Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: March 21st

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.

37 Comments

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

    Morning low of 36 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 59. Partly cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Sunday Meese. 27 here in Kingston, going up to a bright and sunny 61.

    Puerto Rico

  3. I had a weird night’s sleep — wide awake in the 3 o’clock hour but once again asleep when the alarm went off. Another chilly morning in the 40s. Yesterday I made my tea & overnight oats for the week. Today: church on youtube, making 2 dishes for next week, and a walk if there’s time — good thing about daylight saving time is there’s more chance of that now.

  4. It’s another bright and sunny morning, 52 going to 67, that I will totally enjoy while it lasts. We generated another 18 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 227 with another good generating day ahead of us. Before the clouds move in tonight. So I will enjoy the now while I have it and deal with the clouds when they get here.

    I got my gas bill yesterday. That ice/snow/cold spate we had used 40 ccf more than I normally do in February. Almost doubling my usage in fact. I am grateful that I have it but I truly wish the source where “bio” rather than fossil. (That is what’s been driving me nuts when it’s not depressing the hell out of me for the last 40 years. We have the technology to get our “natural” gas naturally – landfills, sewage systems, dairy and any concentrated agri process all produce it – but we’ve put our tax subsidies into allowing the fossil fuel industry to do what they do only worse each year rather than forcing them to make the massive-but-one-time capital expenditures to change how they get it.)

    I have no idea why my hands are bothering me with this lovely and even relatively warm sunny weather. But they are. I think I can manage to stay functional. If I’m careful to use the keyboard where I can and take breaks in my boosting tweets and other things I can’t use the keyboard for. I think. I hope. Meanwhile I’m using the heat from the oatmeal bowl for comfort. It won’t warm them up – they could be used for icepacks had I the need right now – but it feels good/comforting.

    I’m off to Dee’s diary. “Strange Fruit” – I can’t have been 10 when Momma explained to me what that meant. I was old enough to know to ask Momma and only Momma questions like that. Community is how we survive. Music is part of how the community survives. So music. And chores, online and off. And coffee once the oatmeal bowl is no longer warm. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • I switched to the budget plan for gas a few years ago when I downsized my monthly bills to allow myself to semi-retire. I knew I would not be able to deal with the occasional $300 and $400 a month heating bills that would be budget busters. It means that I pay higher for gas during the summer months when it is only used for cooking and hot water but it has been a mental relief. The original budget amount has held pretty steady when it is recalculated each year, dropping a few dollars. I don’t think anyone here is thinking about gas replacements and pretty much the whole state is on natural gas or propane for heating. Changing from that would be huge.

      • I’ve been on the averaged/levelized budget plan for decades. I never could afford a big chunk in a single month and certainly can’t on Social Security. I wasn’t talking about changing things at the customer end. I was talking about the source of the gas that goes into the pipeline in the first place. It’s not only possible to capture the methane/ethane from landfills and agricultural operations, we have the technology. And have had for over 20 years I personally know of. (My last job in KS was a short-term contract/temp position with an engineering firm that built gas-fired power plants on landfills using landfill gas. Just not in America because after their 1st one outside Chicago a bunch of regs & tax structure got changed to make it too expensive.)

  5. Annnnd – just got off the phone with my son. He’s got a skinned knee & possibly cracked (but definitely not broken) rib from having “laid his motorcycle down” last night going home from work. That’s all he’s dealing with. Thank heavens he’s smart enough to not only wear his helmet, he’s smart enough to wear “body armor” when he rides. But he’s not feeling real well. I’d appreciate Good Energy via the various Traditions we represent here. Thank you. (Bless you for being here.)

    • Healing thoughts to both you and your son. Our son’s motorcycle seems to be a permanent fixture in his garage now and that’s fine with me.

      • Thank you and I hear ya. My son didn’t get his until he was 45 so let’s say he’s a lot more mature about safety and all than his father was. But gravel is still gravel and 2-wheelers don’t do gravel well. sigh.

