Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Dec. 16th through Dec. 22nd

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?

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.

  • Page One of Comments is HERE!
     

  • Page Two of Comments is HERE!
     

35 Comments

  1. 43 windchill 39 and overcast this morning in Fayetteville, AR. It’s trying to clear off though which I would certainly appreciate. We generated 7.3 KWHs yesterday and that with this morning’s driblet brings the m-t-d to right at 86. Hopefully we’ll have reached 100 by the end of the week. Or more, of course.

    I’m home today so more laundry (“decorate the tree” party followed by a very-welcome guest for almost a week does increase the laundry 😁). Mixed my sausage stuff together and have it melding in the fridge. Not sure when I’ll actually grill them. They need at least a day to meld/mix the flavors but I’m working at least half days the rest of the week. I’ll work it in somewhere. Then it will be 5 weeks before I have to do it again. By which time I may be retired again. I’m supposed to be. They’ve got a new lot of applicants in and did/are doing the preliminary screening yesterday and today. Plans are to set up interviews starting the 7th. We shall see what we shall see.

    Need to touch base with a few folks and do some twitter/tweet boosting. Then coffee & a peanut butter cocoa muffin, schlep in some more firewood, and read by the fire for a bit. Maybe a walk later if the sun comes out and them wind stays down. Healing Energy to everybody everywhere shaped to the need. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  2. Good morning, Meesefolk; 27 when I got up with a mostly sunny high of 36 today. I had to wear sunglasses on my drive in to work this morning, which was cause for a pause for thanksgiving.

    Holidays are over for me, so now I get to sit back and watch the rest of the world rush around while I do not. We had a wonderful, relaxing visit with The Kiddo and SIL, but when we got home, we both collapsed in a puddle of exhaustion. I’m not sure why we were so tired, but I suspect it was mostly decompression after all the racing around before the visit. Hubby has the rest of this week off; I do not. I’d like to think that will mean he’ll take over dinner responsibilities for the balance of the work week, but his track record on that is hit-and-miss. He does well in the summer when he can easily grill, but it looks like rain for most of the rest of the week, so I’ll probably just ask him to turn on the crockpot after I prep a meal each morning.

    I barely glanced at social media for four days, so I have no idea if there was any can’t-miss news. I suppose at some point I’ll try to catch up a bit, but for now, that’s what I’m doing at work. And Diana, I saw your email and will get to it later today.

    Good day to and for all!

    • YAY! for seeing the sun! Always lifts the spirits. Especially this time of year when the short days and long nights can weigh us down, no matter what the temperature might be. My holidays were basically over with the “decorate the tree at grandma’s” party – but I definitely counted basket’s visit as a present. Wise to set up the crockpot and just ask him to turn it on. Heaven only knows what he’d provide if you left it up to him in non-grilling weather.

      If there was any “can’t miss” news, you’d have seen it here. The MSM in its drive for clicks is also deliberately trying to push everyone into adrenal exhaustion so when the election cycle actually gets here we won’t have the energy to do the work we need to do. Not this time. {{{HUGS}}}

  3. Good morning, 51 and raining in Bellingham. Much to Ava’s relief I now have some packages wrapped and under the tree. She is the present elf for our family gift exchange and has been worrying :)

    My sister returns to Santa Fe today so I’ll have a few days to finish my Christmas list, and then this busy month will be over.

    Best wishes to all.

  4. Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …

    It is 32 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 41. Flurries this morning then cloudy skies with sunny breaks later today.

    Funniest headline of the day “Michael Flynn’s lawyers appear to have miscalculated” followed by “Note to Michael Flynn: Twitter is not Federal Court.” He turned on Fox News, believed his own bs about being entrapped and then met a judge who had no patience for his crap. Good. When the courts are able to be swayed by the twitterings and lies of the right wing, it will be a dark day.

