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 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.
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– Page One of Comments is HERE!
– Page Two of Comments is HERE!
Good “morning”, Motley Meese! The week begins …
Morning low of 50 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 61. Rain is in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Sunday Meese. Good morning. 40 degrees here in Saugerties NY going up to a cloudy 69.
I’m tired of being told we will lose the elections if we continue to call out the racism and sexism of Trump and his supporter/voters.
Just like we are being told if we put a woman at the top of the ticket we will lose.
I’m not going to be scared-off and shut up.
Will be writing about Puerto Rico this morning – took a partial break for Black and Women’s History Months
I am watching and listening to the words from our 2020s. I am hearing too much buy-in to the lie of “economic anxiety” and pandering to the “oppressed white male.” Polls mean nothing right now and anyone saying that a woman can’t win or a person of color can’t win is showing their asses – they are using that as shorthand to try to mask their biases.
We have well over a year of primaries to do the sorting and winnowing, we should let it play out.
Yesterday was interesting. Severe thunderstorms, and the electricity went out for a while; only came back on as I was figuring out how to get cleaned up for the dinner without taking a shower. The talk & dinner was nice. The imam, a rabbi & the pastor from my church talked about morality across religions; there was supposed to be a Buddhist, but the weather prevented that. There were lots of good questions.
And there are thunderstorms again this morning, so that’s interesting. I’ve got beans simmering, will make tea later. Hope the storms blow through before time for church. Still got It Won’t Always Be Like This stuck in my head; it’s a very catchy pop song.
Sunday post up
Good morning, Moosekind! It’s somewhat cloudy this morning in Ashburn, with a veil of hazy white cloud across the underlying blue, and the temperature at 10 a.m. is 51, with an expected high of 70 F. It’s good enough to walk the dog after brunch. We are waiting for brunch in the pub at 11. This is the first time they’ve ever offered it. As a rule, brunch is across the campus at Cardinal Clubhouse, and is so difficult to get into it’s not worth the effort. (Who wants bacon and eggs at 2:30 in the afternoon?)
Never made it here yesterday because of all the errands and because of picking up Miss Pink Cheeks from Chinese school yesterday at 4. She wanted an overnight with Grandma and Grandpa. We went to dinner down the hall, and while she hung out with Grandpa afterwards, I walked across the parking lot to the movie. It was riveting! I have a new respect for Ben Affleck as an actor and director after seeing “Argo.” Goddess bless our neighbors to the North!
Too busy with Miss Pink Cheeks, shopping, and a little bit of housework to pay much attention to the news. While I’m waiting for a plot to descend from on high for my next novel, I’m going to get my book of short stories ready for publication. It might be out in time for Christmas.
The Great Orange Satan is becoming increasingly unfriendly to regular, decent persons. How depressing.
Today is Anonymous Millennial’s birthday. She’s 25. It’s also the eleventh anniversary of my late mother’s demise: I still think of her a dozen times a day. I suppose one never gets over the death of one’s best friend. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!
{{{Diana}}} – my Mum’s been gone 30 years as of last January – no, you never get “over” it. You just get used to it. After a while. Mostly. moar {{{HUGS}}}
Ya know, 5 indoor cats are a handful! Seems like I’m always feeding, dealing with litter boxes, or telling Freddie to quit bothering Murf. But they’re adorable so I guess it’s just a matter of getting used to 5 instead of 2. ???????????? Anyway, it’s 57 heading for mid 70s and hazy again. I think it’s trying to clear off. I hope. We got 12 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 94.8 so some catching up to do. Which requires sunshine. As does my mood.
Only checked my TL twice yesterday – did my twitter boosting from other places – probably continue to stay mostly away although I do want to check periodically. Doesn’t do any good to follow folks I want to help if I’m not on twitter to see their tweets. I can’t keep a home page tab up for them all. Having some minor (I hope minor) trouble with my computer. It’s randomly – & so far only once or twice a day – dropping the WiFi connection and won’t put it back until I run troubleshooting. It doesn’t matter whether or not troubleshooting even finds much less fixes the problem (as in I sometimes get a result message saying it couldn’t fix it) once I run the program it hooks right back up and I’m online again. Which is weird. I think. Anyway everybody is either still in wait mode (like Aji) or things have gotten worse (like jan4insight & library guy being banned at DK). Prayers and invocations of whatever nature are most definitely still needed – and hope. I certainly can’t take care of everybody who needs help – not even of just everybody I know who needs help. It really does take a Village, a Community, but when your community kicks you out because you need help…Well, prayers and invocations.
