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 morning. Happy to be wfh, watching astronomy shows & eating breakfast. Going to tweak my Bookchat diary — please come by this evening 7 central time, at the orange place. That’s all I’ve got, just nothing much going on. Which is totally fine.
Good Wednesday morning, Moosekind! For the second day in a row we’ve awakened to the sound of rain and the sight of drops on our windowpanes. This is rare enough in our area that I’m enjoying it—especially considering that this rain is bringing cooler temperatures with it. We’ll have a week of highs low 80’s. September is truly coming on. Right now it’s 70 F. in steamy Ashburn, with rain off and on.
My day yesterday was completely derailed because of a crisis in my daughter’s family. We were on the phone for hours. Today will be busy, as I never made it to the post office to mail that form yesterday. I am sending it certified mail as I don’t trust DeJoyless’s post office. I’m also making five copies of the bloody thing.
This afternoon is the Legacy Letter Writing Group and I have several contributions to make to it.
Our rainfall deficit for the year has been reduced to a little more than an inch. Perhaps today’s rain will flatten it to zero.
Wishing a good day to everyone at the Moose Pond.
What happened to the “edit” button? I should have said “We’ll have a week of highs in the low 80s.”
I send almost everything I care about via Certified Mail. I don’t trust the USPS. I am still waiting for my 2021 tax returns to show up as inputted at the IRS. They arrived at their location, I have proof of that thanks to the Certified Mail receipt. They claimed I never filed my 2020 returns (which I did, they cashed the damn check!) so when I re-sent them, I sent them Certified. Sad state of affairs when incompetent people are put in charge of important things.
Wednesday Meese. 61 degrees here – and the rain will continue today, temp going up to 73. despite the rain our drought emergency is still in effect.
Puerto Rico
It’s 66 heading for 85 and sunny at the moment. We managed to generate just over 11 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 54. Not on track even for 300. But the widget says the next week will be sunny so we shall see what we shall see.
We’re now at the betwixt and between time of year. The mornings are too cool for shorts to be comfortable, the afternoons too warm for long pants. The nights start too warm for a sheet, much less a blanket, but sometime after midnight both sheet and light blanket are necessary. It’s definitely no longer summer. My hands are cold again. The Wheel turns, and all that. Everybody seems to be hanging on or trucking along. Healing Energy to everyone.
I’m off to twitter. Sometime today I’m going to make butterscotch pudding. And tomorrow morning I’m baking. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 60 and sunny outside my window today. I was at the garden shop yesterday returning all the plastic plant pots I’ve used this year so they can be recycled and saying good bye to Mary, the owner. Her shop is seasonal, so they will close soon and the she goes to their winter place, south of Tucson. We had a nice visit and I have a few pansies to plant today.
Good news for our son…..his docs have decided to order another c scan on October and then make a decision re surgery. So he has a reprieve and we are both greatly relieved. It’s so good to see him looking healthy again.
I should read the news of the day, but I’m so easily upset because our country voted to put horrible tRump in power that I keep avoiding reality. So another solitaire game, then time to work at my desk. Best wishes to all.
{{{princesspat}}} Holding the Good Thoughts/sending Healing Energy to your son & all your family. moar {{{HUGS}}}
link for the book chat: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/7/2114713/-Bookchat-Mercenary-Librarians
Good morning. We had quite a thunderstorm last night. It’s actually cool this morning — 72. In the office, but I’m leaving early to go get my contacts from the eye doc. Not much traffic in my book chat, but I really liked the book & enjoyed writing about it.
Diana, I didn’t see your reply to my comment about music playing in my head last week. It’s always different, but yes lots of Snow Patrol. I saw a comment yesterday about not listening in meetings. I replied saying how handy it is to have an internal iPod, I can listen to U2 while people babble about stuff that doesn’t concern me.
Ha! It’s a handy trait to have, isn’t it?
Thursday Meese. No rain today :(. We are still under drought restrictions here in Ulster County. I’m very unhappy about our Gov. lifting mask restrictions. Am VERY alarmed by the religious ruling on PrEP
Puerto Rico
Excellent article from SUNY Albany Professor Pedro Cabán, author of Constructing a Colonial People: Puerto Rico and the United States, 1898-1932.
The christianists are awful, part 85 bazillion.
Posted.