  6. Good morning, 40 and raining in Bellingham. RonK is on his way to Orcas Island where he will meet his brothers for an overnight visit. Everyone has been vaccinated so they should be fine but after this long year of covid confinement he’s nervous about going anywhere.

    Our family lunch was fun yesterday regardless of the rain. So good to be together again, but everyone is showing and feeling the stress of this last year. Good we can all be honest and support each other in person now.

    My knees need a day off so I plan to do as little as possible today. Best wishes to all.

  7. Good morning, meeses! Monday …

    It is 50 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 57. Cloudy and rainy.

    The weekend news seems calmer than it used to be – possibly because Joe Biden does not fill Twitter with his idle ramblings and petulant posturings in the wee hours of the morning. Clearly, The Former Guy had no life and was bored, he probably did not read or enjoy movies and it is unlikely that anyone in his family would want to have a conversation with him. I am glad that our president is a normal, mentally healthy human being.

    There are too many Ron Johnson stories! This time the New York Times did a piece that I am sure he is pleased with – handing him the mantle of trumpism as he embodies everything about that movement that is terrible and mirrors his leader: inherited wealth, ignorance, sense of white entitlement. I don’t have any illusions that Wisconsin voters will reject him, I expect that they will embrace him. It only makes me more determined to relocate next year before leadership changes at the state level, making the state uninhabitable for decent people. I need to set up a timeline for prepping to empty and sell the house and restructure my business.

    I spent a quiet weekend watching sporting events and organizing projects. On Sundays I do maintenance on the networks I manage and it was more complicated than usual because Microsoft released a buggy update on March 9th that they put out an emergency patch for on the 18th that has not yet reached the corporate update channel. I can’t release any updates until the bug fix supersedes the buggy update so I will have to put off the update process until next weekend. There’s always something!

    See all y’all later!

  8. Monday Meese. 29 here in Kingston NY going up to 62.
    It is March Madness time in my house – so the tv is tuned to basketball all day. Hubby is a former college bb player.

    Puerto Rico

  9. I wore long sleeves for my dash into the office this morning, the days are coming when I can put all the long sleeves away. Yesterday I made a broccoli & quinoa casserole for lunch this week, hope it’s good. Maybe rain tonight, I should walk this afternoon.

  10. Good Monday morning, Moosekind! It’s been chilly this morning—44 F. currently, going up to 65 F. Very little wind (thanks, Zephyr, honey), and SUNNY! Bfitz’s solar panels would have loved yesterday and today. This is our last sunny day for a while, however.

    After morning chores, which included cooking a Proper Sunday Breakfast (what would an Improper Sunday Breakfast look like–black satin teddy and fishnet stockings?), and changing the sheets on the bed, we readied ourselves to meet Younger Son and family at another house to explore.

    This one was also in the middle of nowhere. It seems that a house big enough to accommodate the six of us and two grumpy dogs has to be way out. There were charming views of the lake from the two upper levels. They were so charming, in fact, it would have been easy to fall in love. However, the lower level, where Dearly and I would have been perching, was not completely finished, was dark, and had only one bedroom. The large Trump banner spread across one wall also put me off. (The house is currently rented.) We already live in a small dark apartment with one bedroom, so I’m not anxious to trade it for another, especially not at that price and in that place, miles and miles down a winding two-way road from any hospitals or shops.

    The housing market in the DC market is so hot that buyers have to plunk down $50,000 cash in addition to the asking price. Duh. We don’t have that kind of moola.

    It looks as if my dream of living under one roof and saving money is not to be realized. Bummer.

    But enough about that. We’re going to climb into the car (with dog) and go to Reston to see where my cataract surgery is to take place. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s getting lost when going somewhere for the first time. We will also go by the post office to post Political Granddaughter’s birthday present. She’s in Ohio. With the criminal DeJoy in charge of the PO, Goddess knows whether it will get there by 7 April.

