Welcome to The Moose Pond! The Welcomings posts give the Moose, old and new, a place to visit and share words about the weather, life, the world at large and the small parts of Moosylvania that we each inhabit.
Welcomings will be posted at the start of each week (usually Saturday night with a Sunday date). To find the posts, just bookmark this link and Voila! (which is Moose for “I found everyone!!”).
The format is simple: each day, the first moose to arrive on-line will post a comment welcoming the new day and complaining (or bragging!) about their weather. Or mentioning an interesting or thought provoking news item. Or simply checking in.
So … what’s going on in your part of Moosylvania?
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NOTE: The comments page will 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”, Motley Meese! The week begins …
Morning low of 43 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 52. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Sunday Meese. 33 going up to 64 in Saugerties NY.
Watched “One World: Together At Home Special to Celebrate COVID-19 Workers” event yesterday
Amazing effort from around the world. So many outstanding moments …
The world thumbed its nose at Donald Trump and all the deniers
Puerto Rico
I listened to the concert last night on CBC while sewing masks. It was nice to hear and to feel moments of our shared humanity.
Got in a good walk yesterday, it was short so I could get home to hear the result of the Saturday Song Write. Yes, I know I can listen to something on Instagram while I’m outside, but I wanted to be able to really hear it. Today’s walk has to end before 2 so I can watch the U2 concert (not a new one, they are streaming one they filmed in Sydney in 1993). It is so much fun watching along with other fans on Twitter when they did this a couple of weeks ago, for Adam’s birthday. A real relief from reality.
Good Sunday morning, Meese. It’s a spectacularly lovely dayin Ashburn, with a current temperature of 43 F. It’ll climb to 64 F. during the day and become cloudy.
Woke up at 4:30, couldn’t go back to sleep, so got up at 5:30. After breakfast I’m going back to the old pit. The food they gave us yesterday is absolutely awful. Thank Goddess I had asked our Fetch shopper to buy some frozen dinners. We were able to have spaghetti with salad. Today I’m going to make slow cooker beef stew because we both want something decent to eat. Despite our strident requests on the order form for NO SALMON, we received three salmon dinners. Tomorrow I’m going to email the head of Dining Services.
Soon I’ll take up the Misguided Treats to the contribution sack on the fifth floor. Whoever decided that old people like junk food? We don’t.
Well, enough griping, I realize it’s very first-world. Nothing intelligent to say this morning beyond professing ongoing horror at the doings of Turnip and his minions.
Wishing all a nice quiet Sunday.
I’m spending my Sunday at home celebrating jazz
Well Meeses, start of a new week. It’s 51 heading for 61 and dark enough I’ve got the lamp on. Light rain and rumbly thunder too. Which actually I like. After dark as a sleep enhancer. Yesterday the sun was glorious. We generated right at 20 KWHs – for the first time since last August (and we only got that much 2 days last August – August is about when this really cloudy cycle started). Anyway the m-t-d is 218.5 and quite possibly won’t make it to 220 today. sigh.
I haven’t done the counters or the floors yet. I’m gonna have to turn on lights to see well enough to do that. The dark saps my energy. I’ll get to it later. It’s not like it’s gonna do anything weird in the interim. I’ll wander the internets for a bit. Visit Dee’s diary and stuff. See if it lightens up a little. This dark cycle in the weather…as above, so below. But we will do what we can find to do and weather both as best we can.
Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody for their shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 52 and mostly cloudy in Bellingham. We’re hosting a family birthday party for our son today via zoom so I hope it doesn’t rain. Younger son and his family can be on the upper patio, Ron and I on the lower patio, the birthday son and dogs can carefully mingle, and we’ll be iPad connected with the rest of the family. I’ll pre slice the cake and have snacks in individual bowls so I hope we’ll be safe. I’m extremely tired of COVID and all the worry that comes with it, but I know it’s not over yet. So I’ll keep my Clorox wipes and Lysol spray close by.
Time for coffee and to bake a chocolate cake. Best wishes to all on this Sunday morning.
Goodness, that chocolate cake sounds delicious! Hope the birthday party goes well!
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is 36 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 59. April showers expected this afternoon then :::stares at weather widget in dismay::: snow overnight.