Good morning, meeses! Thursday …
It is 77 muggy degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 95. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast. Later today we may get some moisture from Hurricane Kay (Pacific hurricane) who is hanging out over Baja California. Our cooldown is now put off until tomorrow afternoon (it had been expected today) – at 5am Saturday morning we will have temperatures below 70! I will be ready to open my windows!!
The news is so bloody depressing – undrinkable water in Mississippi, women dying from lack of “approved” medical care in their states, democracy literally on the brink because the Trump-Sanders SCOTUS plans an all-out assault on state constitutions and the protections they afford for voting rights, obscene sums of money tainting our political system, and right-wing businessmen taking over even more political media. I have avoided clicking on CNN since they refused to fire the birther Chris Cuomo but generally their headlines were accurate. Not to be trusted any longer. I have always taken Politico stories with a grain of salt and try to find other sources to corroborate their “scoops”. Now we find that their new owner had asked his employees to pray for Donald Trump to win in 2020. JHC on a popsicle stick!! I will pick and choose and try to find local news sources where possible.
I lost the LED indicator on my phone and now it is impossible to find it in the dark. I had a phone shutdown incident yesterday at a doctor’s office – I was trying to find the Do Not Disturb, fumbled around and then just shut the phone off. When it restarted, I had lost my status bar (got that back) and this morning I noticed that the LED indicator is off. The on/off switch for it does not seem to work. :( Yes, first world problems but my technology is an anchor for me when things are chaotic. After I get my morning client connections done, I will have to dig deeper into the googles – the first pass did not solve my problem. The googles did, however, help me discover that I can produce a downloadable report of all my Amazon purchases and that will make my life easier as I try to sort out expenses that need to be assigned to various funding sources. Life is good!
See all y’all later!
This sums up how I feel.
It’s that bloody Mercury retrograde, Jan!
Hope you can everything back to rights.
It’s 63 heading for 86 and sunny at the moment. We generated 11.6 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 65.6 – this does not bode well. But I’ll keep hoping.
This morning I baked molasses spice muffin bread, which is currently cooling so I can cut it and smells divine, and having the oven on actually felt good. Definitely Autumn even though the equinox is 2 weeks out. Yesterday my son came by (he’s been working so many double shifts lately – has to again today – that his regional manager came in yesterday and covered the day shift for him) and cleaned/replaced the thermal paste on my computer. We shall see if that was the problem with the overheating or just a problem. It certainly did need cleaning. We also did the Tractor Supply run which wasn’t quite as expensive as expected. Mostly because I got one 22-lb bag of cat food instead of two 16-lb bags. That will at least get me through the rest of September. Everybody’s still hanging on or at least they were last night when I logged off.
Off to twitter and Dee’s diary (it is Thursday, right). Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
It’s that bloody Mercury retrograde, Jan!
Hope you can everything back to rights.
Good morning, Moosekind! It’s 72 F. here and sort of sunny. No rain expected, high in the low 80s. We lost power for two hours this morning. In fact, I learned that half of Loudoun County was out! (Was it Putin? Who knows?)
Busy day and I need to get to it. Had an AWFUL night, despite taking a sleeping pill. Every once in a while this happens.
It seems that London Bridge is about to fall down, which is code for Her Majesty is on her deathbed. All the children are at Balmoral in Scotland, and the grandchildren are winging their way there. We feel sad. After all, she represents a great deal of history. Her first prime minister, Sir Winston Churchill, was born 101 years before the current prime minister, Elizabeth Truss.
Have essays to read through and mark before it’s time for the Writers’ Group at 1:30. Wishing everyone at the Pond a good day.
I will be saddened to lose the Queen – she is a connection to so much history, good and bad.
My guess is that the Brits will cancel the monarchy rather than deal with the current set of royals. No one wants Prince Charles to be king and no one wants the bald headed guy who was mean to Meghan. England needs a queen, not a bunch of rude buttheads.
Did your power come back or is this post before you lost power?
The power did come back on. It wasn’t just the Home, it was Loudoun County! Scary! I put it down to Putie.
I feel bad for Harry. He seems like a genuinely good guy, and she was the only person in that family who was nice to him.
Good morning, 61 and sunny. I woke up late and now need to rush to get to a dentist appointment. Sad comment on a quiet life when going to the dentist is the major event of my day :) I think I’ll stop at the fabric store on my way home. I don’t need anything but I used to enjoy just looking around to see what interested me. As always, my best wishes to all.
