Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Apr. 5th through Apr. 11th

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 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!
 
Page Three of Comments is HERE!
 

 

37 Comments

  1. Good Tuesday morning, Moosekind. It’s cloudy here, which is annoying, because it means we won’t see the Super Moon tonight. Right now it’s 53 F., on its way up to 71 F., with thunderstorms expected this afternoon. Normally I quite like rain, but not on a Moon Day.

    My laptop, a six-year-old MacBook Air, is making an ominous buzzing noise. I rely heavily on this laptop. The iPad is nothing to it, as I can’t get to the Moose Pond or do any serious work (it has the stupidest keyboard in the world, plus the ever-unpopular AutoCorrupt), on the iPad. If it goes, I’m going to be stranded.

    So that’s that. The food delivered yesterday, enough for three days, is so awful that I gave the overly sweet snacks away and plan to root through our freezer to see whether we can manage a spaghetti dinner tonight. I couldn’t eat the salmon provided yesterday, so Monty will have it for a snack. I shouldn’t complain, though, because there are those who have no food at all.

    The dog is driving me nuts, wanting attention every 15 minutes, which makes me unable to focus on any task for very long. Elder Son texted that he hoped we won’t all be dead or divorced by the time this is over. He is finding being home with Mr. Preschooler extremely trying. Elder Son himself was “very challenging” as a child, so this seems like karmic payback. I don’t envy him, poor guy.

    The news continues to be horrifying: that awful SecNav who castigated the poor captain, the fact that Bojo is in ICU (yesterday Twitter was full of tweets protesting, “Wrong one, God,”), the ridiculous, vindictive Wisconsin Rethugs who are holding the election anyway, and the horrifying death toll. My 86-year-old friend, who still lives in her own house a few miles away, was planning to take her car in for inspection this morning to comply with state law. However, our gubernator declared that all car inspections can be put off until the end of June. I emailed her the link. She doesn’t need to be leaving the house at her age. Her neighbors do her shopping and she says both her freezers are well supplied.

    That’s all from me this morning. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond.

  2. No rain here till Thursday, it’s going to hit 90 today & tomorrow so I’m going to try to get my walk in early. Got to walk today, there’s a challenge for the AIDS Ride. I’ll be posting a diary later, I have to take a video while I’m walking.

  3. It’s 66 heading for 83 and cloudy so far. It’s supposed to clear off by this afternoon. I hope so. We got 8.6 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 50. I’m covering use but not much else so far this month. As below so above seems to be the theme of 2020. I could seriously do with some sunshine. April should be too late in the year for SAD. A couple of the cats would really like to go outside and play. Not gonna happen – to many semi-ferals wander through my yard and I can’t afford a vet visit even if I had a vehicle to take them to the vet in. (Mobile Vet doesn’t do emergency calls. He directs emergencies to the vet hospital up in Springdale.) But they are being troublesome about it. Which I don’t need.

    Everybody I know is doing what they can. From correcting dangerous medical advice to making masks (or donating money for fabric for making masks) to doing food runs for neighbors to staying home when we really don’t want to we’re being this cycle’s “greatest generation”. Which is a phrase those of that generation I personally knew didn’t like. It was made up by Tom Brokaw to crap on the Boomers for not being WWII-dedicated to Vietnam. The Depression & WWII folks didn’t like what was going on, wouldn’t have volunteered for it if they’d had the choice, and – just like we are – did what was needed to be done to get everybody through it with the least amount of death and destruction (at least to our own communities – death and destruction of other communities is what war does). Well, the “Great” Depression gave both Hitler and FDR their paths to power. We have both Hitler & FDR types vying for power here right now. We shall see what we shall see.

    Holding the Good Thought, Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everyone. Gonna tour the internet & read Dee’s diary. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  4. Good morning, 47 and partly sunny in Bellingham. I was semi awake around 3:00 am Pacific time this morning, and briefly thought of joining the Moose conversation in real time, but I was to sleepy to form a coherent thought. So I worried myself back to sleep and now my day is just beginning.

