Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: July 31st

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.

54 Comments

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

    Morning low of 75 degrees in the Desert Southwest with an expected daytime high of 88. Mostly cloudy skies with chance of storms in the morning and afternoon.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Sunday Meese. 60 degrees here in Kingston and going up to 87. Not humid today. Will be celebrating the big “75” tomorrow and am not doing anything special. Still don’t want to go out to eat in a restaurant – haven’t done it since the start of the pandemic. Will have a meal delivered.

    Things in Puerto Rico are getting messier and messier

  3. Good morning. Watching the news and eating breakfast. CNN because MSNBC has Morning Joe on and I’m never going to watch him. Tea is steeping, they’re showing the last day of the Women’s Tour later. Hope everyone has a good day

  4. Good Sunday morning, Moose Peeps, and a blessed Lammas to all, even if it isn’t exactly your holy day. Now that the Supremes have said we can go around imposing our religion on each other, why not? Anyway, it only means “loaf-mass,” which of course celebrates the first grain harvest. This will be the first year in a long time that I haven’t baked a loaf.

    It’s a bit overcast this morning, but I’ll have to take Monty out soon. It’s supposed to be fairish this morning but rainy this afternoon. The current temp. is 74 F., on its way up to 83 F. Daughter and son-in-law are in the air right now, flying up to Washington National Airport. She texted earlier to ask if we wanted them to stop by as soon as they arrive near their air b-n-b, but I told her that they would be very tired and should probably rest after catching a 7 a.m. flight from DFW. Also, I wanted Dearly to rest before they pick us up for an early dinner at 5-ish this evening.

    Dearly had a terrible night and is even now trying to sleep in our bedroom. He also has something on his leg, which impairs his ability to walk even more than the arthritis. I tell you what, Moosekind, I have a horrible feeling that a major change is going to happen in the next 6-8 months. I feel that he will depart this life and that this upcoming birthday will be his last. I hate to think about it (not at all sure what I’ll do without him), but I’m also a realist, not a stick-your-head-in-the-clouds person who denies the fact of death.

    Despite his ill health, we did have a jolly time at Elder Son’s house yesterday. The other grandparents also attended and we all gazed proudly at our seven-year-old grandson as he opened his presents. Asked what he thought of a particular present—can’t remember which one—he said it was “exquisite.” That made us giggle.

    The cake was decorated with Ferrante Rocher chocolates, two sticks of Kit Kat, and Tootsie Roll Pops, and there were gobs of icing pyramids in different colors on top of the cake. I’ve never seen so much sugar in my life! I noticed that DIL later scraped off the rainbow pyramids of frosting right into the trash. Don’t blame her. I ate only the cake, it was too much sugar for me.

    Fineena was knocked down and robbed of her rent money yesterday. Her landlord apparently has always wanted to be paid in cash, which is very suspicious to my mind. The little blighters got away with a lot of her stuff, including the bra she’d removed during the MRI earlier in the afternoon. I am at my wit’s end trying to think what we can do to help her.

    That’s enough from me today, Moose Peeps! Hope everyone at the Pond will have a good day.

  5. It’s 74 and raining, heading for 84 and I hope to heaven it clears off when it stops raining. Which it did yesterday and we managed 8.8 KWHs. So we’re at least over 500 – 501.74 to be exact – for July and anything today gets us close to covering A/C use for the month. The house is closed up already – the heat index is over 80 with the humidity. But it was open overnight and I managed to get all my Sunday chores done before I needed to close up. Now it’s so dark I’ve got the lights on.

    Fineena was mugged in a grocery store parking lot Friday. Some bruises and scratches are the physical damage. But her SOB landlord demands the rent be in cash and she’d just gotten it so the little bastids got a really good haul in stealing her rent money. She’s got until the 5th to find the rent somehow. I’m going to see what I can borrow from my tax money. But at most it’ll be 10% of what she needs. Everybody’s tapped out right now. Prayers up. (Also prayers up for Amelia/earicicle – that the move next weekend goes safely and smoothly, that she can get medical help as soon as possible once she’s moved. & well, I guess for everybody who needs them.)

