Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: December 13th

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 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 (right before “Leave A Reply”) and use the Pages Tool, shown here with 3 pages of comments available.

COUNTING DOWN THE TIME UNTIL DECENCY RETURNS …

25 Comments

  1. Good “morning”, Motley Meese! The week begins …

    Morning low of 18 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 34. Partly cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Sunday Meese. 43 going up to 54 and sunny here in Kingston NY.

  3. Good morning. We were supposed to get rain, but didn’t. I’m watching the coverage of the vaccines leaving the Pfizer facility. Even knowing I’ll be among the last to get it, it’s still pretty emotional. Anyway, today: church, make next week’s overnight oats and tea, cut back the dead stuff off my too-dry plants (there’s one I just forgot to water). Call my friend in Portland for her birthday.

  4. It’s 36 – will hit our high of 39 in about an hour then start a steady slide down. We were supposed to get snow overnight. We didn’t. It’s very overcast and is supposed to be raining right now. It isn’t. But I expect both will happen before the day is out. The PV system is on, which surprised me. We got 2 KWHs yesterday bringing the m-t-d to 62.59 – not on track but better than nothing. I’ll be surprised if we get as much today.

    Murf just finished off my oatmeal. sigh. Why the heck – it’s probably the tiny bit of butter I stir in while it’s still too hot to eat – but still. A cat eating oatmeal. Oh well. I’d eaten most of it. Just turned away to start this comment. LOL. Need to get back to my Sunday chores. I’ll get Dee’s diary up so I can listen as I work. Not a lot left to do. The floors and the kitchen counters are the worst of it as far as my hands are concerned. Maybe more coffee first.

    Annnnnd it just started snowing. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  5. Good Sunday morning, Moosekind! Yet another bright, beautiful day has dawned. At the moment a few veils of white cloud are stretching across a pale blue sky. Right now it’s 56 F. in Ashburn, heading toward 59 F. I need to get out for a walk while I still have the energy. Also, bfitz and I need to trade weather.

    A proper Sunday breakfast has been cooked and consumed. I’m giving myself an easy day, dedicated to walking, listening to music, and writing. I should do some laundry, but I’m tired of that.

    My new hearing aids STILL SEEM TOO LOUD, but I do think the brain is beginning to catch up. I wonder what messages aliens are sending through my new devices, as I had a very strange dream last night. I was a nightclub singer in spite of Covid 19 everywhere. Ye gods, who’d want to hear me sing? No one with a measurable IQ, let me tell you.

    Just been catching up with my cousin’s neighborhood library in Austin. She has received book donations from everywhere in the country! Every other week she hands out prizes and holds a raffle. She’s getting kids really interested in reading. “If they come to the library once, they come back,” Jennifer said on Facebook. She rocks!

    In other news, I think I’ll go for a walk before the clouds start coming in. We’re supposed to have rain tomorrow. Uh, huh.

    Will also try to send funny cartoons to my poor friend who’s laid up in the hospital with a leg infection. She called yesterday but didn’t seem enthusiastic about getting out of there, or about anything at all, really. When people give up being interested in living, they fade away. Hope that doesn’t happen to her.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.

  6. Good morning, 40 and cloudy in Bellingham. My relative low key Christmas is definitely less work but this morning I’m missing the “feeling” of the Christmas/winter season. I’ve got some sewing to do today and I want to make a arrangements using holly, ivy salal, cedar branches, red twig dogwood stems, pinecones, etc. I can gather all and more from our garden, just need to do it.

    Right now I’m sipping coffee and listening to Sting: A Winter’s Night….Live from Durham Cathedral.

    Best wishes to all on this quiet Sunday morning

  7. Good morning, meeses! Monday …

    It is 27 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 25. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’ electors will meet at noon at the Capitol and cast their votes for the next President and Vice President of the United States. One article I read said that the “time and place are being kept under wraps” for security reasons and another said that it was at noon today! So perhaps the noon is to throw off the deadenders who are intent on disruption. The casting of the votes is purely ceremonial – it does have to be done in person, however – so disruptions will not stop the fact that the votes will be cast in some form or another. I don’t remember if there is a fancy announcement – it used to be pretty pro-forma and I suspect most people did not even know when it happened. Nothing about this election is pro-forma. The Republicans already seem to be looking past today to January 6th for their next election nullification gambit.

    File under “who could have predicted that?” – firing the chief of cybersecurity and driving away the rest of the professionals in his department would lead to Russian hackers gaining access to government systems. The sheer incompetence of the tRump malAdministration is mind boggling. Thirty-seven more days.

