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?
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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.
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Good “morning”, Motley Meese! The week begins …
Morning low of 54 degrees in the Desert Southwest with an expected daytime high of 75. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Sunday Meese. We had heavy wind storm here in Kingston last night – thankfully no damage. It’s now 38 going up to 48.
Puerto Rico
Good morning. Got my tea steeping, making my apartment smell great. We might have thunderstorms this afternoon — and it’s supposed to get to 92 tomorrow! (it will cool back down later in the week) Watching the news, eating breakfast. Plan for today: church, make next week’s breakfast, get in a walk before the rain.
Posted
Good Sunday morning, Moosekind! Here in windswept Ashburn it’s 43 F., going up to 52 F. or something like that. The cold wind is blowing the white clouds across the blue sky. Ugh. I want a quiet day at home, putting my office back to rights. Yesterday I began reading my diaries for the year 2008, looking for clues as to what happened to my late sister’s personality. It was fascinating. Because of my compulsive habit of dating my journal entries, I also discovered some extremely valuable financial information that I can use as soon as my voice comes back.
It still sounds like a creaky wagon wheel. I have resumed swearing but not singing.
Dee has written a beautiful diary with exquisite illustrations. Have to do chores this morning but perhaps I can pop in for a listen this afternoon.
Today is Palm Sunday. Are y’all familiar with this poem?
The Donkey
BY G. K. CHESTERTON
When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
On all four-footed things.
The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.
n/a
That emotional wallop in the final line never fails to make me cry. I met two donkeys in Ireland: a sweet little lady named Jenny, who was wearing panniers of white Irish heather on each side of her pretty gray fur; and her baby, Jack, who was three weeks old, covered in soft dark brown fur, and so full of energy he couldn’t stay still! Talk about “jumping Jacks”!
I can’t do anything about the slow cooker until Dearly wakes up. As usual he had a rotten night. In the still of the night he watches movies, reads books on his iPad Kindle app, and makes cups of tea with chocolate biscuits for a midnight snack. I don’t suffer quite as much as he does. He sleeps on the living room sofa most of the time, as he can’t breathe when he lies flat in bed, even with pillows.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond…feeling very nostalgic for the life I used to have, where some of the food we ate for dinner came from our garden.
{{{Diana}}} I think I read that long, long ago. There’s another in the same vein I totally don’t remember anything of except the one line “once I carried a King”. Healing Energy for your voice, you, Dearly, and all your family. moar {{{HUGS}}}
Thank you, dear one!
It’s 50 heading for 75 and sunny. We started April off with 18.5 KWHs – definitely on track. We’ll see how long we stay that way. Hopefully it’s a good omen. Hopefully.
I’ve done my Sunday housecleaning chores so that’s (mostly) it for another week. My hands of course are protesting. Hard to type & “mouse”. Spilled the raisins in my oatmeal so instead of oatmeal with raisins today I’m having raisins with oatmeal. LOL.
Lots to do over at twitter of course – which is still disintegrating. Unless they fixed it overnight which is unlikely, cut-and-paste isn’t working right. It’s working sort of – but the format’s mucked up on the paste end and links aren’t pasting right at all. I can fix what it does to the link to NDN Silver but I can’t fix what it does to folk’s Amazon wishlists. It only pastes the amazon.com address – not the wishlist – so when you/I click on the link it just takes you to your own account (or I guess the homepage if you don’t have an account.) So my usual lots to do at twitter 1st thing is compounded by having to fix formatting. Add my hands not wanting to do it at all and. . . Oh well, Dee’s diary is always good and that helps. Holding the Good Thoughts for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}
Twitter is going to get worse before it gets better (I still hoping for “someone buys it from Melon”). The elimination of verified accounts is going to render it useless to people seeking out important information like weather alerts, school lockdowns and other things. The government needs to build a Mastodon instance for official communications and kick Melon to the curb.
Spoutible has someone doing weather alerts. Those are showing up in my TL. I don’t know about school lockdowns and other emergencies. I haven’t seen them in my Spoutible TL – but I’m still at twitter more than Spoutible right now.
Good morning, 43 and mostly cloudy outside my window today. The breeze is really cold so I’ll be mostly indoors. Tooth extraction day is Tuesday, my sister arrives on Friday, and Easter tea for the family is next Sunday so I’ve got plenty to do. Fortunately I decided to do some Easter shopping yesterday because jelly bellies were hard to find this year and traditions matter :)
Best wishes to all.