    Off to twitter & Dee’s diary. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  6. Good morning, 74 and sunny. It’s pleasant now, but the afternoon tempts in the 80’s are very tiring. I’ll be glad when clouds and rain return!

    I was with our son when on of his doc’s was there yesterday so it was good to learn more and to have a few questions answered. He will have another C scan today and based on the results one of two treatment plans will start. I hope he can have the chest drain removed and the pic line put in because then he can move to home care on Monday. His doctors are concerned re the infection returning so they are being very cautious. I’ll go see him later today and take a fresh bouquet.

    I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned the basement situation, but it’s a mess I’ve got to deal with today. Apparently a perimeter drain is leaking so water is seeping in along the foundation and floor joint. We can’t dig up the foundation and fix it so it’s just something to manage but I’ve been preoccupied with our son’s illness so it’s a bigger mess than usual. We quickly move things and have fans going so this morning I’ll do a bleach scrub followed with a vinegar rinse to retard mold, dry it all again then, then put things back in place so I can tend to the laundry. Next week I’ll ask the city to check and make sure the water line isn’t leaking, and there is one downspout drain we can have cleaned, but I suspect the water is coming in due to watering the garden plants. No more deep soaks for the plants until we know.

    As always, my best wishes to all.

    • {{{princesspat}}} Healing Energy to your son & Good Thoughts for your basement situation. moar {{{HUGS}}}

    • Your son’s progress sounds encouraging! Glad he’ll be able to move to home care.

      Re the leak—yes, do check with the city government! There is sometimes a break in the water line. In fact, we had one at our house.

  7. Monday Meese. 65 here in Kingston and raining going up to 83. Will spend the day at home listening to music and relaxing. Hubby is ordering dinner from my fav local eatery so I won’t have to cook on my b-day. Just glad to be alive today.

    Puerto Rico

  8. Good morning, meeses! Monday … and Lammas!

    It is 72 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 93. Sunny skies are in the forecast with the rains expected at about noon today. The humidity is high but I opened the window in my office anyway because it has not been open for weeks and it is feeling musty. I was rewarded by a light not-too-moist breeze (and the sounds of coyotes playing) and I will keep it open until the sun comes up in about half an hour.

    Ninety-nine days until the mid-terms – hoping for a 2018 and not a 2014; our planet will not survive another Republican Congress. This week is the vote-a-rama on the reconciliation bill. Already, the business media is claiming that the tax increases will “destroy America”, I guess because to them “America” is hedge fund managers and real estate speculators who depend on carried interest loopholes to feather their already massive nests. Fie on them! They have no interest in the survival of our planet or of us – it is time we showed them that we don’t care if they can’t buy a third yacht.

    I am going to pretend that today is July 32nd because I promised a client that I would finish their project in July. Since July 33rd would really be pushing it, I better get it done today.

    See all y’all later!

  9. Good morning. July was the hottest ever, by 2 degrees. And now starts the hottest part of the year. Sad about the passing of Nichelle Nichols. I wanted to be Uhuha when I was little.

  10. Good Monday morning, Moosekind! It is a beautiful morning, thank Goddess, 71 F. now, 87 F. later. A blessed Lammas to all, happy birthday to our dear Sister Denise, and happy birthday to my daughter!

    Yesterday the temperature was in the 70s, owing to the rain and clouds. Daughter and SIL said they hadn’t experienced weather like that since February in Lakeway. I can’t quite make out where she lives, sometimes she calls it Lakeway and sometimes something else. Her address is the Hills, Texas, about 12 miles from Austin apparently. She felt so cold I had to lend her a shirt to wear over her tank top when we went to Anita’s Restaurant, because of the air conditioning.

    Anyway, it was wonderful to see her and SIL! We all had dinner and then they came back here for a chat. Monty went into hysterics, swearing and barking furiously. Dear Goddess, that drives me nuts.

    We had good news about fineena yesterday, so that alone should have enabled me to sleep. However, I was up and down like a jack-in-the-box again during the night. I’ve been awake since 3-something this morning. Will probably turn into Caliban by noon.

    We’re having dinner at their hotel tonight, and tomorrow night they’ll come here. It was so good of them to come all this way, especially after attending our cousin’s funeral on Saturday.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.