I need to get the muffin bread out of the oven – cheese-cornbread this week because I’m out of GF flour. I did have enough GF flour left to make cookies yesterday but that was it. Anyway – muffin and coffee and Dee’s post at DK are in my near future with grilling sausages a bit further out. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 46 and cloudy in Bellingham. Spring break is over and the grand kids are all home so our house seems very quiet. Being with the kids was fun and a healthy distraction from tRump angst for all of us.
Years ago, when helping a friend close her antique store, I brought home several needlepoint pillow tops. I’ve found them again and have been looking through my stash for trims and backing fabrics so I’m just about ready to sew new pillow covers for my living room. Blooming roses and tulips, backed with linen and soft green velvet will be a welcome spring change.
Time to find my coffee, best wishes to all.
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is 52 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 70. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
The axes keep falling on people in a White House wallowing in the cesspool of its own incompetence and fetid ideology. You can’t stop migration by tweeting “our country is full!” at families willing to travel thousands of miles for a better life – in some cases, for their only chance at life. You can’t block them from coming into the country with a wall, and decent people are hoping that an increasingly desperate Trump administration doesn’t start shooting people at the border. A chilling comment from a story I just read about Stephen Miller’s takeover of the migrant crisis (his push for more hardliners) has this telling comment at the end: “he has told allies that the administration is out of ideas about how to stem the migrant tide at the border.” That is because they can’t conceive of “find ways to make their lives better where they live” in their cloud of xenophobia. Goddess help us!
Funniest 2020 media coverage moment of the weekend: pundit suggests that Mayo Pete is the only executive from a red state in the race and that should make him president! They really are blinded by the white – former mayor and former HUD secretary Texan Julián Castro would like a word with you.
See all y’all later!
Monday Meese. 56 here in the Catskills – going up to 76! (with April showers)
Puerto Rico
I had seen that NY Times article about the island of Vieques earlier and tweeted it out. So a woman goes into labor and has to jump in a boat to get to the mainland to give birth? What could possibly go wrong?!!?? They want everyone there to die, don’t they?
Nice, calm, cool morning after the weekend of huge storms. They canceled the Capitol 10K for the 1st time ever — there was pretty extreme storminess Sunday morning. Today is supposed to be sunny & into the 80s. Yesterday I made beans with quinoa, greens & tomatoes with chiles for dinner for the week. Didn’t get in a workout, plan to today. Playing Wild Horses, because I need the energy.
What are you holding back?
I know you’ve wild horses, enough inside of you
Good morning, Moosekind! Cloudy again in Ashburn today, with a current temp. of 58 F. and a projected high of 80 F.! It may or may not rain this afternoon. There may or may not be thunderstorms. Who knows?
Miss Pink Cheeks’ family came for tea yesterday afternoon and took her home. This was the most successful sleepover in years, because I hid the iPad and the Kindle Fire Somewhere in the Building, so she was forced to interact with others. She displays an unnerving ability to fit into life here: there was a puzzle laid out on one of the tables in the Game Room down the hall, just the edges, so over the course of her visit she finished it! It was a complicated 500-piece puzzle, too. She also accompanied me on an hour-long walk with the dog yesterday, showed me how to play a game called “Life,” and read her collection of Shakespeare stories when it was time to go to sleep.
Her younger brother wants a sleepover too, but I’m not sure he’ll want to when I tell him no Kindle or iPad.
We’re getting ready to take off next Sunday. Today I’m going to put the suitcases out on the bed to start judging what we need to pack. Hubby has a visit to the dry cleaner’s scheduled. I have to make a list of things to do: call Security, stop the mail and the newspaper, and so on.
I am so fed up with the Buttigieg coverage I could scream! Elizabeth and Kamala have great policy positions, Castro has an immigration plan, Amy and Kristin have ideas too, and Cory Booker, even though he has yet to break out (or perhaps, it’s just that the MSM refuses to cover him) deserves to be listened to and reported on. I’m also sick of hearing that Saint Bernard of No Accomplishments is the front runner when we’re more than a year and half away from the election. And the “debates” are not debates at all. They’re Q-and-A sessions. I don’t see how they’re going to get the world at large on the debate stage, anyway.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!
