Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: May 22nd

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 to view previous pages, shown here with 3 pages of comments available and Page 2 circled.

32 Comments

  1. It’s 60 heading for 71 and overcast. More rain on the way. sigh. We generated right at 5 KWHs yesterday and brought the m-t-d to 301.7 – so 5 sunny days, which we aren’t going to get, would bring us a bit over 400. We have 8 production days left. We shall see what we shall see.

    As of when I logged off last night it looked like Aji – NE NM – was going to get some rain. I hope so. A good soaker would help get those wildfires under control and slow down new ones from starting. Among other things. I still don’t know what kind of doctor Jill went to, but it was a good appointment. She came back talking about the relief at hearing the words “I believe you”. Amelia had managed her stock and soup but not her shower and was going to try for that after basketball.

    As for me, I got more sleep last night and got it earlier in the night. I’ve done my treadmilling, am eating my breakfast, and am about to head over to twitter and set up for the day before going over to Great Clips and seeing if it’s empty enough for me to get a haircut. I’ve enough rashes on various parts of my body. I don’t need one on my head, too. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  2. Good morning, 53 and cloudy outside my window today. Ryan is here now and it’s wonderful to see him feeling well and full of energy. Insomnia is still an issue, but he’s doing better with that too. Later today we’ll clip the ivy growing on the slope above the patio and spread bark chips there and under the hedge. It’s hard for us to work on the slope now so it’s good to have his help. Best wishes to all.

    • {{{princesspat}}} It’s so very good that Ryan is (mostly) well – and able to help with the gardening/landscaping work. Have a fun and productive visit. Healing Energy and moar {{{HUGS}}}

  3. Good morning. We had thunderstorms last night, I had some of my plants out to get water. Spent the afternoon yesterday trying not to throw up. Most of my work yesterday was setting up new library accounts for dyslexic elementary school kids. None in Uvalde, but they were all around that age. What is wrong with this country?

  4. Morning, meeses. Wednesday …

    It is 68 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 95. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    TFG rebuked in Georgia. I hope that the diehard MAGAts stay home in November to “punish” Kemp and Raffensperger and Democrats win those races plus the 6 year term for Warnock. I am glad that at least the worst of the worst will not be in positions of power to ratfk the vote counting in 2024.

    Another massacre, another round of thoughts and prayers. Nothing will change, nothing ever changes. I am sick of people who say “America’s Hands Are Full of Blood”. NO! Republicans have blood on their hands. From Elie:

    This:

    I am going to lightly scan for other news and then go back to work.

    See all y’all later!

  5. Good Wednesday morning, Moosekind. It’s 62 F. and kinda ugly outside: overcast with sunlight trying to poke through and not succeeding. The high today will be 71 F.

    Well, we all know what happened yesterday. It is SO disgusting! Imagine how those poor parents feel this morning. And all the Rethugs who thought kids would be “traumatized by wearing masks”—what do they think kids will be like, now? I let loose on Twitter yesterday, I was so heartsick and furious.

    I didn’t even know about it until mid-afternoon. Yesterday I attended a memorial service for the husband of one of my friends. I hardly knew the poor man (it’s his wife I’m friends with), but I became so emotional that I could hardly speak. In fact, I was so overcome that I was unable to speak to the family and the widow afterwards, just shook hands.

    Felt so exhausted I had to have a nap. I wish I weren’t so emotional. But there, I’m a Pisces, what can I do? The waterworks are always at the ready. It rained on and off all yesterday, so the weather was quite appropriate to the occasion.

    I basically skipped reading the “No good news EVER for Democrats” morning paper today. The Style section features the disgusting couple whose trial has dominated our local news. I’ve carefully tuned it all out. I loathe most celebrities and have no wish to know about their private lives or anything else.

    The farmers’ market happens in half an hour and I might be able to get some rowing in before lunch. My daughter is having a milestone birthday on August 1, so I want to collect some of my writings in a booklet for her, along with a special letter. I won’t be around for her next milestone birthday, according to that fortune teller I consulted in the ’80s. She said I’d live to be 87. She was wrong about a couple of things, but surprisingly right about a couple of others.