  11. We had a lovely cool 73 when I got up – the house was open overnight for what’s probably one last time for a while – but it was already 77 by 8 and the house is closed up again. I’ll keep the A/C off for as long as I can but I get heat rash if I get too hot (although my too hot is a lot warmer than a lot of other folks’ too hot). We wrapped up July at 506 KWHs – so not the 520 I’d hoped for but over 500 so that’s a blessing. The highest we’ve ever done in August is 533 so that would be nice but not likely. Even getting to 500 again/at all would be a real blessing considering the A/C. But realistic is more like 450. Hold the Good Thoughts.

    Fineena’s rent is covered (offline friend). It partly took her utility money but she’s got time to find that. Folks are working like mad to get ready for Amelia’s/earicicle’s move next weekend. Jill’s been OK because Ronald’s been in hospital so she knows where he is. & basically everybody’s still hanging on. Prayers up for all who need them.

    Off to twitter & the Lammas post. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  12. Good morning, 71 and sunny outside my window today. To my relief the temps will be cooler this week. I’ve got my legs elevated and ice on my knees this morning so I can finish putting the basement back together this afternoon. Getting it cleaned up was a messy hard job yesterday. We enjoy our basement living spaces, but old concrete is porous and the perimeter drains are over 100 yrs old so water can get in, like it or not.

    I think our son will be released to home care today, yay! Hospital procedures and arrangements take time and are subject to change but I think this is the plan. Best wishes to all.

  13. Tuesday Meese. 66 going up to 89 here in Kingston NY.

    In the midst of all the messes we are in – good things happening from the Biden Admin are often overlooked. See this from his EPA head Michael Regan

    • I was trying to figure out who the Black guy was on the “scary” ads being run by Arizona Republicans – there was Biden, Pelosi (of course), Mark Kelly and then a Black man (to ratchet up the fear to a 10, I assume). I realized last week when I was reading about how the administration plans to poke the eye of the Supreme Court by regulating coal plants a different way, that it was EPA Director Regan. He is definitely working quietly behind the scenes. Good for him to put Puerto Rico front and center.

  14. Good morning. Working from home today, the HOA meeting is tonight. Trying to balance between preparing and not obsessing. For now, I’m watching astronomy shows and eating breakfast. Got the “log in disabled” message, so consider all your comments fierced.

    • {{{another}}} Holding Good Thoughts and sending Healing Energy for the HOA meeting. moar {{{HUGS}}}

  15. Already 75 and the house is closed up (heat index is over 80) but sunny at the moment. Of course it may not stay sunny. It didn’t yesterday. We generated 12.3 KWHs and mostly certainly are not on track. sigh.

    The A/C didn’t come on until 8:30 pm yesterday but it did come on. Not a particularly restful night but one of the wakings was just before 5 and when I checked, there was cool air outside so I opened up. Then when back to bed for another hour’s more-or-less sleep. Put the laundry on and it was time to close up by the time it was ready to hang out. It’s out now. So are 4 of the cats. Little wretches. Bobbie’s the only one who hesitates long enough for me to close the door before he gets out when I’m taking the laundry out. I’ve got a “home visit” wellness check as part of my BCBS Health Advantage plan and that doctor is coming in an hour or so. She called yesterday to check on whether I was boosted and to request that I be masked. I told her I was about to ask her the same things and we both laughed. I could practically feel her relax.

    Step by step getting closer to getting Amelia/earicicle moved. Basket’s doing most of the steps, bless him. But aitchdee and Pat are doing some of them too. The physical stuff, well, that’s Basket mostly and Pat a very important some. I’m mostly doing what I always do – help with morale and anxiety spikes. Of which there are a lot right now. For her and everybody else, we’re all doing what we can – for surviving and for thriving it takes a “village”. Or at least a community. Holding the Good Thoughts all around.

    Heading over to twitter. Hoping I can get set up and also get the cats back in before the doctor gets here. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • I ignore my Medicare Advantage plan’s request for home wellness visits. First, if I don’t feel well, I will go someplace and see someone. Second, I don’t want strangers in my house. And third, they are so bloody insistent (despite my request that they stop calling) and I will not reward their spamming.

