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 (every Sunday morning). 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 now 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 and use the link.
Good Thor’s Day morning, Moosekind! Our current temp. is 68 F. under fair skies, going up to 90 F. today. Yesterday I was biting my fingernails wishing for rain so I wouldn’t have to go out and water the garden: it kept raining all around us but didn’t bother to rain here until nearly 4 p.m. After that, though, we received a nice amount and it rained again during the night.
Miss Pink Cheeks’ and Babylicious’ other Grandpa is arriving from Beijing tonight if all goes well. He is very old and frail, so I hope the long flight doesn’t debilitate him. Haven’t seen him since 2012 when we were in Beijing. He will be here for the weekend but then will go to New York to stay with my DIL’s friend whom she’s known from high school in Beijing. BTW, non-Chinese people like me never think about it until they meet it, but there’s a whole Chinese world going on around us. Chinese realtors, home improvement contractors, doctors, lenders, you name it!
This morning on GMA I noticed that George Step-in-Awfulness pointedly refrained from mentioning that Bernie Sanders is also running for the Democratic nom for POTUS. He mentioned O’Malley but not, of course, Sanders. The “lamestream media” are going to learn to their pained surprise that ignoring someone does not make him go away. Thank Goddess for social media!
Going to check the Austin Statesman on line to see how Lake Travis is doing. Hope all in the Pond and Beyond will have a good day!
The lamestream media wants to choose who is important to us. Too bad for them. O’Malley’s candidacy is circling the drain after his full-throated support for his heavy handed policing tactics in Baltimore. The Hope of the White Appalachian Democrats, Jim Webb, just lost his lone campaign worker in Iowa. It is Hillary and Bernie, going high-heel to sandal.
How fun to have a visitor from China! He may not want to return once he discovers what it feels like to breathe unpolluted air. I have relatives who work in China and the pollution is ghastly.
Eating breakfast, drinking tea. They still haven’t found those missing people in Wimberley, very sad – though they found a child’s body who may be one of that group. They found the body of an elderly man who had been clinging to the roof with his wife. A neighbor with a kayak rescued the wife but couldn’t get him. And U2’s tour manager or 30+ years died of a heart attack yesterday. Their tribute last night is too emotional for me to watch before work. I need death & destruction to take a break. I need another country to decide something great like the Irish marriage vote; an overwhelming wave of “happy”. Failing that, I’ll just drink more tea.
And here’s the emotional performance of 40 that I can’t watch right now. 40 is their re-working of the 40th Psalm & is gorgeous.
bfitz, what kind of cherries do you have? Years ago I lived in a house that had a lovely Queen Anne cherry tree in the backyard. I gave the neighbors permission to climb and pick, which they did. They filled their freezers. Do you think they picked any for me, the donor? No. That still rankles whenever I think about it, which mercifully isn’t often.
In the past my apple trees have borne so much delicious fruit I not only gave to the neighbors but also to the homeless shelter and even to people on Freecycle. Different mindset, I suppose.
Starkrimson is the variety – developed by Stark Bros’ Nursery umpty years back. It’s one of the very few self-pollinating sweet cherries out there. This is a semi-dwarf – although when I bought it the label said “dwarf” (I should have known better – there were no actual dwarf sweet cherries at the time) – which is probably why it is not only still alive but producing. All the actual dwarf fruit trees I about about the same time succumbed to the virus five or more years back.
And yeah, different mind set totally. Although with most of my neighbors its a different but equally irritating story. During boom years I’ve told them they were welcome to have some but while they appreciate anything I hand them, they won’t come over and pick them for themselves. My best friend lives across the street though – and she is the one who makes the jam when there are enough cherries to do so. :) I wish I had enough fruit to take to the homeless shelter but really I’d need to “manage” the tree for fungus and other stuff as well as have the equipment to get the top 10′ worth of fruit even in the boom years.
Quick question, peeps!
We now have 90 comments and while they do not slow down the display of the screen (at least for me) they DO make it difficult to find the most recent comments.
There is an option to split the comments into pages with the older comments available via a page back link. My thought is to split them at about 20 which is our average daily chittering and chattering. The pagination says it will keep comments/replies together so you won’t lose a conversation thread. I don’t want to do this without warning people because it means looking for the Page link button(?) at the bottom of the page. What do you think?
