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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Wednesday Meese. 63 going up to 79 here in Kingston. Was offline from Monday evening until around 2 in the afternoon yesterday – no internet, no tv, which screwed up my writing schedule. Now have a new modem and router – so should be okay from now on.
Puerto Rico
No Internet sucks! Glad they got you fixed – routers seem to be really sensitive to environmental issues. Do you have it on a good quality surge protector?
Horrible to be without the Net! Glad to hear you’re OK now.
Good morning. Dinner last night was nice, we talked politics and our lives and stuff. He apologized for treating me badly, which was nice to hear — but it was a million years ago, I told him it was long forgiven. Anyway, back to normal routine today. Watching astronomy and eating breakfast. Got in a good morning walk yesterday, 30 minutes in the neighborhood. Will do that again today.
Good morning meeses! I am on holiday in upstate NY at the moment where it’s 54 degrees in Fairport, NY. Will be heading down to Kingston this morning by train to stay with my cousin until Monday morning.
Hi, basket! Kingston sound familiar – wait, that’s where Dee lives! Do you plan to visit her?
I DMed her and will try work out the details!
{{{basket}}} When/if you see Dee – and she’s up for it – give her a hug from me. Have fun visiting your cousin too. moar {{{HUGS}}}
I hope you come by!
Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …
It is 63 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 90. Mainly sunny skies are in the forecast. Yesterday the official high was 99 degrees at the airport, which set a record. The local weather guy said it would have broken 100 but there were some clouds that rolled in to mitigate the temperature. This morning I was up early enough to see the waning gibbous moon in the southeast sky.
I was shocked to see that the Tennessee governor responded to protests over gun violence by strengthening background checks and asking for a red flag law. I guess when the shooter is NOT a cis white male, it becomes a crisis – clearly the “wrong” people are getting guns! There really is no reason for anyone to purchase or own an AR-15 and Congress needs to ban weapons of war – except for ceremonial swords – from American streets and homes.
Everyone seems to be declaring the “end of the Republican Party” because their willingness to embrace unpopular policy positions is making young people and women turn away. Puh-lease! The Republican Party is perfectly happy to rule from the minority and they have the Supreme Court to help them achieve that. From refusing to block gerrymanders to allowing states to suppress the votes, the courts is a willing accomplice in the destruction of small-d democracy. We can’t vote our way out of some of these things because of the electoral college and the composition of the Senate – we need the courts and as long as you have dinosaurs like Dick “Dick” Durbin allowing Republicans to override Joe Biden’s judicial picks, there is no fix. Kill the blue slip, doodiehead! You know that the Republicans will do it when they next have power.
My day started early as the morning after Microsoft Patch Tuesday requires early connections to clients with computers that get their updates directly from Microsoft. Some I need to pause updates on to manage when they will install/restart and others I need to make sure they rebooted cleanly and didn’t have any startup failures. I will reward myself by shutting down early and then watching a sporting event on TV.
See all y’all later!
Good Wednesday morning, Moosekind! It’s 67 F. in Ashboring already, and we’re beginning to have sunlight and blue skies after a cloudy dawn. The high today will be 87 F. or something insane like that.
This area is so dry that we’re in danger of forest fires, how ’bout that?
On the agenda this morning: Get hair done and order a cake for Shakespeare’s birthday celebration by my writers’ group tomorrow. His actual birthday is the 23rd, of course, but we meet tomorrow. He’d have been 459 years old the 23rd.
This is Croaky the Frog signing off now! Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.
It’s 50 heading for 75 (or higher) and sunny at the moment. These supposedly sunny days have been getting a spate of cloud cover for an hour or so in the early afternoon – AKA prime generating time. Add in that trees are leafing out – both the shade and the pollen, which everything is covered with right now, and we’re not getting the kind of days the system’s capable of. Yesterday we generated right at 14 KWHs and the m-t-d is 136 (so still on track but not gaining).
I hope somebody of the family members gathered in Denver remembers to keep me posted on how my nephew is doing. They tend to forget to.
