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 THE TIME UNTIL DECENCY RETURNS …
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Good “morning”, Motley Meese! The week begins …
Morning low of 32 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 43. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Sunday Meese. 28 degrees here in Kingston NY going up to 53.
Puerto Rico
Some background
COVID
Good morning. We had a cold front blow in, it’s 45 degrees this morning, brrr. And another one coming — it might freeze later this week, I’ll have to squeeze my plants together Monday; don’t know if I’ll cover them because I don’t know if it’ll really freeze. Anyway, right now I’m watching the news & eating breakfast. Later: cooking for the week and I’m doing my walk/run in the evening.
Sunday music
Rec’d & shared.
Feeling grungy and running late this cloudy, chilly morning. It’s 42 going up to 49 and supposedly we’re gonna get rain. The relative dark let me sleep in which was nice. Vertigo came back as soon as I got upright though which is definitely slowing me down as far as my Sunday chores are concerned. Yesterday’s sunshine generated 6.9 KWHs which ooched the monthly total to 184.8 putting 2020 in 2nd place for November production. And still 2 production days to go.
Holding on until the Deplorable-in-Chief is out of office as of noon 1/20/2021 isn’t easy. But it’s a danged-sight easier than if we’d had to wait until 2025. If we lived that long. Help really is on the way this time. But the GA runoff is what tells us whether or not we have the equipment to do the job with. (Or any scenario that gives us control of the Senate. And I’d like more than one. Redundancy in this case is good.) Meanwhile ordinary people trying to live their ordinary lives during pandemic except at minimum 30% of the population wants to use the pandemic to kill BIPOC. Jobs and other income down, healthcare getting iffy as the system gets overwhelmed with COVID cases. Scary times. But there is hope. Help is on the way. It’s not “tie a knot in it and hang on” it’s “tie it around you so you can’t let go” – but help is on the way. Need to head over to DK for #BlackMusicSunday. Also see if I can get up the energy to sweep the floors now I’ve finished my oatmeal. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 34 and foggy in Bellingham. Our plans for an anniversary dinner by the fire on the patio may change…..the dining room is warmer! We were married on an snowy day 53 years ago and our life together has been busy. The quiet of covid confinement is a change for both of us.
Best wishes to all on this quiet November morning.
{{{princesspat & RonK}}} Happy Anniversary! 🎶🎶🎊🎉💕💕🎶🎶
Belated happy anniversary, princesspat and RonK! Didn’t realize that it’s been 53 years for you as well. Hope you both had a happy day.
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is 28 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 30. Sunny skies are in the forecast. The fullish moon has been visible here for the past two days and today she is officially full.
The Wisconsin recount has finished and Biden picked up net 87 votes from Milwaukee and Dane counties. Today, the Election Commission conducts their final canvass and tomorrow Wisconsin’s Biden electors are certified. There are already tRump and Wisconsin Republican Party lawsuits challenging the urban votes but the statute is pretty clear – the bi-partisan commission certifies. With the election of a liberal Supreme Court justice this year and the surprising rulings from the hater that the Republicans elected last year (turns out that he has a law degree from a reputable college and he refuses to just toss aside the statutes like the other Republicans do), it is unlikely to block the certification or overturn it. It doesn’t matter for electoral college voting if they miss the deadlines, Biden-Harris have plenty of other state’s votes, it only matters because Wisconsin would have no say in the election of our president and that would suck. In a just world, Wisconsinites would rise up and throw the bums out but we are so gerrymandered that we are stuck with our Republican legislative overlords forever.
Joe Biden is set to name Neera Tanden to OMB, an excellent choice. She has been running the liberal think tank CAP that has been developing policies for Democrats in Exile and is both smart and tough. That the berners and John Cornyn despise her tells you everything you need to know. I hope he doesn’t back down – this is the kind of fight we need to throw down the gauntlet to the left-of-the-left and remind them that we won’t let the bros run the party. The Democratic Party is a center-left party and we win elections by being pragmatic and focusing on the doable.
