Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: July 17th

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 to view previous pages, shown here with 3 pages of comments available and Page 2 circled.

41 Comments

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

    Morning low of 82 degrees in the Desert Southwest with an expected daytime high of 102. Sunny skies with some clouds – slight chance of rain in the evening.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Sunday Meese. 65 going up to 88 here in Kingston NY and muggy.

    Major Secret Service shade continues

  3. Puerto Rico
    Puerto Rico

  4. Good morning. I’m watching Le Tour and the news…. ok, really just Le Tour. They are in the south of France, where it’s supposed to be warmer, but not in the upper 90s. The riders are stuffing ice down their backs, splashing water at every chance; this is just crazy. I read something yesterday about how they’re taking measures to keep the roads from melting. There was a really terrible crash a few years ago because of a melting road, I think it may have ended his career; it was certainly awful to watch. I’ve got tea steeping and later I’ll make “overnight” oats for the week.

    • Man, I love drums with a purple passion. At Witch Camp, when the drums began to beat, my feet would start wanting to dance. I’d throw some glitter over my hair, face, and clothes and rush up to the dance floor where Witches were already stamping and whirling, with their colorful ritual clothes catching the breeze.

      Of course, glitter doesn’t disappear overnight unless you take a shower, so some of us were still sparkling at breakfast.

  5. Good Sunday morning, Moose Peeps! After cooking breakfast and then finally sitting down to my own, I have just refused to take Monty out. For once I’m going to drink ALL my coffee before it goes cool. It does not taste the same if I leave it, take him out, and then warm it up in the microwave.

    It’s 74 F. and overcast in Ashbuggy this morning. I can hear cicadas still—I supposed they finished singing Handel’s “Oratorio” and are now doing the “Hallelujah” chorus. Yesterday evening I took Monty out after dinner and was nearly bitten to death by little flying things.

    Not much to say this morning except that I can’t understand why I’m still reading the WaPo. There’s NEVER any good news for Democrats, who have “irreparably damaged their chances in November” (huh? After the overturn of Roe?), and all their accomplishments must be denigrated. Some RWNJ was rejoicing this morning because Goobernator Dumbkin, he of six months’ experience in governance, has signed a bill for “lab schools.” This means “charter schools” under another name. The writer, a member of the Independent Women’s Forum (read: Trumpist) is so happy that now parents will decide which school their children will attend. Charter schools pick and choose their students before they open their doors, which means their students are all White, make straight A’s, and are not physically challenged. I am NOT a fan of charter schools.

    Our high today will be 89 F. It may or may not rain. It’s going to be like this all week. Ugh.

    My new ThinkPad is on its way and is now expected to arrive on Tuesday rather than Wednesday. NOW I have to figure out which person is going to have the privilege of setting it up for me. I don’t respect the abilities of the tech guy here, the Geek I hired from Geek Squad TOTALLY MESSED UP all my files, with the result it takes me 20 minutes to retrieve one, so I want someone new. Someone who knows what she or he is doing. I bet my 13-year-old granddaughter could do a better job than that guy from Geek Squad.

    Well, enough whining. Wishing everyone at the Pond a good day. I was going to donate all my entire Anne of Green Gables set to that wonderful woman in downstate Virginia whose mission in life is to provide every child with a book, but decided against it. I’d miss those books too much. I adore L. M. Montgomery’s writing.

    • {{{Diana}}} How the Rs changed charter schools from their original intent. Hillary was instrumental in getting some of the original ones going. I guess you could call them “magnet” schools – basically the original charter schools specialized in chosen areas – like the Arts or multiculturalism or robots – and the plan was to make schools more integrated by allowing anyone interested in those areas to attend the school no matter what district they lived in. sigh. But then, the Rs turn everything into white supremacist bull pucky.

      Good luck with your computer tech. Healing Energy and more {{{HUGS}}}

    • Try to find a tech who understands how you want to work not someone who will set it up for how they work. I have found that some youngins don’t understand folders and just trust their software to find the documents that they save and need later. NO THANK YOU! In any event, you should order and set up your Microsoft365 account first so that you have your cloud repository in place before you set up your computer. It will be a lot easier if your new computer simply has to sign into your M365 account, download your Office apps and build your cloud links. I can’t give you any good advice on where to go to get help – I think Geek Squad is generally a good choice but I suspect that there are differing skill levels.

      • Thanks, Jan, appreciate this advice! So you think I should order the yearly rent Microsoft, not outright buy the whole package?

        As for the geek, I’m still looking. It was a guy from Geek Squad who messed up my files to start with, although they were on the Mac, not a real computer. I will act on your excellent advice and order Microsoft 365.