The fundraising is not going well – or at all in many cases. The last donation JoanMar got on her GFM was about a week ago (& it was a small one from aashirs nani) & yes she can get her relatives a car for under $12K or even the ~$10K GFM would actually put in her hands if the goal was met. But she can’t do it for under $1K. As to the folks on my twitter help thread, even the ones asking for as little as $20 for a meal or copay for meds aren’t getting anything. sigh.
But boosting fundraisers is what I do so I’d best get over there and do it. Holding Good Thoughts for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}
Thursday Meese. I cannot believe the weather here in Kingston – it’s going up to 89 today! YIKES.
My favorite cartoon today:
Puerto Rico
Thursday in Kingston and it’s going to be hot! Thank heavens for AC.
We are allergic to AC so fans will have to do :)
Good morning. Had a good walk, with 9 segments of running — 2 of them were 90 seconds! I may actually run a mile some day. In the office, preparing for work. Was good to see the 2nd Tennessee legislator get reinstated yesterday, had a great interview with Lawrence last night.
Good Thursday morning, Meese! Basket, you’re going to visit Dee? How wonderful is that? Give her hugs from the rest of us!
It’s going to be a really hot day today, 87 F. in Ashburned. It’s already 56 F. At least it’s going to be nice and sunny, not nearly as windy as yesterday.
Today we are celebrating Shakespeare’s birthday during my writers’ group meeting. I’m picking up the cake at 11 a.m. We’re going to discuss haikus and sonnets. Hope I can stay awake through it all because I had a terrible night.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.
Posted
Good morning, meeses! Thursday …
It is 63 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 79. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast. We are sending our 90s east – sorry Dee!
Dianne Feinstein agreed to step down from Dick “Dick” Durbin’s Judicial Comity Panel but the way the dysfunctional Senate is set up, she can’t be replaced unless 10 Republicans agree since changes are subject to the cloture rule. So until she resigns, judicial confirmations, our last bit of Congressional power, is gone. That will energize the Republican Party’s base who actually understand the power of the judiciary to undermine democratic and Democratic governments. No, Senator, you are not more important than filling lifetime seats with decent people and making sure that the number of Kacsmaryk’s who can repeal our rights are limited. If a Republican wins in 2024 with hundreds of judicial nominations pending, we are well and truly screwed.
Melon was bragging that Twitter is now being run by 1,500 people and is “breaking even.” I guess it could be true but breaking even is not going to pay back the $12.5 billion in loans he took out to purchase the company. Now PBS has joined NPR in suspending use of Twitter because of the “state run media” label he put on them. With fire season coming up and state and local officials relying on Twitter to get out the word on dangers, this is no time to be futzing with the bedrock of who you can trust on Twitter. Media organizations and governmental units need to get moving on adopting a new text-based social media platform; I wish Mastodon was not so bloody complicated – the structure is there, it just needs a good sign-up process and website.
The Arizona House expelled a MAGAt election-denying member for lying to House leadership and using her position to promote whacked out conspiracy theories that impugned other members. The two-thirds vote was bipartisan (unlike Tennessee) and a new Republican member (it is the law) will be appointed by the county within a couple of weeks. There are a lot of crazy MAGAt election-denying Q members in Arizona and in the House but Representative Harris touched the third-rail of Arizona politics – she went after the Mormon Church. Crazy is fine but don’t diss the religion invented by a guy in New York who wanted multiple wives!
I have a short list of projects that need to get done this morning so I better get back to it.
See all y’all later!
It’s 57 heading for 77 and supposed to be sunny but isn’t there yet. It’s not dark – I don’t need the indoor lights or anything like that – but sunny it ain’t. Yesterday we generated 16.4 KWHs and the m-t-d at 180.8 is still on track.
My hands are slightly swollen and achy. Not helpful for doing much of anything but while not comfortable and definitely slowing me down, also not preventing me from getting stuff done. Sinuses aren’t happy either. I’m figuring allergies or at least an autoimmune type reaction to one or more things in the air right now. No news of my nephew. I’m hoping that’s good news at this point. Nothing new with anybody else that I know of. Except basket being in Kingston of course. I hope he and Dee can have a nice visit. Maybe in the garden as it’s warm up there today.