    Time to start my day. The farmers’ market opens at 10 a.m. Wishing a good, quiet day to all at the Pond with NO bad news.

    • This:

      And all the Rethugs who thought kids would be “traumatized by wearing masks”—what do they think kids will be like, now?

      The Republicans who claim to care about children’s feelings are lying piles of excrement. I cannot imagine what it would be like being a parent bundling a kid up for school today – and trying to find some way to comfort them saying that they aren’t going to be next knowing there is no way to know that.

  6. It’s 63 going to 66 and raining. And will be off and on, mostly on, all day. Again. Yesterday we generated 4.6 KWHs and the m-t-d is 306.45 – obviously nowhere near on track. We’ve got 7 production days left in May.

    I got over 7 hours of sleep last night, mostly in a single chunk, so that part’s good. My hands are shaking and my balance is iffy, so that’s not so good. But nothing hit the floor, including me, so it’s not bad either. I spend summer/warm weather itching. There is something outside apparently blowing in the wind that gives me contact dermatitis. Even when all the outside I’m doing is taking out the litterbox detritus and putting out birdseed. I’ve minor rashes on my hands, wrists, jaw and neck. sigh. At least not on my scalp. That rash was from needing a hair cut and now I’ve gotten the hair cut, it’s not itching any longer. (Yes, I was the only one masked – the stylist did put one on at my request – but I was also the only customer in the place until we were almost finished. And he was sitting with is back to me so no not-masked people breathing in my direction.)

    I’ve been derailed every time I’ve tried to get over to twitter and check on people so all I know is as of last night everybody was alive and hanging on. And Aji’d gotten some more slow, soaking rain. Not a lot more but any is good. Especially the slow, soaking part. The burned slopes can’t hold any water and a heavy rain would do nothing but flood and carry off what soil is left.

    We live in an evil country. Call it patriarchy or colonizer culture or whatever, our society is evil. And since “evangelical” white male supremacy is the underlying foundation, I have no idea if we will ever change that. But I know we need to keep trying. We can at least push it back a bit.

    Off to twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  7. Thursday Meese. 53 going up to 74 here in Kingston. Spent the day yesterday trying to install software and figure out my passwords – since my puter crashed and I had to buy a new one. Couldn’t get onto Moose. Fingers crossed that some data can be saved from the old one.

    Still reeling from Buffalo and now Uvalde. There are no words anymore.

    Puerto Rico


    Carmelo Ríos, who filed a project in February of this year to make it easier to obtain weapons permits, received more than $3,500 in political donations from a well-known lobbyist on the issue and a member of the National Rifle Association.

    • Sorry to hear about your computer woes and glad to see you got back on the moose!

  8. Cool enough for long sleeves on my walk this morning – 60 degrees. But it’s warming up, won’t need them tomorrow. 20 minutes,better than nothing. I should try for more next week.

  9. Good Thursday morning, Meese. The weather eejit refused to provide a forecast for today, she was so excited by the forecast for the next four days, so all I can tell you is that we currently have 63 F. in Ashburn, going up to a humid 75 F., and it’s cloudy. Dearly is preparing to take the dog out and I’m preparing to jump into the shower since I have something to go to at 11 a.m.

    This is a film about how to deal with your transgender children. A resident who is connected with the film industry said she helped produce it, and that the Science & Faiths Committee here is very conservative and didn’t want to show it at first. Half the residents here are conservative (well, they’re rich as hell), so that makes me want to show up at 11 to own the Rethugs.

    However, yesterday I refused a last-minute invitation to join a candlelight vigil in front of the NRA. For one thing, Dearly had forgotten to order dinner so I had to cook, and for another, I just don’t see the point. None of the vigils I have participated in to end gun violence have done a particle of good. I want to focus on electing Democratic senators (fortunately, I don’t think mine are up for reelection this year), and just getting more Dems elected in general.

