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 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.
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Good “morning”, Motley Meese! The week begins …
Morning low of 34 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 45. April showers are in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Sunday Meese. 49, raining – going up to 62 here in Kingston NY
Looking at anti-vax, anti mask, anti-lockdown protests in England – horrible
Anti-lockdown protester in England dons Yellow Stars comparing her situation to the Holocaust
Yellow stars? That’s gross!
Puerto Rico
Yes, I had read about that and how they tested Depo-Provera on Puerto Rican women.
Good morning. Yesterday was gorgeous — sunny & perfect temperatures. When I went to vote, I was pleasantly surprised that there was a line. Arcane charter revisions aren’t what I think of as drawing a crowd, and on maybe the prettiest day of the year so far. It was also wonderful for another reason — between donations and matches, I raised about $1,200 yesterday! WooHoo!
Yay for the fundraising! Hill Country Ride will be very happy.
Sunday Music
It’s 49 going up to 75 and sunny. Yesterday we got right at 8 KWHs and the m-t-d was just a hair under 324. The one April with the 2.5K system did 335 and we should pass that today, no problem. The lowest 4K system April was 375 and I expect we’ll pass that by end of Friday. It’s possible to get over 400 this month. Not probable, but still possible.
The cats are all doing well as best I can tell. They’re eating, sleeping, and otherwise doing healthy cat stuff anyway. Which is such a relief. anotherdemocrat beating her goal with the match (which I hope was met over all the riders/teams) is a very good thing and a relief of a different kind. & I’ve heard Fineena is getting some nursing help next week. (Of course they shouldn’t have sent her home from the hospital without nursing help in place. But she seems to have survived it so far & that’s medical’s marker – even though we tried to kill them via neglect they survived so what we did or didn’t do was obviously OK – effen bastids.) Anyway, I’m counting help as good.
The London protests just show our own Deplorables have common ancestors. And that they didn’t all move to this continent back in the 18th century. Plenty of them stayed in England. I guess they figured not having to have contact with mainland Europeans outweighed getting to kill Natives and own Black people. The fascist leaders made pandemic racial and once they did that, the Deplorables took it from there. Bio-genocide is nothing new. And it’s always been legal. At least while they were doing it. & our team isn’t helping with this crap about not sending vaccines or even allowing the ingredients to make the vaccines go to India. Our tax dollars paid for the research. If there’s got to be a patent on it for “intellectual property rights”, OK. The patent should belong to the U.S. gov’t that paid for the research. And then distributed as widely as possible to prevent another and even more deadly wave. Anything else is genocidal bull pucky. And the Biden-Harris administration needs to deal with that ASAP.
Household chores mostly done. Need more coffee, then off to Dee’s #BlackMusicSunday diary, RonK’s new environmental one here, & my twitter chores. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
True, this: “our own Deplorables have common ancestors.” The Anglo-Saxon Caucus writ large. One big difference is that England abolished slavery long before we did and did it without a bloody war.
Good morning, 47 and raining in Bellingham. I’ll be complaining about my garden being soggy after a few more days, but for now the rain is welcome. I hope to be in my sewing room today but I also have a few new books to read so I’ll see what happens.
Diana, my sister loved reading Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell. Have you read it? Based on her recommendation I’ve now got it on my Kindle by after reading this review I think it may be too intense for me to read right now.
Time to find some coffee and start with my day. Best wishes to all.
Princesspat, I haven’t yet but I’ll investigate it. Thanks for the link!
Poor Shakespeare had to leave London hurriedly when informed of his only son’s illness:
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is 36 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 66. Mixed sun and clouds are in the forecast. Tomorrow the high is expected to be 80! Crazy time of year. Today is the first day that sunrise will be before 6am. Being a “working in the quiet of the early morning” person, the sunlight intruding into my brain is not often welcome – it means that people will be starting work and wondering why I didn’t fix their problems over the weekend! :)
The good thing about the Oscars is that since it consumes the news – and I have no interest in movies or pop culture – I can very quickly scan the headlines. I am closely watching the American Jobs Plan because I am wondering about how it plays out. Does Joe Manchin really want to be the guy who kills it by insisting that it only include transportation infrastructure? Does he really think that the Republican bill that raises money by putting fees on electric cars is how people want to pay for roads? Republicans will not raise taxes, period, they all signed a pledge. I think Joe Biden should put the onus on Manchin – he wants to be King, make sure everyone knows that he is the one who killed the jobs.