Monday Meese. 26 here in Kingston going up to 62. As a women’s basketball fan I really want to tell Keith Olbermann and some other sports journalists to STFU.
Puerto Rico
During the visit @SecGranholm
we proposed a pilot project of 5,000 solar roofs for all the neighborhoods of Adjuntas, to be managed by the Savings and Credit Coop with local labor and to build energy resilience with economic activation. Here is part of that conversation.
Vieques
Good morning. A hot one — 72 already, and the weather guy said it’ll get up to 94 this afternoon. Blech. We get a cold front later this week, though. Got my walk done. Yesterday was exciting in my twitterverse: got a reply from Phil Plait, the astronomer; a “like” from Jodi Picoult (she said something about all the sex & violence in the Bible, and I replied about how super steamy the Song of Songs is); and an rt from Mary Robinette Kowal (an episode of How the Universe Works posited an asteroid hitting the east coast of the US, and I posted about how that had me thinking about her trilogy, Lady Astronaut — which is awesome and Netflix should have already made it into a series). Anyway, that was exciting.
Good Monday morning, Moosekind! It’s a clear but frosty morning here in Ashburn. We’re in for a week of 70s and 80s after today. The met. column in the WaPo admitted that we are “teetering on the edge of drought.” Glad someone finally took note of it.
I didn’t grow a garden last year and I won’t this year. For one thing, the grandchildren don’t visit much now, and for another, I have a feeling that looking after Dearly will take all my time.
On today’s agenda is tidying up my Awful—I mean my office. My voice is still creaky. If I don’t get it back by the time of my Writers’ Group meeting on the 13th, the next most senior writer will have to lead the session. That’s going to make me very sad as April is poetry month for, us and I had planned to rant and rave about my beloved Shakespeare.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is 52 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 79. Sunny skies are in the forecast. It will get windy around mid-day with a front rolling in overnight to cool us down.
Today I shall just laugh at the political news. What is it with Arkansas governors that makes them think that Arkansas is a model state that everyone in America wants to be like and that we should elect their governors? The governor from any state that is Trump+60 will never win a national election. Go away, Asa.
I was disappointed in the women’s basketball championship game. I stopped watching about 10 minutes in when it was obvious that it was going to be the Kim Mulkey show – Mulkey screaming at refs, Mulkey screaming at players. There are a lot of faces of women’s basketball – Adia Barnes of Arizona, Marissa Mosely of Wisconsin, to name two of my favorites – it is sad that the world has to see the face of an ugly homophobe who treats her players like garbage. Her behaviour is exactly why I also root against Louisville’s coach and why I stopped rooting for Pat Summit’s teams – don’t shout at your players, don’t get in their faces on national television making them feel bad. Maybe I don’t get how motivation works for players but I would not be motivated by someone screaming at me and humiliating me and I would not want my daughter playing for someone like that. In any event, the championship game is in the books, the tournament was very exciting – I am sad that it ended with a hateful person making it all about her instead of all about her players. And for everyone who came up short, congratulations on making the tournament, winning some games, showcasing your talent – there is always next year.
Busy week of project work ahead.
See all y’all later!
It’s 58 heading for 84 and sunny. So far. Yesterday started sunny too but got over it. We generated 13.5 KWHs but the m-t-d at 32 is still on track with a little room to spare. We shall see what we shall see. Today is almost summer. Tomorrow will be a little cooler, then the rest of the week will be back in the low 60s with an upper 50s or two. With clouds and maybe some rain.
I’m hoping now we’re in a new month and quarter that folk’s fundraising will pick up again. JoanMar’s attempt to get a car for her family in Jamaica so they can start a taxi service and stop needing the money she no longer has to send hasn’t had a donation in 8 days. The GFM is actually enough for 2 cars, one for each of 2 different branches of her family, but she’d be happy with one car for the branch most in need. Right now she’s nowhere near even that.
Anyway, I’ve twitter chores to do and my hands aren’t cooperating much better than they were yesterday. sigh. Oh well. Holding the Good Thoughts for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}
Good morning, 44 and cloudy in my garden today. RonK is busy outside but my knees kept me awake for hours last night so I’m reluctantly staying indoors today. I’ve got a good start on a sewing room project so I can work on that and rest as needed. Best wishes to all.
Tuesday Meese. Preparing for a full day of news here in NY dedicated to the booking of the Orange Criminal. At least NYC Mayor Adams called out that horror Marjorie Taylor Greene by name.