    This afternoon there’s a concert of singing at 3, to which I’ll go as I need some music, followed by a meeting of the UU’s upstairs in the Reading Room at 4. There will be a UU minister present, who will ask such questions as “Is there an afterlife?” I wish I believed in an afterlife on the order of a perpetual family reunion. I’d love to see my parents again and people whom I loved but who are no longer here. Unfortunately, I can’t believe that, considering that our whole cosmos is going to consume itself in fiery gases 7 billion years from now. Of course, our poor, precious, beautiful Gaia will probably die before that, the way we’re carrying on.

    Well, now that I’ve cheered y’all up, I’ll extend sympathy to our Sister Dee. Gods, what a thing to happen! Mine did that a few months ago. I have an external hard drive that stays plugged in all the time, so the geeks were able to recover many of my files. However, when I get my new computer (it’s to be hoped, in July), I hope Jan will show me also how to store stuff in the cloud. There are documents I don’t want to lose.

    Wishing a good, peaceful day to all at the Pond.

    • I will definitely help you becloud! I could not have survived multiple moves and disruptions and 7 days off the grid and two weeks with my computers packed up in-transit if I had to rely on hardware storage. It is the only civilized way to manage document storage.

      This:

      None of the vigils I have participated in to end gun violence have done a particle of good. I want to focus on electing Democratic senators (fortunately, I don’t think mine are up for reelection this year), and just getting more Dems elected in general.

      My daughter was really unnerved that we literally can’t do anything to fix the gun thing until we get 3 more Democratic Senators. She and her cohort walked out of classrooms in 2018 to protest the inaction after the Parkland massacre. I told her that we need to kill the filibuster and to do that we need at least 3 more Democratic Senators to counter Manchin, Sinema and Feinstein. By the way, Joe Manchin claims that “if we kill the filibuster to pass legislation, the other side will come back and undo it all when they are in power!” Yes, probably so. But in the meantime 100,000 lives will be saved from needless gun violence between now and January 2025. And that date is only if we suffer an electoral catastrophe and lose the presidency and both Houses of Congress. A lot has to go wrong for that to occur.

  10. Good morning, meeses! Thursday …

    It is 68 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 99. Sunny skies are in the forecast. It will be a day to do outside things in the morning and inside things in the afternoon. The worst part about high temperatures is that it takes hours after the sun goes down for it to get comfortable. When I woke up at 1am and looked at the thermometer, it was still 80 degrees – too hot to open windows. By about 4am, we can open windows and doors and get some of the cool morning air into our abode.

    So now we are finding out that the “good guys with guns” – literally the cops sworn to protect the Uvalde elementary school children – stood around for an hour afraid to confront the shooter. If I recall, something similar happened in the Parkland shooting. Maybe instead of relying on the courage and perfect location of law enforcement, we should instead try TAKING THE FREAKING ASSAULT RIFLES AWAY FROM PEOPLE! Sheesh.

    I have some projects with hard May 31st deadlines that I need to put serious effort into completing sooner rather than later.

    See all y’all later!

  11. It’s 53 heading for 61 overcast and drizzling. It shows less rain than it showed last night, but just as much cloud cover. sigh. The sun did come out yesterday afternoon – we generated 11.9 KWHs by end of daylight. The m-t-d is 318.32 – still possible to get to 400 by sundown next Tuesday, but it will take a lot of sunshine. We shall see what we shall see.

    Didn’t get to sleep until around 1 a.m. so I’m moving slowly. Zoning out in the middle of doing things and all that. Still with the tremors but they’re better. I think. At least I haven’t had “mouse trouble” so far this morning. Of course I haven’t started boosting anything yet either. I wish I had something good to say about anybody anywhere. At least everybody’s still breathing. (And I am very much looking forward to basket’s visit next week.)

    Guess I’d best get over to twitter and get started. Bright the day, Meeses.{{{HUGS}}}

  12. Good day, 59 and partly cloudy outside my window today. I’ve been busy with Ryan’s visit, an early Dr”s appointment yesterday, and furnace repairs this morning so my morning routine has been disrupted and I’ve forgotten to come back to the Moose later. My habits keep me going as my memory seems to be fading! I need to get some plants situated now because rain is predicted later this afternoon. Best wishes to all.

