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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Good morning, 51, cloudy and windy in Bellingham. I haven’t set up my calendar for 2017 yet so today proves once again why I need to do so. I want to go to the funeral services for an old friend’s husband this morning, and I’ve scheduled a Dr’s appointment and my hairdresser for the same time this afternoon. I’ll sort it out, and then try to be more attentive.
Time to find some coffee and get busy.
The calendar is a specter of doom – I don’t blame you for not wanting to look at it! I pushed myself last month to get our spring break vacation set up because slots at the kennel go quickly and air fare goes up. But it is difficult to think more than a few days in advance. I have to shake myself out of it – when you have a teenager, there is no time for wallowing in misery!!
I’m so, so proud of my real Congressman, Lloyd Doggett (not my gerrymandered technically “mine” rep, McCaul)
I always liked LLoyd Doggett. 40 years ago he was good and he’s just gotten better.
Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …
It is 34 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 41. Sunny skies are in the forecast. Yesterday the temperature stayed at the freezing mark long enough to make the roads too dangerous for area schools to open – today’s high and the sun will help finish the melting that finally started in the afternoon.
President Obama will hold the final news conference of his administration this afternoon at 2:15pm Eastern. Here is the link:
Joe Biden just got back from an overseas trip to visit with Ukraine, a country that will likely be the first casualty of the incoming administration’s Russia First foreign policy, and when asked about tRump said “we have no freakin’ idea what he is going to do”. I predict we will see a lot of: “He can’t do that!” followed by “He just did.” What is particularly aggravating to me is the level of ignorance about how elections work and a failure to understand that people, blinded by racism, just enabled a Republican Congress that literally wants to destroy America to do so. In many ways the PEEOTUS is the perfect president for them – a soulless man with not a shred of decency or empathy – an orange-faced Paul Ryan.
I have to get a project done that should have been done last week. See all y’all later!
Good morning Meese. Dreary and rainy here. Have a dental appointment today. Ugh.
Truly amazing that morans do not know Obamacare and the ACA are the same
How can ANYONE be so, um, effing stupid? If it weren’t for blatant racism it would have been called “the ACA” all along rather than “Obamacare,” and the Trump-full procession might not have happened.
I still blame the MSM in large part for this disaster and virulent racism for the rest.
I blame the MSM 100% for this disaster. Their handling/presentation of everything that came along – from the Hillary smear-or-ignore campaign to the Comey email crap to the “successful” businessman just saying like it is B.S. – was all MSM and precisely why we are here. The clarion call to bring that virulent racism out from under the rock it had been hiding was carried on live TV.
Good morning, Moosekind! Cloudy and damp this morning in NoVa, but with blue beginning to show through the clouds. It’s 45 F. now, going up to 55 F. We are due for two weeks of temps in the fifties—where did winter go? It’s supposed to rain starting at noon on Friday (even the heavens shall weep at the spectacle of Thing’s in-hog-uration). I won’t be watching.
Well, it seems we are getting a new roof, about half-price, and they’re going to throw in new shutters as well. We’re busily rearranging our finances to pay for it. My husband has to call the Critter Catchers about the squirrel family that has moved into our attic. Because the howling winds have torn off some of our siding, the underlying textile has been exposed and the squirrels simply punched a hole, got in, and set up housekeeping.
Have weight training scheduled for mid-morning and Darling Niece is coming for lunch, so I’d better get on with things. Wishing a good day to all!
I think that the skies will open up in an effort to wash away the sh*t stain that will be put on our country’s history.
Chilly (for Texas) and rainy. Going to leave work early so I can walk & visit my friend & go to my Democratic club meeting. Eating breakfast & drinking tea. Grateful for the hot oatmeal — did I mention it’s chilly? Hey, 45 is cold when just a couple of days ago I was wearing sandals. Still have the same Coldplay earworm. Luckily it’s a happy, poppy song.
34 when I got up, 39 now, supposedly going up to 52 but if it doesn’t clear off I doubt it will make it. The fog under the clouds has dissipated, but the clouds themselves are still there. Sigh. I really need some sunshine. On many counts.
Hands are stiff and it’s hard to type but I’m soloing today and I’ve got to finish my Wednesday Street Prophets diary before 3 central. Good to be busy though. Today is the 28th anniversary of Mother’s passing and it’s really hard this year. I so much would like to be able to talk over the whole election cycle and the coming menace with her. She was very political – we watched the Nixon hearings together back in the day (can’t remember why she was visiting me at the time) and later when she was living with me the Iran-Contra hearings. But she’d have also been 86 so who knows… Still, it’s good to be busy.
Called my Senators yesterday – specifically regarding Price but in general keep harping on “NO unless/until they get a clean bill of health from Ethics” – think that’s the only approach to take with these bloody-red Rs. Meanwhile, gotta get back to work. Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 52, raining and windy in Bellingham. I finally resolved yesterday’s scheduling dilemma by rescheduling all my appointments, and driving my friend to her PT appointment in stead. She’s recovering from her fall, but it’s a very painful injury. And I bought a new calendar, so today’s task will be to get it set up and in use!