    The news came at us like a firehose yesterday! Trump Foundation, Flynn hearing, shutdown/no-shutdown, Mueller subpoena drama. The governor of Arizona selected the loser of the Senate race – an anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant, anti-ACA, trumper – to fill the second two years of McCain’s Senate seat. She will have to run in 2020 to fill the final two years of his term and a good candidate will beat her and help us turn Arizona blue. A former prosecutor, a Democrat, is considering a run against Pat Roberts in Kansas in 2020 so maybe we can pick up a few seats in places we don’t expect to win. President Harris is going to need a Democratic Senate to help her turn back the tide of craptastic judges that the right-wing is installing in the federal courts.

    By the way, there are few things as satisfying as watching the berners who helped elect Donald Trump coming to the realization that in a contested primary with lots of options and new faces, their god will not be crowned front-runner. He came in second by a large margin in a 3-person primary in 2016 and then allowed his fans to became willing accomplices when a foreign power ratfked our election. Go away, you are boring.

    I have some hard deadlines coming up including the big one on December 31, 2018 to get 2018 accounting locked in so I may be only lightly online for a while.

    See all y’all later!

  5. Good Wednesday morning Meese – 16 degrees here in NYS, windchill below zero.

    Spent yesterday being pissed off at the Alexandria O-C contingent.
    After this was posted

    folks were pretty pissed off.

    She issued a weak sauce response – which really didn’t answer the charges – which is why I asked about her support for Hakeem

    Anyway – I’m tired of her, and much of the group who dub themselves left and everyone else ‘corporate Dems’

    • I noticed that she didn’t answer your question. So, is she NOT targeting Dems to be primaried?

      • Best I can tell she’s trying to keep the support of the bros without totally losing any chance she has of actually working with actually elected officials. She’s gonna have to choose one group or the other. The two have a few goals in common but the means needed to reach them are too pragmatic for the bros. They’ll turn on her in a NY minute if she actually pulls up her socks and works with the rest of the Dem House to achieve them. She may, possibly, be OK once she realizes that. Maybe.

  6. Foggy again, not as bad as yesterday but still pretty dense. My watch thinks my sleep was “fairly continuous”, it is wrong. Going to try again on the walking today. Yesterday I got busy cleaning house & making tea, but today there shouldn’t be any reason not to walk. Today’s music: Indigo Girls version of Angels We Have Heard On High.

  7. Good Woden’s Day morning, Moosekind! It’s a chilly 27 F. here in Ashburn, with frost whitening the grass outside and even forming a thin skin of ice on the brown water of the creek in the woods. Later it will be 48 F., under what looks like clear skies.

    Yes, yesterday’s shenanigans were unexpected. Paid only minimal attention as there are events happening here on the ranch. Jennifer Boysko is coming to the Great Oak Theatre this morning to speak about the election on January 8. She hopes to win the former state senate seat vacated by Jennifer Wexton (she who ousted The Woman Comstock). I always enjoy hearing Boysko speak, as she and I go back to Howard Dean days 15 years ago.

    Today Dearly will have to return the computer he bought at Costco yesterday—it turned out to be not what he wanted—and I’ll have to return the iPad that arrived from Target. I wanted an iPad Mini. Sigh. We’ll put Monty into his favorite hotel while we’re doing this, he gets into trouble if we leave him home alone. Yesterday he pounced on Mommy’s cellophane bag of Christmas bows, dragged it to his bed, ripped it open, and started chewing up the bows. Fortunately I was able to salvage a good many.

    Princesspat and DoReMI, thanks for your responses to my questions! Will thank you officially later in the day after we return from errands.

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

  8. 43 windchill 37 and overcast at the moment. Not dark enough to keep the PV system in night mode but we’re not gonna get much today if it doesn’t clear off. Figures. Yesterday we matched the daily high for the month at 8.123 KWHs and the m-t-d is 93.6 – if we were by a minor miracle to get what we got yesterday we’d crest 100 today. As it is we’ll be lucky to reach 100 by end of tomorrow. But we’re generating – only in double-digit watts right now, but it’s still making progress. Much like our political situation at the moment. Politically we’ve got a whole lot against us being able to make any much less good progress, but we’re still making progress. There is hope in that. There is hope and beauty in the sky – clouds that were a cross between charcoal and indigo at sunrise are now a much paler blue-gray, but then and now there are streaks of skystone blue. Very beautiful as it is but full of the hope of a clear sky and sunshine in the future.

