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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– Page One of Comments is HERE!
– Page Two of Comments is HERE!
– Page Three of Comments is HERE!
Good morning, meeses! Saturday …
It is 39 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 57. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast.
I read the coverage of the Republican Death Cult rally at the Wisconsin State Capitol yesterday and the only thing I can say to those who attended is “be careful what you wish for.” One of the headlines was a quote from one of the attendees that “we have the right to make our own decisions” which is both idiotic and a lie. You can’t decide, for example, that you are going to drive 100 miles an hour on the highways – there are rules that are put in place for public safety and when one person breaks them, they put everyone in danger. As expected, the fact that Governor Tony Evers put Stay At Home orders in place quickly also flattened our curve quickly. Now, those screaming about opening things up are pointing to the smaller number of infections and the fewer deaths, not as an example that SAH works but as an example that the original forecasts were lies. :::sigh::: I hope that the names and faces of those who chose to create a disease vector are noted so that people can avoid them for the next two weeks and that they only infect each other and people who are as ignorant as they are. If I were an employer whose employees showed up at the rally, I would think long and hard about letting them back in my workplace.
I decided against a new Fighting Back post and just freshened up the comments with the Weekly Democratic Party Address by Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Nancy Pelosi’s press conference from yesterday. I like that “Democrats will always use truth as our guide” is at the top of our front page.
I let myself sleep in and, while I woke at my regular time because of habit, I was able to turn over and get another hour and a half of sleep. Now I need to see if that translates into a more energized day. I tend to start my Saturdays with good intentions for project work and then they end up as “well, I still have Sunday before the work week begins.” Of course, then Sunday becomes twice as busy because I have scheduled maintenance on client’s networks that can’t be delayed. So I am going to try to get at least one nagging project done before I run out of steam.
See all y’all later!
Today would have been the AIDS Ride. There’s an online workout scheduled for later & other virtual activities. I’m going to e-mail my donors, and once my morning brain fog clears, I’ll put up a diary — maybe with ;pictures from past rides or something. Still have allergies, so brain is taking a while to get going. Music for today: Invisible. Not just because of the words, but because they’ve always been involved in fighting AIDS & gave all the profits from this song for that cause.
There is no them
There’s only us
There’s only us
There is no them
There is no them
There’s only you
There’s only me
There is no them
{{{anotherdemocrat}}} – I know that after all these years of doing it and never missing any that not having the Ride today is a real jolt. And a real sacrifice most folks won’t understand. But all the folks who’ve been in the AIDS community (or “friends” like myself) since the RR years will. Healing Energy. moar {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, Meese, and for once it’s a sunny Saturday. We have weak sunlight and blue skies smeared with white cloud. Currently the temperature is 46 F., on its way up to 66 F. We’ll have to get our walks in this morning because this afternoon it’ll be cloudy. We have a week of highs in the 60s with cloudy skies coming up.
Yesterday I was furious because during the daily COVID-19 briefing given by the Executive Director every day at 4 p.m. on the in-house TV channel, he proudly showed a video clip that had appeared on the Fox National News on Thursday night. FOX NEWS! It showed people in a hallway singing “Sweet Caroline” off-key. (This is supposed to be a daily activity for the people here, not that most of us bother any more.)
I have always suspected this man since he joined the community 18 months ago because his bio said he had a son at Liberty University. No one but a RWNJ would send a child to that den of stupidity. When I mentioned this to a good Democrat I encountered during my walk yesterday, she said she’d heard a rumor that this ED was involved in the Trump campaign.
If you didn’t know this about him you’d think he was a nice, personable man who is eager to keep us all safe from the disease. I just can’t have warm feelings toward him now that I know what I know. I’m glad that the majority of people here are Democrats. It would be too depressing to live in a place full of Rethugs.
The managing editor of the quarterly to whom I pitched the idea of an article titled “Life After Lockdown” expressed a marked lack of enthusiasm for the idea. This, of course, makes me more determined than ever to write it. If he rejects the completed article, that’s okay—there are at least two other places I can publish it. He seems to think by the time the summer issue comes out, All This will be behind us.
I most emphatically do not think so. I’ve read about concentration camps in WWII. The people who were likely to survive (if they survived the initial “selection”) were the people who recognized their new, horrible reality and adjusted their attitudes accordingly. The ones who didn’t survive were those who couldn’t understand that their old “reality” was dead. They kept wanting their former lives back.
