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 to view previous pages, shown here with 3 pages of comments available and Page 2 circled.
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Good Wednesday morning, Moosekind, sure, and it’s a grand immortal day outside! Right now in Ashburn it’s 70 F., on its way up to 90 F., with the chance of an imaginary shower—possibly—this evening. The view outside is a glorious palette of blue, gold, and green from the sky, the sun, and the woods across the way. The full moon tonight will be extra magickal because today is the 13th!
We did have a shower at dinner time yesterday, surprisingly. It rained and rained for quite 10 minutes, and the wind was fierce. There aren’t any trees down on the campus, however.
I feel infinitesimal this morning after looking at those NASA photos yesterday, especially the one of the faraway celestial nursery where stars are waiting to be born. Imagine that.
Yesterday I just didn’t move. Sat in a chair waiting for the NASA scientists to finish yapping and show us the photos, then sat through a couple of hours of the hearings. Unfortunately, when I’m obliged to sit in a chair and listen, I tend to go off to sleep. So let’s say I watched a good bit of the hearings, not all.
Poor Monty is going to be alone tonight for the space of an hour. This is French week in the restaurants because of Bastille Day tomorrow, so we’re going to sample the Boeuf Bourgignon at the Pub. Then tomorrow night there’s Coq au Vin or Salmon en Papillote at the Windows restaurant. We’ll see what happens.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond. Blessings on all your camels.
Good morning. It’s 81 degrees already, headed up to 106 — but hey, at least it’s not a record. At least I’m wfh & get to watch Le Tour. The commentators are calling the finish “rude”, it’s a steep climb with no flat parts until the finish line. Yesterday’s hearing was….wow. I’m going to have to read some about it, because I absorb things better that way, but the testimony of the guy with the tattoo (sorry I’m terrible with names) had so much information.
Wednesday Meese. Had a big thunderstorm last night. Only good thing about it is I don’t have to water the garden today. It’s 65 now here in Kingston, going up to a sunny 85 today.
This really upset me
OMG! Murder! The police are murderers! Look at that charming child. And now he’s dead.
Puerto Rico
Solar is needed!
It’s 73 heading for 95 – the humidity is down so the heat index isn’t supposed to be much if any more than that. Yesterday’s clouds didn’t go away until around 1 so we only generated 13.95 KWHs – but we’ve got enough in the sock at 215.5 to still be on track. It’s sunny so far today so hopefully we’ll keep gaining.
I just got back from the grocery store. Whew! No produce and the only meat I got was the turkey breakfast sausage and it was still $79 for food alone. It doesn’t help that GF stuff is more expensive than “regular” stuff anyway nor that they were out of a couple of the things I normally get so I had to get even more expensive substitutes. Or of course come back at another time to a place where nobody but me is masked. (OK, today one other customer – an older woman like me – was masked but we were it.) But prices have just flat gone up. The last time I bought frozen concentrate OJ – about 4 months ago – it was $1.98 per can. Today it was $2.48 per can. I’m going to have to start thinking what and who of my automatic giving I need to stop. I hate that. Most of it is going to individuals who need it desperately. (I’ve already shut down on most of the giving to non-profits and all but one political.) But if my son weren’t helping me with my groceries I’d have had to do it sooner. And although he knows where my money is going, it’s not fair to him. Sigh.
I guess keep Holding Good Thoughts/praying for everybody and hoping for the best is only path forward. But it is a path forward. Off to twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 62 and sunny outside my window today. I was up early hoping to be more productive today, but now I’ve got ice on my knees and am trying to not be discouraged. I had hoped to be outdoors today but oh well. I’ve got laundry and some easy sewing to do so that’s prolly a wiser choice.
I watched the Jan 6th hearings yesterday and remain full of angst realizing that American voters still support tRump. Despite a basic intellectual understanding of how hard it is to change long held political affiliations I will never understand how people can vote for such evil. So once again I’ll retreat to my small world. Best wishes to all.
{{{princepat}}} Healing Energy – & retreating to your small world is best for your own health. moar {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning. We are running ahead of 2011 in 100 degree days, that was the year we had 90. I think we’ll leave that in the dust. In the office today, at least I get to use their electricity. Supposed to be able to watch today’s stage of Le Tour on NBC’s app, but it’s only on the paid tier. Grrrr.
Thursday Meese. Last night was really scary here in Kingston – we got hit by a huge hailstorm – that knocked out power in the area and flooded city streets. Thankfully we have the backup generator, however the hail came down so hard I thought it would break our windows. Luckily it didn’t. Many of our neighbors still don’t have power.
Yikes! I’m glad the hail didn’t break the windows. I hope it didn’t do too much damage to your garden. Blessings on backup generators. Healing Energy & {{{HUGS}}}
OMG, Dee! How terrible! Glad it didn’t damage your house.
Hope your neighbors’ power is restored soon.
Puerto Rico
It’s 71 heading for 98 and the heat index may or may not go over 100. Low humidity makes a big difference. I’ll still need to close up the house in another half hour. Yesterday we generated 20.67 and the m-t-d at 236 is still on track for over 500. Over 550 even, which would be nice.
I just took my peanut butter-applesauce muffin bread out of the oven. I’ll cut it into squares when it cools. Operating on 4.5 hours of sleep means operating on autopilot. I put chopped walnuts into the batter since I usually do – except with peanut butter muffins. LOL.
I’m zoning out already. Oh well. At least my hands love this warm weather. Holding the Good Thoughts for everybody. Off to twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Or maybe not off to twitter. It doesn’t seem to want to let me in. sigh. Eff their stupid “something went wrong. please retry” message anyway. Be nice if they quit jacking around with the programing.
