Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: December 18th

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.

28 Comments

  1. Good morning, meeses! Wednesday and Winter Solstice

    It is 37 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 61 degrees. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    So the final gift from Nancy Pelosi’s House is the release of TFG’s tax returns. Good. There is unlikely to be evidence of crimes in his tax returns but there will be lots of proof that tRump lied about his wealth and his success, his charities and how much he abused the tax system. No surprises but it may also allow some Republican primary voters to choose differently in 2024 when his name is back on the ballot.

    In other Congressional news, the Senate passed the Omnibus, keeping the government open and also passing as part of it the Electoral College Reform Act fixes so that a future John Eastman won’t try to exploit the loopholes and blow up the certification of the Electoral College votes. It turns out that “norms” need to be codified when one political party is willing to discard democracy itself to retain power. It sounds like Trump’s Kevin is declaring war on “squishy” Senate Republicans who choose to govern rather than blow up everything. That is a good sign going forward. Maybe some sanity will return and we won’t have to hold our breaths for the next two years.

    I need to get moving! I love that my winter holiday is not a day when things close down – I can shop for the holiday meal and enjoy a visit to one of the National Parks with no gates barring my way.

    See all y’all later!

  2. Good Wednesday morning Meese. 19 here – brrr, going up to 37. Might get snow tomorrow.

    Puerto Rico

  3. Good morning, everyone. Cold but nothing like what’s coming. Going to log off work early and clump up and cover my plants. Bringing in some of them, since it will be below freezing all of Friday and I think Saturday also. But I think if I have most of them bunched together & covered in 2 layers, they’ll be ok. Right?

    Watching astronomy tv, I may re-watch this one later on demand because it’s about dark matter and I need to hear it probably 50 more times before I can wrap my brain around that. It’s Wednesday, which is really Thursday this week. Grateful that we get Friday & Monday off.

  4. Good Wednesday morning, Moosekind! It’s 28 F. in Ashburn right now, sunny but with a few wispy veils of white cloud stretching across the blue—in other words, not quite as glorious as yesterday, when it was so sunny the landscape of bare trees, shadows, and sunlight looked like a painting by Monet.

    My English friend and I had lunch at Good Eats (never again if I can help it), then visited the India Bazaar. What a marvelous place! I was able to buy whole nutmegs, whole cinnamon sticks, and a bag of dried rose petals for the magickal potpourri.

    Moosekind, I am conducting a Winter Solstice ritual this afternoon! I’ll wear a black and silver top, black moleskin trews, pentacle earrings and necklace, and my black crushed-velvet cape with a hood. We’ll start the potpourri on the screened porch, then go out into the courtyard where there will be a fire in the firepit. We’ll welcome the solstice, then go back to the screened porch to drink spiced cider and eat ginger cookies. Then we’ll scoop the potpourri into little red or green organza bags to give to friends and family. All this will be done to a playlist put together by Betsy from MotherTongue’s “This Winter’s Night” CD that I lent her. I love the music it contains. Did you know that “Carol of the Bells” is Ukrainian?

    Speaking of Ukraine, President Zelenskyy will visit the White House and Capitol Hill today. At 10 this morning in downstate Virginia they’ll be counting yesterday’s votes in Virginia’s Fourth District (Rep. Donald McEachin died, poor man). The contenters are that awful, scandal-plagued pervert Morissey (who hit on his 17-year-old Black secretary, got her pregnant, and married her after he was released from prison), and Jennifer McLellan. The paper said turnout equaled that of 2008, when the people in that district voted for President Obama. The Democratic party ran out of ballots and had to hurriedly print 5,000 more.

    Got to scamper to the barbershop for a haircut!

    Happy Yule, y’all!

  5. Happy Yule, Meeses. It was 28 when I got up, 35 now, and heading for 48. Hazy so not dark enough to need lights. It cleared off yesterday. Maybe it will again today. Yesterday we generated 6.43 and reached 91.6 for the m-t-d. It’s possible for us to get to 130 so that’s my current goal.

    I went to the credit union and got cash (for my son when he does grocery shopping for me) and then to Braum’s for milk. Jerkwad hauling a trailer of brush passed me on the way there and when he cut in front and sped up a third of his load blew off. I had to stop and remove a very large branch that got caught under my car. Why is there never a cop around when you need one. (Of course said cop probably wouldn’t have done anything anyway. Good ol’ boy in a pickup can’t help it if the brush blows off his trailer. Just because we have tarping laws to prevent that. Ahem.)

    I’m ready to hole up against the weather (which will be -2 w/ windchill -20 Friday at dawn). Meanwhile today is also a day and I need to get to it. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  6. Good morning, 14 and frosty outside my window today. No new snow but the streets around us are icy so we’re staying home. I finally finished my sewing so today I’ll finish wrapping and then move to party prep for Christmas Eve. Weather permitting there will be 10 of us here for dinner so I’ve got lots to do. Best wishes to all.