    I’m working half day today, but the end half. So I took my friend to work then came home and grilled the breakfast sausages. As soon as they’ve cooled a bit most of them will go back into the freezer. I now have breakfast sausages until the last week of January. 👌😁 Anyway, I’ll do a few more things around the house and online then get to work. I’ll be working full days tomorrow and Friday (unless they decide to close early on Friday – it’s being talked about) then that’s it until January 2nd. They’re trying to set up interviews starting the 7th. At the moment the plan is I work through 1/11/19 – but then the original plan was I not come back at all so we shall see what we shall see. Healing Energy to everybody everywhere shaped to the need. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  9. Anybody know enough about twitter to know why I’m no longer getting email notifications of DMs? Started – or rather stopped – sometime yesterday or late Monday evening. Thanks.

    • Sometimes when they update the site software, various settings have to be re-done. You should go into your Twitter account and verify the notifications.

  10. Good morning meese, 50 with high of 63. Weather forecast is clear till Friday with showers after that. They’re advising that mountain travel on Monday and Tuesday may be difficult.

    Time to get started with finalizing my move today. There’s about a week left.

    • {{{basket}}} – moving is such a pain. Energy of whatever nature you might need flowing to you. moar {{{HUGS}}}

  11. good morning, 47 and cloudy in Bellingham. My house seems very quiet this morning so I’m enjoying the moment. We enjoyed our time together, but a month is a long visit…..for both of us! I’ve a feeling she is enjoying being home this morning :) After she left yesterday afternoon I collapsed on the sofa for a long nap, but when I woke up the endless December list was still waiting so I worked until late in the evening.

    I’ve just about got Christmas wrapped up and my housekeeper will be here today so I’ll have help changing all the beds. Once more busy week and the work of December will be done, yay!

    Best wishes to all.

  12. Good morning, Meesefolk; 28 when I got up this morning with an expected high of 37. It was a sunglasses morning, but that didn’t last long…it’s now completely overcast with rain moving in tomorrow. We’re not going to have a white Christmas; after our very early-in-the-season snow, we’ve barely seen any since. I miss it, but I reserve the right to complain about the snow when we finally get shovel-able amounts.

    I was thoroughly confused by the Flynn sentencing news yesterday, and from what I could find time to read on Twitter, I wasn’t alone. Did the judge get too far over his skis with his treason questions? Did he pull back to save face, or was he sending some sort of message to Team Mueller or Team Flynn? It seems likely that Flynn will get off with no jail time come March as long as he provides minimal, further help on the EDVA case, but was that help even needed or wanted? This is all well beyond my pay grade, but it sure did appear that the judge was very angry as a result of having full access to the information about Flynn’s law-breaking.

    I did like that Flynn will be restricted in his travel pending sentencing, but I look forward to finding out what his already-approved international travel is all about. If Flynn is smart, it’s nothing more than a holiday in some warmer clime, but I’m not convinced that Flynn is all that smart. I admit to a certain amount of bias though; in my days of working with a defense contractor, I worked a contract at the Naval War College and had a lot of interaction with flag officers as a result. I was generally underwhelmed; they were very good at negotiating political terrain, but I didn’t work with any that wowed me with their smarts. I’m not saying they were unintelligent, but I certainly never felt I was surrounded by the brightest and the best. Perhaps the War College wasn’t the most representative sampling?

    Time to get back to work; I’m still catching up a bit. Good day to and for all!

    • The Flynn sentencing hearing was definitely a head scratcher! I think you may have hit on it – the judge asked for the detail but in the end he did not want the detail; it was unsettling to him how deeply corrupt the Trump campaign and the people attracted to it were – and still are. I am with you on the international travel – my first impression was that he won’t be back now that he knows the judge plans on giving him jail time. Are there any countries that one one would want to live in that don’t have extradition treaties with us? I can’t imagine he wants to live in Turkey or Russia.