      And get off my lawn!! ;)

      • I used to before COVID happened. But COVID has shown that my doctor, though convenient because just down the road, is a quack. So I do these for wellness checks. These folks are a lot more careful about COVID than my doctor’s office is. I need to get a new one, but I rarely need one and so far the hassle of trying to find a doctor who isn’t either a quack or suffers from “doctor god syndrome” takes more energy than I wish to expend on it.

        • I still have to find a PCP here. I have one that showed up on my provider list initially but now doesn’t show up as a choosable PCP. The insurance appears to be covering my initial visit and lab tests but they won’t cover the Medicare Annual Wellness unless it is one of their approved PCPs. It is nearly impossible to find a medical doctor and I don’t really care if it is a nurse practitioner – they generally do a better job and have more time to talk. The one I had found based on a recommendation, besides no longer being on the PCP list, turned out to be affiliated with the local Catholic hospital which is not only one of the worst but, because of the church affiliation, follows the Catholic church’s guidelines on end of life. I do NOT want to be on life support after I am dead and to have my savings drained and medical bills passed on to my family. So I will begin my research again and start with the hospital affiliation this time and work backwards.

  16. Good Tuesday morning, Meese!

    A late-night surprise thunderstorm tore through Loudoun County yesterday, tearing aluminum siding off buildings here, hurling dead branches on the turtles’ sunbathing rock at Fisherman’s Pond, and just generally destroying blossoms and branches. This morning we have 76 F. on its way to 90 F. and blue skies. Have already walked Monty and am now drinking coffee.

    We had a wonderful time at the dinner hosted by our darling son-in-law at a restaurant nearby. Afterwards they came back here and SIL, who is a Verification Engineer at Apple in Austin, helped me set up the new ThinkPad. We still have lots of work to do on it but at least it’s plugged in, we have our passwords, I bought MS 365, and so on. He says we can use the external hard drive (brand-new, untouched) I found while rummaging in a drawer the other day. He urged me to upgrade to Windows 11 right away since I’d have to do it eventually. He also wanted me to use Gmail as my email, but I hate Gmail. It does what it wants to do, not what I want to do. I’ve had a Gmail account for years but I look at it only every two months. SIL says Yahoo is 1950s. Oh, well, that’s enough about tech.

    Daughter looked so pretty in her pink dress, wearing the earrings I gave her (made by a member of my writers’ group) that I wanted photos of her. We waited until sunset, then took them with a background of the pond and the sky outside the restaurant. She told me earlier that she cried when she read the letter I wrote to her, describing it as the most loving, touching letter she had ever received in her life. I was pleased. Her adoptive mother apparently did not give her the encouragement she needed, growing up, and was frequently shocked by Daughter’s lusty nature. I am not shocked at all.

    Finished the short story, am letting it cool, will work on other projects this morning. Daughter and SIL are coming over for dinner here tonight.

    Wishing a good Tuesday to all the Pond!

    • Yay for getting tech help! I agree with his advice that you should upgrade to Windows 11 right away – I would do that now before you set anything else up in case you need to revert PLUS you will not have to retrain on the new user interface. I have done one upgrade and it was seamless and the changes are fairly minor (mostly the toolbar presentation).

      Your comment got stuck in spam and I have no idea why – you are an Editor and a trusted user. There is still something going on with the site from some sort of change made a month ago, I can no longer put phrases into quotes as that is somehow considered dangerous. No, what is dangerous is my reaction when I get the mod-error! I can feel my blood pressure rising!!!

      • I did upgrade right away. I’m now looking for your advice on One Drive and Ms Office 365. Naturally, although I saved it, it is NOWHERE to be found! And that’s exactly why I’m switching from the freaking Mac that everyone worships to a Windows machine where the first thing we did last night was look for Windows Explorer. There, but there, I’ll be able to set up files!

        • The Microsoft 365 setup starts in the cloud – you Sign In to your account via the Edge browser at office.com and one of the options is to download the Office programs to your computer. The first screen you will see is the Good Morning screen and way over to the right is the button Install Office. That is what actually downloads the programs to your computer.

