Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: May 1st through May 7th

May 1, 2016 JanF Community 122

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 (every Sunday morning). 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 now 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 and use the link.

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59 Comments

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

    It is 43 degrees in Madison WI, on its way up to 55. Cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. The White House Correspondents Dinner. Raw video from the White House:

    The president is introduced at 2:33 into the video.

  3. heh – I was on the same wavelength Jan – here’s a youtube version

        • Why? Because he used the “n-ish” word? Or because he was moved that the country he grew up in that didn’t think a black person could lead a football team had elected a black president?

          • Yup. The n-ish word has them bent outta shape – meanwhile they have never called out tRump or other Rs on blatant open racism.

  5. Slept in, feel good. Eating breakfast, watching the news. Not much about Nerd Prom — seen the mic drop multiple times…… was that the only thing? Ok, and “steak or fish”, that’s funny.

    I don’t have to cook today, so I’ll just clear out the dvr this afternoon. I should do a “thank you” diary. I’ll think about that after I’ve had my tea.

  6. Good morning, 47 and sunny in Bellingham today. RonK and I are both weary this morning, but the garage is cleaned up, my potting bench and the upper garden are ready for me to plant some flowers, and several truck loads of dirt and used concrete pavers have been hauled to the dump. We’re bring order to the chaos in our house and garden, but the next challenge is to reduce the amount of chaotic stuff!

    May will be a busy month as its finally time to settle Ron’s mom’s estate. I’ve found an estate seller to manage the sale but we’ll need to be in Kennewick for about two weeks to assist. I’m dreading what I need to do, but at the same time looking forward to being done.

  7. Good luck, princesspat! I found the estate sale organizers to be extremely efficient. I hardly had to do a thing, and that was a big help.

    • Thanks Diana…..My biggest job will be sorting and packing the family items left in the house, and then making sure I can find the items family members want to keep. I’ve got a good plan and pros to help me. I just hope I can do what I need to do and stay healthy.

  8. Good morning, Moosekind! This’ll be a drive-by as we are due to leave in half an hour to visit Mr. Newbaby and his parents.

    So tired yesterday I never made it to the gym, still tired this morning after entertaining Younger Son and family to dinner.

    It’s raining here, sometimes hard, but mostly just steadily, and has been since last night. The grass is dark emerald—any minute I expect to burst into a chorus of “The Wearin’ of the Green.” It’s 53 F. now, going to 65 F. later, or so they allege. Not good for collecting solar energy, but our parched earth needs it.

    Terrible news from Iraq and Syria. I WISH the U.S. military would do a little math and stop bombing Doctors Without Borders hospitals! Dayum. That’s murder, in my opinion.

    On the home front, people must have been interested in “All Acts of Love and Pleasure” because my site has accumulated 1,044 views in two days! Mostly at 8 Saturday morning. S*x before breakfast? H’mm. Also, I discovered that I do have a dynamic Facebook feed on my website home page: it had been so long since I posted on my Facebook author page that I thought it was static. More and more I’m liking WordPress for making things so easy.

    If it ever stops raining I’ll perform a Beltane ritual while decently clad. Meanwhile, wishing everyone a peaceful, restful Sunday!

  9. Morning all -Happy May Day! Hum a chorus of “Solidarity Forever!”

    Watched the whole WHCD last night since it was PBO’s last one – he was terrific as always, although I thought he was tougher on Hillary than on Bernie. Seriously, this is a black tie event and Bernie shows up in a suit, I guess just to show he’s still a man of the people – but he and Jane were soaking up the attention all right. I came from a working class family, we had not much extra money, but when my oldest brother became a popular escort for Nashville debutantes (he was at Nashville’s big private male prep school on academic scholarship), my parents scraped together the money to actually buy him a tux, because THAT’S WHAT THOSE OCCASIONS CALLED FOR! When I saw Bernie in his suit last night, all I could think of was Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess on Downton Abbey coming along to give him and Jane a talking to about proper behavior. Just because you’re working class doesn’t mean you can’t have manners. Faugh.

    I didn’t listen to much of Larry Wilmore’s routine, but I’ll read the transcript. I read some thought he was too harsh on Hillary, but I’ll go look at it. I do think the press does not take at all well to being skewered, they think they’re the only ones who get to do the skewering.