Friday Meese. Only 54 here in Kingston this morning – going up to 83. Since my perspective on “the Royal family” looks at them all as part of British global colonialism I admit I’ve been paying most of my attention to #IrishTwitter, and #BlackTwitter Caribbean and African responses to Elizabeth’s death. I do also admit that I’m laughing at Brits who spend much of their time attacking Harry and Meghan who are now horrified that their two mixed-race kids will be “Prince and Princess”
Puerto Rico
Ha! Funny tweet about white people’s Royalist heads asplodin!! I suspect that Charles won’t change the rules. Prince Archie and Prince Lilibet may be the only lasting legacy of Queen Elizabeth’s reign that matters.
Good morning. Nothing much going on in my world. Since the mornings are less hot — finally down to the 70s — I may start walking before work again. Maybe. (It’s easy to say on Friday that Monday I’ll get up earlier & walk.)
Good Friday morning, Moosekind! It’s 62 F. lovely degrees in Ashburn, on its way up to 84 F. We’re going to have a week of 80s, isn’t that greaties? Be sure to watch Moonrise tonight—She will be a Harvest Moon tomorrow, but tonight she’ll be accompanied by Jupiter and Saturn on either side, at 7:28 p.m. EDT.
Yesterday the power went off in the Home for two hours. It turned out to be at least half of Loudoun County. I figured it was old Putie, trying to bring down the grid since he’s clearly not winning in Ukraine. This may be too fanciful.
Had the night from hell Thursday so was running on empty, but powered through my Writers’ Group meeting anyway. They’re such a crazy bunch! We have a great time together. Their next assignment is to write either a ghost story or an account of something totally weird that happened to them. Yesterday after the meeting I went to sleep, and after dinner went to bed at 8:30.
Feeling very sad, with sudden tears popping out at random times. Yes, I’m American and glad of it—I don’t approve of hereditary monarchy or aristocracy—but Her Majesty was our last link to the Greatest Generation, the generation that won the war against Hitler. I didn’t feel anything much when the Queen Mum, Princess Margaret, or even Duke Philip died, but this is different.
The U.K. has been like a second home to me. Been there so many times I’ve lost count. Younger Son was there in August, staying with his cousin in her enormous house. It’s strange to think we’ll never hear “God Save the Queen” again.
Still tired from yesterday even after a pretty decent sleep last night, so will be dragging all day. A Witch I know sent me one of his short stories to critique, and I’ve lots of correspondence to catch up on. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.
I watched the coverage after the news broke and I found myself tearing up a little as they described the Queen’s life and showed clips of her through the years. England and its colonial past is ugly but she personally was in that role by the circumstances of her birth (and her uncle stepping down) not by any active choice. I find it hard to dislike her for the sins of her ancestors and for the decisions she made that are the product of her upbringing rather than a conscious choice to be a terrible person or to support the terrible things the Prime Ministers did. She loved her dogs and her grandson Harry and provided a steady presence for her nation during troubling times (the COVID-19 address was particularly important – we had nothing like that in America). I would not have wanted that job and that she did it for 70 years with grace and dignity is remarkable. I do hope that she left a note somewhere telling people how she really felt about TFG. :)
I’m very conflicted about Elizabeth. England is the source in the modern world of the myriad evils of colonizer culture that anybody not WASP is still dealing with to this day. (RC Church is a different issue with a similar outcome.) She was the Queen of England. But if she’s going to get the blame for things done before she was born or thought of, I’ll give her credit for being on the throne when the African colonies and many of the Caribbean colonies gained their freedom. England’s response to those fights wasn’t “bless you my children” but it also wasn’t the totalitarian violence of the U.S.S.R. when any under their control tried to break free. From the moment her father became king, Elizabeth set herself the job of being the morale builder (not the repressive “moral” authority her several times great grandmother Victoria was) for England and to a certain extent the world. She did that job very well.
It’s 60 heading to 86 and sunny at the moment. Mostly the problems with electricity generation are cloudy days, especially that pseudo-monsoon pattern of clouds mid-afternoon when the production otherwise would be highest. But I took a look at the oak tree yesterday from a different angle than usual and it’s still growing. Not just taller which wouldn’t be so much of a problem but wider which most certainly is. We generated a little over 12 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d at 77.8 isn’t on track for even 300. But at least it’s gaining on it.