  7. Puerto Rico

  8. Today’s the day the front arrives. This may be the warmest point of the day, 43degrees. It’s supposed to be freezing by the time I leave work. Lots of pollen blown in, stupid cedar trees are way too happy — I’ve been sneezing my head off, even on Claritin. Anyway, last in-office day till….next Thursday. Which is also a Friday as we’re closed Friday. So that’s cool.

  9. Good morning, meeses! Thursday …

    It is 39 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 61. Sunny skies are in the forecast. We might see our 70s as early as Sunday but more likely Monday. The moon is a very thin waning crescent at about 2% illumination with the new moon tomorrow.

    I did not listen to the Zelenskyy speech last night; I saw the beginning of it and saw some clips later – it was Solstice and we were doing family things. I will pull up some articles and maybe try to view the video. I understand that it was well received except by Republican dead-enders. The party of anti-Russia has become the party of Russia coddling. Thank goodness tRump was kicked to the curb in 2020 – I shudder to think of what Europe would look like right now if we did not have a president who saw that we needed to protect Ukraine from Russian aggression. For us it is just money – for European democracies, it is life or death.

    I am going to make a quick pass through the news and then get back to my projects. I took yesterday off and celebrated the holiday – now the reality of “holy mackeral, next week is the last week of 2022!” is hitting. I do have two more weekends which is good. The most important thing I need to do is a dry run on business and personal taxes to see what I need to do in the next week to minimize taxes both this year and next year – sometimes moving expenses or income into or out of a tax year can make a big difference.

    See all y’all later!

  10. Good Thursday morning, Meese! The Winter Solstice ritual in the courtyard was a great success. Dining Services and Resident Life got the fire going in the firepit for the first time in three years—-yay! The two guys were so fascinated by my outfit and the fact we were holding a lot of the ritual outside (it was pretty cold in the courtyard) that they came out again at one point and took photographs.

    Guess what, I actually got to cast a circle with my athame! Haven’t done that in years. We had a great time making the magickal potpourri and scurrying back to the screened porch for hot, spiced cider in the crockpot and gingersnaps. Then we packed the potpourri into little red or green organza bags. It was interesting that when we called out good wishes as we cast our offerings into the cauldron that several people asked for mental health and for comfort for the dying. We had fragrant greenery, cinnamon sticks, orange peel, whole nutmegs and cloves, and juniper berries in the mix, to name just a few.

    After that we surged out to the firepit again to count down to 4:48 p.m., when winter solstice began. “The Light Returns!” we all shouted. The music was coming from the Spotify list that Betsy created from my written directions for the CD we were using.
    Several of the 20 or so UUs who attended told me they really liked the ritual.

    Meanwhile, back at the ranch, it’s still, quiet, gray, and 33 F. Both my phone and the weather widget on this laptop are falsely declaring it will snow. Rubbish. It never snows. It barely even rains.

    Last night little Ethan lit the fourth candle on the family Menorah. Lucky lad, growing up with two great religious traditions.

    Looked through the WaPo to find the results of the vote in the Fourth District. They started counting at 10 a.m. yesterday but are proceeding very slowly and carefully, so as to give the losers no possible reason for concern. The big news was about a runaway llama. Despite the police cruisers, officers on foot, and the hovering helicopter shining a light on her, she didn’t get farther than a quarter mile from home. Apparently, she just wanted a night out, like all 20-year-olds.

    Going to take it VERY easily today! Wishing a nice, quiet day to all at the Pond.

  11. YAY! Just saw on Twitter that JENNIFER McCLELLAN won 84 percent of the vote on Tuesday, compared with the Pervert’s 13.5 percent! The Fourth CD of VA is such a deep blue that anyone who wins the Democratic nom is likely to win the general. It’s in February.

    Hurray for Ms. McClellan! The VA Senate will miss her but we’re glad she’ll be a DEMOCRATIC vote in the U.S. House!

    And this is why I’ll miss Twitter when it dies. It’s the first with the news and it was EASY to get onto. These other behemoths are entirely too much work for old people.

    • Yay for Jennifer!! A lot of people were pulling for her.

      Yes, finding news on Twitter is quick and easy – it is 1000 times better than a Google search.

  12. The high was 33 just before dawn on the first day of Light Returning. We’re at 23 now and drifting slow down to -2 sometime before dawn tomorrow. It’s supposedly snowing. I suppose one could call those tiny white iceballs snow. But I don’t. There’s not much of it but it is ice so I’m not planning on going outside any more than I have to. Yesterday we generated 5.8 KWHs and 96.8 is the m-t-d. And probably will be tomorrow as well unless it clears off this afternoon as the PV system isn’t on right now.

    I just discovered that the vitamin E I thought I bought when I stocked up was actually another bottle of vitamin D. sigh. Well, I’ll just have to do without until the weather clears up and Christmas is over.