    I got the worst of my desk work done yesterday and rummaged around in my bought but never sent greeting card stash looking for suitable Easter cards. So today I’ll try to get them in the mail. I miss going to Paper Dreams, the gift shop connected to our Bookstore. Sure hope the small business in Fairhaven survive this COVID shutdown. They are woven into the fabric of my life.

    Best wishes to all on what I think is Tuesday morning.

  5. Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …

    It is 43 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 63. It is foggy now and we are expecting rain throughout the day. Yesterday the thermometer on the back deck registered 80 in the sun and I was able to bake on the deck for a while.

    Wisconsin has “voted”. Well, they tried to vote anyway. Thousands of people did not get their absentee ballots and weighed going to in-person voting or staying home. Of course, it is not just the people who stood in long lines at the reduced number of polls available in the cities who were exposed but the people in their families and at their workplaces, as well. Everyone they will come in contact with over the next couple of days were standing in those lines. The spike should happen in about 3 to 4 days, likely before the results of the election are even announced. (The federal court order is giving ballots 5 working days to show up – with a 4/7 postmark – before the results can be released. As our paper called it this morning, “the results and then the lawsuits.”) The Roberts Court and the Wisconsin Supreme Court will have the the blood of any who die in this spike on their hands. The piece of human garbage Speaker of our state assembly, Robin Vos, suited up in PPE to go vote in his tiny town saying “come on out and vote, there is nothing to be afraid of.” Well, no, not when you have access to the PPE that is SUPPOSED TO GO TO MEDICAL WORKERS YOU AHOLE!! He is also the guy who, when Democrats swept the statewide races in 2018 said that people voting in cities is unfair to rural areas (yes, he said that.)

    Cable news needs to stop doing the live broadcast of tRumps lie festival and personal grievance shitshow. There is no news and his disinformation is going to get people killed. Their time would be better spent reporting on the troubling purge of Inspectors General throughout the government – the Republicans are planning to allow their president to turn the $2.2 trillion recovery into a personal slush fund to reward friends and harm enemies, personal and political, without any oversight. There may not be a functioning government left when we take over next January – assuming we can have a fair election.

    See all y’all later!

    • The Wisconsin situation is truly chilling Jan. Kudos to folks who managed to vote.

      • I was alternately energized and horrified by the images. I hope that people take care of themselves and watch for symptoms – then stay home! Once again, as in 2011, Wisconsin is the test case for the latest Republican assault on our democracy – this time, forcing people to vote in-person during a pandemic in the hope that they stay home instead and cede the election to those who have access to technology or those in rural communities where the public was duped into believing that the virus is a hoax. I will overdose on Schadenfreude if their ploy backfires – there were a lot of people who voted, many because the Republicans crashed the economy and they have no jobs to go to.

  6. Good morning, Meese. Woke up far too early this morning, got up at 5 a.m. I was interested to see what the results were in Wisconsin but as Jan says, we won’t know until next week. What happened in Wisconsin is beyond disheartening. What a crime family the Trumps are! And as for Rethugs in general, one can’t help hoping karma will whack them as they deserve.

    It’s raining at present and 57 F. “They” say it will be sunny and 78 F. this afternoon.

    Life here grows ever more restrictive. Now we aren’t even allowed to pick up our mail from the mail room down the hall. They’re going to deliver it to us. I find the idea of that EXTREMELY distasteful. I hate the idea of someone seeing my mail and where it comes from or is going.

    Another first-world problem is that the payment I sent through PayPal to my husband is not settling into his bank. Usually I write a check to him every month because it takes both our incomings to pay for this expensive place. Now, he can’t go out to deposit a check so I thought PayPal would be a good idea. The money has certainly left my account and PayPal has done its best to deposit it but if it’s not there today, Dearly will have to spend his day on the phone trying to find out where that money is!

    Yesterday evening I cooked a meal from our freezer and pantry rather than eat the deranged chicken they gave us. I feel like a nasty woman complaining about the food, but the shipment the other day was very, very odd. Well (shrug), there are many worse problems.

    Wishing everyone as good a day as possible in the circumstances. Stay safe!