Amelia’s slowly getting better, Jill’s about the same, and Aji’s horse Miskwaki has colic and may or may not survive. He was still alive at midnight CDT but he needed more painkillers and that’s a bad sign. Working at/for the university is getting more and more stressful & my friend is still over 5 years from full retirement. And my son has so far not been able to find 10 people in Fayetteville willing and able to show up, preferably on time, and make pizzas for $12 per hour which is both minimum wage and fairly decent wages in Fayetteville, AR, and continues to work double shifts to cover for the ones who say they want a job but don’t show up. Healing Energy to everyone, in whatever shape or way desired.
Cleaning the computer and/or replacing the thermal paste did solve the overheating problem. I’m not sure the fan kicked on at all yesterday for the whole 11 hours the computer was on. And the box itself stayed cool to the touch for most of that time. No longer good as a hand warmer, LOL.
Off to twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Glad to hear that your computer is happy! The most inefficient hand warmer in the world is an overheating computer. :)
Yep. LOL
Glad your computer is OK, bfitz!
Help for the old and clueless: What is “thermal paste?” I have never heard of it.
Is there a job your son could get that doesn’t involve making pizza? Could he go to work for the state, for example? My son took a pay cut to do that but considers it worth it to have a stable job with a pension at the end of his work days.
I’d never heard of thermal paste either until basket said it needed to be done. He sent me the link to order it. Apparently it’s kind of like a heat pump in A/C mode, it moves the heat from inside to outside.
My son is also a licensed massage therapist but didn’t have enough regular clients to support a family. He’s a manager and makes more than I did as a secretary/administrative assistant at the university. Not much more and he has more people to support, but still more. I’m not sure what, if any, pension his company offers. He’s probably going to be like me, dependent on Social Security when he retires 16 years from now. If he could just get reliable staff so he didn’t have to work multiple shifts, he’d like his job. He’s always wanted to feed people and his company does a decent pizza relatively inexpensively. (Which is why it’s so popular with students.) Pizza’s bad rep comes from the anti-salt and anti-fat crowd. It’s decent food and even good food if your lifestyle means you burn a lot of calories and you do it in the hot sun. Admittedly not a whole lot of Americans fit that category but even “normal” sedentary Americans as long as folks don’t eat it too often, it tastes good and it won’t hurt them.
Good morning, meeses! Friday …
It is 75 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 86. It is overcast and we are expecting rain starting at about 11am with the downpour expected after 3pm. I think these are the remnants of Hurricane Kay but I could be wrong. The weather here is still a mystery to me! In theory, we are still in monsoon season – at least until September 15th – but this year has been a little different. For example, we should NOT have had the kind of heat we had the past week in September – it still gets hot but the mid-100s are pretty rare.
Yesterday, I mostly watched coverage of the Queen’s passing – I was glad to see that they reminded people that Charles is NOT popular and that many of the Royals are jerks. Charles would be wise to devise and then implement a change from a true monarchy to a figurehead monarchy like other European nations have done. Roll the royals out to greet foreign dignitaries but disband the House of Lords, give the remaining Princes a payoff and then take the monarchy out of the government completely. If he does not do it, I suspect that it will be done for him. The only glue that held the Commonwealth together was Queen Elizabeth and the force of her personality. No one wanted to upset her as she finished out her time on earth but change is needed.
In more mundane things, it appears that the Justice Department has given the deplorable Judge Cannon an off ramp to narrow the scope of her Special Master to allow the national security documents to continue to be processed by the government. As someone pointed out, there is no claim of right to possession of any of those documents by tRump – none, zero, zilch, nada. He could make a case that the personal note from the leader of North Korea is his (even though it technically isn’t) but not the documents he reviewed only because he was president. They were not to have been kept anywhere but in the secured areas in Washington or wherever they are kept. I hope she takes the off-ramp, I for one do not want the despicable trumpian Florida Circuit to rule on it and we do NOT want to test the Trump-Sanders SCOTUS’s feelings on protecting their lord and master. I am not sure I could deal with them saying that tRump still has powers that no former president has ever had.
I have several important things I have to do today and I best get to them. I saved off a bunch of templates and notes earlier this year for a government filing I need to make now and I can’t find them. March and April was pretty chaotic and I was not consistent in where I stored things. So I have to dig them up and make sure they are current and correct and get those filings done.
See all y’all later!
Hi, Jan, to answer your question: No, I didn’t ask the computer guy to set up a new email for Diana@goddessfiction.com. Perhaps I will later.
Have been doing a great deal of thinking lately and have decided that I am P.O.’d with certain aspects of my life. I am going to rearrange them. More writing is one of the things I want to do.
I hope to have time to write again. It got set aside when I found it interfering with my bill paying job.