Well, on that cheery note, I’ll wish everyone a good day. Kamala is supposed to be on MSNBC with Joy Reid this morning at 10, which means I need to hurry up with morning chores so I can watch it.
the picture on the bottom of Ali Velshi’s show says 11 am eastern
You’re right, another. I was misinformed. We did watch her and she was great!
This guy is nuts: “He seems to think by the time the summer issue comes out, All This will be behind us.” It will be a year before we can even approach normalness – we need to be steeled for a re-infection in September when schools reopen too soon.
I will add my opinion about your questioning your decision to sell your house and move to a retirement/assisted living/nursing home community here because we broke to a new comments page and I am not sure how many people go back a page to read. I have been thinking about it since I saw it posted yesterday. I think you made the right decision – you really do not want a house to maintain and selling when you did will turn out to be wise. Would you want to be selling a house right now? Would you want your children to be trying to sell or maintain a house right now if either you or Dearly Beloved ended up hospitalized or in long-term care? There will always be things that tug at you (“this was better when I had a house”) but if you have to move somewhere moving where there are things in place for meals and shopping and health care seems like a very good idea. I consider my house to be an albatross around my neck, a burden that I will have to unload before I can feel as though I can begin the next phase of retirement. I am glad right now that I have a house because I can’t imagine living in an apartment during the quarantine and I think that the events of the past few months have shown that until my daughter finishes college, I need to have a place where she could do remote learning if she needs to – an apartment would not have worked (we have a basement rec room here). I had originally thought I would put the house on the market this year but got lazy about emptying it out and now, of course, that is impossible. There will be no garage sales, no place to recycle household items, no way to gauge the value of my house – and the best time to sell – in a market where there may be 25% unemployment. So maybe I gained a little time but I need to turn it into a real action plan for when things open up again.
And yes no one sends their child to Liberty University unless they are a Republican and stupid. At least now you know who to avoid!
It’s 54 heading for 68 and cloudy at the moment although we’ve had a few bits of sunlight sneak through here and there. The clouds are supposed to clear off before noon and give us a sunny rest of the day which would be nice. Yesterday we got 12 KWHs and the m-t-d is 295.6 so we’ll get over 300 by the end of the day. Hopefully enough over 300 that we get over 335 by the end of the month.
I’ve got my “grow boxes” going. The tomato takes one all by itself. The other (the one 1/2 full of plastic containers I can’t recycle and wouldn’t throw away) has, presupposing they come up, 8 lettuces and 20 green bean plants. The nice thing about grow boxes is they’re moveable. When the storm warning came just after dark, I went out and pulled the boxes far enough back on the carport they wouldn’t get washed out or hailed on. This morning I pushed them back out onto the edge of the carport where they can get the afternoon sun. Now it’s just waiting for stuff to grow. Since I wasn’t able to find my GF flour mix I’m doing corn-cheese muffins (they’re in the oven right now) for the next week of breakfast and mid-morning coffee. I’ve found a DIY recipe for a GF flour blend that doesn’t rely on rice flour and I’m going to try it. Once my son’s brought me the ingredients. We shall see what we shall see – but it would be ironic if it was less expensive and worked better. 😁
I’ll go check out the Fighting Back updates and other internet stuff as soon as I get the muffins out. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 58 and raining in Bellingham. I’m finally closing in on my mask sewing project, yay! I’ll mail a box to Oregon today, and our son will deliver the goods to our Edmunds family on Wednesday. He is going to be part of a COVID plasma study at the University of Wa Medical School so perhaps some greater good will come from his misery. I know that my masks are not a medically safe deterrent, but they will lift morale and that matters too. However my morale will life when I’m finally done!
Diana, thank you for writing about your experiences with moving and living as you are now. You have helped me and Ronk have much more informed discussions re what we should do next. COVID confinement is increasingly difficult for Ron and having the luxury of a garden and the various rooms of this house is helping him cope. The stairs are not easy for my arthritic knees, but I know how to “live small” in this big old house so I’m setting thoughts of moving aside for now. I’ll continue to clear out possessions and keep what we have better organized but for now we’ll just continue to live here as best we can.
Best wishes to all on this rainy quiet morning.
Quickie post