    • Does your bank have an image check deposit app? I use my bank’s for personal deposits (I won’t use it for business deposits, I won’t expose my clients’ checking accounts to the Internet). Since I don’t trust security on my phone, here is how I do it (I only have one or two personal deposits a quarter, the rest are direct deposits).
      1. Install the app on my phone and authorize it.
      2. Choose “Deposit a check” from the menu.
      3. Enter the amount, take photographs of the front and back of the check when prompted and press Submit.
      4. The check shows as accepted, then a bit later, as approved at the bank (via an email).
      5. I uninstall the app from my phone.
      The whole process takes about 10 minutes and I don’t have to go in person to the bank. My bank used to have a “scan checks” feature but they cancelled it because they were too stupid to figure out how to get it to work with modern browsers (it only worked on Internet Explorer) so I am forced to go to the bank for my business deposits.

      I hope you can find the deposit! This would be a bad time to get evicted!!!

      • Good suggestions, Jan. Problem is, the money has left my account and left my PayPal account. I have a message in to PayPal but because of coronavirus it’s taking them a long time to answer.

        If I get the money back I’ll see what we can do. We don’t have to pay until after the 20th of the month.

        • Yes, the “advice” was for the next time. Once money leaves your account it is no longer under your control. For what it’s worth, I never use PayPal because I don’t trust it – some of my international software vendors use it and to purchase from them I can opt into the one time credit card payment and then PayPal does not keep my information. I have no answer for a possible alternative.

  7. Wednesday Meese. 50 degrees here in Saugerties, NY going up to 58 and sunny.

    Hubby spent about 3 hours outside yesterday in his wheelchair – elated to feel sun on his face for the first time in months. The dogs were happy he was outside too. I hooked his phone up so he could listen to his favorite program “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me”

    Puerto Rico


  8. It’s supposed to get up to 95 today, then rain tomorrow…. I think I’ll take the day off from walking, there’ll be some time tomorrow when it isn’t raining. I got some donations yesterday — I’m up over $1,000 raised, which is nice. I’ve got to fire up the work laptop so I can get in my 8 hours.

  9. It’s 66 heading for mid to upper 80s today – supposedly sunny but hasn’t got there yet – before dropping back into late winter/early spring overnight. Yesterday we got the highest for the month (March still has highest single days for the year) at 14.3 KWHs and the m-t-d is 64.7 – nowhere near on track but at least gaining a little. We shall see what today brings.

    All’s quiet here. Sort of. I’ve stopped giving even the little bit of canned food I had been to the cats. For the elders apparently that was the wrong kind of protein or something. Since then almost no barfing and not nearly as much “G.I. problems” so that’s good. But I think the little guys need it. They’re a lot younger and can handle a wider variety of proteins. The big point it, I’m not sure they’re getting enough fluids without it. So far I haven’t managed to come up with a way to give it to the Twins without it causing problems with the elders. Still pondering.

    There is so very much awful going on right now. With my friends/online family obviously – they all need money and they all have health issues. With the country in general, well, the symptoms of the disease are obvious. But most folks keep focusing on the symptoms (twitler) and not the cause. Yes, he’s evil. He’s rampaging around doing stuff that kills people and laughs about it. He likes killing people and getting away with it. That’s more fun than just stiffing them their wages or contracts. But he’s just a rabid squirrel let loose to divert attention. The mechanism of governance is being destroyed. The Courts are being packed with fascists. Those vacancies were held open by the R-controlled Senate long before twitler was put into a position to give them their fascist nominees – a list waiting for any R to get into the WH and do so. The Rs aren’t “spineless” – they’re evil. They are a deliberate and willing part of putting the KKK into AmeriKKKa. & they don’t care if the KGB is helping them do it. Which it is. The MSM is doing its job – the RW propaganda job it was consolidated to do starting in 1958 when the Birchers started buying up am radio stations. No, it’s not being the “4th Estate” that speaks truth to power. That’s not what it was engineered to do. From the point the RW got enough “market share” to run opposing views out of business – 1980 – MSM has been Goebbels wet dream. & my voice “crying in the wilderness” is just noise. Molly Ivins had the voice and range and couldn’t stop it. I seriously do not know if we have one last chance to stop this – this year – or whether we lost it when we didn’t manage to take the Senate as well as the House in 2018. But we gotta/gonna try.