    Ok, everyone have a great day!

  10. Bright and sunny May Day here in Fay., AR – a tad cool-ish at 62 and only heading for 70, but still a lovely day. I love to start the month with sunshine – heck, I like starting the day with sunshine about 300 days out of the year. (Clouds right after sun up are great about mid-July through mid-September – IF they clear off long enough to give me some electricity generation. heh. Of course we got 2″ of rain last week so I don’t have to worry about that for a bit.)

    Finished my weekly housecleaning and food prep. This week it’s orange muffins, which I love second only to lemon muffins. Crockpotted some chicken quarters yesterday (half of which I’ll be eating for dinners this week) and made soup with chicken, a couple of lbs of mixed veggies, and the leftovers of Pad Thai I brought home when the faculty took us staff out for Administrative Support Staff Day last week. So lunches and dinners are covered, too. Celebrating incoming Summer with strawberries from the Farmers’ Market.

    Bright the day and also the week, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Bfitz, your recipes sound so delicious! Please, please—recipes for orange and lemon muffins?

      Although I’m currently on a strict reducing diet, the day will come when I can once again enjoy muffins and yours sound scrumptious. :)

      • Thank you. It’s my basic muffin recipe with citrus peel grated in – 2 c. GF flour (before I started the GF regime I used 1/2 white, 1/2 whole wheat), leavening, 2 T. butter, 2 T. brown sugar, grated peel of one lemon or orange (if lemon I also add the juice in place of some of the fizzy water, if orange I eat it for breakfast – heh), 2 eggs (I use 2 for the extra protein, then reduce the other liquid – original recipe was 6 oz liquid), 6-oz plain yogurt, 1/2 c. fizzy water (unflavored soda/seltzer water).

        Sift, measure, sift the flour (add leavening with the 2nd sifting) and set aside. Cream butter and sugar. Grate lemon or orange peel into the creamed mixture (I like mine in larger strips so us the same side of the 4-sided grater that I use for grating carrots) and mix thoroughly. Beat in the eggs. Beat in the yogurt. Stir in the water. Lightly mix the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients (it does take more mixing with GF flour than wheat flour).

        Bake at 350. How long depends on what you’re baking it in. If regular muffin cups, 15 minutes. If a 9×9 square baking dish, 30 minutes. Basically, when they “smell most sentimental” they’re done. :) Cool on a wire rack. Muffins are fine immediately, but you don’t want to cut the “muffin cake” until it’s thoroughly cooled. Enjoy.

        • Thank you, bfitz, how delicious! Tell me, what is the fizzy water for?

          Going to capture your recipe right now for my Recipe file.

          • I use baking soda as my leavening and that seems to work best when I use fizzy water as the liquid. You can actually use whatever fluid you wish – from milk to beer – in the basic recipe (but I don’t think beer would be good in a lemon muffin – LOL).

  11. Good morning, meese! Monday …

    No Internet here this morning so that will keep me busy trying to figure out a way to work when my business depends on the Internet.

    See all y’all later … I hope!!! :)

    • Oh dear – it is horrid when that happens – hope you are back online soon Jan!

  12. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s yet another gray, rainy morning here in NoVa, 54 F. now, going up to 79 F. later today. Only the memory of parched brown Julys and Augusts in this area keeps me from objecting to the rain. I do think mildew will be growing on everyone soon.

    Had a lovely weekend seeing the three youngest grandchildren, all of whom currently hold Nobel prizes for adorableness (adorability?). Other than that, not many thoughts in my head except chores, chores, chores. This will be a bad week for writing because we’re focused on getting ready to fly on Friday morning.

    Going to click around to find out what the Seattle Mayday riots were about. The idiots on telly showed the violence, all right, but did not mention what caused it. TV reporters must have IQs of minus thirty.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!

  13. Ugh, Monday. Oatmeal & tea. And getting ready to be around people all day again. I should do a thank you diary with all my pictures. Maybe not today.Mondays we always have heavy call volume, then I have a 6 o’clock meeting about Dining Out For Life — to raise even more money for AIDS Services. I’d like to live in a world where all the places that care for people have all the money they need.

