Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: December 11th

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.

39 Comments

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

    Morning low of 48 degrees in the Desert Southwest with an expected daytime high of 66. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Sunday Meese. 29 here in Kingston going up to 34 with snow on the menu.

    Puerto Rico

    An additional $26,181,026 will be needed for the construction of the hospital in Vieques – El Nuevo Día

  3. Good morning. Another warm day ahead, but the weather guy says I’ll need long sleeves for my walk in the morning. But just for that part, it’ll get up to the 70s in the afternoon. Ali Velshi is talking to someone about the Artemis spacecraft, the Irish Independent has an interview with Adam Clayton & I have tea steeping, all is good for me. Today: church then making next week’s breakfasts.
    Edit: Interview with my love is behind a paywall. Grrrr. And they have lots of pictures of my handsome silver fox. And he worked on a documentary about Francis Bacon; I’ll do some research to see where I can find that.

  4. It’s 47 going up to 55 and overcast. sigh. Yesterday we generated 2.1 KWHs and the m-t-d is 41.71 – at this rate we’ll barely manage over the 76 generated by the 2.5K system in 2014.

    Neither back nor hands are happy about it but I’ve finished all my Sunday chores. Including vacuuming. And have done my 1st 10-minute session on the treadmill. I “rewarded” myself with raisins in my oatmeal. LOL. So now twitter and Dee’s diary on DK. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  5. Good Sunday morning, Moose Peeps! It’s 40 F. on another overcast day in Ashburn, with sprinkles. It’s not really rain, just something damp.

    I’m somewhat stymied as Dearly has gone back to bed after breakfast. We have awful sleep patterns in this house. I can’t do laundry, because the laundry hamper is in the bedroom, and I’m afraid to make a noise by vacuuming. Wurra the day!

    I want to get my newsletter out but fear to offend my poor old aunt by mentioning her illness. I may consult the Cousin-in-Chief, who is superintending her care, about this.

    Just what I don’t need: my Mac (which I’m still using because it PRINTS), suddenly told me my external hard drive is failing and that it can’t save anything new. Gulp! As it happens, I have an unused external hard drive that we bought years ago for some obscure reason, so I wonder whether I can substitute that. First-world problem, I know. Gotta get a nerd in here but my calendar is so full I don’t know when I’d have time.

    I have bananas that are falling-to-pieces ripe. Should I throw them away or make something? Have a recipe for easy banana bread kicking around somewhere.

    Better get on with what I can actually do. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.

    • {{{Diana}}} make banana bread. And if Dearly likes it, maybe banana pudding for dessert tonight. moar {{{HUGS}}}

    • That is one of the drawbacks I found to downsizing to an apartment – I miss having rooms set aside for certain things and places to go when I want quiet time. My "quiet time" room is my office and it is not restful to sit near my computers, they are always taunting me with unfinished projects! We thought that the deck (called the Outside Den on the floor plan) would be a place to just rest but there is weather and bugs so it really does not cut it. I am not regretting not owning a house – and mowing and shoveling and worrying about unexpected expenses – but there are some tradeoffs.

      I saw in Saturday’s comments that you had to relinquish Mandy back to foster care. I know that must have been a difficult decision but I could see you were struggling to deal with her issues – especially while helping Dearly navigate his health care and maintaining yourself. I was glad to see you report it, though, as we benefit from each others experiences. When my old dog finishes her time on the earthly plane, your story will make it easier for me to resist my daughter’s entreaties for a new dog. After a certain age, I think we should put our effort into maintaining ourselves so that we can live to a ripe old age. There are benefits to having a doggie to love and pet but maybe a dog I can visit and not have to maintain would be better. I guess we shall see! I had no intention of getting my current dog and were unable to be dogless. :)

      • Hi, Jan, yes, I hated to relinquish. It seemed like an admission of failure, and she is such a sweet, loving dog. However, Dearly never took to her as much as I did. I like girl dogs better, as a rule. However, he wasn’t walking her and I was, in addition to all my other chores, and I couldn’t go to the gym. So it was for the best.

        Monty was the king of Dearly’s heart and always will be. I was surprised at how much I missed Monty—even now I can’t stop tears from springing to my eyes when I think of him. It’s really hard to get used to not having him around.

  6. Good morning, 39 and cloudy outside my window today. I actually finished a sewing project yesterday and if all goes as planned will finish another one today. I’m so slow this year, but slow progress is better than none. My packages must be mailed tomorrow so I’ve go to have then ready to go too. And holly and ivy clippings are waiting for me to arrange so I’d best get busy! Best wishes to all.