I know you will find this shocking but the Liberate America “protests” appear to be astroturfed! I was looking at the very fancy coordinated signs from the Brookfield Wisconsin rally (a tony suburb in blood red Waukesha County) and quite a few do not appear to be handmade and bear a remarkable resemblance to each other. And our press fails again – the news report said “many waving flags” but they fail to mention that some of those flags were Confederate flags, a symbol of white supremacy and racism – the modern Republican Party’s call to arms (along with the Gadsden flag, a literal call to arms). The “waving flags” would make one think that it was a patriotic rally but in Wisconsin, a state that sided with the Union in the Civil War, a Confederate flag is a symbol of the derangement rural and exurban whites descended into when America (but not their America) elected a black man president. It will always come back to that, always, until they become a minority not just in number but in power.
It appears that there may be a deal to get more federal money to small businesses and hospitals. The hitch is the money that Democrats want for the states – tRump wants to hold power over the states so he can use federal money as a cudgel to get them to reopen on his schedule, not the schedule appropriate for each state and based on scientific data. We may have no choice but to skip the state aid and add it later because the small businesses really need this cash now. We have some leverage but Nancy Pelosi knows when she has gotten all she can and won’t sacrifice the good on the altar of the perfect.
I am definitely not going to “keep” online/pickup shopping after the pandemic is over. It helps cut down on the total amount of time spent in a grocery store each week but there are too many out-of-stock items for it to be relied on. As a supplement it is fine and we will use it to stock up on things we can’t e without – with the understanding that we are buying for 10 days out, not for the upcoming week.
I have to organize my to-do list – something I should have done on Saturday but I simply ran out of energy and enthusiasm. New day, trying again!
See all y’all later!
Going to look for those pics with confederate flags Jan. Horrible.
Found this:
Waving a Confederate flag at a rally in a northern state signifies only one thing – racism and white supremacy. One could make a claim that waving a Confederate flag in Mississippi was “honoring their Southern history” but in a state where over 11,000 died to preserve the Union during the Civil War it means only one thing. When Donald Trump won the electoral college, young people at my daughter’s high school drove their pickup trucks through the parking lot screaming and waving Confederate flags. They were celebrating “reclaiming” their white-right to power.
Monday Meese. 44 here in Saugerties NY going up to 56.
Puerto Rico
(I wish Jose Andres was in charge of all our government food distribution)
I had a terrible night’s sleep, so the very first thing I did was get in a 2 mile walk. Going to walk again later, got to make sure I’m tired enough to sleep tonight. And now my work laptop won’t connect. So wow, what a Monday.
{{{anotherdemocrat}}} – must be something in the air. I had a lousy night’s sleep too. Probably better than yours – about 3 hours, not in a row – but still lousy. Hope you get your laptop connected. Healing Energy & more {{{HUGS}}}
It is at the very end of the waning moon cycle so the last bit of nastiness is getting sucked into that tiny sliver so it can be snuffed out. Thursday is a new moon – maybe we will sleep better without all that noise. :)
We will all hope! {{{HUGS}}}
Rotten start to the day, another! Still, good for you, getting a 2-mile walk in. Hope you can walk this afternoon.
I got in a 2nd walk – 1.5 miles. Still had to log out from work at 3:30, I just couldn’t hold my head up any longer. Going to try to stay out of bed until it’s dark. For now, I’m just clearing out the dvr.
It’s 47 heading for 73 and sunny at the moment. The widget said it would be foggy this morning but if it was, that was just after sunrise before I got dressed and moving around to notice. Yesterday the sun came out mid afternoon. We got 9 KWHs bringing the m-t-d to 228. If we have a good sunshine day it’ll be over 245 by day’s end. We shall see what we shall see.
I wish people would quit called twitler incompetent and a failure. When it’s deliberate it is evil, but it’s neither incompetence or failure. When folks start calling Dur Fuhrer and The Godfather incompetent failures maybe I’ll let the other ride. This is deliberate. This is fascism. Genocide. Fraud. Protection Racket. Not that I think he planned any of it, I don’t. The Cabal that threw the rabid squirrel in front of the TV camera did. But that rabid squirrel is out there deliberately biting everyone he can get to and the Cabal is deliberately profiting from it. They are evil and I hope we can stop them. But we won’t as long as we keep fighting the wrong target and not giving credit for just how dangerous the targets are. (As to folks who keep insisting Dems in general and Pelosi in particular “do something” about twitler, just what do they think we can do?)