    Head is playing In The End, by Snow Patrol. I love the lyric: “we’re lost till we learn how to ask — so please, please, just ask”

    • I’m enjoying my hot oatmeal – it is raining and damp and dreary here. Oatmeal wards off the chill :)

      • Since I discovered that you can bake oatmeal, that’s what I’ve had for breakfast. It is so easy. 30 minutes prep time – most of which is crunching up walnuts to then put in the oven & roast for 10 of the 30 minutes. Almond/soy/hemp milk, oats, berries, flax meal….done. I have 5 glass containers, dished up & done for the week – and most of the week after. I didn’t have to cook this weekend & I have home cooked meals all week.

  14. Yesterday was bright and sunny (generated just over 23 KWHs, highest single day for the year so far) with forecasts for the same all week. Wrong! Woke this morning to cloudy and gray. And chilly. In fact, I’ll probably have a fire this evening, that chilly. Hope the forecasts for sunny again tomorrow will be correct.

    Yesterday, other than sunshine and solar generation, sort of sucked. My dishwasher is dead and of course you only find that out when you’ve tried to run it full of dishes. So. I hand washed everything and hope to get up the courage to bail it out tonight. Whatever is taking over my computer has taken it over to the extent I cannot email or save to a thumbdrive my household data excel spreadsheet – the email search function can’t find my hard drive and the thumbdrive couldn’t find “the directory”. Since I also don’t have a printer I’m going to have to get creative about rescuing my data. And I was dumb enough get sucked into an exchange with a couple of Berners over at GOS – you know, the ones who sound reasonable you think you are just giving information to and then it turns out that no matter what you tell them, somehow that wasn’t what they were talking about. Sigh. Oh well.

    Hope everyone’s day gets better, whether the issue in question is lack of sunshine or lack of internet. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • conversations with most Berner’s just don’t work. I’ve pretty much given up – though I must say, a few Bernie supporters I know have switched to Hillary recently – which was good to hear.

      • I’ve noticed and usually don’t bother. Some of them are sneaky though and I don’t realize I’m dealing with a Berner until they’ve moved the goalposts a couple of times. sigh. It is nice to hear that some of the Bernie supporters are facing reality and coming over. I try not to talk about Hillary with my friends who are supporting Bernie – not that anybody talking to me face to face has been nasty, but their guy is losing and that feels bad enough. When they ask about Hillary, that’s when I can talk about her – and usually get a good response at that point.

    • Gad, bfitz, you didn’t accidentally download “Ask.com,” did you? Until we caught on to that malware, Dearly Beloved was constantly having problems. We went back to a “restore” point of a week earlier. Assume you have a Windows machine?

      If you can still Google, perhaps you could try Googling to ask the world what’s the matter with your machine? I’ve done that with my Mac and received marvelous “fixes” from irate users in London and elsewhere. They didn’t like the new “features” either. :)

      Good luck!

      • I’m afraid I did accidentally download Ask.com but it was so long ago a restore (which Jan recommended a few weeks back) isn’t going to work. I started having problems over 6 months ago which means I have to have accidentally downloaded it at least that long ago and probably longer. I was going to get a new computer – a laptop – in time for NN anyway and I didn’t realize it was getting worse until I couldn’t email my spreadsheet to myself yesterday. The original plan was to send myself what I could get to off my PC via email, get the new laptop, then save my attachments down to the new machine. Now I’ll have to come up with a Plan B in there somewhere.

        • bfitz, you may be able to salvage what you have by doing a complete malware scan and seeing if it can be cleaned. I recommend MalwareBytes – it is free and very thorough. Go to malwarebytes.org (not .com) and download the free version. When you install it, be sure to NOT choose to run the free trial of the pro version as it is very difficult to turn off later. When it launches, choose to do a custom scan so that you can select to scan for rootkits (it will be an option on the left) as well as your C drive. It will run about 2 hours. Just take its advice about deleting the malware after you finish.

          To get your Windows back in sync, you might try the System File Checker command (sfc). Open up a command prompt and type in (without the quotes) “sfc /scannow”. It will check the Windows system files and if it finds damaged or missing files, it will replace them from a special cache area.