Puerto Rico
Someone said that cable news covered tRump flying from Florida to New York like it was OJ’s Ford Bronco. Sheesh. I will stay away from my TV today and pray that there is no violence.
Good morning. Slept in, so I have to get my walk in later. It will be hot, but I needed the sleep. Watching astronomy before I start making work calls. I’m glad tfg was indicted, but there are other things happening. Rachel & Lawrence at least each spent maybe 5 minutes on Tennessee last night.
It needed more than 5 minutes – the Tennessee legislature is expelling duly elected members who protested with the school kids over gun rights. If they can do that, democracy is done, period.
Good Tuesday morning, Meese. It’s 50 F. and sunny in Ashburn, going up to near 80 F. today. The recent winds have tossed our lighter belongings, such as flowerpot holders and the cooler, all over the screened porch. Those winds also ripped all the cherry blossoms off the trees in the Tidal Basin downtown. When I observed the same thing as a child in Tokyo, the cherry blossoms blown down the street looked like pink snow.
Must hurry through my errands this morning so I can be back in time to watch the arraignment. The crowds of young people protesting unfettered gun laws in Tennessee was ignored by the media, as was Kamala’s visit to Africa. I long for the day when we can go 24 consecutive hours without a glimpse of that orange face or the media nattering about the owner of the orange face.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.
Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …
It is 41 in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 54. Sunny skies are in the forecast. Yesterday it was 80, overnight tonight there is a freeze warning. I am just glad that they took the red flag fire warning down. I have not yet mapped out a wildfire plan but I am pretty sure “it won’t reach me because I am on the other side of the golf course” is not the best strategy. Winds can blow burning embers pretty far. I should calendar setting up a plan so that I don’t forget.
No news watching today – the orange pustule will suck the air out of everything. I am barely on Twitter because there is something creepy about the dog image (related to Melon’s bitcoin crimes) that comes up when I open it plus the verified account issues will soon render it a free for all. I will count on breaking news emails to keep me informed about what I need to know.
I have a few hot projects to complete and one “done project” to monitor. I am not sure what happened to “retirement”, I really had no interest in working this hard. It had seemed to go in spurts which allowed for idle days but now there is a constant stream of projects. I am hoping it is just because the first quarter is always busy with end of year and tax projects. Or maybe the economy getting better means that there is more going on? I am ready for some days off.
See all y’all later!
It’s 71 going to 80 today, a little cooler than yesterday but not much. Overcast though so unless it clears off soon we’re not going to get anything close to the 16.8 KWHs we generated yesterday. The m-t-d is 48.9 so on track with room to spare. But not a lot of room to spare. (Temps dropping tonight & the next 3 days will supposedly be in the 60s. So a few more evening fires this season anyway.)
Yesterday I got a serious craving for salt and grease. The day being so lovely I walked to the convenience store – something I haven’t done in at least 6 months and possibly a year – and bought a bag of potato chips. Most of which – about 500 calories worth – I ate last night. I’ll finish the bag off tonight and that will be that for another couple of years. I’ve been hitting the low end of my 1400 to 1500 calorie a day budget for a while so this was probably a good thing.
Everybody’s trucking along, as of last night when I signed off. I boosted JoanMar’s GFM again and she got a (very small) donation for the 1st time in 9 days. She DM’d me to thank me & say she’d almost given up on the idea but maybe she’d try again. DK, which even 10 years ago would have wrapped this up in a week or less, is not just no help – they’d at least warn and probably ban her for doing a fundraiser for folks who aren’t long-time kossacks. That was the 1st rule they made to shutdown on fundraisers – which immediately killed the food drives, winter fuel drives, and even Netroots for the Troops drives. The miracles they do occasionally pull off (did one about 2 weeks ago) are wonderful but almost painful to see because they used to be normal and now they’re so very rare. sigh.
Twitter & Spoutible stuff to do so I’d best get to it. Holding the Good Thoughts for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}
Wednesday Meese. 48 going up to 53 here in Kingston.
Glad to be able to post some good news for Puerto Rico – for a change
Looking forward to seeing this – given that racism is still an issue in PR
Vieques
Good morning. We’re supposed to have heavy rain, even hail later today. Probably should have walked this morning. We have a training on a new device for work this morning, the woman doing it isn’t very good, sigh. Enjoying my pre-work time, eating breakfast and watching astronomy.