        • The Microsoft desktop Apps (Word, Excel, etc) come with the Microsoft 365 yearly subscription. You can buy them outright but it is difficult to find the proper SKU and then you have to make sure you keep them up-to-date so that things keep working – at some point Microsoft will make you get a new version and then you will pay for it all over again.

          The version you want is Microsoft 365 Personal since it will only be you using it (link); it does lets you install the product on up to 5 devices (including iPads, iPhones and Macs) and gives you 1 terabyte of storage (that’s a lot). I put my business documents and 30 years of archive into the cloud and have not used even half that. You get desktop apps for Windows and Mac and also cloud apps so you can edit documents via your browser.

          • Thank you!

            I was rummaging in a drawer the other day and came across an unopened Seagate Backup Plus Slim hard drive, 1 TB. The 2 years of Cloud Storage will be obsolete by now because the disk was bought in 2017. I’m not sure who bought it or why, but the package is still sealed. Should I use it with the new ThinkPad?

  6. It’s 85 heading for 98 and overcast. sigh. The A/C kicked on at 7:30 while I was vacuuming. Cloudy is especially not good on a day when the A/C kicks on at 7:30 am – doubly especially since yesterday was cloudy enough we only got 15.3 KWHs. But the m-t-d at 287 is still on track for 300 today IF we can get another 15 KWHs today and for over 500 for the month.

    I’ve got all my Sunday chores done. I’ll need to cook several days/weeks’ worth of meat for protein this evening after my son brings me groceries. But otherwise nothing special in the way of house stuff until next Sunday when I do the cleaning chores again. heh.

    Same ol’ same ol’ with everybody I know. Holding the Good Thoughts. Off to twitter and Dee’s diary. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  7. Good day, 63 and mostly cloudy outside my window today. My family phone and chat lines have been busy this lately, especially today. Our son and his family have covid and even though they are vacc’ed and boosted they are quite sick so that’s worrying me. And our really sick son is slowly recovering from the lung infection but still has alarming (to me) shortness of breath. He has another C scan scheduled and follow up appointments with the infectious disease and lung docs have finally been approved by the insurance company so he may finally get some needed medical attention again. The delays in medical care due to bureaucratic roadblocks have not been good for him. I long for him to be well again :::sigh:::

    I’m doing ok, just weary so I’m slow with everything. But next I’m going to bake a raspberry torte for dessert tonight and we’ll watch the new Downton Abbey movie and try to have some fun with our ailing/recovering son. Best wishes to all.

    • {{{princesspat}}} Healing Energy to you and your family. moar {{{HUGS}}}

    • {{{Princesspat}}} That’s very worrisome about your family! Hope they will all recover soon.

      The vaxxed, boosted people here are getting it. I’m going to start wearing a mask when I step out of this apartment.

      Today is Monty’s birthday. Raspberry Poodle and her mom, who live across the hall, gave him a cute gift bag with pawprints all over the outside, containing two little packages of treats and a birthday cookie. What a happy and fortunate animal, considering he got on MY LAST NERVE yesterday, barking because he wanted a piece of our steak. Anyway, he’s 11 years old in hooman years. I’ll have to Google that in dog years.

      I have to mention the text exchange with Miss Pink Cheeks the other day.

      Saturday I received a TikTok video starring Drew Afualo from Miss Pink Cheeks, who texted, “She reminds me of you.” After listening, I said, “Why does she remind you of me?” She replied, “Because you both hate men.”

      Patiently, I explained that I hate patriarchy, not men. Told her I loved all the men and potential men in our family, as well as certain men friends on blogs and Twitter, and so on. I also advised her to look up the definitions of “patriarchy” and “misogyny,” and told her she has fewer rights than her mother had. Those aren’t important to a 13-year-old, but they will be in 5 years.

      Sigh. The fact that I want my rights doesn’t mean I hate men. Indeed, it would be rather odd if I did, considering I’ve been married to the same man I started out with for nearly 55 years, am the mother of two fine men, the grandmother of three grandsons related by blood, and two grandsons related by ties of love and kinship. It’s too bad people don’t understand this.

      Oh, the weather! We are supposed to have der Stormy Vetter today. (Cue Gordon Lightfoot singing, “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.”) Right now it’s warm, muggy, and buggy, with thunderstorms predicted. It’s 74 F. now, going up to 90 F. It rained yesterday just before dinner and again late at night, as we were going to bed. (Note to self: Too bad you sold your crystal ball to someone in Pennsylvania. If you’d known it was going to rain this much you coulda planted those tomatoes in the community garden and not had to water at all.)

      Have had COFFEE, so feeling almost human. I think a hot shower would make me feel completely human and then I might be able to make some phone calls and do some work. Have already begun the White Wash.