    I admit to being upset that people in the White House – host of scores of superspreader events over the past several months – will be moving to the head of the line for the vaccine. In a just world, they would all sicken and 5% of them would perish. However, I would want the Biden-Harris White House and key administration members to move ahead of the line if this were happening 38 days from now so it makes sense to insure that those in power are protected. It just seems wrong that the people who called this a hoax and wanted the virus to run unchecked and simply see who lived and who died will get vaccinated before those who they consider expendable.

    I woke up with a head full of projects that needed to be done (they are also in written form as I often email my HOT to-do list while I am sitting and watching sporting events or Weather Nation on TV) and got two done. Some have to wait until people start working. I do need to get November accounting done – I can’t have it run up against the end of the month when the end of the month is also the end of the calendar year. So I better get to it.

    See all y’all later!

  8. Monday Meese. 32 degrees here in Kingston NY and we have light snow.

    Looks like Puerto Rico will be getting vaccines
    Dr. Iris Cardona, Undersecretary of
    @desaludpr
    , reports that some 30,000 doses of vaccines against #COVID19 will arrive today at #PuertoRico and will be distributed to the 65 hospitals in the country. The vaccination of health professionals will begin tomorrow, Tuesday.

  9. More Puerto Rico

    At this time (7am) the page of the @PRPHealthTrust
    , where the information on the positivity of active cases of #COVID19 in #PuertoRico , has NO DATA. It’s been like this since Saturday. No info on positivity rates by municipality.

  10. Good Monday morning, Moosekind! It’s a hideous morning in Ashburn, dark and cold, with pouring rain. The current temperature is 39 F., on its way up to 43 F.

    Have been awake since 1:30, so am viewing the world with a jaundiced eye. Last night I didn’t take a sleeping pill, just to see whether I can get by without it. Evidently not. I’ll crash by noon, but not before I get some stuff done.

    Today is the sad anniversary of Sandy Hook. What kind of country allows this? In Australia after only one such incident, guns were banned. But not here, land of “free-dumb.” The agony of the bereft parents can hardly be imagined. It’s utterly horrifying when innocence is wantonly destroyed.

    Hoping January 21-25 will usher in four years of sanity and that people will be so enamored of it they’ll vote for four more. Of course, the first two or even three years will be spent cleaning up the mess. The media are whining that Joe is picking the tried-and-true rather than young people with “fresh ideas.” Well, as any mother can tell you, nothing very creative happens until the diaper has been changed.

    The sky is beginning to lighten, not that that means much. Wishing a nice, quiet day to all at the Pond.

  11. It was in the teens when I got up, 20s now, and heading for low 40s. Once the snow was on the panels yesterday, the system shut down – is still shut down until it warms up enough to melt the snow. It’s still mostly cloudy but the sun is coming out which will help get the snow off the panels sooner than otherwise. Because this is an intertie system I don’t have to worry about not having power – nor what I could do to reduce load as I would if I were depending on batteries as my other source. Dirty-coal utility is still power. As always, sending Good Thoughts to the folks in Puerto Rico (& on the Reservations) who don’t have dependable power, more to those who don’t have it at all.

    The RW & LW are having an effing party throwing out stuff Joe isn’t planning and never was to make Dems OMGHOF. What it mostly shows, besides a serious lack of understanding of just about everything both political and strategic, is our team is just as happy to buy into the “can’t trust Joe” memes as the Rs are. Meanwhile I hope Joe’s team is as quiet as the 32nd of any given month on what Joe’s planning for things like getting those kids safely away from ICE/gestapo holding them hostage – & that everybody STFU about them so as to not call attention to them before twitler is out of office. Those Jewish and Rom kids smuggled out of Europe in WWII would never have made it if our newspapers were busily reporting – or even just ranting – about how our team was gonna do it. You don’t give your plans to the enemy! When it comes to rescuing hostages, you don’t even let the enemy know you’re making plans. Jeebus!!!

    OK. Sunshine. Warms the spirit. Lifts the mood. (& let’s you see what you missed when you swept the floor. LOL) Keepin’ on keepin’ on. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  12. We had a cold front blow through yesterday — and I do mean blow. We had gusts over 30 mph. And wow is it cold. Saturday it got up to 80, last night it was in the 30s. Should stay cold all week, even a freeze on Thursday. The Science Channel is having astronomy shows all day, so naturally my cable box isn’t showing that channel. Sigh.

  13. Good morning, 41 and raining in Bellingham. I seen to be unable to push myself to complete a daily list, so now I have a rolling one and more is just dropping off than is actually getting done. I did collect greens and twigs from the garden yesterday but that made me weary so I stopped. I have a few tasks I must do this morning and I hope I can fine some creativity to make winter garden arrangements this afternoon.

    Wa State receives 62,000 doses of Covid vaccinations today. It’s an impt start but Whatcom County has a population of over 222,000 people so I wonder how long it will take for us to receive one. Fortunately we can stay Covid confined and careful until we do…just getting weary of the wait. Best wishes to all on this rainy Monday morning.