Danny Westneat, at the Seattle Times…..
Ignore the carnival barker’s words on Inauguration Day
{{{princesspat}}} – I’ve already been planning to follow Westneat’s advice. Actually, I’m already doing it. :)
This is excellent advice, princesspat. tRump does use words as weapons of mass destruction. And the press prints them unfiltered as if each bleating is important or breathlessly reports on them 24/7 on cable “news”.
I will have to formulate a plan for staying informed. I will be doing a Great Pruning of my Twitter feed as I discover on Saturday which people have been Vichyized and dump them. I won’t unfollow @POTUS and @FLOTUS and @VP until I get ready to go offline tomorrow morning.
Good morning, meese. Thursday …
It is 34 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 39. Cloudy with rain this afternoon and into the evening.
President Obama held his final planned press conference yesterday and ending by saying “I think we’ll be okay”. I must say that I would feel better about that if he were going to still be in charge of things. But he won’t be and his successor is temperamentally unable to think in the “we” – his narcissism won’t allow that.
I will post the president’s news conference later today. What struck me the most was his description of the reaction of his daughters – not taking it to heart and moving on. Maybe we need to have more of the optimism of youth but right now I am having a difficult time getting into the “brush yourself off and move forward” phase. Every new revelation from the Cabinet of Deplorables brings more panic, every new think piece about tRump’s unfitness adds fuel to my anxiety about the future. It would help if we could get to a good place about the future of the ACA but every day brings a new declaration from the Republican Congress and the transition team, generally in disagreement with each other.
I will turn off my news feed tomorrow like I did after the election and stop by just to say howdy. I may peek at the news Saturday for the Womens March – I have not yet decided if I will attend ours here in Madison. I am not great with crowds and it is in a place that starts out crowded. The weather is expected to be nice, in the 50s, so I will not have that excuse.
On Saturday, I will post something from either Nancy Pelosi’s office, the Democratic Party’s web site, or from one of the Senators who is doing a good job of protecting Democratic Party principles. It will probably take a while to settle on something – the President’s Weekly Address was easy and I don’t want to get sucked into a big weekly project to find a post because Saturday is catch-up day on work projects.
See all y’all later!
This holds the key to successful resistance. It is sad that the power is in the hands of those who paved the way for a vulgar talking yam to sit in the most powerful office in the land
“You’re not supposed to be complimentary. You’re supposed to cast a critical eye on folks who hold enormous power.”
Hola Meese
Was up at 1 AM writing – and am now going back to bed :)
Kudos to Kerry
At work, eating breakfast, drinking tea. Tomorrow there’s a protest that starts at 5 & expects to be at the Capitol by 6:30 or so. I’m thinking about bringing dinner & just waiting here. Or going home & just attending the Saturday one. They said on the news that there’s plans for high school kids to leave their last classes & UT students to walk out…… The Friday evening one may be too vigorous for me. Maybe my brain is playing Coldplay at me because it is trying to cheer me up?
Good morning, Moosekind! It’s 44 F. in NoVa under cloudy skies, going up to 53 F. today. I’m unable to think about anything much except the awful pain in one of my upper right teeth. Seeing the dentist in an hour. She’s treated me for this before, it’s an exposed root or some weird thing that’s extremely sensitive to hot and cold. Have been popping aspirin every 4 hours for a week and it’s time for it to stop.
The new tenant brought his tiny, aged parents round yesterday morning to view the flat he’s moving into tomorrow. He explained they’d just moved here from Toronto, where they were unhappy because it was so cold. They won’t have that problem here! I really like Indian manners: the grandpa folded his hands and bowed, his wife bowed, and then we all shook hands. They left their shoes outside on the step. I explained to Malik that the first thing we all do when we come in from outdoors is take off our shoes, put them in the shoe bench in the entryway, and change to indoor shoes. We’ve done that ever since Younger Son married our DIL, born and brought up in China, more than eight years ago. He said he’d start doing that tomorrow instead of leaving them out on the front step.
Must fly to get ready on time. Wishing everyone a good day although I, for one, will be on the verge of tears all day and in absolute floods tomorrow—as will the world at large, alas.
Another gloomy day, just a little warmer – like going to 55 instead of 50. Life will of course go on but I’m having trouble putting one foot in front of the other right now. (Partly because due to the humidity, the scar on my foot hurts.) I would be doing a lot better if the sun would come out. Hard to keep my own spirits up, much less anybody else’s, when the sky stays gray.
Need to check in at DK – need to be more surreptitious about it, too, as I got a reprimand from the Chair this morning – and try to get some of this paper off my desk. Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 47 and cloudy in Bellingham. I’ve got a long list of chores I should do today, so I hope I can find some energy to just focus and proceed. President Obama’s words re “don’t mope” apply to me!
So I’ll go to my re scheduled hair appointment, stop at the carpet store to make the final payment and delivery arrangements for the sewing room carpet, either glare at or actually do some work at my desk, and if all else fails, take a nap.