But so far it’s a lovely day and I’m gonna do my best to enjoy it. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
I like the rabid squirrel analogy, bfitz! Spot on!
The other day I got a very-much surprise phone call from Deb Haaland thanking me for my consistent support and while I was thanking her for her work in the House I used that phrase. She laughed & said she’d never heard him called that before. LOL. {{{HUGS}}}
This is infuriating: “As to folks who keep insisting Dems in general and Pelosi in particular ‘do something’ about twitler, just what do they think we can do?”
The best we can do is negotiate the least awful deal with the Republicans and vote for that. We have no power except to deny and it won’t always work – the other side has the power of the veto and unless a bill includes gifts and graft for tRump to dole out and tax cuts for Republican donors, it will not pass. The Republicans don’t care if no help is passed and working people and those on the margins are hurt – they really don’t. And because they know that we do care, they will always have that ace in the hole.
Really! And it’s not just the Rs don’t care if ordinary people get help, they don’t want ordinary people to get help. And that’s why our team has had to give the em effers the whole bakery in order to get a few loaves of bread for ordinary people and a crumb or two for the neediest.
Good morning, 45 and partly sunny in Bellingham. Our birthday gathering via Zoom was disorganized fun yesterday, but we need to learn to manage the technology better so there’s less confusion. Our old router gave a strong signal to the patio area, but the new one doesn’t. Fortunately I found and charged the MiFi device, but some people could connect and others couldn’t, etc. Our daughter, who teaches her university classes via Zoom now was very patient.
It was also a good trial run for mask wearing. The ladies version fit everyone well and was comfortable to wear, but the men’s need to be larger. And some ears support elastic bands better than others. It’s impossible to buy elastic now, so I’m going to do the extra sewing and make fabric ties and each person can adjust the fit themselves. I remain skeptical of how well fabric masks protect from the dreaded virus, but wearing them in public keeps us legal and socially appropriate so I’ll keep sewing.
Best wishes to all on this quiet Monday morning.
Good afternoon, Moosekind! We’re having yet another cloudy day in Ashburn. Right now it’s 59 F., going up to 63 F. later. Tomorrow it will rain, so they say.
Saturday and Sunday I had the “lost weekend.” It was like the jet lag you get when you fly home from the Antipodes. I can deal with one night of not enough sleep, but not two consecutive nights.
Last night I took Tylenol PM and got a straight 8! I’m beginning to understand why the late Michael Jackson was so desperate for sleep that he allowed himself to be given a life-ending anesthetic. I’m also beginning to understand why some old people say, “It’s not worth living any more, I’d just as soon joss it.”
Without sleep I can’t do anything. I can prepare meals and eat them, but I can’t do anything else. Considering how much I have to do, that is very depressing. Even though I tried to make up the lost sleep by having a nap, I couldn’t go off to sleep either morning or afternoon. However, with the mild weather today I may go for a walk later on.
So that’s my first-world problem for Monday. Apologies for being boring. Hope everyone’s having a decent day.
It is not boring to know that you are okay! I was concerned about you when I did not hear from you by noon when I shut down my computer so I was glad to see this check-in. I am sleeping some but it doesn’t feel like “good” sleep. It is probably somewhat from inactivity, the neighborhood feels too busy for long walks and I am certainly stressed and depressed by what is happening. I worry for my daughter: so much is up in the air – no one is sure if in-person university classes will resume in the fall and whether or not there will be summer jobs of any sort. I should probably stop worrying – the worry won’t help!
I hope you can get some sleep. I am not a doctor and don’t understand completely the long-term effects of Tylenol PM but you need to sleep. Which is worse?
Thanks, Jan! I try not to use Tylenol PM very often. I do like having a liver!
Sleeplessness may be due to stress. Basically, when I can’t go to sleep it’s because I think of everything I ought to be doing and am not doing, and then it progresses to every bad thing I’ve ever done in my life, and from thence to all my failures.
When I wake up too early, it’s owing to the dear old bladder, which constantly makes me madder. Once awake enough to do what I need to do, there is NO going back to sleep!
Still, my problems are very small beer compared to what others are enduring.