Meanwhile, twitter’s still alive so I’d best get to my boosting. For the good or lack thereof it seems to do. Holding the Good Thoughts for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}
Good morning, 43 and mostly cloudy outside my window today. I think I’m finally recovering from dental misery……my knees hurt now more than my face, progress!
We’re hosting a family party on Saturday so I’ve got party prep to do today. I’ve made everything as simple as possible but food and drinks for 12 does take some doing. Best wishes to all.
Friday Meese.56 going up to 89 here in Kingston NY. Looking forward to meeting Basket today
Puerto Rico
I know you and basket will have fun. You’re both wonderful and fun to be with people. {{{HUGS}}} to you both.
Good morning. Had a good walk/run — same as yesterday with 2 90 second running segments that did not kill me. In the office. Just have to keep it together till 4:45. I can do this.
Good morning, meeses! Friday …
It is 54 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 72. Sunny skies are in the forecast. Perfect weather! I hope to get a long walk in, maybe a hike. This morning the waning moon looked like a lemon wedge, bright on the edges and a mottled in the middle. It is nice to see the stars back.
The good news about the right-wing’s new best friend, a white christianist national guardsman’s stealing and sharing classified military documents to show off to his buddies, is that it pushed TFG out of most of the headlines. That and Clarence Thomas’ latest ethics “lapse” – getting his billionaire sponsor to buy his mother’s house in an undisclosed real estate transaction. My preferred headlines do not have more than 5% tRump stories and at least half of them must be about pending criminal and civil indictments or trials. DeSantis stories are bad too but they are split 50-50 between how he is destroying Florida and how Ronmentum is getting untracked. He is running on the former but every new ban and anti-democratic edict will make it more and more difficult to pivot to the middle in a general election. Romney tried to etch-a-sketch his extremism away and failed, tRump never bothered in 2016 – he was running as the anti-Hillary and that was enough to win by 70,000 votes (in 2020, he was a known quantity and could not run as anything but himself which lost him those 70,000 votes). In any event, the stories about how Republicans can’t win the general election if they have to please their base’s anti-abortion demands are hopeful – I pray that they are right.
I got my stack of unboxed papers sorted into scan/shred and scan/store. Most of those papers I will shred with relish as they are painful reminders of my disastrous home purchases/maintenance over the years and the money spent that would be welcome now as I try to spread my meager savings out over my remaining time on earth.
See all y’all later!
Good morning meese from Kingston. It’s my New Year today so I will be celebrating it with my cousin and her family before going to see Dee. :)
{{{basket}}} Happy New Year! 🎉🎊🎊✨✨🥂🥂
Happy New Year – is it Puthandu?
It is the Sinhalese/Tamil New Year, and it’s celebrated together with many other cultures :)
It’s 53 heading for 81 and sunny at the moment. Yesterday we got 14.8 KWHs and the m-t-d at 195.8 is still on track. Which is lovely and heartening. And surprising considering the thick layer of greenish-yellow pollen that’s currently on the panels.
Still no word from the family. I’ll call my other sister (not my nephew’s mom) and see if she’s heard anything. Nothing particularly new with anybody else that I know of. And as of yesterday not another dime for JoanMar/JoanMar’s family. I wish I could think of something else for her.
It’s going to be warm enough today my hands will stop aching. They already feel better than they did when I got up. Not working any better though. Bad sinus flare last night. Or rather in the wee hours – from about 2 am to about 5:30 – but I did get maybe 4 hours of sleep altogether. And dreamed about boosting fundraisers on twitter. LOL. Which I’d best get doing. Holding the Good Thoughts for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}
Good morning, 40 and sunny in my garden today. It’s so nice to wake up feeling rested. I still have some discomfort from the dental doings but it’s getting better, yay!
I’ve got a fairly easy day ahead getting ready for our family lunch tomorrow, baking cupcakes, arranging tulips, setting up the dining room, etc. I think I have an Elsa safe plan for serving the food but she’s quick so we’ll have to be on alert regardless. She has been here for the afternoon all week and has really enjoyed long walks with my sister. Best wishes to all.