Busy day here: it is the last day of November and as always happens I am running up against hard accounting deadlines because of procrastination. It was a particularly hectic month and I was distracted by the election for big chunks of it. I am hoping for a quieter December, focusing primarily on staying healthy.
See all y’all later!
Glad to see the Neera pick. Have been reporting and blocking her attackers from the fauxgressive faction for some time now.
Monday Meese. 36 and cloudy here in Kingston NY, going up to 60 with rain.
“Trump is Gone” is my pick for song of the week
Courtesy of this recovery community in Roswell, GA
Remembering Shirley Chisholm
She was a great woman. I like how she called herself “unbought and unbossed.” Kamala, if you remember, took her campaign colors from Shirley Chisholm’s campaign colors.
Puerto Rico
Good morning everyone. It got cold, I had to turn on the heater and even got out my grandmother’s quilt. Going to have to take the plants I have on shelves down this afternoon & bunch them all together, even if it doesn’t freeze tonight, they shouldn’t be surrounded by cold air. And the weather guy just said 28 tonight, so I’ll have to actually cover them, wow. Today: back to work.
It was 25 (feels like 16) at daybreak and we’re heading for 45. Sunny though. A nice if chilly day to wind up November. Yesterday we got 2 KWHs putting us at 187 – if the sun holds out, we should reach 195 or a tad more for the month. Which while not 1st place, is a lot close to first place than I thought it was going to be a couple of days ago.
I don’t trust any rumors of Joe’s picks. When he/his team announces them, then I’ll believe it. But he’s doing some danged-good picking so far. The team is going to be ready to hit the ground running on 1/21/21 – how fast and how far is gonna depend on whether or not we can get the Senate. But if he has to do everything by E.O., well, obviously it won’t be the first time this has happened. Joe was 6 years v.p. under those circumstances. Holding the Good Thought for my fam/friends/circle online and off – that we can all hold out until that promised help starts coming.
I’ve got molasses spice muffins I need to pull out of the oven and more coffee to get. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
The “Rahm Emmanuel to Transportation” pick had been floated by dubious sources, Axios and their ilk. I suspect that they are being prompted by Rahm himself to make him seem possible, to move his Overton Window from “fk no!” to “I guess he wouldn’t be too bad.” Someone last night said that he does not want any Republicans in Biden’s cabinet but if the choice is between Rahm and a Republican, they would be happy with the Republican – I concur!
I read one suggestion – how serious I don’t know – that the rumor started with AOC so when it didn’t happen she could pretend like pressure from the Squad made Joe change his mind. Giving the LW the appearance of power and influence they don’t have. It wouldn’t surprise me – their tactics regarding Nancy Pelosi are similar. (Scream about stuff she’s actually already done then take credit for forcing her to do it.)
Good Monday morning, Moosekind, and happy St. Andrew’s Day. This particular day has stuck in my mind ever since I read Don’t Tell Alfred a long, long time ago. It’s raining prodigiously, as Jane Austen’s characters would have said, and the temperature in Ashburn is currently 56 F. It’s supposed to go up to 63 F. Thunderstorms are in the forecast, after which there will be an abrupt change in the weather.
Nora and Karl begged for a sleepover with us, so we said yes. The situation in the outside world is so dire I fully expect to be in quarantine before Christmas. I’m very glad, therefore, to have seen Elder Son and family on Friday and Younger Son yesterday. I’m even thinking of buying the main ingredient for Christmas dinner this week so I can freeze it.
Nora Pink Cheeks is sitting at her school laptop in our bedroom. Little Karl is in the living room. I just helped him with a composition after he whined for 15 minutes that he didn’t know what to write about. Well, in the autumn, he discovered a very large stick insect on our screened porch (on the outside, mercifully) that turned out to be a praying mantis. He went home and looked it up in the Merriam-Webster Children’s Dictionary I gave him for his birthday. It’s a marvelous book, full of color pictures.