I also need to find proper supports for the yew tree on the upper patio. The wind blew it over again last night and fortunately the pot didn’t break. The pot is one of two with a tree trunk motif, and I really like them, so I need to secure it before my luck runs out. I started with one stake, then added another, but it looks like three are needed. I hope to find some decorative metal plant supports because the motley wood ones I’ve just grabbed are not working and they look bad……can’t have that!
And as I go about my day my quiet thoughts will be with the Obama family, wishing them a safe and well deserved time away from the worries of running this country. I’m very grateful for the experience of living with their leadership.
This woman speaks for me:
Friday Morning Meese
I have turned off the TV – unfollowed @POTUS and @FLOTUS and White House on twitter
Am following Barack Obama and Michelle Obama – of course.
Am dumbstruck that Hillary is not on the list of honorees for the Women’s March – so am tweeting the #AddHerName hashtag.
People are upset that Trump has not put a Latino in his cabinet of horrors – however I don’t care because any Latino he picked would be a pendejo
Have to take my car in for annual tuneup today – will spend the rest of the day prepping for school which starts next week.
I can’t unfollow yet – I will do a ceremonial unfollow at 11:59 am Eastern.
The disrespect to Hillary Clinton is awful. She won 65 million votes and came within 77,000 votes in 3 states of winning an election tainted by serious interference from the FBI and Republican leaders in the Senate burying damaging information related to foreign interference. The votes should be celebrated. And if the organizers of the Womens March are worried about upsetting the berners – meh.
These berners are as bad as the Tea Party “keep government hands off my Medicare” idiots – you know they’re using Hillary’s “Women’s Rights…” quote on their banner while pointedly refusing to include the woman who said it.
Morning, meese. Friday …
It is 36 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 39. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast.
I am going to hang onto this thought:
We were one election cycle too soon to be able to rise above inbred bigotry and centuries of misogyny. If we can keep the Democratic Party from splintering into purity and pragmatic wings, we will be able to win the day. #Resist and #NeverNormalizeHate.
My quick scan of the news has been done and my Twitter feed is being muted to remove the news outlets who are reporting today as if it is normal for a man to be elected president as the puppet of a foreign enemy.
See all y’all later!
I decided not to go to the protest this evening. If I was younger, I could go, and train tomorrow & do the protest. But I don’t have that kind of energy any more. Also, they were talking about it on the news & it sounds kinda…..not my scene. I really hope our callers today can stick to library business. Playing The Revolution Starts Now in my head. Because.
the last verse — goosebumps & tears, every time – such a beautiful vision:
Last night I had a dream
That the world had turned around
And all our hopes had come to be
And the people gathered ’round
They all brought what they could bring
And nobody went without
And I learned a song to sing
The revolution starts now
Good mourning, Meese, because I’m afraid that’s what it is. The skies are gray over Northern VA, a harbinger of what’s to come. “They” say it’s going to rain at noon: symbolic, perhaps.
Will not watch TV until the evening news. Can’t wear black, because I don’t own any. Dark blue is the best I can do. Hoping to get a lot done with respect to work.
Yesterday I did no work at all because my routine office visit turned into a root canal! It wasn’t the same tooth that had bothered me before, it was a different one. It’s dying, according to my dentist. She did as much as she could but could not complete the root canal because of the inflammation that was causing the pain. I left there with prescriptions for an antibiotic and two painkillers, one of which was Percocet. I’m on DRUGS, Meese! Anyway, after that 2 and 1/2-hour session I was pretty beat for the rest of the day. It was still better than cleaning out the downstairs fridge, though, which is what I did last Friday. Took the whole day and I was a nervous wreck afterwards.
I, too, cannot believe the disrespect shown to Hillary Clinton. Glad I’m not going on the march, now. I’ll watch whatever coverage there is on the news.
Goodbye, grace, intellect, and class. Hello, rudeness, cruelty, and all that is crass.
Ouch! I am glad you went in on that tooth and hope that you can get the final repair done soon.
Usually my daughter has a morning news show on while she eats breakfast and gets ready for the day. I asked her to not put the TV on this morning. I don’t want to see the normalization of a stolen election and the celebration of the end of our small d democracy and, really, decency in the White House. If there are any decent Republicans left, they should be ashamed of themselves.
Madison is having a march tomorrow at Library Mall which is on the campus. Already 11,000 people have RSVPed (whatever that means!) and the weather is expected to be in the 50s. I have been thinking about going but I am not great in crowds plus parking will be a nightmare. I will watch and sing along from here.
{{{{Diana}}}} – Healing Energy, lots and lots of it.
Ouch Diana……I did not like paying for a root canal and crown this month, but I am glad to have less pain in my mouth. I hope you feel better soon.
Thank you all, Meese! Actually, I have not had to resort to Percocet yet. The antibiotics and powerful Motrin are keeping the pain at bay. It’s fortunate that I’ve always got on well with dentists and never object to what they do to me.
Already feel a bit better. Plan to have a rest now.