If the Tylenol PM works consistently you might try using it for say a week then 1/2 strength for a week and see if you can get enough good sleep in a row to break up this cycle. (I do hear ya about the liver damage. It’s a concern of mine, too.) Persistent lack of sleep impacts other health areas & that is not a first world problem. Healing Energy. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …
It is 36 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 46. Sunny skies are in the forecast. The expected storm yesterday evening looked like a fierce line coming in but broke up and gave us a two minute lashing downpour. No snow that I could see this morning. Tomorrow, Earth Day, they expect highs in the mid-60s.
I can’t bear to watch the news now of states opening up in the foolish belief that the economy will magically return to normal if you just let businesses open and ignore that there is a deadly disease making the rounds that will sicken and kill thousands. The only boom will be in hospital admissions and deaths. Does South Carolina really think that tourists will jump on planes and flock to their resorts? Does Georgia really think that opening up gyms, bowling alleys, hair salons, restaurants and movie theaters will result in all the stay-at-home people coming out en masse and ignoring the science that says that they are not safe? Will they fire workers who refuse to put themselves in danger for their boss’ bottom line? If I were a public-facing business owner, I would not open up. If I were a business owner who had employees who were working from home because I cared about them and wanted them to be safe and who then decided to go to a bowling alley, I would fire them and kick them off their health insurance. Okay, I couldn’t do that but I would certainly want to! All the work – all this work and suffering to stay out of harm’s way – is being negated by the anti-science Republican death cult. Our state will stay shuttered, we have a plan in place (14 days with declining cases) and a governor who is willing to fight to keep us safe.
A bunch of little crises arrived by way of email yesterday afternoon so I need to get to them before people start work.
See all y’all later!
My goddaughter in Georgia is livid about her ass of a Gov. Sadly a lot of people are going to die or get very sick as a result of this criminal stupidity.
A poll said that 87% of Americans are fine with the lockdown. I am not sure who Governor Doodiehead thinks is going to go to these newly opened businesses.
Tuesday Meese. 37 going up to 55 in the Catskills.
I’m playing Nina Simone today.
Puerto Rico
Got in 2 walks yesterday — 2 miles in the early morning & 1.5 in the afternoon. And I actually slept last night, yay! It is warm & humid already, 68 degrees at the crack of dawn, but I’ve got to be sure to get that walk in today. And fire up the work laptop, got to get in more than 8 hours today, unless I want to use sick leave to cover having to stop yesterday when I couldn’t concentrate any more in the afternoon.
YAY!!! for good sleep. Healing Energy. & {{{HUGS}}}
Good Tuesday morning, Meese! It was lovely and clear when I took the dog out to the courtyard at five-bloody-thirty this morning, but now it’s clouding up. We’ve been promised a severe storm with hail starting at noon, so I’m hurrying to check in before starting my walk at 10 a.m. Currently it’s 53 F., on its way up to 64 F, with a 70 percent chance of rain. Also, the winds will occasionally gust to 40 mph. UGH!
The Chief Raging Granny, who organizes all the anti-NRA vigils (until lockdown hit) evidently thinks I’m more technologically ept than I actually am. She wanted me to set up a Zoom meeting room so we can have a book club. I tried to tell her that Witches don’t have much luck with technology (some Witches are super at it, others are rather hopeless), but she didn’t care. So I duly signed up, downloaded and installed it, and invited a group of women that we think would enjoy reading and discussing a book she just finished reading. It’s about a woman who was adopted and brought up by Jewish parents. However, when she started tracing her roots through Ancestry.com, she discovered her birth father was Christian and felt shattered. I haven’t read it yet.
Not much news except that my sweet tooth is getting out of hand. Every day I tell myself I’m going to get this or that done, and every day what I basically do is indulge myself by reading romances and eating chocolate! Duhhh…
I perked up at 10 p.m. last night when rumors started circulating of Kim Wrong ‘Un’s imminent demise, but no one really knows anything. My Goddess, the number of people he’s had murdered, and the hideous manner of their deaths, boggles the mind!
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and hoping the news won’t be too bad today.