Anyway, we wrote four sentences about that, and that was sufficient. Now he’s complaining that he doesn’t know how to do math, so Grandpa is helping him with that. Goodness, children!
Younger Son has been using his furlough (10 months so far) to acquire educational credits so he can transfer to a four-year university to get a teaching degree. He has an A.A.S. in Culinary Science but not many employers are interested in that.
I am still wrestling with Chapter 9 of Iron and Scarlet. The biggest problem is that everything has been too easy for this guy, so I’ve decided he has to make an agonizing choice—he must give up either his lover or his religion. There’s also a huge, horrible, hideous wild black boar that has to be dealt with, as well as an introduction to the Little Dark People. Hey, never say there wasn’t anything going on at Hadrian’s Wall in A.D. 140!
Never had a chance to check in yesterday, alas. Preparing meals for two people and a dog is quite tiime-consuming, and when two more are added (all with different food choices)—well, there we are.
Wishing all at the Pond a nice, quiet day.
Good morning, 47 and raining in Bellingham. We enjoyed a quiet anniversary day together and now it’s Monday, ready or not. Marcus, our tree trimming guy will be here soon to remove some branches from the maple trees, trim the laurel hedge, and help me prune the Camelia I’ve let grow as a tree. I need to work with him for awhile so I’d best find my gardening cloths and rain coat.
Best wishes to all.
Tuesday Meese. #WorldAidsDay
51 and cloudy here in Kingston NY.
Puerto Rico
Dept. of Health reports 16 deaths and 1,233 additional cases of Covid-19. Hospitalizations increased to 638
RIP
Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …
It is 18 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 27. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
Just a quick hi and bye. I declared today November 31st but making tomorrow November 32nd is going to be a stretch. I have missed my accounting report deadline which is not a hard deadline like the end of a quarter but is an embarrassing deadline in that I hate when something that should have been delivered by the middle of the month goes over the end of the month. The problem today was from new projects inserted into my schedule from Monday that needed to be addressed. So I need to see if I can muster the energy to get the dreaded reports finished. The other alternative – which I am leaning to – is to accept that I have already missed the deadline and decide that one more day doesn’t matter.
Wisconsin appears to have certified their election but I admit to being confused by the process. The recount itself can be appealed – they have 5 days to do so – but if the recount is “overturned” it apparently does not impact our certification? Perhaps a Wisconsin recount only guarantees that we will recount, and you can appeal that it was not done properly. I guess we will find out.
See all y’all later!
Good morning from freezing Austin. Ran into the office & came back with more applications. Glad I covered my plants. Today: work till 4, then do my walk/run.
Good Tuesday morning, Meese! A very light drizzle (which no one mentioned during yesterday’s forecast) was falling when I took Monty out to the courtyard at 6:30 today. He hates rain so he only did half his business, and then scuttled toward the door to the inside.
We now have a lovely, rather breezy blue-and-white day. Right now in Ashburn it’s 44 F., going up to a toasty 46 F.
I promised Dearly a soft-boiled egg and soldiers for breakfast this morning. I received an A- for the soft-boiled egg. With these large eggs you just never know. Next time I’ll soft-boil the egg for 4 minutes 45 seconds. Still, he enjoyed his breakfast. I also had an egg, although not soft-boiled.
Cooked breakfasts are so time-consuming! Yesterday I should have changed the sheets but Nora was in our bedroom, the office part, doing her classwork. I was afraid she had her camera on, so I left the weekly change until today.
Last night I was too tired to work on Chapter 9 so I’ll do it this afternoon. I did find a picture of serious-looking young man, so I bought it and will use it to illustrate this chapter.
In a little while I’m going to do a couple of errands and then come home to work. Wishing a good Tuesday to everyone at the Pond and please, Goddess, don’t let HIM wreak too much destruction today!