The last week of April is upon us and I need to pull together my to-do list.
See all y’all later!
Good Monday morning, Moosekind! This is supposed to be a Full Moon night, so I hope I’ll be able to see Her. Right now a beautiful morning is dawning, showing green-and-gold woods against a clear blue sky. It’s 44 F. in Ashburn, going up to 66 F. The courtyard was very chilly and windy when I took that dreadful little dog outside before 6 a.m.
Never made it here yesterday because of extreme busy-ness. Saturday night after dinner it started raining and kept it up into daylight Sunday morning. I was delighted because we reduced our rainfall deficit by a whole inch! Younger Son and family came to tea and left young Karl, who wanted a “sleepover.”
His somewhat absent-minded parents forgot to pack his toothbrush, pajama bottoms, and socks for Sunday. We keep a toothbrush over here for him anyway, and I let him borrow a pair of my socklets. For “sleepy clothes,” I put one of my t-shirts on him. It bears the legend, “Every baby deserves a change,” as it was a gift from the Texas Diaper Bank. Luckily Karl paid no attention to the writing on the t-shirt.
He was very good while he was here. While waiting for his iPad to charge, he read books. He told us that the really big planets, Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn, and Uranus, are all gas giants and all of them have rings. He said he’s now reading chapter 5 of the book I sent him about Our Solar System. Then we had to dress him in his uniform for Tae Kwon Do class. Poor old Grandma was totally clueless about tying the sash, but one of the teachers did it when we arrived.
Attended a Zoom seminar Sunday afternoon on how priestesses can offer comfort to the dying. It was so full of New Age jargon I nearly passed out, but everyone was very nice. I’d be hopeless at priestessing at someone’s deathbed because I’d simply burst into tears. It’s tiresome how I become emotional when reading something that moves me. Perhaps it’s because as a writer of fiction my emotions are very close to the surface.
My Amazon page got screwed up yesterday. Don’t know why. It’s going to be tiresome trying to fix it. The other day I did a cold reboot, with the result that I have to sign in to all my favorite sites every time I visit. Hate that! Even though I click “Remember me,” it doesn’t seem to work. Anyway, that’s a first-world problem, so apologies to all.
As usual, I’ll probably spend the day pottering about. Like Jan, I have zero interest in the Oscars as I never go to movies, so I can basically skip the news today.
Wishing a nice, peaceful day to all at the Pond.
I saw that the Full Moon this month is called the Pink Moon and I have not had time to research why. The headline said it would definitely NOT be pink in color. I hope to be able to see her too but we are having mostly clouds!
Jan, the weather persons here told us that it’s called “pink” because the last of the pink spring blossoms are visible now, lying on sidewalks and grass. They specifically mentioned phlox. We did see Her last night, big and bright in the clear night sky. It was a treat!
When I went to bed, it was overcast but sometime during the night, the clouds lifted. I saw her in the night sky around 11pm when my shifting and rearranging woke me up.
I read about the phlox and that it was related to the native phlox. We have some phlox but I doubt is is native – it is used as planting material around our backyard rock wall.
Monday Meese. 40 going up to 58 and sunny here in Kingston NY- looks like a good day to mow the lawns.
Puerto Rico
Back from a dash into the office, nice morning — sunny & warm. It’s supposed to be stormy later this week, but today is nice. Today’s agenda: work, and call the city health department to see if I can change my 2nd dose appointment. I’m scheduled for Wednesday, way far on the other side of town, in a drive-through.
It’s 64 heading for 83 and more sunny than not at the moment. Clouds are supposed to move in by noon. I hope they wait until sundown instead since once they get here they’re supposed to stay until Thursday evening and the production will be down. Yesterday we generated 20.9 KWHs – the highest single day since early last August – and the m-t-d is 345. So we’re above the 2.5K system’s April and closing in on the lowest 4K system April generation. Still need 31 more to do that and of course 55 to reach 400 (which would still be 4th place). Those are doable. How likely with the cloudy days in the forecast? We shall see.