I am still looking for a tool to show replies to our comments so that we can tend them like we used to. I know it is possible because I have seen the database structure and the code (I may have to write my own). Maybe with the new Fiercing tool there is a way to see which comments we have not read!
I trust you to figure out the best way for us to keep track of each other. So yes, please warn us when something’s going to change/get weird, but experiment to your heart’s content. :)
I think I will make the setting change at 10am our time, bfitz. It should be seamless other than the screen will probably jump on the first refresh.
Thanks for all the fine tuning Jan…..this new format is fun to explore and keeping up with the changes makes my mind work!
The note at the bottom of the screen shows “Older Comments” with an arrow pointing to the left. I am kind of tweaking the settings now. 25 comments is too many and 20 seems too few. It might not be possible to balance it well.
75 heading for 80 in Fay., AR – sunny at the moment but a rather large cell (stretches from Wichita, KS to Dallas, TX) is heading our way. It might break up and go around us – many do – but from what the radar shows right now I think we’re going to get some rain in a few hours. It’s not very wide, the leading edge is not quite to the OK-AR border and the west side has cleared OKC already, so unless it stalls the rain shouldn’t last long.
My cherries are gone for the year – the birds didn’t leave even a shriveled or fuzzy green one – but I got 10 lbs half of which are going to jam for next winter :) Today was the first day this year I opened the windows and turned on the HVAC fan to bring in cool air before shutting the house up again (don’t leave it open while I’m at work). I call that early summer no matter what the calendar people call it :) – late summer is too hot to open up in the morning/having to run the A/C which will be here too soon no matter when it gets here.
Got lots of stuff to do, much of it I’m waiting for somebody else to do something first. So. I will check everything and do what bits and pieces I can – it’s not efficient, more like Aesop’s tortoise – but it ultimately gets done. Have the good Thor’s Day – stay safe and dry if possible. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 53 and cloudy in Bellingham today. A quick scan of my local newspapers tells me the PNW is quiet today. The top story here is about finding lost fishing nets and crab pots in Bellingham Bay, and in Astoria they are using beach balls to keep the sea lions off the docks.
We’ve lost several crab pots so I hope they will be found…..
Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2015/05/27/4316517/lost-nets-crab-pots-pulled-from.html#storylink=cpy
Princesspat, good luck with the crab pots! Hope you get them back.
With no boats Ron’s crabbing adventures will be closer to shore now. I just don’t want the missing pots to collect and harm sea life. Some crabbers are not considerate and are very competitive, so many of the missing pots come from lines being cut. Crabbing closer to shore and staying with the pot is safer for all!
A fast wave to everyone, Will be back later to read, Hope it’s a good day for all in the Pond and beyond.
Good morning, meese! Friday!!!!!!!
These short weeks seem longer than the regular length weeks.
It is 67 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 79. Thunderstorms headed my way. It got into the mid 80s yesterday and we had to turn the air conditioning on.
Last night my Twitter feed was abuzz about former House Speaker Denny Hastert (R-IL) being indicted for illegal money moving. He was paying someone $3.5 million in hush money to keep them from ratting him out about “prior misconduct”. I have not checked my news feeds but I imagine that there is a certain amount of glee by those who had suffered under the Hastert Rule. So that makes it 2 for 2 in indicted House leadership from the Bush II era. Fine party you have there, Republicans. What I find interesting is how he went from wrestling coach to Congress to a guy rich enough to pay someone $3.5 million to keep quiet. Selling access to those who wield power must be very lucrative.
I have a bunch of early morning things to do today and will try to get back.
See all y’alls later!!
I worry that things like this will turn some voters off as they think
“why bother, everything and everyone is corrupt.”
Yes, selling access to power is lucrative.
what I want to know is — $3.5 million is a lot of hush money….. and as Rachel Maddow pointed out, the indictment goes to the trouble to point out that both Hastert & “Person A” lived in whatever city while he was a coach….. Ugh. Maybe I don’t want to know….
think I am with you on this. Not sure I do want to know.
I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to know. If it goes back to his coaching days that is a very long time to be paying hush money.
Hola Meese
Today is Menstrual Hygiene Day
Menstrual Hygiene Day: the world celebrates periods
A subject that many of the young people I teach still can’t discuss openly.
