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 …
–
It’s 43 going to 49 and overcast. The PV system is on but that’s about all I can say for it. Yesterday the clouds didn’t move in until almost dark so we got 7.7 KWHs and the m-t-d is 144, meaning if we can get even 2 KWHs each these last 3 days we’ll reach 150 and not be in last place for production. (That “honor” would stay with 2015.)
I hope (but doubt) McConnell will consider it too much of a bad look to not bring the $2K CASH Act to the floor. It being twitler’s idea and all that. It mostly will depend on whether the “good trump” spin can be strong enough to help Rs win in GA. If he doesn’t think it will make a difference to whether or not he keeps his gavel, he won’t. We shall see. It certainly would be a bit over 3x as helpful as $600. (Added to her regular Disability benefits that would almost cover 2 months at the motel for Amelia.) And it certainly would help JoanMar – $2K is 20% of the fundraiser goal for her. So. 🙏🙏🙏
Both back and breathing are a bit better this morning. I still need to get the chimney folks out here. I “contacted” via their website but I’m not sure they monitor that as often as they should. They don’t have any office staff. Just the guys checking in when they’re dropping off paperwork between jobs. I’ll probably try calling them this afternoon if I don’t hear back this morning. Meanwhile we got cloudy days through the end of the year. They have taken back the prediction for snow on New Year’s Eve. We shall see. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good news is the chimney folks called me back. Bad news is they don’t have an opening before 1/25 – but they’ve put me on the “1st cancellation” list.
Thank Goddess for that, at least!
Good morning, 34 and mostly cloudy in Bellingham. I was overly optimistic re the state of my legs yesterday so that led to an afternoon of disappointment blues. I’m not making any predictions today!
Sometimes Twitter surprises me. This story by Ann Patchett was so nice to read last night…..These Precious Days
Best wishes to all on this quiet morning.
{{{princesspat}}} – thank you for that link. Yes, I’m crying. Healing Energy & moar {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …
It is 30 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 28. The forecast calls for isolated flurries. I can’t tell how much snow we had – the plows have not been through yet – but it does appear to have stopped snowing at least.
To the surprise of no one, Mitch McChinless has blocked the CASH Act. When I turned off the news yesterday, it sounded like he planned to amend it to include repealing the social media 230 rule and authorizing a complete investigation into the “stolen” election. No Democrat will swallow those poison pills and if the Senate were to pass it with just Republican votes, it won’t go anywhere – Nancy Pelosi’s House won’t even take it up. So the only remaining question is if this hurts the two Republican Senators from Georgia. The headline in my right-wing paper said “Senate Republicans Block $2,000 Check” so it is going to be difficult to spin this with “I would have voted for it but my Senate bosses wouldn’t let me” – that literally makes the case that the Senate needs new bosses! I was laughing at how Tim Kaine on MSNBC yesterday tiptoed around Bernie Sanders’ plan to block the NDAA vote – he said of course the NDAA will go to a vote and Sanders was just making a point. Hey, Tim, haven’t you been paying attention?!?? Bernie Sanders will do anything to puff himself up and he hates the Democratic Party – he will try to kill the entire vote and leave the mess at the feet of Senate Democrats.
I am sure there is other news but I have a few irons in the fire and need to get back to it.
See all y’all later!
Tim Kaine tiptoes around everything. About the only good thing one can say of Tim is that he’s a Democrat.
Good morning. Warm here — 67, but rain & cold front coming, it will fall into the 40s late afternoon. Right when I am (was?) planning on walking. I did walk yesterday, but cut it short because I was convinced it was about to rain — the clouds really looked like it & it smelled like rain. Anyway, working till 4, then we’ll see about a walk. Will watch Dr. Who between calls.
Good Wednesday morning, Moosekind. It’s 33 F. right now, on its way up to 46 F. It’s another lovely morning, our last for some time as it’s supposed to rain tomorrow.
Last night I took the shuttle to the main clubhouse to pick up dinner from the café. It was twilight, and the beautiful full moon was a pale gold color, like custard. Later in the evening I went out to the courtyard to see Her and She was silvery white, just hanging out in the night sky. Last night’s full moon was the 13th full moon of the year. I’ve always appreciated the fact that the number 13 is considered lucky in the Craft of the Wise. Of course patriarchy, which loathes and oppresses women, made out that it’s unlucky.
Nothing much to say except this will be another quiet day of pottering about. I may tidy up a bit and do some laundry. I really need to do something about Chapter 9. There’s an interesting website that will take old WordPerfect files and turn them into Word files that can be manipulated, so I’ll try that on a file that dates back to pre-2000. I have software that can read WP files from 2000 onwards, but not WP files from the 90s. Lawks, it just shows how old I’m getting.
Being a nontechnical person I’ve always maintained that geeks and techies update software simply in order to make life miserable for those of us who glom on to a particular version and are loath to let it go.