    Lots of Good Thoughts. Lots of prayers/invocations. Lots of Channeling Healing/Helping Energy. Candle magic. Whatever Tradition good people might have. We need the “massed might” of Good Will to feed the actions required to get us out of this. I think, I hope, each of our little bits will add up to enough. Aji’s doing butterflies this week – hope and promise. Such fragile beings and yet they have the determination and the endurance to migrate thousands of miles. We are also fragile beings. We also have determination and endurance. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  10. Good morning, 50 and sunny in Bellingham. Thanks to a restless night my early morning “nap” has my day off to a very late start. I had forgotten the tree service was coming to trim the hedges today, so that was a rush to throw on some clothes and answer the door. RonK is walking on some steep trails in the woods above Fairhaven Park, and Ava is bored and sad about the Easter Bunny needing a mask this year.

    Our son is continuing to feel better over all, but he still has breathing issues on some days. Today is a good day and that makes me feel very grateful. Best wishes to all.

  11. Good morning, meeses! Thursday …

    It is 37 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 45. Sunny this morning then flurries this afternoon.

    I am running behind so I can’t stop for anything more than a quick check-in – I hope everyone has a good day!

    See all y’all later!

  12. Thursday Meese. 51 going up to 57 in the Catskills

    In case people forget – Barack Obama warning

    Puerto Rico

  13. Thunderstorms later today, maybe even hail. Got to get my walk in before that. Working from home takes a lot out of me — I feel like I have to be working every moment, when that’s not the case at the office. Got a webinar on self care this afternoon, I should pay attention to that.

  14. It’s 53 and still sunny although the widget says clouds will be moving in by early afternoon – the most productive time of the day. sigh. There’s a biting wind blowing though. We’re heading back into late winter for the next 10 days. Overnights in the 30s and even a possibility of snow next week. Springtime.

    We’re not only gonna hit the millions dead that deliberate federal inaction already has in train, but we won’t know how many millions dead because the feds are stopping what diddly testing (relative to the population) they were doing as of tomorrow. Meanwhile the number of cases hasn’t anywhere near spiked yet – that’s probably another week off. IF we manage to continue/increase social distancing. If not, only the gods know how long and how many. And this round of genocide looks like it’s going to exterminate – and I’m using that word deliberately – at least one more Native tribe and probably more. Twitler and the Rs don’t have to “de-list” tribes that are extinct to get out of even a nominal push at fulfilling treaty rights. Zuni Pueblo is tiny – just under 700 living there – and already has 31 confirmed cases. Almost 1/20 of their population. San Felipe Pueblo is also being hit hard. The Navajo Nation are in trouble. They’ve got a bigger population base but they’re worried about the rate of infection. This is just evil. Perpetrated by my country in my name against people I honor, admire, respect, & have been at least trying to ally with. & I don’t even have a Dem rep I can call to do something – all mine are instigators of the evil.

    Of those on my “personal list” – well, we’re all breathing. Upset. Heart-sick. But breathing. At this point I guess we count that good. Sort of. Healing/Helping Energy to everybody. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  15. Good Thursday morning, Moosekind. The overcast at 7 a.m. has given way to pale blueness, wispy white clouds trailing across the sky like floating bits of pack ice, and sunlight. At the moment we have 52 F., going up to 68 F. It’s supposed to be very blustery today, so I may take my walk this morning.

    After trying for three days, I was finally able to get a delivery slot from Whole Foods at 8 p.m. last night. No bread, no blackberries, no half-gallon of milk, but perhaps our son can bring them this weekend.

    The only good thing about lockdown (now we’re not even allowed to fetch our own mail) is that one need not wear a bra. It is so very, very agreeable to observe that one’s mammary glands have moved from their accustomed place around my waist all the way up to the middle of my chest, where they belong. (They said this would happen as soon as artificial support was withdrawn.) One really feels one deserves some sort of prize.

    So Linda Tripp has jossed it. In the free-living days of yesteryear my friend and I would occasionally drive to Middleburg for lunch at the Red Fox Tavern and wander down the main street after lunch. Linda and spouse ran a Christmas shop there, so my friend and I always went in for a look around. (We never saw her.) I used to wonder why there were so many objects of German origin for sale and after reading her obit in the WaPo, now I know: her mother was German.