I saw that on my news feed and wondered what it was all about. It is actually very pertinent: tell them that tampons are taxed as “luxury items” in some countries (although Canada is changing their policy and there is quite a dustup in Australia over this). Sheesh … we clearly do not have enough women in positions of power.
I remember seeing on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show, a couple of times, that there’s a movement in Africa to have period supplies produced locally. Provides jobs and keeps girls in school, since they had been having to stay home. It’s kind of like his charity that provides desks for schools that have never had desks. They don’t just truck them in, they have them produced locally so the kid’s families have jobs – producing the wood and the desks.
Good morning, Meese.
Just saw that the temperatures in India are staggeringly high and the death toll is nearing 2,000. The news really is weather news all over the world.
Hope it’s a good day for the Pond and beyond,
It’s raining again/still. It is very hard to say “enough” to rain after so long & harsh a drought, but really….. I have a scab on the side of my nose where the doc took a sample yesterday. He’ll call next week to say what the results are. Gave me a brochure about the kind of surgery I’ll need if I need surgery. Meanwhile, this weekend – workouts both mornings, gotta figure out next week’s food, etc. And my earworm just switched itself from California to With or Without You. That’s interesting.
Here’s hoping you don’t need that surgery.
Ron had several skin cancers removed this year with the Mohs surgery, and then he had a chemical peel of his face and the top of his scalp. The surgeries were quite manageable and left no scaring, but the peel was miserable. He is reluctantly wearing a hat and using sunscreen now.
http://www.skincancer.org/skin-cancer-information/mohs-surgery
yeah, it’s that Moh’s thing, if it’s cancerous – because it’s in the fold of my nose, will find out next week
Ron’s were squamous cell fortunately, but they still had to be removed and freezing them didn’t do it. I hope your tests, and whatever happens as a result, go well for you.
64 heading for 75 (they’ve underestimated the high all month so I’d add 5 degrees to that) and drizzling again. I’m with anotherdemocrat – yeah, we need the water (major floods usually mean Man imposing His Will on Nature with predictable results), our lake hasn’t totally recovered from our much lesser drought, but I’m awfully tired of backache-inducing damp! Have a gawdawful Payroll mess to clean up. I was informed yesterday mid morning that “oh, those totals were for the month, not the project” so the entire team of kids working on this project over the summer were underpaid with the May check. Actually there are 3 projects involved – one full summer, one mid-May through June, and one July 1 through mid-August which makes figuring this mess out sooooooooooooooo entertaining. NOT! Anyway, gotta get to it. Have a lovely – hopefully at least some sunny and dry – Friday and weekend. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 53 and cloudy in Bellingham today. Reading Timothy Egan’s piece in the NYT this morning was not a good way to start the day…..so I’ll share!
The Arrogance of Jeb Bush
May he proceed with his sorta campaign, lock up all the money and cause grief for the rest of the know nothing R’s and then just quietly go away!
Yikes! Good point by Egan: “Is it arrogant to say that smoking causes lung cancer? That you shouldn’t text and drive?” There are so many awful things about the Republicans it is difficult to find one position that is worse than others. But a guy who lives in Miami not caring about the rising seas is indeed evidence that “Evolution does not always mean advancement”.
I love the new banner! And what you’ve done with the Moose is rampant awesomeness!
You folks rock, keep up the good work!
fogiv deserves all the credit for that … and none of the blame, by the way, if it does not resize properly on your device (I messed that up and will fix it this weekend).
This week we got “Fierces” … what more can I say? :)
Good Saturday Morning Meese
It’s 67 here in the Catskills – going up to a muggy 87 with rain
Teh Crazy:
Hundreds gather in Arizona for armed anti-Muslim protest
More and more I want this country to have hate speech laws – contrary to my good brothers and sisters of the ACLU persuasion
America has always had a streak of religious intolerance, heck, they have a streak of intolerance, period! Islam has as much to do with the “Islamic State” as serial killer John Wayne Gacy has to do with movie actor John Wayne.
The frightening thing about this new brand of intolerance is that it comes armed to the demonstrations. Talk about stifling free speech … who is going to dare counter-protest? Perhaps that was their intent.
This is frightening, the protest and the call for more. And now those who love to hate have a new group to hate. I am sick.
Good morning, meese! Saturday …
It is 65 degrees in Madison on it way up to 63. Rain is in the forecast but appears on radar to be going above and below us.