Yesterday I had a follow-up appointment for my hearing aids. Before we left, we made sure that Monty did some business in the courtyard. Then we turned on the TV to “Sesame Street” rather than the Death Channel (CNN), and gave him a lovely kong to lick. I filled the kong with plain yogurt interspersed with little bits of Pupperoni, then froze it. He loves slowly licking the kong until the contents are completely gone. We figured he’d sleep or watch TV after that.
Huh! After we arrived back, we discovered the little devil had dragged a sack containing cardboard food containers to his bed in my office and ripped them up. I told him he was a Very Bad Dog, after which he fled to his bed in our bedroom and sat in it, facing the wall. He knows when he’s been bad.
I’m going to file for a divorce from Monty the minute life returns to normal.
Wishing a good, trouble-free day to all at the Pond.
Our high of 51 was several hours ago, it’s 39 now (windchill 33), and it’s raining. The PV system is on which surprised me. Yesterday we only got 4.5 KWHs but it was enough to push the m-t-d just over (by .1 KWH) dark December 2016’s 149.1 – so December 2016 still has the “honor” of being the darkest month. Fitting, that. There’s no way to get out of next-to-last place but we will at least broaden the gap.
Nobody’s surprised McConnell didn’t bring the CASH Act to the floor and is trying to add poison pills to it so he can make it the Dems fault folks didn’t get their $2K stimulus money. And Rs, especially the twitler-follower version, will be happy to believe him. So of course will the LW. Especially the ones who boost about their ideas on social media while trying to erase the folks (Underwood, Davids, Harris) who’d actually put those ideas into bills and got them out of committee. I’m beginning to think that should we ever be able to isolate the Deplorables so they can’t hurt anyone, we should put the LW lot in with them.
Rough-ish night but made up for it by sleeping in. So now off to do my twitter stuff. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 45m wind and rain in Bellingham. It’s so dark and wet I’m not motivated to do anything! Fortunately The Transatlantic Sessions are on YouTube so I’m listening and day dreaming about being in an old house in Scotland watching the amazing musicians make their magic. I would love to own the series but it’s about a $1,000.00 investment so I hope the videos stay on YouTube.
I made some progress with my desk yesterday and am ready to empty and shred old papers today. Love getting rid of 2020 every way I can!
Hope you’ll are warm and dry today. As always, my very best wishes.
Thursday Meese. New Year’s Eve. 35 going up to 41 with rain here in Kingston NY.
At some point today/this evening will be posting a memorial tribute diary to musicians we lost in 2020.
Puerto Rico
Good morning, meeses! Thursday, the final day of Gregorian Calendar Year 2020 …
It is 21 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 23. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
I just spent about 2 hours doing some 2020 cleanup work that I probably shouldn’t have taken the time to do right now. But it caught my eye and so I started it and then didn’t know how to break cleanly without finishing it. I expect more of this sort of random project work to ensue because the flip from one calendar year to another has dozens of little projects, both electronic and physical (like moving 2020 folders to storage boxes), and they will begin nagging me. I have to triage them – today I have to get personal accounting done because it is cash-basis and I need to put together a project list for the long weekend; I promised several clients progress on their projects and I will not be working on Monday as I have to take a short road trip.
I am wondering how Mike Pence is going to handle the pressure on him to reject the Constitution and cater to the anti-democracy elements in his party. The counting of the certificates is not subject to a vote of approval, it is just a counting of the votes in the presence of members of Congress – you count, you say that the totals are x and y and who won and then gavel the session closed. I would not want to be a Republican Senator right now, realizing that they have to choose between voting for the rule of law and voting for their party’s leader and that they may be destroying their political career to vote against their leader. That choice was presented to them earlier this year and only one of the members, Mitt Romney, voted for the rule of law. I hope our useless media does not let them off the hook. I want them to forever be referred to by their role in this debacle, for example “Josh Hawley, who ignored the law in order to cancel the democratically cast votes of states that rejected his party’s candidate.”
In other news, certainly NO ONE could have predicted that an incompetent administration would botch the rollout of vaccinations needed to protect people from a deadly virus. I am curious to find out why the health care worker in blood-red Grafton Wisconsin, district represented by anti-masker Congressman Glenn Grothman, decided to purposefully spoil vials of vaccine containing 500 doses. Anti-vaxxer, covid truther, Republican asshole? I guess we will find out. They should be charged with felony endangerment.
See all y’all later!
Good morning from cold, thunderstorm-y Austin. 39 degrees and rain all day, it might snow just north & west of here. West Texas is getting “historic” amounts of snow. If the rain clears out this afternoon, I’ll go for a walk. Anyway, staying inside, watching movies. The Dr. Who marathon continues but they’re on a character I don’t like, up till 2:14 when one of the best episodes ever is on.
