Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: December 13th

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 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.

COUNTING DOWN THE TIME UNTIL DECENCY RETURNS …

13 Comments

  1. Running behind today. Usually my email is stuff I can just glance at and delete (or delete without evening glancing at) but this morning there was a bunch of stuff I not only had to read, I had to answer. We started out right at freezing but we’re in the 40s now and heading for low 50s. The snow did finally melt off my solar panels yesterday. Not as early as I hoped but still early enough we got a hair under 5 KWHs and the m-t-d is 69. It’s sunny at the moment but clouds are supposed to move in later. We shall see what we shall see.

    I wish Joe hadn’t decided that since he couldn’t raid the Senate for his cabinet it would be OK to raid the House. He should know better. (& Haaland is not an unalloyed good thing anyway. Yes, 1st Native and it’s a very good idea to have a Native in charge of Interior. I’ve thought so for decades. But she’s also done some serious harm to Black Natives. & the Cherokee, among others, still aren’t happy with her buddying up to EW.) Nancy Pelosi is good and she can, with enough votes, give Joe damn-near anything he needs by putting it in the non-filibusterable budget. Joe’s hamstringing himself by hamstringing her.

    Closer to home, one friend is losing a cat and another a dog. Both animals are elderly and apparently both have pancreatic cancer. Which is quite painful. It hurts to eat. So the animal is hungry and wants to eat, but puts it off as long as possible and eats as little as possible because it’s so painful. Evil disease. But so very hard to let go of someone who’s seen you through well over 10 years of hard times.

    Folks having health things. (🕯🕯🕯) Folks having money things. Lots of folks having both, with the latter caused by the former. We can see the end of the tunnel. We’re trying to get everybody there. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  2. Good morning, 45 and raining in Bellingham. RonK slept in the recliner so his head was elevated last night, but he looks like he’s been clobbered this morning. Fortunately there’s not much pain and the bandage has controlled the bleeding. He gets the pathology report on Monday, and stitches come out next Thursday. So glad we added the doors to our basement rooms…..his recliner is in the study and thanks to the doors he was warm and comfortable.

    I’ve got a full Christmas day ahead with sewing and gift wrapping but I am nearly done, yay! I know our family outdoor lunch will be fun but to be honest I’m ready for 2020 and all that’s come with it to be over.

    Best wishes to all.

  3. Saturday Meese. It is 6 degrees here in Kingston NY. Let me repeat that, – yikes! Going up to 29.

    Trying to find things to smile about – I like this tweet for Warnock Ossoff

    I am really pissed about the attacks from the faux left against Nancy Pelosi at a time when we need to focus on getting control of the Senate and remaining unified in the house.
    This sister uses some strong language which reflects how I’m feeling right now

  4. Puerto Rico

  5. Good morning, meeses! Saturday …

    It is 34 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 37. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast. There was a chance of some precipitation early this morning and it looks like it missed us. With temperatures over 32, the roads should be driveable in any event.

    One more vaccine source available now! The Moderna vaccine is very similar to the Pfizer in efficacy and is going to be easier to transport and store so it will be available to more places. I have not seen yet how many doses are ready and how many they can roll out quickly but given that the Pfizer vaccine is sitting in warehouses with no federal directions on where to send them, I hope it is a lot. I can’t help but think that the Pfizer vaccine is being slow walked as punishment for them not agreeing to being part of the development phase of Operation Warp Speed – they signed on to the distribution phase but took no federal money. It would not surprise me to find out that the petty person in the Oval Office and his miscreant son-in-law are exacting revenge. Anyway, more people getting vaccinated mean that more people can go about their lives. Republican dead-enders not getting vaccinated, unlike Republican dead-enders not wearing masks, only hurt themselves and their family. Once health care and essential workers are vaccinated, MAGA COVID droplets will fall harmlessly on everyone but their own. Good riddance!