I’m not interested in awards and movies or what have you either. I’m very interested in the good we can do/are doing – & the evils I/we can do something about. But I can all too easily get overwhelmed in the twin firehoses of need and evil. So I narrow my focus. This I can do, that I can boost, this other thing I need to be aware of but otherwise let it go. It’s what I do. It’s what I can do.
Coffee in hand with a cat on my lap. Off to twitter to boost stuff. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 49 and raining in Bellingham. The new green leaves on my old maple trees are nice to see against the bark of the tree trunks and the gray sky. I’m sleepy this morning and the rain is lulling me into an early nap.
However I’ve got the urge to pack a few more donations boxes in my sewing room so I’d best do so while I want to. The urge comes and goes! I want to mail some things to a fiber artist so I need to get some flat rate boxes to keep the cost agreeable. I can load the car and drive to Ragfinery, but thanks to covid confinment it’s full of donated items so I’ll mail a few boxes this time.
Best wishes to all on this slow and sleepy Monday morning.
Tuesday Meese. 41 going up to 61 here in Kingston NY – and rain possible (I hope not because I need to mow the lawns)
Puerto Rico
Forum tomorrow
Wow! If I’m conscious this afternoon I’d like to tune in to your program.
First of several rainy days, but we’re in a drought & need it. My second dose is scheduled for tomorrow, I found one closer than the city clinic I had been scheduled at. Should have walked this morning but I was ridiculously sleepy yesterday so I”slept in” till 6:15. Today: just work.
Goodness, I can’t really be the first one here today? Anyway, good Tuesday morning, Meese! We have an underlying blue sky trying to break through the white veil of cloud this morning, and sketchy (using the word in its original sense, not the modern usage) sunlight. The current temp. in Ashburn is 52 F. and the high today will be 84 F.! That’ll be a nice change.
There was too much bloody drama at Barky Flat last night. Well, it wasn’t really dramatic in the traditional sense, but it certainly was bloody. Dearly, arriving home after his doctor carved up his face, was okay until after dinner. He then began bleeding profusely (he’s on a blood thinner) and couldn’t stop. He tried to get an Urgent Care appointment with Kaiser but couldn’t. Finally, we drove to the nearest emergency room, which was Inova Loudoun, just a couple of miles away.
We were treated very nicely by the ER staff. I’m so ancient it’s hard to get my mind around the fact that men are nurses. We were seen by two of them, looked in on by a woman nurse, and finally the physician’s assistant came to look at Dearly. He sent a blood sample off for a test so we had to wait for the results of that. At 1:15 a.m. he applied a clotting agent to Don’s nose, wrapped one of those stretchy bandages all around his head, starting with the nose, and released us to go home. We’d left home at 10:30 p.m. and arrived home shortly after 1:30 a.m. I made some hot chocolate, which we drank thirstily before staggering off to bed. The light woke us up this morning at six o’clock.
During all this madness the Super Moon greeted us wherever we looked when we were in the car and when we walked to and from the parking lot at the hospital. It was wonderful to see and for some weird reason cheered me up.
Yesterday I actually got some work done on my short story, which is encouraging. I totally need to exercise and I would like to have my regular hair person wash my hair. I’m afraid to get water in my surgically treated eye. I’m convinced that Dearly and I are going to be pretty useless today.
So that’s my tale. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond, and remember to wear your mask when you go outside so people won’t think you’re a Republican.
P. S. I am going to feel like a Mafia wife today, trying to get the blood off the carpet and out of various garments.
{{{Diana}}} – Healing Energy to your household. Grandmother Moon at the full is also Warrior Moon. She probably cleared the clouds with her own hands to be sure you could see her during your emergency. moar Healing Energy, moar {{{HUGS}}}
Thank you, dear bfitz!
Oh, my, what an adventure! I hope everyone is doing well today including getting a nap in as needed.
I am late to check-in as has been my pattern lately. I have not set an alarm since the time change because my normal awakening more or less fits with my work day. However, sometimes I have more to do in the early morning and I can’t break to check the Internet news until much later.