    Bfitz, hope your son is feeling better and healing well. You should see Dearly’s face and neck! It’s green, yellow, steel gray, and black, topped off with a white bandage.

    Wishing a nice, peaceful day to all at the Pond, and the cat-o-nine tails to all journos intent on manufacturing news out of whole cloth in the hope of bringing down Biden and Harris.

  11. It’s 56 heading for 63 and cloudy. Even though the rain isn’t supposed to start until after dark. sigh. Yesterday we generated right at 17.5 KWHs and with the driblet so far this morning we’re at 245 for the m-t-d. I’m not betting on even double-digit production today but it would be nice.

    Having responsible – and caring – adults running the government is more than nice. But we need “rapid response” team, multiples in multiple places for 24/7 deployment, to “fact check” MSM/RW lies and propaganda. That’s how Bill was able to be the “Come-back Kid” – nothing was allowed to pass. Nothing. No matter how fiddly, no matter how stupid, nip that sucker before it put down roots. (Enough of them still managed to put down roots that many youngsters who weren’t alive at the time not only don’t know but deny all the work the Clintons did in and for the Black, Brown, & LBGT+ communities.) Don’t let a single “nobody’d believe. . .” get by. Because the Deplorables, right and left, are rushing to believe them. That’s the “price of liberty” vigilance.

    I haven’t heard from my son but I’ll call him later to see how he’s doing. I figured (or hoped anyway) he’d spend most of yesterday sleeping and didn’t want to call at the very moment he dropped off. Continued Holding of Good Thoughts would be appreciated.

    My hands are better but not a whole better. It would be ironic if the lower humidity was doing it. But yeah, at this time of year it does make the cold feel colder. And since just washing my hands causes a minor flare of the Raynaud’s I can see that being at least a factor in a major flare. What can I say? My body developed in Houston – born and lived to age 19 there – and not for nothing is the old joke “Houston is LA with the climate of Bombay”. More than once in my youth we managed to get over 100% humidity. Apparently 50 years out of Houston hasn’t done a full reset. LOL.

    Off to do what I can of my twitter chores. After more coffee. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  12. Good morning, 42 and partly sunny in Bellingham. My house is very quiet with RonK away, but he’ll return this afternoon and our tidy kitchen will be in full cooking disarray!

    I’ve got a long chore list today…..laundry, bills, some letters to write, etc. So one more cup of coffee and then I need to get busy. Best wishes to all.

  13. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 39 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 57. It is expected to rain all day.

    More gun violence, more thoughts and prayers – we are a terrible country that allows people access to weapons that can kill on a whim. That the country is now in a state where faux outrage is ginned up by the right-wing media hate machine and perceived grievances have been festering for months does not help. We may all want to go back into lockdowns! I realized yesterday that I went through the entire winter without a cold. I had a few sniffles every once in a while but no cold where I needed cough medicine or used more than two Kleenexes in a day. I did not miss them! Maybe I should consider masking in public as a permanent thing.

    Toxic berner Nina Turner is picking up endorsements for the House seat in Ohio vacated by Marcia Fudge. I hope the people of her district are more sensible – with a razor-thin majority, we don’t need Congressmembers who are willing to vote purity over pragmatism. Left-of-the left wish list items are not going to pass the Senate even if the filibuster is reformed or eliminated. We need to get good, solid legislation passed and build on that.

    I need to get a few nagging projects – personal and business – done so I can focus on some larger projects that really need attention. Or I need to figure out how to ignore the little nagging projects better; it is possible that they will always be there and I need to do better at compartmentalizing them.

    See all y’all later!

  14. Help get the word out for Shontel Brown – who is running against Nina Turner

  15. Tuesday Meese. 28 going up to 66 here in Kingston NY.

    Puerto Rico

  16. We had thunderstorms overnight, and large hail and a possible tornado northwest of here. Big damage to the historic district of a small town out there. Supposed to be gorgeous here today. Watching the local news because the national news is just too much to bear. I have a friend on twitter who lives in Boulder, and one of my favorite authors who I follow is also there. Today: work — we have our bi-weekly all staff meeting where there may be word about going back in (they’re trying very hard to keep us remote as much as possible), and a fun little contest about “if you could travel, or when you can, where would/will you go?”.