      Keep in mind that the people pushing back on the Flynn hearing first-pass narrative are the tRump cheerleaders from Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper. I take them with a huge grain of salt.

  13. Good morning, meeses! Thursday …

    It is 39 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 37. Rain this morning, cloudy skies all day.

    I am not one to complain about ending wars but it seems a bit hasty to just pull the troops out of Syria without consulting diplomats and military advisors. It is probably intended to distract from the border wall brouhaha – Trump is taking a lot of heat from his fans, even Ann Coulter unloaded on him over that broken promise. I predict that the plan will be quietly walked back, his base will think he pulled the troops and Fox News will simply not report on any military activities that would expose the lie. Mission Accomplished, Promise Kept.

    I am enjoying the “Paul Ryan is a craven ahole and stupid to boot” stories. That he was called “the smart one” exposes the emptiness of conservative thought and Republican policies. It. Is. All. About. More. Money. For. The. Donor. Class. Period. Good riddance.

    The government won’t shut down unless Trump vetoes the Continuing Resolution that punted the appropriation bills to February. I am not sure how the political climate for building a wall gets better – you wonder if Senate Republicans are hoping that a less-unhinged-about-the-wall President Pence will be easier to deal with.

    See all y’all later!

  14. Thursday Meese

    19 degrees here in Saugerties NY, going up to 46 with rain.
    Have a new stove being delivered this morning and am finally getting my post-op glasses today.

    Am really pleased to see this legislation passed — it’s about time!

    • In that video, the Mississippi Senator who was presiding over the vote looked like she wanted to vomit. Poor thing, having to deal with 21st century political reality: despite her best efforts, black people got the vote and the right to seek and win elected office and represent all of their constituents, not just the white ones.

    • 1000% YAY! – and way-past time! I’ll listen to that when I get home. No speaker on the work computer. This is a seriously good milestone on this very long road.

  15. Warm enough this morning that only long sleeves was fine — it’s really windy again, so there will be lots of cedar pollen. The cedar trees love sunny, windy days, that’s when the cedar count goes way up. I’m already taking both zyrtec & benadryl. Ugh. Link to a free story from Neil Gaiman. It’s a pdf, And here’s The Chieftains Bells of Dublin.

  16. Good Thor’s Day morning, Meese. The sky is overcast, with some rain expected by lunch time and a LOT of rain expected by evening. Currently in Ashburn it’s 33 F., going up to 54 F. Tomorrow is the full moon and winter solstice, but I won’t get to see the full moon: in this area I can see it only once in, well, a blue moon. So annoying.

    Not much to say this morning except to thank princesspat and DoReMI for their invaluable advice on subjects I know nothing about. Chapter 14 is proving very difficult to write, but Chapter 15 is writing itself.

    We were invited to a drinks party down the hall on Saturday night but one of the hosts is ill, so we won’t be going. However, we may have Miss Pink Cheeks with us on Saturday, so that will be good. Today I’ll be attending Virginia Beauty Spa’s Christmas party (they’re all Vietnamese, but evidently they’re in a seasonal party mood), and two friends are coming to lunch. We’ll have it at the Deli in the clubhouse building, a few steps from the building I live in.

    I dread the thought of a President Pence. Had I better order the “Econo-Wife” garment? I’m much too old to be a Handmaid.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.

    • The only thing I can see as a positive about a President Pence is that he will not draw us into a disastrous war using an impulsive tweet. He may draw us into a disastrous war but it will be using normal Republican methods of meeting with defense contractors, deciding how much money they need to make and then proceeding. Trump is like a cornered animal right now and if the Senate hawks abandon him, it may be the final thing that sets him off. I am trying to figure out who on the cabinet would vote to 25th amendment him and if Acting cabinet members get a vote. Right now the Attorney General and Interior are acting department heads.