It’s 30 heading for 42 – both of which numbers are at least 10F warmer than the wind chill. At least. Overcast again but no rain at the moment. That’s pushed itself into evening. So maybe the clouds will clear off at least for a bit on this last calendar day of 2020. Yesterday we only got 1.4 KWHs but that pushed the m-t-d to 150.6 – Dec. 2016 still has the honor/stigma of being the darkest month of all. (At least with the 4K system)
Well, it looks like the twitler supporters in Congress are absolutely insistent that we get a roll-call, named, record of which Rs are traitors and which Rs at least understand that rule of law supports their own elections. Twitler’s people are just like the berners who try to hamstring anyone who doesn’t support bernie no matter how much damage that will do to party and our country. Practically identical cults save having different cult leaders. sigh. The rest of us are going to have to keep doing what we did this election – overwhelm the fascists so they can’t steal elections, get at least enough majority to set the rules – and bring bills up for vote. & the LW is forcing us to go to/dicker with Rs in purple states to get the votes for those bills. sigh.
Anyway, it’s another day. We are here. We will do the best we can as long as we can with whatever we can manage to scrounge up. And I got brownies from Avilyn so I can put off baking muffins for another day. 😁 Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good Thursday morning, Moosekind, and welcome to the last day of this godawful year.
We have cloudy skies in Ashburn today, with the promise of showers later. It’s 47 F. at the moment, 1 degree away from the forecasted high of 48 F. Tomorrow it will rain all day, according to the meteorologists.
Had such a terrible night that I went back to bed after breakfast. I’m determined to get something significant done today. Don’t much care what it is, as long as it’s significant.
We have no plans for the night other than staying in and watching telly (Dearly) and reading a novel (me).
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.
Good morning, 41 and raining in Bellingham. The Covid Confinment walls are closing in on RonK so he’s restless and I’m “on edge.” Oh well, we have no choice but to cope, so we will. My preferred New Years is a quiet evening at home regardless! We have steaks to grill tonight and a ticket to stream Pink Martini’s goodbye to 2020 concert.
It’s been a week since our outdoor Christmas and so far everyone is healthy…..3 more days and I’ll feel more relief. The thought of someone being here and getting sick has worried me even though we were as careful as possible.
Best wishes to all as we say goodbye to 2020.
Memorial
Good morning, meeses! Friday, January 1st, 2021 …
It is 18 degrees in Madison on this no-longer-2020 morning, expected daytime high of 32. This afternoon we are expecting :::checks forecast::: Ice Pellets! Lovely. We were expecting a winter storm with 5-8 inches of snow on top of the 6 inches we got on Tuesday so I guess an hour or two of ice pellets is an improvement. I don’t need to go anywhere.
I hate that our elections require all these anxiety points – election day, election certification day, Electoral College vote day, Congressional acceptance of Electoral College votes day and then Inauguration Day. The founding fathers wanted to make sure that the election was not stolen and what they have done instead is set up multiple points where the barn door is left wide open for chicanery by bad actors. January 6th has always been simply a chance to fluff up your “I will fight for you” party credentials – sorry, Barbara Boxer, you too – and that it has now turned into a destructive attempt to overturn an election is awful. Would a Paul Ryan House and Mitch McConnell Senate have succeeded? Is Mitch McConnell only against this because he knows it is doomed to failure? Chilling. I also think we need a new statute to transfer power to the new president as soon as the January 6th certification is completed. A quiet ceremony would be fine with me. Keep Inauguration Day as the big party but waiting 14 days for tRump to find more ways to ratfk the country is a huge mistake. People are dying because of the slow motion vaccination rollout by an incompetent federal government and we literally can’t wait. Bastids!
I have started my 2021 new calendar year by taking time to label a set of manila folders for 2021 papers and putting the 2020 folders into a bankers box labelled 2020. I will set up the new computer folders as I need them but the paper change is the long standing ritual.
See all y’all later!
Happy New Year! I spent last night watching Dr. Who, and will do more of that today. Going for a walk this afternoon when it warms up to 50. Got my dish with all the symbolic foods, hope 2021 is better, though I’ll settle for “less awful”.
Good morning Meese. 23 here in Kingston NY, going up to 38.
Will be posting my annual post Maria Puerto Rico diary at 9AM.
Thank you all for helping me spread the word about PR over the last year.
Puerto Rico
Posted
Well, here we go. Day One of 2021. Like anotherdemocrat I’ll settle for “less awful”. Especially since we’ve been dealing with a series of each one more awful than the last for some time now. But. Day One. There is hope. There is Light, even if the light is dim and skies overcast at the moment (as they are here). We can see the actual end of this tunnel from here.
We wrapped up 2020 with 3.5 KWHs for the day, 153 for the month, and 4.04 MWHs for the year. Not the best year by any means but not actually the worst either. In this as with everything we are starting a new calendar, grid, starting point. And hope.
A gray day and a quiet one. Nothing unusual. We’re still where we were at the end of 2020. We’ve some traveling – and work – to do in order to get away from this dismal, deadly, place. But we have Light and we have Hope and we’re getting the tools and in a few weeks we are getting the change in gov’t/leadership. We finally can get away from this place. And will. Meanwhile I’m heading over to DK for both of Dee’s diaries. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 52 and cloudy in Bellingham. I know nothing really changes with the new year…..sky looks the same, the endless PNW rain will keep coming down, and my quiet slow and sleepy morning is as usual. But it feels better to know 2020 is over, we all survived and the official Biden Presidency is coming closer.
Best wishes to all as we begin 2021.