    The great PayPal debacle has been resolved! It turned out that Dearly Beloved, unused to the ways of PayPal, was checking his bank account for the money rather than his PayPal account. When I told him to check PP, the money was sitting right there. He asked for it to be transferred to his checking account so it might be there as early as today. Alles ist gut!

    Speaking of checking accounts, I finally started the Death Papers yesterday. Trust me, entering the numbers of savings accounts and checking accounts in the Putting Things in Order book is BEYOND tedious! And I’ve only entered Dearly’s accounts so far! Now I have to do mine. I’m like a squirrel—I have an account for Christmas presents, a savings account for each grandchild so in their sophomore year of high school they can go on the foreign language field trip with their classmates, an Embarassment Account (for a transfusion to the checking account when it gets too low), and a Frivolity Account for nails and hair. As I can’t get my nails or hair done at the moment, the local food bank is going to benefit from that one.

    So that’s all from me on this sunny day. Hope everyone has a decent day, and that today’s grim statistics are less grim, and that bernie goes home to Vermont to buy his fourth house and take up knitting. Or perhaps he’ll take up counting, since he has $33 million sitting in his bank account.

    Alors, I depart!

  16. Good morning, 44 and mostly sunny. Trimming the laurel hedge completely by hand isn’t feasible anymore so we decided to trim it before new growth starts and just do the individual cuts for the most visible areas and a gas powered hedge trimmer for the rest. To my relief it looks just fine and when it starts growing all the machine clips will be covered with new leaves. It was faster and easier for the Marcus, but it still took him and his helper about 6 hrs. The hedge is a focal point of the garden and we can no longer prune it ourselves so I really appreciate his careful work. They will be back today to trim the arborvitae hedge by the veggie garden.

    Our grand girls were restless yesterday so they kept the family phone chat busy with photos and a trivia game. Then last night they drove by with cake for us and our son. It was nice to visit with them from the porch.

    I’ve finally found the fabrics I want to use for masks for the family so today I’ll try to get some sewn. I remain hesitant about fabric masks, but if everyone is careful re washing and handling them it should be ok.

    Best wishes to all on this sunshiny day.

    • {{{princesspat}}} heaven knows there’s lots of misinformation out there but the best I can think/find says if your fabric is thick enough (or your mask has enough layers) to block light then it’s just a little less effective than a surgical mask (although not an N95 of course). Your garden sounds soothing. Healing/Helping Energy. moar {{{HUGS}}} bf

    • I am not handy at all – I ordered some masks and expect them to arrive in February 2021.

  17. Good morning, meeses! Friday …

    It is 30 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 48. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast. Yesterday we had a bizarre weather day that culminated in a sun blizzard in the evening during the dog’s walk!

    I can’t bear to watch the news as it is “revealed” that a political party that hates government, can’t run government programs. JHC!! Also, since only stupid people and fraudsters want to work in a Trump Administration, why is it shocking that there is so much self-dealing and incompetence!!?? Congress authorized billions in payments to workers and families and loan guarantees to small businesses – no cash is flowing and 10 million people have no paychecks as a pandemic is sweeping the country. The Florida governor is allowed to say that no one under 25 got the virus and no one fact checks him. tRump is being allowed to talk about opening up “parts of the country” and people are not laughing him off the podium. When we have a science-based administration again, we need to criminally charge everyone in a position of power who lied to the American people and led them to their unnecessary deaths. And while we are taking out the trash, let’s impeach the 5 men on the Supreme Court who refused to delay a vote in the middle of a deadly virus outbreak.

    I can’t concentrate on anything for more than about an hour and it is putting me so far behind on projects that it is stressing me out. My haircut kit came yesterday and maybe a trim will improve my disposition!

    See all y’all later!!

    • Stress trashing focus causing stress for the trashed focus – a really unhelpful feedback loop. Sending “Good Vibes” for disrupting that circle/cycle! {{{HUGS}}}

  18. Puerto Rico

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