Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: August 21st

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.

7 Comments

  1. It’s 68, only got down to 66 overnight, heading for 91 and sunny at the moment. Odds of the moment lasting are not good. We only got 12.6 KWHs yesterday. The m-t-d is 356 and we’ve 5 days left. The worst August so far was 415 in 2017, last year we did 438. If we could just have the sunshine we did in August 2020, we’d make it to 450. But we won’t. sigh.

    I had a lovely visit from my eldest grandson yesterday although the topics we discussed were anything but. They ranged from global warming to the more personal. He’s stopped going to college – calc II beat him after 5 very expensive tries – and has a job at Whole Foods (he’s happy – says it’s nice to be around people who, when he says “Blackwater is evil”, not only agree with him but know what Blackwater is). The serious problem is the university sold his student debt twice, thereby doubling it, and refuse to talk to him about it “because they no longer own the debt”. He’s been making small payments to both debt companies while he tries to find out how to straighten the mess out. He totally qualifies for the new debt relief program – but the feds are only going to pay the actual debt, not the debt caused by the university selling it twice.

    As far as I know everybody’s OK. Or at least still hanging in there. Healing Energy for everyone. Off to twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • OMG, bfitz. It the presidents of universities didn’t pay themselves $1 million salaries, and if colleges didn’t waste money on totally irrelevant sports like footbore, then college costs would have kept pace with salaries. It sounds as if your unfortunate grandson will have the job of a lifetime repaying the debt.

      • His real job will be forcing the university to admit they sold his debt twice and fixing the problem. Then he can deal with the real debt – which actually could be covered by Biden’s forgiveness plan.

    • I am pretty sure that the only student loan debt that Biden controls is the debt serviced by the Department of Education (edfinancial.com). People who got private loans are definitely not covered but if the debt started out with the Federal government and then got sold, there may be hope. In any event, the fact that the Department of Education finally gives a damn about the debt crisis is good news – there will be places to contact to ask about the debt and possibly ways to get part of it cancelled. Good luck to your grandson!

      • I’m not sure but the govt may be able to deal w/ all federally guaranteed loans. But yeah, he’s got to untangle the mess before he can get any help with paying it.

  2. Good Saturday morning, Meese! I’m taking it VERY slowly and easily after my exhausting day yesterday.

    The weather is sunny and gorgeous, with a little restless wind blowing through the woods across the way. It’s 80 F. now in Ashburn, heading for a high of 88 F. No rain in the forecast.

    Yesterday Ethan and I went to the little putting green outside Cardinal Clubhouse. We found the golf clubs and balls all right, and proceeded to play. We were both absolutely horrible at it, so I hope anyone watching from the upstairs windows of the surrounding apartments didn’t kill themselves laughing.

    Then we went to Fisherman’s Pond. By that time of day (well after 10 a.m.) it was too hot even for sunbathing turtles, but Ethan threw a scoopful of fish food into the pond. We were impressed by the size of the catfish who swam up greedily to partake of the freebies. Catfish is on the menu far too much at this place—thankfully, I never eat it.

    After lunch Ethan played games on his Kindle while his grandparents took their afternoon naps. He doesn’t drink hot tea, so at teatime he had chilled apple juice on the screened porch and spelled out his name in Cinnamon Schoolbook Cookies. (I couldn’t resist buying them at Trader Joe’s.) Then we read a book about the solar system. At age seven, Nora read a chapter of the first Harry Potter book fluently and easily; Ethan, who will be in the second grade as of Monday, has a hard time with words and frequently guesses at them, or puts in words that aren’t there, and is completely stymied by words like “neighborhood.” The parents need to get another reading tutor, as the first one retired.

    Well, enough rattling on. He behaved like a dream child the whole day. I hope he doesn’t have a tantrum for his long-suffering parents. I feel so sorry for them, but I remember that Elder Son grew out of that behavior as he grew older, and apparently DIL did too.

    I should be working. Hope everyone at the Pond is having a lovely day!

  3. Good morning, 61,cloudy and breezy outside my window today. Leaves are starting to turn color, and the light is changing fast now. Feels like our summer is over. We have the grand puppies here for the weekend so I well dogged this morning. Milo has to be touching me and Maggie wants all the pillows. Oh well, they are sweet pups and I can share. Best wishes to all.

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