  13. Good Friday morning, Moosekind! It’s 70 F. in Ashburn right now and we’re under a tornado watch until 2 p.m. Rain is expected at 10 a.m. so we might have to hurry breakfast and get Monty out for a business meeting. He’s already had one this morning, but it wasn’t serious.

    Yesterday I went to the film, which was good when they finally got it running. No one told me it was 90 minutes long, so I had to leave after the first half-hour. It seemed to deal with how evangelical Christians dealt with the fact that one of their children was transgender. Well, no parent who believed she was bringing up a girl or a boy is delighted with the news. It requires a mental, psychological, and emotional adjustment. However, some parents are fortunate enough not to belong to patriarchal religions that view such events as abominations and sins against God.

    Then I went to a chimes concert at 3. I mistakenly believed it was a singing concert at first and was startled to find a stage full of women holding sticks in their hands, sticks that made a chiming noise when shaken. The conductor explained that the white sticks were like the white keys on a piano and the black sticks were like the black keys. It was charming. I almost wept at one point, thinking of Uvalde, but luckily was able to control myself.

    After that I sought out the UUs upstairs, and we had a stimulating discussion. I kept seeing the same people all day, because we all attended the same events! By the time dinner was over I was wiped out.

    Meese, I am SO looking forward to having a real computer and a non-Logitech keyboard that will let me type as fast as I want to, which is 100 words a minute. With my current setup I type but nothing happens, so I have to either sit and wait for the strokes to appear on the screen or start over and hope they will appear. Very irritating! First-world problem, I realize, but when you have a novel to finish and a limited remaining lifetime, this situation is annoying to the max.

    Today will be devoted to laundry, listening to music while I write, and, it’s to be hoped, joining my gym buddy in the gym at 4. Man, do I need the gym! I seem to grow larger every day.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and hoping there are no tornadoes threatening where you are.

  14. Good morning, meeses! Friday …

    It is 70 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 99. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    I am not sure what is more embarrassing for Wisconsin – having idiot Ron Johnson as a Senator or knowing that there are more than half of the people in the state who hear him blame “critical race theory” and “wokeness” for the Uvalde massacre and nod their heads in agreement (and plan to re-elect him). You can’t fix that level of stupid. I am not sure that the voters in Arizona (as a whole) are a lot smarter but I have seen signs that they reject outright ignorance and stupidity. I think that this purplish state has a better chance to some day be blue than Wisconsin does – they were ground zero for the 2010 Tea Party movement and their gerrymanders are permanent.

    Out of all the heartbreaking stories coming out of Uvalde, the one where the 11 year old girl smeared blood on herself and played dead to avoid being slaughtered has to go to the top of the list. At least she survived but, good lord, she is going to have a lot to deal with! It is too bad that she lives in a state where mental health care is not readily available and where the rich white males who run the state hate her, her ethnicity and her gender and have no interest in helping her cope with what happened. :(

    Republicans are tripping all over themselves to be the “toughest on abortion” with a candidate for Oklahoma governor saying life begins before conception after the current governor just signed a complete abortion ban. They really want to outlaw women and return them to the chattel that they were before the repeal of the coverture laws. I wish there were funds available to relocate oppressed women who want to escape red states. I know that many want to stay – for family, mainly – but what kind of life will their children and grandchildren have?

    Today is the Friday before a long weekend and I need to get my weekend projects lined up today while I can still email clients.

    See all y’all later!

  15. Friday Meese. Still working on setting up my new puter – got word that the techies were able to retrieve some of my data from the old one that crashed – will find out later today what was saved. I will now have to figger out the best way to save everything to some kind of cloud storage – have no idea which to select

    Report on ongoing ugly attacks against VP Harris, from Chris Bouzy, Bot Sentinel CEO

    62 here going up to 78 with rain.
    Puerto Rico

    • I am still not comfortable with the idea of large in-person gatherings but at least the parade is outside. The vaccinated should be safe from serious illness but there are a lot of people who can’t afford to get even mildly sick and who are going to exposed to those who are.