    I guess I don’t understand the upset over Deb Haaland’s pick for Interior. Yes, she is a Warren supporter but so are a lot of Democrats – my daughter voted for Warren in the primary even though she had dropped out by the time we voted. If the criteria for cabinet members is perfection, it will be empty. Besides, you will never satisfy everyone in a coalition as large as ours. We should be happy that a Native American will be managing the land of her people instead of a fossil fuel lobbyist. Low bar, I know. I am not going to nitpick Biden’s cabinet unless he chooses a Republican – they are all f*ckers in my mind.

    Today I plan to Get Some Things Done so I better get to it.

    See all y’all later!

    • I guess I don’t understand the upset over Deb Haaland’s pick for Interior. Yes, she is a Warren supporter but so are a lot of Democrats – my daughter voted for Warren in the primary even though she had dropped out by the time we voted. If the criteria for cabinet members is perfection, it will be empty.

      Completely agree, Jan. I sent her a donation when she was campaigning for her seat earlier this year. Received a nice postcard of thanks. I think she’ll do well.

    • The issue with Haaland that I know about is not so much that she supported Warren as a person but she supported Warren in a way that basically blows off other Indigenous Nations’ problems with her – dividing Nations who are just starting to work together. And even more so, there are some racist issues within the many Indigenous Nations dealing with people who are Indigenous and Black – & Haaland is firmly on the wrong side of those issues. (Including sponsoring legislation that pretty much says if you’re Black you can’t be Indigenous.)

      So in trying to ally with both the Black community and the Indigenous Nations, I have a problem with Haaland. (Who I’d donated to monthly for years until I found out about the 2nd issue.) And just in general I have a problem with Joe pulling anybody from Nancy’s very slim majority and making it slimmer. Haaland isn’t the only Indigenous person in Dem politics. There are many who’ve both in politics (but not in office) and in the environmental movements who’d have been very good, possibly better, picks for the job even if not as well known.

  6. Good Saturday morning, Meese. It’s 23 F. in Ashburn, on its way up to 38 F. The skies will be cloudy all day.

    Scurrying to have breakfast this morning, get dressed, and get ready to take Monty to day care. We are loading up the car with sacks of presents for the grandchildren and will deliver them from the driveway this morning. Hope to snap photos of the famillies. I’ll also go to the post office an the grocery store.

    The almond croissants are baking in the oven and smell wonderful. Between present-wrapping and newsletter-tweaking, I’m exhausted. It’ll be nice to have it over!

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.

    • 32 days until the inauguration – at noon on Monday, Winter Solstice, it will be 30 days. The countdown will be accompanied for the final 30 days by an increase in light – quite fitting!

  7. It’s actually raining! Yippee! I moved a couple of plants out to get rained on. 55 degrees and a high of 65. Watching the news, eating my almond butter sandwich. I got almost all the ingredients for Crisp Gnocchi With Brussels Sprouts — one of the recipes from the NYT Cooking thing that I copied down during my free trial. I forgot to get a lemon, don’t think it’s worth it to go to the store for that, I have lime juice in the fridge. Yes, it isn’t quite the same but should be close enough.

  8. Cloudy & 49 – and gonna stay that way until the temps start dropping after dark. But yesterday was the sunniest day we’ve had all month. We generate 8.3 KWHs and the m-t-d is 77.3 – over the 76 the 2.5K system did in ’14. There’s no way to get to 200 and even 150 is iffy. But anything’s good.

    Rotten night then made up for it by not waking up until 9 – the cats were not happy with me. Finished breakfast and need more coffee. And get started on stuff. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  9. Good morning, 46 and cloudy in Bellingham. RonK has an impressive bruise under his eye and down his cheek and I’m barely hobbling thanks to my arthritic joints…..we’re not jolly elves this Christmas season! Oh well, it’s a fitting end to 2020.

    I’ll finish the table cloths, wrap as many remaining gifts as my I can, do some more desk work, and that will be the day. Best wishes to all.

  10. Update: I bought groceries – needed bread, and Wheatsville has this amazing bread, just for December – chocolate cherry. So now I have the lemon to make the recipe properly. And my cast iron skillet has been flaking; the company website says to wash and re-season. So now it’s in the oven and I’m watching Harry Potter

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