Good news from the 9th Circuit in striking down Idaho’s 20 week abortion ban. This assault on the 2nd trimester protections in Roe v Wade is the latest ploy by the forced birthers. The good news is that in 2013 SCOTUS refused to hear an appeal of a similar ban from Arizona. The bad news is that it is only a matter of time before a more anti-woman circuit hears a case and rules that it is just fine to defy the Roe v Wade ruling.
I guess today is the day that Martin O’Mehley announces his run for the presidency. Watch closely who his advisers are and who is supporting his campaign. It reads like a who’s who of discredited and washed up pols. Gary Hart? Really? Anyway, we have someone to run to the left of Hillary to keep her honest and the former mayor of Baltimore has nothing to add but his view that broken window policing and mass incarceration works. Good luck with that.
I need to go see what the president is talking about this morning. He grudgingly signed a 2 month extension of the highway bill (33rd can kick down the road since 2008) but is also trying to get the PATRIOT Act renewed. Starting at midnight Sunday, your lols texted to your BFF will no longer be swept up in the metadata at the NSA. But neither will it pick up the email with “let’s fly a plane into the World Trade Center”. Tough balancing act between civil liberties and national security.
See all y’alls later!
Jan, “Martin O’Mehley”–brilliant!
So, will the Patriot Act really expire? Goody gum drops! To me it’s useless. Any smart terrorist uses a burner phone and a software mask to communicate, not a regular cell phone. It’s too easy to trace regular cell phones.
One so takes it for granted that one’s intimate conversation with veterinarians, nail technicians, and so forth are private. Glad they will revert to being so.
BTW, I received an email from the Webb campaign. It said: “Support Jim Webb. Donate!” and that was ALL. Talk about short and sweet–they didn’t even bother with a spiel. Naturally, I deleted it. I’ve had just about enough of middle-aged, balding white guys wanting to be president. I want to be Xena, Warrior Princess, but I don’t inflict my private fantasy on the general public by asking for donations.
Ha! “I want to be Xena, Warrior Princess, but I don’t inflict my private fantasy on the general public by asking for donations. ” You should!!!
Yes, Jim Webb was going to be the “pull Hillary to the right” candidate as an offset to the “pull Hillary to the left” candidate. He has not been a Democrat long enough to suit me and the siren call of the Reaganites would surely lure him onto the shoals where his campaign would be dashed to bits. We have moved past trying to recapture the love of the Reagan Democrats; they were mostly Southern Democrats who hated Lincoln so much that they could not be Republicans or people angry that Those People were given civil rights. Now that the modern Republican party has broken completely with the principles that Lincoln held dear, there is no need to pretend that they care about any of his “quaint notions” of equality and even the preservation of the union.
I don’t know about the PATRIOT Act. I read what the president said about it and he seems convinced that he fixed the worst abuses. But it makes me itchy to think about all that metadata sitting in the cloud waiting to be hacked. I was just reading about how they want to put all the police video cam footage on the cloud to “keep it stored securely”. Goodness gracious, have they not been paying attention?
To his credit, Webb spoke out strongly against the Iraq War. For me, that is in his favor. However, for now, Sanders is my fave.
Yes, he did, Portlaw, and I am still grateful to Webb for saving Virginia from Macaca. However, as Jan says, he’s too recently a Democrat to suit me. I just don’t get a good feeling about him. And why does he want to be president, anyway? He hated the fundraising involved in being a senator and did not seek a second term, even though he might well have pulled off another win.
I think that has to be the big question for any candidate: why do you want to be president? For Webb, I think it is “to be in charge of stuff” or maybe “so the girl doesn’t win”. But clearly he has no interest in running for president … he wants to be elevated to the position, methinks.
Yes! Macaca Man!! How quickly we forget. Webb was the man of the moment and helped give us a majority in the Senate when we most needed it. But I look at how Mark Warner, catering to the white folks in the exurbs and rural areas of Virginia, almost got his rear handed to him by relying on his white maleness to be enough. That vote is gone and catering to it turns off those whose vote is still possible.
I don’t have a problem with people changing their political stripes: I am one who did so also. But you have to look at why and also give it time to ripen. If you become a Democrat on a single issue but still hear the dog whistles of Philadelphia Mississippi, you are not Democratic enough to run for our party’s nomination.