          Your best hope is the malware scan … I hope it finds something. To move data, by the way, buy a jump drive. You can get a USB jump drive for about $10 that will hold 32gigabytes of data. That is probably bigger than your whole computer’s disk!

          The Ask toolbar was included in downloads of Java updates for several years. It started out as an annoyance but at some point the software it downloaded to “improve” your online experience included malware. It is like sites that don’t vet their automatic ads very carefully and end up with viruses on their pages. Photobucket did that a few years ago and wiped out several P&W Peeps computers. Good luck!

          • I’ve been running MalwareBytes weekly since I got this computer (the free version) but I haven’t done the custom scan. I’ll do that when I get home tonight. How do I open a command prompt? I’ll try the file checker as well.

            I tried to copy my Excel spreadsheet to a jump drive but I kept getting an error message “cannot locate directory” so I gave that up. However I manage to deal with my data – current thought is copying the new data into the body of an email to myself (actually 7 emails – one for each spreadsheet in the workbook or whatever it is Excel calls its stuff) then printing it out and manually updating the last Energy etc data workbook I sent myself for “safe keeping” – which unfortunately turned out to be November of 2013.

            I haven’t had any more of those virus/unwanted files that I asked you about earlier since I started refusing Skype updates. Good to know it was probably an automatic and not something I did myself – well, maybe not good, because automatic isn’t anything I can do something about but at least I don’t feel guilty for doing something stupid. (BTW – what site, preferably free, do you recommend for saving pictures to? I promised Tricia I’d do at least a couple of “back up” pootie diaries but first I have to learn how. Thanks, bf)

          • I use Photobucket. Free up to a pretty generous limit of space and bandwidth.

            If you can’t copy an Excel spreadsheet, you are doing something wrong – a virus can’t block that. I will send you some ideas via email.

            To open a command prompt, in Windows XP, find the Run command and type in “cmd”. In Windows 7, type “cmd” into the search bar and then click on CMD.EXE when it comes up on the list.

  15. I’m back but now I am seriously behind on things I need to do. Found on the Internets:

  16. Good morning, meese! Tuesday …

    It is 43 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 67. Partly cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    My Internet was up and down all morning yesterday and finally came back around 11am. The good news is that “up and down” meant that email came in quickly enough to be able to communicate. The bad news is that I could not connect to web sites or networks for any extended work because I kept getting dropped. I caught up on some offline work so the day was not lost.

    Indiana!! Normally I would say “this should finally do it” but apparently Sen. Sanders wants to consider the nomination attainable until Wyoming casts their votes for him at the roll call on July 22nd. What an incredibly selfish thing to do! Our candidate is getting attacked from the right and the left and the convention needs to be a scene of unity not a contentions gathering to soothe the ego of a nasty old man who believed that big crowds and lots of $27s raining down on him meant that he was smart and important. Go away!

    There are 83 delegates at stake tonight and 538 says that Hillary needs 39 to stay on target. The polling is close and the win could go to either candidate but the delegate counts will be close to a split. I hope that Hillary wins because you know damn well that Sanders will claim freaking momentum. :( If I sound grumpy about this, it is because I am.

    Cruz looks to go down in a flaming heap. His favorables are going down which is what I expected – the more people know him, the less they like him.

    See all y’all later!

  17. Good Tuesday morning Meese

    Today is my last day of classes – though I have final exams and paper grading next week!

    Yay!

    Twitter: hmmmm

    • I saw that talked about on Twitter and laughed aloud. I am sure that Professor Krugman has a sad that Jane Sanders does not think he is very smart. Ha!!

      • Twitter has certainly given me chuckles in the last few weeks – helping me get through this primary season with a smile …sigh – I just want it over!

        • The nice thing about Twitter is that people are forced to be pithy – you don’t have to spend a lot of time reading something to get to the kernel of truth. Very often there are screen shots of pieces of articles or captioned images or just a quick 140 characters of insight. I use it to dip into the news during the day and save off articles I want to read later to Pocket. And to laugh!! I follow a lot of funny people … and smart ones, too.