  17. Good lackadaisical Tuesday moaning, Meese! Well, one worry is off my mind—I had two doctor appointments scheduled for Thursday at the same time. And my husband will have the car Thursday morning for a post-op visit to his doctor miles and miles away in Tysons Corner.

    Called both offices this morning and the office of the eye doctor who is going to perform the surgery will see me at 1:30. By that time I’ll have the car back, so that’s okay.

    Right now it’s cloudy and 48 F. in Ashburn, going up to 66 F. I hope I manage to get out for a walk. We enjoyed our little jaunt through Reston yesterday. The forsythia is bursting into yellow bloom, the trees are that early-spring, fuzzy green I love, and yellow daffodils are popping up prettily everywhere. It was 65 F. and sunny as well, which made it really feel like spring.

    Feeling quite well this morning. I agree with Jan—I may continue to wear a mask iwhen out in public. When we visited Beijing in 2012 we saw more than a few wearing masks. I was puzzled until someone explained that there had been a huge public health campaign ordering people to mask in public if they had colds.

    Funny thought yesterday: as we were getting ready to go out I thought, “Which mask shall I wear today?” I have quite a wardrobe selection of the cloth masks I wear over the paper surgical mask. Masks for holidays, checkered masks, solid-color masks, it’s really quite amusing. In 1900 a woman might have asked herself, “Which ribbon shall I wear around my hat today?”

    That’s enough from me for the time being. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond. It won’t be a good day for all beyond, though, with aggrieved white murderous males running around with rifles. Why can’t these psychopaths learn to control their anger? Most of us do.

    • {{{Diana}}} – I’ll be wearing masks out in public for the foreseeable future. And if wypipo as a society weren’t mostly temper-tantrum-throwing 2 year olds masks would be as normal as pants. And would have been since 1918. Yes, every woman would have a selection – even if only “every day” and “special occasion” – of masks. And guys would too of course. Maybe to match their ties for those that wore them or their team colors for whatever team (or union) they supported. (& white men don’t control their anger because they have been taught that it is the appropriate response when they don’t get their own way.)

      Holding the Good Thought on the various doctor visits. moar {{{HUGS}}}

    • I will be following your cataract surgery plans closely as mine should be right behind yours. I still have a lot of questions about how it is done and how long I will be unable to work but I am afraid to Google it because I don’t want to stumble on all the bad outcomes and plant those fears. My appointment is in early April – I will just wait and ask my ophthalmologist.

      • Hi, Jan, today is the electrocardiogram. Tomorrow morning is the visit with my primary care doctor so she can clear me for surgery. In the afternoon I have to have a “right eye scan.” Whatinell for? They scanned the bejazus out of my eyes the last time I was there! They also dilated my eyes, after which I had to drive myself home.

        Everything was so fuzzy I couldn’t see. I barely got out of the parking lot, remembering I had to turn left, left, and left. I only recognized the Gloucester Road intersection by guess and by Goddess, narrowly avoiding an accident.

        My lasik doctor who did my lasik surgery so I could toss my glasses always asks which procedure I want. There’s one where she dilates my eyes. The other choice is more expensive, but at least my eyes aren’t dilated and I can drive home safely.

        If I were you I’d take a Lyft there and back for your initial assessment if they’re going to dilate your eyes. Also take a book and a bottle of water in case they make you wait in your car before they call you in. Luckily I have my Kindle app on my phone so I can go on reading my book while I endlessly wait for them to attend to me.

  18. It’s 55 heading for 61 and I’ve got the lights on. Sigh. Supposedly we got some rain but it must have been early because the street’s dry. Yesterday we generated 8.45 KWHs and the m-t-d is 253 so at least on track for over 300. I can see patches of blue to the north and the west but east and south are socked in.