It’s 50 heading for 75 and mostly sunny today according to the widget. I like that. (My son brought me milk last night – and a 3-qt container of ice cream because things are starting to warm up. LOL) We got 19.7 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 247 – another 5 days of that will at least get us higher than the 335 the 2.5K system did in April of ’15. At least 6 days of it will get us out of last place for the 4K system. We shall see what we shall see. If “as above so below ” we moved into a time when Evil took over our world last August. One more thing we shall see is if we can overthrow it – or at least push it back – and make the “as below so above” part work to bring back our sunshine. We were supposed to have a “weather alert scary” thunderstorm last night. Got some pleasant rumbly thunder around 8 pm then it broke up and moved off. Works for me.
When I was a little kid and not just seatbelt but child seat laws hadn’t been thought of much less implemented sometimes Daddy would let me sit on his lap while he was driving and “drive the car”. Our nation currently is being driven by a genocidal cabal who has a nasty little kid in their lap pretending to drive – and the cabal is totally delighted to have every genocidal action they are doing be blamed on the nasty little kid. Of course the cabal owns 90% MSM and has it reported that way. But they must be snickering to themselves practically nonstop that the “libs” believe it and are putting all their/our efforts into getting the nasty little kid off the cabal’s lap rather than stopping the cabal itself. sigh.
I think my laptop is dead. I hadn’t plugged it in since last June when Basket and I went to the Scott Joplin Festival together. This morning I got it out and plugged it in – my desktop’s required updates reminded me I’d best update the laptop too – and nada. The charging block is warm but on the laptop itself no light to indicate anything is coming in, much less it logging me in when I open it as it should. sigh. Now is not the time to be taking it anywhere to be looked at. And the warranty is up next month. double sigh.
But the sun is shining and in another couple of hours or so it will be warm enough to open up the house and air it out a bit. The cats will love that. Open windows are their fave. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody to their shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 52 and mostly cloudy. The old maple trees are magically growing leaves overnight. I love seeing the fresh light green color against the grey morning sky. Fortunately I can see the garden from my sewing room windows because that’s where I’ll be today. I managed to do the mask math yesterday and made a better fitting pattern for the men’s version so now I can just make them. I think I’ll focus on each family today and get one set in the mail. I need some completion!
I’m missing my grand kids this morning. We talk and text and I see Emma and Ava but we keep our distance. They would love to be sewing masks with me and it would be a perfect “learn to sew” project. If covid house arrest continues all summer maybe I can set up sewing stations on the patio :)
Best wishes to all on this sleepy quiet morning.
{{{princesspat}}} I know masks are better but I can’t wear them. And sewing is seriously not my strong point. 😁 So a friend sent me a piece of that iron-on facing to “strengthen” the bandanas I’ve been using on the rare occasions I go out. Yesterday I made up 4 which should be enough for me. You are doing good work in the world!
I hear ya on missing your grandkids. Not being able to hug my son is, well, not a good feeling. But at least we can talk to each other a bit and actually see each other while we do it when he brings me milk and such. I hope you can set up those sewing stations on the patio or something like that. Healing Energy to you/your family. moar {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, meeses! Wednesday, Earth Day 2020 …
It is 34 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 59. Rainy all day, thunderstorms tonight.
I am going to give a deep reading of the news a hard pass today to see if it helps my demeanor. I am glad that Congress and the Republican Party’s president negotiated another tranche of money for the Small Business Loan program and that Democrats got their set asides for underserved communities and money for the SBA disaster fund and also got new money for hospitals and testing. It is too bad that they couldn’t get help for the states – the Trump administration wants to be able to force states to open up and needs to be able to coerce them. Now he has his attorney general threatening the governors who dare to exercise their judgments regarding the health crisis that faces their citizens! tRump should be happy that his Southern states have created a new coalition – I think the Dixie Death Compact would be an appropriate name – with Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi banding together to kill as many of their citizens as possible and reel in any visitors who are stupid enough to go there. I hope we have a way to trace them and force them to quarantine when they come back home to any Stay-At-Home state.
In our state, the Republican legislature demanded that the Wisconsin Supreme Court skip all the lower courts and directly take up their lawsuit wresting control for managing public health crises from the governor and vesting it in the two men who run the Republican legislature. If the Supreme Court does that, it will upend the state constitution and cement their legacy as the Coronavirus Death Court. If the legislature and their court minions override the governor, I hope we publicize and shun any businesses who open before public health experts say it is safe.
The Canadian killer was angry at his ex-girlfriend and slaughtered 18 people. Evergreen.
See all y’all later!