyes-forward on some early morning projects that I need to address. I should have an easy day after the initial push, which is good because I slept terribly last night. I could not get to sleep so I sat up reading hoping that would tire me out. I eventually fell asleep but I woke up feeling unrested. I think this election needs to wrap up so we can all heave a sigh of relief and fix our sleep patterns. The Occupant seems more unhinged than he has been as he starts seeing himself having to pay the piper. I wonder if they will 25th Amendment him after he loses so that he doesn’t strip the federal government bare on his way out? He will need cash to live in Dubai, safe from prosecution.
See all y’all later!
Good morning. Yesterday, I stopped work early because of laryngitis. Just tested my voice & so far, I have one. I slept late — on non-walking mornings, there’s no reason not to. Today: work as long as my voice holds out. The weather is showing a crazy snowstorm in the midwest, we’re having a record warm morning of 74.
{{{anotherdemocrat}}} Healing Energy. moar {{{HUGS}}}