    • There are a few places you can store documents online. If you use Microsoft Office, the most seamless place is OneDrive. You should have a free OneDrive subscription that came with your computer’s Windows Operating System but it only holds 5gb – that sounds like a lot but it isn’t. The other options are here. For $20 a year you can get 100gb, for $69 per year you can get Microsoft365 which comes with Office in the Cloud and stores 1tb (1000 gb). You can also store your documents at DropBox where you can get a free 2gb account. The cheapest DropBox account is $120 a year (for 2tb – 2000gb). Google has an offering but I would never recommend Google – they have security issues and want to take over your entire computer to use any of their products. My recommendation is the Microsoft365 Personal. You can share your OneDrive files on up to 5 devices and it comes with easy to understand apps. If you need more storage, you can go to the Family version for $99 a year and get up to 6tb (6000 gb) of storage.

      • Thanks, Jan! I’m copying and saving this. I do plan to get Microsoft 365.

        The tornado passed over us and moved east. All we received was a rumble of thunder and some rain. I think even the rain has stopped by now.

      • Thank you Jan. I’ll take your advice and get Microsoft365 personal. Do you happen to know what is the best place to use for music storage? My husband has hundreds of those little flash drive things for music storage which he is always misplacing

        • You can store music files in the Microsoft cloud but I am pretty sure that you can’t play them from there – you would have to copy them out of the cloud into local storage to play. However, that information might be dated – I researched it for a client who had some video files they wanted to save off into Microsoft storage last year. Do you happen to know what format the music files are in (MP3, MP4A, WAV)? I can do some research. I can’t imagine that Microsoft would push “cloud computing” for consumers and not be able to accommodate music files.

          I will re-up this conversation in Sunday morning’s post so we can back-and-forth on the M365 options.

  16. Checking in from home. My a/c is broken, I’m waiting for the a/c person. Sigh. Oh — and the weather guy is saying this is the hottest, driest May on record.

    • {{{another}}} Hope the A/C is fixed quickly & (relatively) inexpensively. You’re definitely going to need it this year. Healing Energy & moar {{{HUGS}}}

  17. It’s 56 heading for 77 and sunny! Yay! Which is very good since we only got 5.6 KWHs yesterday. The m-t-d is 324 – can we get to 400? Yes. Will we? We shall see.

    My son, bless him, came by and brought me a pizza yesterday – good thing I have the opposite problem from Diana since between lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, and dessert I ate the whole thing. That means I’ll be baking the pork roast this afternoon. Oh well, 77 is actually OK for baking. Tomorrow’s 82 or Sunday’s 86 would not be.

    Holding the Good Thought everybody’s at least OK. Last night just before I logged off I saw the monster wildfire “they” said they were gaining containment on had exploded at both ends. “They” were wrong. As usual. But that’s still over the ridge and not moving in Aji’s direction. But anybody who loves the land and the living beings thereon is weeping. Well, there is much to weep about these days. And only the little bits (like a pizza or a visit from basket or a phone call from a friend just to chat or the 14 cherries my tree gave me this year) bring smiles. & my computer looks like it wants to go down, too. sigh.

    Off to put my laundry on, then to twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  18. Good morning, 52 and raining outside my window today. We enjoyed a taco dinner with Ryan and Emma last evening and it was nice to just be with them and listen. They are sorting out what to do next and trying to cope with the deep sadness we all feel about what’s happening in our country. Both of them are looking at programs in the health care field, medical massage for Ryan and x-ray tech for Emma. I admit to wishing they were both in college, but covid disrupted their lives. I don’t know if their current ideas will last but it’s good to see them exploring options. Best wishes to all.

    • {{{princesspat}}} Options are the only true riches. Healing Energy to all your family & moar {{{HUGS}}}

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