  7. Another sandals-warm day, but a cold front is coming. By Thursday, lows will be in the upper 30s. In the office today. Got in my mile; I have got to get better at walking when I’m at home. On wfh days I usually sleep in as late as I can. I should get up an hour earlier – still later than I sleep on in-office days – and walk.

  8. Good morning, meeses! Monday …

    It is 50 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 45. It is raining heavily right now with 14 mph winds, gusts to 21 mph – rain is expected most of the day. There is a Winter Weather Advisory in place for the region but the snow is not expected below 3,000 ft elevation. In the 4,000 ft range, they expect 3 inches, at the 7,000 ft range, they expect as much as 12 inches. That is where our reservoirs are and we are pleased to hear this.

    It looks like the Senate drama has settled down and the only thing left is to try to get some must-pass bills through the lame duck session before Republican deadenders shut down the House. I could not believe – well, yes I could, we really suck as a governing party sometimes – that the Democrats won’t fix the debt ceiling while they still have a majority. There is no doubt NONE that Marjorie Taylor Greene and her puppet Kevin McCarthy will hold Social Security and Medicare hostage to block raising the debt ceiling, a move sure to plunge the economy into the recession we narrowly averted in 2022. They promised they would do it, ran on that promise and got elected by ignorant people worried about short term pain from high gas prices. Of course those ignorant people will not tie Granny moving in with them to their vote for Republican control of Congress and will blame Biden for their newly craptastic life. THAT was always the plan. And we are stupid to not do everything we can to take that weapon out of the Republican’s hands.

    I have a busy day here as I try to get ahead of end of year accounting tasks. I try to have everything in place by December 15th so that I can plan expenditures with an eye on the December 31st hard deadline.

    See all y’all later!

  9. It’s 49 heading for 53 and overcast. Again. We got a little over 2 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 44. After 11 days of production.

    I’ve an online friend who’s in the hospital – was in for testing regarding tumors – and picked up COVID while there and is “in isolation” as of last night. Prayers would be appreciated.

    Basket DM’d me a photo of him & his sister in Australia. There’s a strong family resemblance. Both very good looking people. He’s going to visit Mopshell next week/just before Christmas. Amelia’s “wrangling the cat rodeo” while he’s gone.

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

  10. Good Monday morning, Moosekind! It’s gray and ugly here today, 41 F. and won’t get much higher.

    Yesterday I worked so hard cooking Dearly’s breakfast, making banana bread after I noticed that a couple were falling-apart ripe, doing a load or two of laundry, and making Cornish pasties and cabbage for dinner, that I collapsed into the green chair and stared at the televicious for two solid hours after dinner.

    In a few minutes I’m going to join all but two of the ladies in my hallway for a Christmas lunch. We woulda done this years ago if it hadn’t been for Covid. My gym buddy can’t go because she can barely leave her apartment—she’s had a kidney transplant. The lady across from her isn’t feeling well. Meese, I am masking up and will remove it only for eating and drinking.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.

  11. Good morning, 35 and cloudy outside my window today. Our younger son and his family surprised our older son with a Christmas visit to trim his tree and make his house Christmas cozy. We stopped by to add a sleigh full of winter greens table arrangement so it was a nice family time together. Our tree still has lights only but RonK has started bring in the ornaments into the living room so that may change today.

    I have a hair appointment this morning and packages to mail (finally!) this afternoon so today will be busy. Best wishes to all.

  12. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 41 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 45. Partly cloudy skies are in the forecast. The rain appears to be done but temperatures will drop below freezing tonight and into tomorrow morning. The mountains got some snow and I can see the white tops from here in the valley. I can’t find a web site that reports snow totals (something I must remedy!) but Pima County had the road closed to Mt. Lemmon yesterday because of snowy conditions. The ski report said 2 inches of new snow but that seems low. UPDATE: The local news says 8 to 12 inches.

    It is still amazing to me that a multibillionaire can buy a social media platform used by government, non-profits and private businesses and effectively turn it into his own (rather disgusting) chat room. I am sure no one wants to have to recreate the ubiquitousness of Twitter but organizations who intend to use it for something serious like weather alerts and road conditions really need to think about deplatforming and finding something else. My advice is to not use hashtags which people who don’t follow you can find. Liberally block and unfollow people who tweet bad people into your timeline. I got my Post dot News account approval and set it up so I have two other places to read people but neither one is great yet. I have not forgotten my promise to do a mastodon writeup but it will have to wait until the new year, I can’t justify taking time away from end of year activities.