    • I have a number of scraps-of-paper lists right now that need to be logged into my main to-do list. A few months ago, when I realized that I had no idea what I needed to be doing, I consolidated multiple electronic to-do lists into one. I have still not sorted that list completely but at least it represents “everything I need to do.” When I have particularly busy months (or distracted months like November), I end up with scraps of paper and printouts of emails I sent to myself that are just stacked up and need to be sorted through and put into the main list. It is not a perfect system but it is better than what I had a few months ago. I hope to have a quiet January that I can use to start organizing better, for example, sorting and shredding things from former clients – there is no need to keep any of it. I bought a good quality scanner to scan documents and put them in the cloud in anticipation of making my office footprint smaller for when I downsize. Lots of projects that will take a lot of energy and will have to be done in small chunks to pace myself.

      I hope you are high on the list for getting the vaccine! Health care workers and essential workers (first responders, teachers) will be fairly easy to identify. People in nursing homes are a definable population. I am wondering how they plan to sort “over 65” into who should get it first. I am over 65 and I don’t want to get sick or die but I have none of the co-morbidities (that I am aware of). Who decides I can wait, the state, people’s doctors? I hope they can ramp up production enough to not have to make those literally life-and-death decisions.

  14. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 9 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 30. Sunny skies are in the forecast. We need some above freezing temperatures to melt the icy patches on the roads from the weekend snowfall. The highways are fine but the city streets are a bit treacherous. I think we got about 7 inches of snow, all told.

    Yay, electoral college making it official! Yay, “some Republicans acknowledge Joe Biden as President-Elect” – no kudos for them, they played along with tRump’s dangerous delusion too long.

    Yay, vaccinations for health care workers! Yay, one day closer to the adults being in charge of the vaccine rollout!

    I am not looking forward to finding out why Bill Barr chose to bail on the tRump malAdministration right now rather than stay through the end. If it is because tRump is planning on doing something that even the most corrupt Attorney General in recent history can’t bring himself to do, that is not a good sign. Some people think that it is the soon-to-come pardoning spree which he may not want to be part of (I think the DOJ writes up the actual pardoning documents). If it is because he thinks that by leaving early, he can escape the stench of being associated with a man whose toxic narcissism brought America to the brink of disaster, it won’t work – it is an indelible mark. My guess is that it is probably both pardons and document destruction related to tRump’s Russian connection. The next Attorney General will have an enormous task rebuilding the Justice Department – I hope that Joe doesn’t bow to Republican Senate pressure regarding Sally Yates; I think she is the best person for the job.

    I have a number of projects calling out to me this morning so I better get to it.

    See all y’all later!

  15. Puerto Rico


    BREAKING: Administered for the first time in #PuertoRico the @pfizer
    vaccine @BioNTech_Group against #COVID19 . Yahaira Alicea, respiratory therapist who treated an Italian tourist in March (first known case of #COVID19 on the Island), was the first person vaccinated.

  16. Auntie Maxine does not bite her words

  17. Good morning. Less cold today, going to get up to the 60s. Logging off work early today to vote in the runoff; we have one citywide school board race. And I’ll walk, if my achilles will let me. Watching Star Trek.

    • {{{anotherdemocrat}}} – Healing Energy & hope your achilles lets you walk. moar {{{HUGS}}}

  18. Good Tuesday morning, Meese. It’s sunny, cold, and lovely outside—34 F. on its way up to 41 F. Clouds will start moving in this afternoon in front of the alleged snowstorm that’s going to disrupt everyday life. If it runs true to form for “snowstorms” in this area, we’ll get five minutes of sleet, followed by three and a half snowflakes that will turn to cold rain for the rest of the day.

    Yesterday was a completely lost day as I spent it trying to recover my lost sleep. The result is that I’m more behind than ever on my chores. Last night I took one of the dreaded pills and enjoyed a 7 1/2- hour sleep as the result. So let it be written, so let it be done.

    I am expecting a small ham—5 to 7 pounds—to be delivered just any day now, so must clear and clean the fridge to be ready. Still have to write my Yule email and choose the photos for it. Tomorrow, as I plan to stay home all day, will be the day to wrap presents for the grandchildren. On Saturday morning we’re going to go to the driveway of each house, scream Christmas greetings, leave the bags, and perhaps snap a photo or two if the children are visible.

    Watched most of President Biden’s speech yesterday (kept dozing off because of my bad night), and felt cheered. To me he’s already President and Outgoing is irrelevant. The reason I know he’s already POTUS is because the media are finding fault with everything President Biden thinks and does. Whereas they did nothing to Outgoing, they’re always ready to pounce on Democrats.

    It’s a sunny day and I’ve had enough sleep to feel quite cheerful. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.

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