    The Deplorables left us as big a mess as they could going out the door. And too bloody many of them are still in Congress. (Not to mention the state houses/legislatures – AR just passed a law saying it was OK for EMTs & other medical personnel to not treat anybody who isn’t OK by their personal religion.) And they’re still instigating both “lone wolf” terrorist attacks and insurrection. But Decent policy – and money – is being rolled out as fast as our folks can get to it. And that is such a relief.

    My hands are better and more importantly so is my son. When I talked to him last night he said he’s just sore and bruised. I’m not going to stop worrying about him of course. But I’m not as worried. As to my hands, well, I’m still gonna have to use the keyboard for getting around as much as I can and skip RTing every tweet in a thread – which I try to do since many folks don’t actually go into a thread and read the whole thing and you never know which of those tweets has something really important for somebody to see/hear.

    I need to do some baking in a bit. My dark chocolate hasn’t been in the stores I go to for the last several visits so I’ve been doing a slightly sweeter (3 TBSP to the batch instead of 2 TBSP to the batch) cocoa muffin to be dessert instead. Last week was peanut butter & cocoa, today I’ll be doing cinnamon-walnut-cocoa. Meanwhile I guess I’ll go start on my twitter chores. I’ll need to take breaks anyway. And there are a couple of patreon things I want to read (other than Aji’s – I’ve already read and boosted hers). So. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Yesterday on Twitter, I saw something heinous that your Attorney General was proposing. There are just so many state governments that are irredeemable and will never be decent again. Wisconsin’s permanent Republican legislative majority (they already plan to ignore the redistricting commission and vote to override it with their gerrymandered map, and then get their Supreme Court to approve that) is trying to strip the governor of his power to direct the federal funds from the American Rescue Plan. They want to use it to help fund private schools and support their no-masking open-now-dammit #RepublicanDeathCult mandates rather than help businesses who are not willing to put their employees and customers at risk, to open safely. They want to limit school money to schools that reopened for in-person so that they can punish Madison and Milwaukee and other cities where the schools simply can’t be brought up to CDC school opening guidelines. It really is hopeless to convince people who don’t believe in science and who despise those not like them to govern responsibly. :(

      • Truth. And so disheartening. AR is striving for most Deplorable in the nation right now. Even with the very stiff competition we may make it. Our AG is hoping to be the next governor and to do that she has to show she’s more Deplorable than Sarah Huckabee.

      • Jan, sounds as if your state needs a “Quiet Revolution” like the one that happened in Québec in the 1960s. The Q. R. completely changed Québec from a theocracy into a place so secular that former churches have been converted to apartments.

  19. Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …

    It is 48 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 54. Cloudy with showers; tomorrow we will have cloudy without the showers. We expect to see the sun on Friday.

    I think it is time to give up on killing the filibuster and try to find other ways to get legislation passed or use executive orders. Joe Manchin gives us a majority and that is handy for confirming Biden Administration nominees including federal judges but it won’t help us pass non-budgetary legislation like DC Statehood, commonsense gun reform, voting rights protections, or immigration reform because Joe Manchin is not in favor of any of those things. Our “swing voter” – and the only person who could kill the filibuster – is not going to vote for any of those packages so the filibuster vote is irrelevant.

    It will be interesting to see how one of the most racially segregated cities in America, Boston, reacts to having their first Black mayor, Kim Janey. One would hope that it helps change some minds and hearts but it will probably be more like what happened to white America after Barack Obama became president – completely remove its hinges.

    The news is discouraging. I have to admit that I was glad that AstroZeneca is going to have problems getting approval for their vaccine here. I think the damage to its reputation is permanent and if we want 70-80% vaccination for herd immunity, we can’t have it in the mix. I hope they can fix the production problems with the J&J vaccine so that we can open it up to everyone on May 1st as hoped.

    Busy morning here – I best get to it.

    See all y’all later!!

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