    I woke up at 1:30am and was unable to go back to sleep. Now I am up and at my desk hoping I will not be too tired to get some work done. Today is Microsoft Patch Tuesday so there are things I need to do.

    See all y’all later!

      • I’m holding out hope for Chris’ platform

        Jan – here’s a different view on Post:

        https://deepnarrative.substack.com/p/post-seems-like-it-wants-to-be-the

        • Thanks for that link! I will check out Spoutable.

          Right now Post is too much of a beta site (lots of missing pieces) to be anything more than a placeholder. It may turn out to be just a place to read articles in the end. In any event, I have an account and some followings but I am not sure how much I will use it. The default is to give you a firehose of posts, you can’t just have it give you your timeline as the default. I am pretty nervous about what I will see there when I open it.

        • I’m hoping Spoutible will be most people’s landing place. I want to be able to follow all the astronomy, writers & U2 fans that I do on the bird place.

      • I applied and have been accepted by Post but the accepted notice came with a warning that it IS a beta and that if I wanted something more “finished” I might want to wait a while before I actually started my account. So I’m waiting.

        • My advice would be to finish the account setup while the links are active and also to reserve your Post handle (most people use their Twitter handle). It does not hurt to have an account you don’t actively use but it would stink if someone grabbed your handle in order to impersonate you.

  13. Good morning. One more warm day — 70 degrees now — but there’s a cold front coming overnight. I had a really bad night’s sleep, one of the times I didn’t wake up was that 45-ish minutes early to walk. If it isn’t raining this afternoon, I’ll try to make myself walk then. I woke up eleventy-zillion times last night but I’m sleepy now of course. I set up a professional-sounding e-mail address and a Linked-in account last night, saved several part-time jobs to look at today. There is a lot of remote work out there, but I want to be sure it’s real.

    • {{{anotherdemocrat}}} I hope you manage your walk this afternoon. Seriously Holding the Good Thoughts on the part-time remote work for you. Healing Energy and moar {{{HUGS}}}

  14. Puerto Rico

  15. Good Tuesday morning, Meese. Our frosty blue-grey winter morning is turning into a clear day. We can’t see forever, but we can certainly see through the trees and feel the freeze. Right now it’s 31 F. in Ashburn, going up to 40 F. or so.

    The Jay’s Wintry Mix Facebook Page is reporting excitedly that a something-or-other in the jetstream may bring snow on Christmas Eve! We of Northern Virginia know that it will never snow. It has not snowed. It is not snowing. Snow is a thing of the past, of my boys’ childhoods when I watched them sledding gleefully down the hill in our backyard.

    This morning I have an appointment with one of the Feminine Plumbing doctors—frightfully unpleasant, but necessary—and will learn my fate. Will not go into details.

    Once home, I will catch up on some sleep and then begin making what I call sausage rolls, but which some refer to as pigs in blankets, for the party this afternoon. As my next-door neighbor turns out to have Covid, I am rethinking how long I’ll stay at this party (will go masked), and seriously rethinking the birthday dinner for my friend on December 27. It is way far away, AT NIGHT, and with all this Covid around I’m a bit wary. Have been double vaxxed and triple boosted, but I’m over 65, so there we are. It’s the over-65s who’ve been jossing it. I have a great deal to do before I joss it, so do not want to take chances.

    Must begin getting ready, I have to leave here at 10! Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.

  16. It’s 55 heading for 60. Overcast again but at least there’s supposed to be rain coming. That’s ushering in a cold front. Nothing above 50 starting tomorrow and going down from there. Yesterday we almost generated 3 KWHs and the m-t-d is 47. sigh.

    I’m feeling groggy this morning. I really do need my sunshine. It gives me heart and strength to deal with less than happy things going on around me with people I care about. Whether I’ve ever met them in “real” life, I care. And try to be there for them. I do that better when I’ve had some sun. But I do it anyway, so off to twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  17. Good morning, 31 and light clouds outside my window today. The Christmas boxes are finally ready for mailing today, big relief! The ornaments will go on the tree today, and I hope to finish my second sewing project. My yuletide list remains long, but the end is in sight and between weary sighs I am grateful to be celebrating yet another Christmas with friends and family.

  18. Puerto Rico

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