      • I’m more afraid of Pence. He’s got the same goals but he’s also got a veneer of sanity – especially in comparison to #45 – and the “nevertrumpers” will rally to him should he ever get into the WH. He’ll defuse the movements that fear of #45’s insanity have brought together. The majority of Americans do not see #45 as a symbol of the Rs’ evil, they see him as a standalone. So once rid of him they’ll go back to status quo behavior – not voting for the majority of Dems, voting straight R ticket for the Rs. Right now, while we’ve got their attention and even some action, is our window of opportunity. Pence in the WH will slam that window shut.

  17. 36 “feels like” 27 and more sunny than not at the moment. We only got 4.3 KWHs yesterday, bringing the m-t-d to 98, but hopefully we’ll get 7 or so today. Hopefully. Cresting 100 is good. Not sure what we’ll manage to get to but 180 would require a miracle of the kind I don’t believe in. I’m not only working all day today and tomorrow, I’m soloing all day today and tomorrow. Wish my computer had speakers. sigh. I used to wrap up every last day of the year with the Muppet Christmas Carol – and email out the clip of Tiny Tim & the Cratchits singing “Bless Us All” to my co-workers in other departments. Can’t do that without speakers. Well, I could watch and I know the music well enough to hear it in my head, but that’s not the same.

    I don’t know where passing the Anti-Lynching Bill ranks on the scale of wins but it’s got to be high and it’s definitely a thing to celebrate. Step by step – Hillary said we can’t win hearts and minds and she was right. She also said we can change policy and allocation of resources and she was right about that, too. The Anti-Lynching Bill is a shift in policy, a shift in official attitude. Step by step. And as much as the white supremacists are trying to push us back, we’re still making steps in the right direction. Both freedom and justice for all. All. Period. End of sentence, end of story. Beginning of a new and maybe even glorious story. In this as in everything else we shall see what we shall see. Healing Energy to everybody everywhere. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  18. Good morning, 58, raining, and still very dark. A high wind warning is real now too. The gusting wind woke me up, but so far my old trees are staying where they belong. I’ve got a few errands to do today, and then I hope to have some quiet time to just read and think my own thoughts. Imagine that!

    Best wishes to all.

  19. Good morning, Meesefolk; 37 when I woke up with a high of 39 today. That’s about where we’re going to stay as the rain moves in later today and through Friday. I looked at the long-range forecast, and it is filled with descriptors like “partly cloudy,” “cloudy,” and “mostly cloudy.” Never a mention of a sunny day; even when I lived in Scotland, which is reputed to be so grey and gloomy, we had more sun than this. I don’t suffer from SAD thankfully, but I do long for the bright, cold, sunny days of winter.

    I had a heart-stopping moment yesterday, when my newsfeed popped up with a one-line story about a fire in the upper stories of a government building in OH yesterday. SIL works in that building, on an upper story, so I was scrambling to find out more details. Fortunately, right about when concern was verging on panic, he posted on FB that he was safe and outside at his designated rendezvous point. It was a relatively minor fire one floor above him, and the sprinkler system squelched most of it before the fire crews arrived. There appear to have been only two minor injuries, which may have been related to the walk down 36 floors rather than the fire. SIL couldn’t go into his office after the fire, because the sprinklers on his floor were activated too; I don’t know if they can go in today. It doesn’t matter to him today, since he works at an alternate site on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I hope they can get things cleaned up and dried out quickly. And given my reaction, I think I had my first real, “you haven’t lost a daughter, you’ve gained a son” moment.

    I see Individual 1 is continuing with his firehose tactics, and since I can’t keep up, I’m going to join the rest of you in celebrating the lynching as a Federal hate crime amendment. Suck on that, Cindy Hyde-Smith…!

    Good day to and for all!

  20. 50 with high of 59 and projected fog in Folsom, CA, home of the Johnny Cash Trail and the Folsom Prison (Blues). Did you know he was born in Arkansas?

    Not much to report here. Noname and Belle are still separated from each other and seem to be doing OK. I’m going to have to miss the white elephant gift exchange at work because I need to run several errands this afternoon related to my move, and at least two of them involve picking up aitchdee (and accounting for her walker)

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