Twitter did that to me too. But after a while it came back.
Wait until Elon is forced to complete his purchase of Twitter and then shuts it down in a peeve. I hope the employees who left in the Musk Purge have a plan for a new site; I would miss my tweeted news links.
Caribbean Matters -posted
Sigh. My comment keeps being marked as spam. OK, going to try one more time.
ood Thursday morning, Meese, and happy Bastille Day—I guess! The tart shells are out of the oven and cooling before I fill them. Girrls, if I had known how small they were I’d have probably bought them elsewhere, only the elsewhere was England and the shipping alone would have ruined me financially.
OK. Soon I will mix the softened cream cheese with heavy cream and confectioner’s sugar and distribute said product into the teeny-weeny tart shells, which are made of phyllo dough. Not authentically French, but wot the hell. Thank Goddess they’re too small to cause heart attacks in those who eat them! I have leetle tricolor flag toothpicks with which to decorate them. Two of the three volunteers I’ve called for have responded. Good. One can carry the little Igloo full of chilled Perrier.
But enough about that. Last night we were surprised by a nonimaginary shower at 10 p.m. Why do they always happen at bedtime? It went on for quite 10 minutes. We are now less than half an inch under par for the year.
No wonder I didn’t get to see the Super Moon. Monty and I went outside to look for it but naturally the half of the sky where the moon was hangin’ out was obscured by clouds.
I know this is going to be a very long post, but I really want to share this with you, apropos of the photos we saw from the James Webb Space Telescope. It’s a quote by Carl Sagan:
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”- Carl Sagan
Lawks, I forgot the weather! This fourteenth day of Thermidor it’s 84 F. already, out of the proposed 87 F. It always amuses me how perfect the blue sky is on sunny mornings, and how the white clouds soon pile up like the sails of stately Spanish galleons, in the heights. Hope everyone at the Pond will enjoy a perfectly peaceful Bastille Day.
We had clouds over the mountains as is often the case in the evening during monsoon season. I am glad we got to see last month’s Super Moon.
Good morning, 60 and sunny outside my window, and the sky is so blue it’s startling! I didn’t do much yesterday, but my late afternoon watering the patio garden was nice. Fortunately I enjoy just being outdoors and puttering around because that suits my aging knees. I’ll do more of the same today. Best wishes to all.
Good morning, meeses! Thursday …
It is 93 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 99. Mostly sunny skies with a chance for a bit of rain at 5pm.
I hope I did not miss BREAKING NEWS that I can’t live without knowing! :) I had two early morning projects that ran long and now I have errands to run.
See all y’all later!
Brrrrr, it’s all the way down to 75, and it might not get up to 100 this afternoon! Yesterday, management sent an email saying that because of ERCOT’s conservation request, it might get “noticeably warmer”. Great. I hope every state employee remembers this in November.
Good Friday morning, Moosekind, and happy St. Swithin’s Day!
So far it’s fair in Ashburn, with 69 F. on its way up to 88 F. Very little chance of rain.
Yesterday was very successful in the sense that the Bastille Day tarts were distributed to those neighbors who weren’t diabetic and could eat them, and of course I brought them to the meeting. It was an excellent meeting. We raised our tiny cups of Perrier, said, “Vive la France!”, and then devoured the tarts. The few of us who remembered our third-year French attempted a stanza of “La Marseillaise” but soon trailed off.
Anyway, we had a good time discussing our obituaries, telling why we chose the photos we did, and speculating as to what our survivors would do with our writings. I was very touched at the end when people said they really appreciated having this group, that we were more than just fellow members, we were actually friends. Some said they were treated disrespectfully by the leader of the other group and received no feedback on their writing. However, in this group they felt safe and they liked the fact that everyone commented. That made me feel good, so I told them they could have their choice of assignments, a pragmatic one, or one involving fiction, for August.
Tonight we are going out to dinner with a dear friend. I hope we can keep Monty from destroying things while we’re gone. Yesterday while we were having dinner at a restaurant, still trying to feel French (we ordered the coq au vin), he stood up on his hind legs and yanked the blue cocktail napkins and small plates off the counter. Gods. At least he didn’t tear them up.
As if life weren’t crushing enough, the WaPo had a worshipful article about Goobernator Dumbkin in this morning’s Metro section. Apparently they just lahved him in Nebraska, where he spoke at a Rethug fundraiser. What a jerk!
I’m so exhausted after my efforts of yesterday that I plan to have breakfast followed by a rest. I keep feeling vaguely surprised that I don’t have the energy and resilience I had in my sixties.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.
It’s 75 heading for 98 and I’ve closed up the house already. The window for having it open was between 5 and 7 – and I missed most of that by not getting up until after 6. In the 10-day forecast I’m only seeing 3 mornings when it will be cool enough to open up at all. And several of the highs are over 100. Happy July and all that. Oh well. My hands are happy. We generated 17.6 KWHs yesterday which was barely on track for the day. The m-t-d at 253.78 is definitely on track to get July over 500. I just hope it’s on track to cover the A/C use this summer.
Aji’s fundraiser for Wings’s clanbrother wrapped up yesterday morning. A bright moment in a mostly same ol’ same ol’ pain and penury day for them and just, well, so many folks. Even I and running on short grass and still have that blasted rash on my arm and what I’d dealing with is diddly compared to what others even here on Moose are dealing with.
Off to twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good Friday Meese. We are still in a state of emergency declared by our mayor here in Kingston due to the violent hail storm- should lift today.
I want to highlight the latest with our VP Kamala Harris
Puerto Rico