          When you work within File Explorer, make sure you are in the One Drive folder so that you are storing in the cloud. You do not want to merrily add new documents and migrate your files only to find out that you are storing everything locally. One Drive should also be something you can see from your Welcome screen – if it is not present on the main screen, click the square of 9 dots (the More Options button) and you will see it there. You need to set up the Sync so that it knows what part of your computer you are beclouding. It may sound daunting but once you get past the cloud setup, it will be just like the olden days – but safer!

          • Good Wednesday morning, Moosekind!

            Gorgeous day here, 72 F. but it’s going to be HOT—92 F. I’ve just ordered a skinny computer desk for my Mac. Gradually I will migrate stuff from the Mac to the ThinkPad (have to figure out out to do that), but I will keep both laptops going for a while.

            Today is the last day of Daughter and Son-in-Law’s visit, which is definitely the highlight of my year. They had dinner with us in The Home’s nicest restaurant and were quite impressed. Daughter was in raptures over the size of the swimming pool in the Blue Ridge Club House. They will stop by later this morning (SIL has my laptop in the hotel room, Doing Things to it), but they’ll leave for the airport at 1 p.m. Jan, thanks so much for your info above, which I will immediately print out.

            Have uploaded a new story, “Home to the Heather,” for your delectation. Enjoy!

            Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.

  17. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 75 in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 90. Sunny skies with today’s monsoon expected at 1pm. Yesterday the winds picked up but the storm stayed in the mountains to the east. The paper says that this year’s monsoon is ho-hum so far. Well, last year’s set records for rain so probably anything will look ho-hum! Sunday’s storm was pretty major and the rain total for July showed 6 inches which I think is considered pretty good.

    Today is vote counting day in Arizona. I suppose some people will vote in person but mail-in and early voting is very popular so I think it will be mostly counting the votes. All the major Republican candidates want to end mail-in voting so we will have a built-in campaign issue. I was watching MSNBC’s afternoon show yesterday and holey moley the people running in the Republican primary here are demented! I hope the least crazy people win because if any of the trumpers get in – and, goddess help us, win – we are screwed. I will have to find a good Arizona election results web site to follow and bookmark it. There were not a lot of contested races on the Democratic side and I have not seen any polling on the ones that are contested. I voted for Secretary of State Katie Hobbs for governor, a woman environmentalist, Kirsten Engels, for my U.S. House Representative (open seat), and the Arizona House minority leader Reginald Bolding for Secretary of State. We have no Lieutenant Governor, the Secretary of State is the 1st in the line of succession so that is a pretty important position. It would not be unusual for the governor and the secretary of state to be from two different parties as they are now. It is how teaparty hater Jan Brewer became governor – Barack Obama tapped Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security and Brewer got in. That was back in the stupid times when Democratic presidents would tap Democratic governors and Senators to help run the administration. Now we understand the value of having Democrats stay in place unless the state is sold blue. I hate to say this but President Obama’s red-state blue-state blinders resulted in a lot of political malpractice.

    I got up a little later than usual and I am behind on what I wanted to get done today. The first week of the month I am often quite lazy because I see the entire month ahead of me and think that I have plenty of time to get that done. I was hoping to get ahead of projects this month but today is already a lost cause. I shall sip coffee and do my Wordle and call it a day.

    See all y’all later!

  18. Wednesday Meese. 66 here in Kingston going up to 89. Hope it is not as humid as yesterday.

    Puerto Rico

  19. Good morning. Well, last night sucked. I get to pay an extra $250 every month for the next 15 years. And they kept saying things like “no penalty early payments!” Sure. That’ll happen. At least this morning I get to work at home and watch astronomy tv. It makes me happy. Current show is about the search for planet 9.

    • Another, I am dropping my long-term care insurance for that very reason. I can’t afford a $600-a-year increase, and who’s to say it will stop there? They’ll think of some other reason why they need to charge that much. Enough.

      Sorry about the extra rent you’ll be paying. Bummer!

    • {{{Another}}} That truly does suck. Holding the Good Thoughts/sending Healing Energy for a comfortable (to you) resolution or way forward. moar {{{HUGS}}}

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