It’s 67 going to 77 and the clouds are already moving in although the rain won’t until tomorrow. sigh. We had a power outage yesterday. That we had one at all is why I sometimes think about getting a whole-house backup battery. As a strict intertie system, my PVs shut down when there’s an outage so we don’t electrocute the line workers, so not only was I out of power but I lost the generation time. It was only 16 minutes which is why I don’t get that battery. Even though the approximately 500 watts I’d have generated during the outage yesterday would have easily covered the down time with some left over to charge the battery. If I were somewhere with iffier power – like Aji on the Taos Reservation or my friends in Puerto Rico – I’d have gotten the battery backup.
Trouble with the sinusitis the last several days. And the fire that was somewhere around here yesterday didn’t help. But that’s the worst of my ills. Anything messing with breathing is worst. I’m not crazy about Raynaud’s flares that make my hands weak (& my index fingers too weak to type or use the mouse) nor the perpetual itching I have especially in the warmer weather (multitude of sources), but breathing is primary. Obviously I’m doing it, of course.
More coffee and off to twitter to do my online chores. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Great Goddess, bfitz, hope you start feeling better and hope you get some sun today!
Spring is lovely but with all those allergens and pollen floating around everywhere, it’s also problematic.
I’m fine. It’s not an issue as long as I’m upright. Either sitting or standing. It’s when I’m horizontal that there can be problems. When there are problems, I sit up. So breathing works. Just not sleep.
Sun would be nice but not likely. No sun in the forecast until Thursday afternoon. & yeah about the crud in the air. & the wind blowing it so fiercely. moar {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 50 and light clouds in Bellingham. I was awake in the night so I did see the moon shining in my window. It was a nice moment and then I was asleep again, and now I feel rested. Nice to have a feeling of energy as I think about my day.
Yesterday I managed to think my way through a curtain project and today I will finish the work involved with making the curtains from our son’s old house fit the windows in his new one. I’ll make new ones for the big windows in the living room and dining room but the wood poles and rings will fit and I have the fabric so the cost will be minimal. We pushed to get the basic move done so now doing a bit more will be nice. He’s been building book cases so his mountain of book boxes will soon have a home too. That will be a big improvement!
Best wishes to all.
Princesspat, it’s unlikely that your son and I will ever meet, but I already know I’d like him! Anyone who has to build his own bookshelves to house his books is a person after my own heart.
Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …
It is 66 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 77. It is overcast and we will get some showers this afternoon into the evening.
A busy morning here saved me from reading the ridiculous news headlines until just now. “Punch people who are wearing masks outside” and “The Census has doomed us.” It is sad that New York, a state hit hard from COVID-19, will lose a Congressional Seat because of 89 people in the head count. But if that seat went to Colorado (the way I prefer to look at it), I think that is good news. Florida and Texas gain one (boo!!), of the other two gainers, Montana is not the most insane western state and North Carolina can be purple so the only REAL loss is the two seats that went to Texas and Florida. Florida has a Fair Redistricting law so they can’t gerrymander that seat to be Republican – that one may not be lost. Illinois and New York (two losers) may be able to gerrymander their seats back. In any event, it is what it is and we need to win on our ideas. Can we persuade Latino men in Texas and Florida that Democrats aren’t going to emasculate them? Can Latino women convince Latino men that Democratic policies are good for their families? On to 2022!!
See all y’all later!
Correction: Texas got two seats, Florida got one.
Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …
It is 46 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 63. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast. We got close to 80 in the sun yesterday and I was able to spend some time “baking” on the back deck.
The lazy press is determined to find something about the Biden Administration that will set people’s hair on fire. Their quiet governing is called “insular”, Joe Biden’s steady presence is “boring”, the Democratic Party principles that lifelong Democrat Biden is espousing are “radical departures” “forced” by progressives. I will try to watch the Presidential Address to Congress tonight but will skip it if they allow the GQP freshmen deadenders on the floor. I can see them making Joe Wilson’s shouting “You Lie!” at President Obama look civil in comparison. I can always read the speech later. I will probably tune in initially for the optics of seeing VP Kamala Harris and Speaker Nancy Pelosi providing the backdrop for President Joe Biden’s address. w00t!!
See all y’all later!