      Today I will use a trick that has worked before: I will work on something unpleasant for one hour and then stop abruptly when the hour is over.

      Have rattled on long enough. Wishing a good Monday to all at the Pond, and the unleashed Furies on all the Fossil Fools who are responsible for the ghastly heat in the Southwest and in Europe.

  8. Monday Meese. 69 going up to 79 here in Kingston with rain and possible thunderstorms later in the day.
    As more and more people decide to run around without masks – I’m really angry. My world is now “Stay home, have everything delivered, and only go out to doctor’s appointments”

    • The sad thing is that no one will ever be able to enforce another mask or vaccination mandate – the #RepublicanDeathCult courts have decided that “caring for the common good” is no longer a valid government action. I never stopped masking but I am often one of only a handful of people still masking. I really REALLY wish that employees in grocery and retail stores would mask. It is the only place I really need to go.

  9. Puerto Rico

  10. Good morning. It’s actually below 80! Barely, but I’ll take it. I hurt my wrist yesterday, it’s still a little swollen and painful. I brought a cold pack to wrap around it. Hope that helps. And when they turn the a/c warmer this afternoon, that will help.

    • {{{anotherdemocrat}}} Healing Energy – for your wrist and anything else that needs it – & moar {{{HUGS}}}

      (Be nice if the folks who set the thermostats weren’t “we’ve always done it this way” folks who don’t realize that temp was for male managers wearing 3-piece suits. The secretaries, even in their suits, were always cold.)

  11. Good morning, meeses! Monday …

    It is 77 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 95. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast with a chance of late afternoon showers. I don’t think I believe that we won’t get above 100 but it would be nice – it was a very hot weekend. We will heat up later in the week and cool down for the weekend. A peek ahead to August seems to suggest that we will get our first glimpse, since May, of a daytime high in the 80s. That would be nice!

    Headline in my news aggregator: “Just 3 Weeks Post-Roe, The Stories Emerging Are Worse Than Anyone Imagined.” Even traditional media has front page stories about the horrors pregnant women are confronting when they miscarry and how medical students in Forced Birth states can no longer get the training they need to care for pregnant women. The “let male state legislators with a 5th grade science education but good bible readin’ skills decide which medical treatments are necessary” plan is not working so well. Who – except every sentient human – could have predicted that? I am starting to wonder if Forced Birth (and the killing off of women who miscarry and are therefore not a Good Womb) is male retaliation for their loss of status since the women’s movement demanded (and in some cases, got) equal rights. It sure feels like an all-out assault on women, not just abortions.

    Busy week as I try to get ahead of the end of the month crush. I was fairly productive this weekend and also had time to test a change that I need to make to the Moose web site so I should be able to roll it out later today. I think it will help our intermittent login failures.

    See all y’all later!

  12. It’s “only” 73 but humid enough I closed up the house already. (Opened it at 4:30 when a sinusitis flare woke me.) At least it was open a bit to air out. Yesterday was cloudy most of the day – not dark, but cloudy. We only generated 11.7 KWHs and no, we didn’t quite reach 300 for the m-t-d. But at 298.3 hopefully we’ll get there by noon today. IF the sun stays out.

    Overturning Roe is not now and never has been biblical, even if the ChristoFascists insist it is. The bible not only allows abortion, it mandates it in some cases. It’s genocide and eugenics by another name. The people behind this may sound ignorant but they’re not. They know very well the stats on maternal mortality is 3x for Black women what it is for white women – and up to 5x for Indigenous women and other WOC who live in rural areas. They consider loss of a “few” white women to be worth killing off “breeding” women who are not white. An attitude all too many white women are complicit with. They’re not ignorant. They’re evil. And until Dems recognize this and deal with it from that perspective – even if it’s not a good idea to say so publicly – we will never get universal healthcare at all, and especially not decent reproductive care.

    Last weekend my son came with a tube of construction cement and glued the broken siding pieces in place. Using the entire tube he glued them to the rank below rather than trying to get the crumbling strip of wood they’d been nailed on to hold anything. So far, so good. We got a very short but heavy spate of rain last night and they’re still where they’re supposed to be.

    I hope everybody’s hanging on. I haven’t seen anything to indicate otherwise. Off to twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  13. Good day, 61, cloudy and a cool breeze is blowing through my window today. I was awake in the night again, then went back to sleep, then woke up “late” so I’m slower than usual today. I know it doesn’t really matter but it still feels not quite right when my inner clock is out of sync with “normal” daytime activity.