          • What I like about twitter is that I can be blunt – and not have to worry about being flagged :)

          • There are limits but it is not a “community” as such so there are no community guidelines. Like the much ignored DBAD … Twitter would laugh at such a rule!!

    • Hurray for the end of school, Sis! Will you take time off this summer or continue to write and teach?

      Chris Hayes doesn’t look very happy, does he? I wish Jane and St. B. would go back to Vermont and chill.

      • I don’t teach summer session – tried it once years ago – never again. I like having the summer off – even though I get no paychecks.

        I’m tired of Chris Hayes and most of the rest of the MSNBC crew.

        • Someone said that Rachel was finally willing to concede that Sen. Sanders had no path to the nomination and that his talk of a contested convention was ridiculous. I am going to go seek out confirmation of this turnaround because it would be pretty major.

          I also saw that Robert Reich has finally agreed that Hillary as president is better than Trump as president. The conversion will be complete when Thom Hartmann agrees with that as well but a lot of these people have shown themselves to be untrustworthy and I think less of them all.

  18. Good rainy Tiu’s Day, Meese! It’s yet another damp grey morning here, current temp. 62 F., going up to 64 F.; not sure my weather gadget is accurate.

    So today is the Indiana primary. I feel like chanting, “Hey, hey, put it away/End it today, Hillary!” We all feel the same, I’m sure. I noticed on GOS the followers of St. Bernard are still berning up.

    Just read a disheartening story about “The Biggest Loser” in the NYT. Apparently, no matter how much weight you lose, your body will fight back and make you regain the weight. And here I was so happy about my 5 and 1/2-pound loss after a week on the Grapefruit Diet! Well (shrug), I’m in it for the long haul, meaning exercise and no sugar.

    Did a ritual with my apple trees yesterday between rainstorms. For a while the sun came out and everything looked wonderful, especially my white lilac. I poured apple juice at the base of each apple tree, thanked Pomona for last year’s harvest, and expressed the wish for a good apple harvest this year.

    Busy day ahead, with training this morning and chores this afternoon. Wishing all a good day!

    • What a lovely ritual! I cannot see how that would not result in a most perfect harvest!

    • Lovely ritual – hmmmmm, I have some black cherry concentrate in the fridge. I wonder if my sweet cherry tree would be insulted if I used that?

      As to getting rid of weight, it’s kind of like giving up smoking. There are multiple factors involved to be successful. The mindset factor is to quit thinking of it as losing weight. People hate losing things and do their best to find anything they’ve lost. It’s whatever works best for you – right-sizing, dumping fat, healthy weight – but ditch the “losing” meme. Exercise is always going to be part of it. Your body was meant to move. Your organs and especially your digestive system just plain ol’ don’t work properly unless you do. Think of the walking, stretching, stooping a hunter-gatherer does to get food. Easy, low-stress, but lots of it. A third factor is frequency – 6 small meals a day tells your body/lizard brain that there’s plenty of food about. One or two large meals a day basically says “eat it while you got it, there may not be any more”. Smaller portion size rather than foregoing any specific foods also tells your body/lizard brain that things are OK, life and food are secure. The absolutely worst thing to can do for your health and long-term weight changing is to go on “a diet” and dump large numbers of lbs in a short period of time. Your body/lizard brain reads that as disaster/famine hang onto every calorie and don’t move much so you don’t burn anything because you don’t know when you’ll be able to replace it. And as soon as you stop the diet, your body responds by putting back everything you lost while in famine mode.

  19. Cool again — had to dig out another sweater. Weird for May. No thoughts in my head this morning, not even one. Saw this weird thing on Twitter:

    Greta Van Susteren Verified account ‏@greta

    Greta Van Susteren Retweeted The New Yorker

    I represented either Daniel or Phillip when arrested in DC for protesting in the 1980/s

    and my brain cannot wrap itself around that. I’ll just let it play me some music.

  20. Good morning, 59 and partly sunny in Bellingham. Between going to the the pool and re potting yew trees in the garden yesterday I’m moving very carefully today. I’ve got begonias on my mind, but my desk needs my attention so I had best stay indoors and give my knees a rest.

    Have a good day everyone!

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