    Obviously I slept in and am very late getting online. So. Off to twitter & also Dee’s diary. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Here’s the weather forecast for the whole country:

      Stay the @#*&^%$! inside. Charge up your phone and your laptop so even if the electricity fails you can still get alerts.

  13. Good morning, 11 degrees with snow and ice outside my window today. I was busy yesterday so my list isn’t as long today. My main task is to dig the greens and branches out of the snow bank and make the flower arrangements for the house. I’ve kept the flowers in a cool spot in the basement so I’ll bring the branches in and work inside today. It’s really cold in the garage. Best wishes to all.

  14. Good morning, meeses! Friday …

    It is 45 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 63. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast. There are scattered thin clouds now but I can see a planet peeking through over the mountains.

    The January 6th Committee Report dropped and there is a lot of stuff in there. I am going to wait for it to settle first – I am not sure I trust all the snippets for context and don’t want to leap to any conclusions. I did find one thing startling, that the Seditious Congressmen were plotting the Eastman Challenge (to throw the election to the House for a vote) back in December. Hello, smoking gun! Can they claim that things simply got a “little out of hand”? I hope there is enough to indict sitting Congressmen. If we take back the House, we need to censure every single House Member who voted to overturn the election – we should have freaking done that in 2021. At one point, corporate donors promised to withhold funds from them but then decided “who needs democracy?” Bastids.

    The Senate passed the Omnibus and we are one step closer to closing the perceived loopholes that Eastman wanted to exploit. The bill is bad for a lot of things but good that the government won’t shut down for at least a year. Maybe by then enough Republicans will realize that they are going to get their asses handed to them if the only thing they have to show for their time in office is an investigation of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Senate Republicans seem to be ready to be part of a governing coalition – it will be interesting to see what happens in the House.

    I need to get my weekend project list settled and that requires checking in with some clients today. They may not even be working – a lot of places in the Midwest are closing early in advance of the storm. I guess I will find out!

    See all y’all later!

  15. Ohmygoshitscold. Fourteen degrees. I’ve got the heat set at 67, wearing thermals — I know 67 isn’t cold but I feel cold. The weather was talking about how this is the driest air we’ve had in Austin, and yep I drank a ton of water yesterday and used lots of lotion. But hey — that’s way better than the snow & ice others are getting. Watching astronomy tv, later will make risotto.

  16. The sun’s out and we’ve struggled back up to 0 – the windchill is still about -20 – heading for 16 today. There’s some snow out there, but the tiny, light, spitball stuff and the wind is busily blowing it off the roofs and street. We generated 1.6 KWHs yesterday and inched the m-t-d to 98. We’ll probably reach 100 by noon.

    I started the fire around lunchtime yesterday and will do so again today. I’m cooking a batch of breakfast sausage as soon as I RT everything on twitter (which takes a while) and then baking orange cranberry nut muffin bread this afternoon. That’ll help. The furnace is kicking on about every 20 minutes just to keep the house at 63. I’m cold. I need to invest in some thermal underwear. LOL. Of course that won’t help my hands. Which are currently bluish white and don’t want to function. But they are, if clumsily.

    Stay warm as best you can, everybody. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  17. Good Friday moaning, Moosekind! (Who’s moaning? Why, the wind.)

    I’m late this morning, owing to adventures in the bathroom, about which the less said the better. However, I am now clean, lavender-scented, and sweet to have about the place.

    The rain of all night and early morning has given way to sparkling sunshine and blue skies with hideous, howling winds. They’re blowing things all over the screened porch. It’s 25 freaking degrees Fahrenheit, if you please.

    We turned on the telly to watch the headlines about the snow elsewhere on “Good Morning, Merrycar” (as my Australian niece called “America” when she was a child). There was a young man who seemed vaguely familiar, somehow, although I had never seen him before. Imagine my surprise when Dearly informed me he is the son of Christopher Reeve! Poor C. R., I remember exactly where I was in 1995 when I heard of the terrible accident with his horse.

    Have done all the Christmas shopping I ever intend to do. Have done all the wrapping and baking I intend to do for the holidays. Last night we had chicken pot pie followed by baked apples, all of which was made by yrs truly. The Home is cooking the dinner tonight and tomorrow night, Younger Son is cooking on Christmas Day, so I don’t have to do anything until Boxing Day.

    Three people have written to thank me for the conducting the ritual at Winter Solstice, imagine that! One said she felt “naughtily Pagan” for welcoming back The Light, and another said both he and his wife had discussed the ritual with their son and daughter. It was the first Winter Solstice ritual they’d ever attended. Betsy, who coordinated the whole thing with me, also said thanks and that she’d needed it.

    I may go to the gym this afternoon as I’m WAY overweight, but I’d like to spend the rest of this sunny day writing to a friend to whom I owe a letter. Wishing a nice, quiet day to all at the Pond.

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