    We enjoyed our Downton Abbey evening last night. We cooked a roast with mashed potatos and carrots vichy, set the table with the blue and white Spode, the raspberry dessert was very tasty, and the movie was fun. Nice to have a relaxing evening together. Better yet, #1 son did not have a shortness of breath issue, #2 son is still testing neg for covid, and Emma and Keri are improving. So grateful the vaccine has made Covid less scary. Interesting to note that our son can now taste and smell again, but Keri’s sense of both is gone.
    I’m going to try to finish planting some plants today and to make more progress with the ongoing laundry, so it’s just another Monday. Best wishes to all.

    • {{{princesspat}}} So glad everybody is better – good will be wonderful, but better is good. Healing Energy & moar {{{HUGS}}}

  14. I got the site code updated mid-afternoon and it appears to be working fine. I have one more thing I want to do but I didn’t want to change everything at once; I will probably do it on Saturday.

  15. Tuesday Meese. 68 going up to 93 here in Kingston. Decided to dedicate my commentary in today’s Black Kos to MVP Harris. Tired of her work being ignored. Yesterday was the NAACP Convention in Atlantic City where she gave the keynote address to an enthusiastic audience

    Also saw this PEW research on her global standing

  16. Puerto Rico

  17. Good Tuesday morning, Meese! It was ugly and overcast when we woke up at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m., but now the sun is beginning to appear and the sky is blue with white veils of cloud covering a lot of it. Weather is so fascinating. We did get a hard rain at 4 p.m. yesterday, which lasted until 5, but after that it cleared up.

    Right now it’s still muggy and buggy in Ashburn, with a current temp. of 72 F. marching straight toward 91 F.

    I managed to get a lot done yesterday morning—if not 100 percent, at least 90 percent. That’s a better track record than usual. I have suddenly realized that if I do find a computer person to set my new ThinkPad up, he or she will need someone to sit. That means I have to clear the sofa of months of paperwork.

    I’m dining out tonight (around the corner) with one of the Peace Corps volunteers I interviewed. She’s fascinating. Even today she can’t tell me everything she did, because she worked for the Agency.

    What else…managed to set up the CAT scan and get my prescriptions refilled. Wishing a good, productive day to all at the Pond. It’s going to be sunny and 100 F. in London today! Dear Goddess preserve us.

    • RE your earlier question:

      I was rummaging in a drawer the other day and came across an unopened Seagate Backup Plus Slim hard drive, 1 TB. The 2 years of Cloud Storage will be obsolete by now because the disk was bought in 2017. I’m not sure who bought it or why, but the package is still sealed. Should I use it with the new ThinkPad?

      If it is connected via USB, it will be usable on your new computer. You would not want to use it to store data but it is fine for backups. In fact, you can use that for your backups before and after the migration. Once your files are beclouded they will be backed up by the cloud provider and with Microsoft you can go back quite a few revisions. However, it is a good idea to back up everything on your current computer before you retire it so that if something doesn’t get put to the cloud, you can look for it there. The trick will be to back it up off the Mac so that it is visible on your Windows computer – I am not a Mac person so I can’t help you there. princesspat moves between Windows and iPad so she may know the answer to that.

      • I have a Seagate backup disk attached to my Mac now, actually. Thank Goddess, because that was the only thing that saved my files when I tried to download Big Surly on the Mac and the laptop just stopped. The Geeks got it going again, but the files are a total mess.

    • The news yesterday said that only 1% of people living in the UK have air conditioning. I can’t imagine being in 100+ degree heat without a/c. And they are not used to it.

  18. We have an excessive heat warning, it’ll feel like 108. Lucky I’m inside, with a/c. Wfh, so I get to watch Le Tour — it’ll range from 87-91 degrees for them. Stay cool — use ice packs on your pulse points.

    • And the commentators made me cry, today’s stage winner dedicated the race to his brother who was killed by a drunk driver the year he turned pro. In 10 years of racing, this is his first win.

  19. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 82 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 102. Mainly sunny skies are in the forecast. It does not look like there will be rain today but one never knows!

    I got a late start today so I am going to skip the news. It is all so depressing in any event. The Bernie Sanders, a grumpy old man who hates Democrats, want to depress mid-term turnout because he did not get everything he wanted in an evenly split Senate. This is just like 2010 when the purity posse stayed home in droves – which led directly to the loss of our statehouses and the surgical gerrrymanders we have now. Fk him with a rusted anvil. We get what we can get – and save the lives we can – and elect more Democrats so we don’t lose we have. Period. It does not help to call Joe Manchin names – that is just peevish and counterproductive. We need him for judges and justices and for the next reconciliation bill which will save the ACA.

    I need to get back to my list of things to do today. I am glad I have a calendar with reminder pop-ups because my lists are getting out of control again. At least the calendar tells me when bills are due! There is nothing I hate more than late fees.

    See all y’all later!

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