As for this
Am not sure and we will have to see but I think he is really strongly against the MIC and that is why he wants to run. Same with Chafee.
I hope he answers it!
More O’Mehley news! Apparently, Gov O’Malley is not very popular in Maryland (only Carly Fiorina does worse in her home state).
Not a very good place to start from. Even Walter Mondale won Minnesota in 1984.
Good morning, Moosekind! Still here, still going mad from insect bites and allergies, but otherwise hale and hearty. Today is Babylicious’ first birthday! He’s walking more than crawling now and so cute I could rant for an hour without repeating myself.
So tired that I hope to do little more than STARE today, even though it uses up only 7 calories per hour. In fact I cried off the Daisy troop’s field trip this afternoon. With Grandpa-from-Beijing in town all too briefly, I didn’t want to take Miss Pink Cheeks away even for a couple of hours. I do have to drop a couple of things off for the PTA yard sale and go to Trader Joe’s; otherwise, I’m just going to try to take it easy. The difference in my energy level between age 70 and 71 surprises and dismays me.
Had a nice chat with my aunt in Bay City, Texas last night. She thanked me for the flowers and said earlier in the day she’d lost electricity for several hours. She also said that my cousin’s family in Corpus Christi knew the family who was swept away in the Wimberley flood and they’re devastated. That family attended the same church they attend. So sad. Really, really sad. There is something primordial about those rains.
Meanwhile, it’s 70 F. this morning under cloudy skies, going up to 90 F. with lots of thunderstorms tomorrow and Monday. Hope it’s a good day for everyone in Moosylvania!
Know what you mean
Diana – have you ever used wild plantain for your bites? It grows ever where and I find it stops the itching
Wild Plantain
Thanks, Denise! I’ll have to Google plantain to see what it looks like.
Very cool idea to fight Nature with Nature. :) I like that.
Good morning, Meese. It’s heading for 83 today and I am waiting, impatiently, for winter.
I did honor the new season by getting a much needed haircut. I haven’t had it cut since I went to Cartagena in January and was beginning to look like a weeping willow or a would be aging hippie,
Diana, I don’t know if you noticed, but Brecht over at the orange complimented,very justly, your writing skills!
Hope it’s a good day in the Pond and beyond.
Did he really, Portlaw? In his latest diary? I’ll go have a look. My day is getting off to a very slow start because it’s much more fun to sit here and read the Moose than it would be to start on my chores.
Thanks for the compliment!
Up to go to early workout. Had an awful night’s sleep. Up is talking about the Hastert scandal. And our floods. But it is dry today in Austin, so out the door I go.
Good morning, it’s 53 and sunny in Bellingham today. I’ve got so many piles of mail on my desk I know that’s what I need to attend to, but I want to be in the garden. If I get busy I can do both, but like Diana, my 70 yr old energy level is easily depleted.
A quick medical update…..our son had his checkup with the surgeon yesterday. His blood flow is good on one side, but the doc wants him to have another CT scan and based on what he sees, perhaps another procedure on the other side. The stents can cause blood clots, so it’s important the blood flows at the right rate. It’s going to be a life long monitoring issue for our son, but he’s alive and recovering and that’s the good news!
Mine is more mundane. I had a healthy bone density scan, yay! And my eyes have responded to the Restasis drops so I can both see better and am no longer at risk of cornea damage. I should have paid attention to my eyes sooner, so I’m fortunate there was no damage done.
“He’s alive and recovering” … indeed, very good news.
I have some stacks of papers on my desk that threaten to tumble over (and in fact one did just that a few days ago … creating quite a mess). Notes and projects have been added to the stacks over the past 3 weeks while I have been busy on crises. Today I have to sort through them because I am certain there are many important things in there that I should be working on. Plus tomorrow is the end of the month and the accounting cycle starts again on Monday. It is hard to believe that it is June next week!
It looks as though your son has excellent doctors. And wonderful news that he is recovering. You and
Ron must need a vacation after all that worry.
walked 2.2 miles
with the walking & drills & stuff, burned over 400 calories. Got home in time to watch Melissa Harris Perry – great discussions about apportionment & the FIFA mess. Really smart point raised” if we can prosecute FIFA why not Wall Street?
here’s my walk on Map My Walk: http://www.mapmywalk.com/workout/1006817091