It’s 59 heading for mid 70s in Fay., AR this morning. Hazy which I hope will burn off shortly. We got right at 18 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 112.6 so not exactly getting on track but not losing ground either. We’ve got a few days of early summer weather – I only wore a sweater today (a boiled-wool sweater but still) – then back to winter when the front moves in Thursday. Betwixt and between weather, that’s springtime. The trees are starting to leaf out. Once that oak is fully leafed it’ll be shading the PV system in the morning. sigh. Considering how bad that soil is I truly didn’t expect that tree to get as big as it has. But then I didn’t have a PV system at the time I planted it either.
Kitties are being a handful. For reasons known only to himself Freddie keeps wanting to play with Murf. Boyo’s gonna get his nose smacked if he doesn’t leave Murf alone. Nothing like being an arthritic old man to get that “get off my lawn” routine down pat. The silly thing is, Rennie and Cloud would both be happy to play with him. Anyway, it’s not the feeding 5 kitties that is the problem. I was doing that anyway. Dealing with 3 litterboxes on the other hand…But kitties are a great and mostly loving distractor from what’s going on in the world & blogosphere. Prayers/Invocations Aji actually hears back & gets the results of that 2nd biopsy soon. Like today. More prayers/invocations that the folks in danger of becoming homeless don’t – & that new/additional jobs or sources of revenue show up.
Meanwhile I’m at work so need to get back to it. Heaven knows how much longer this gig is going to last – it’s lasted almost 5 months longer than we thought it was already – but surely it can’t be long now. But..work. And coffee. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, Meesefolk; 55 this morning with a cloudy high of 66 today. This is the high point of the weather-week; after today, it’s back to the reality that it’s April in Michigan. It was nice to have a few days reminder of what’s to come, but it also makes going back to the norm a bit tough. I’ll actually have to close a bunch of windows tonight.
I got quite a bit accomplished this weekend; it’s just that none of it was what I expected to be doing. I went out Saturday morning to do some raking, when Hubby informed me that he had pitched the leaf rake last fall after a bunch of tines broke. I headed off to the hardware store to get a new rake and realized I still had storage totes in the trunk of my car from my last trip to OH (I’d packed them with dishes for Kiddo). I brought the totes in and realized that I still had a few more dishes to pack, but they needed washing first. The bottom line is that the lawn never got raked, but totes got packed, as well as some other odds and ends I want to take to OH. And I won’t even go into what happened when I poked my head into my sewing room to grab a skein of rug wool so I could continue hooking. Needless to say, no hooking got done.
Good day to and for all!
Good morning, 41 and cloudy in Bellingham. I want to ignore my list today, but reality means I’d best get to my desk or else! Paying bills and cleaning out old files is not my favorite activity but it needs to be done.
Good news for Wa State Dems, and for my creaky voter knees……
Washington Democrats choose presidential primary for 2020, ditching precinct caucuses
Best wishes to all on this cloudy Monday morning.
Washington state jettisoning the caucuses is bad news for berners – they can only win when they pack caucuses with people who bro(w)beat those who refuse to bow to their god.
Good news for democracy!
Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …
It is 41 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 59. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
I laughed out loud at Chuck Assley telling his president to “stop removing people from the DHS.” HAHAHAHA! You can’t enable someone for 2 years and then think that your Stern Words – which are never accompanied by any action – will have any impact. The Republican Party “elders” can’t stop Trump because he is their party. Current officeholders know that if they push back against him, they will be primaried – he is what their base wants.
Another white guy who wants to claim the millennial vote has joined the 2020 fray. I don’t think there is anything particularly bad about Eric Swalwell but he may be mistaking support in his district – which is D+36 – for something other than being in a D+36 district. I suspect he wants to raise his national profile for something in 2028 or catch on as a VP candidate for someone – it can’t be Kamala since they are both from California and it would be difficult to imagine a two white guy ticket so that limits his options a bit.
I have a busy project day today as I try to get ahead a little for an anticipated travel day on Thursday to client sites.
See all y’all later!
Tuesday Meese. We have a thick wall of fog here in Saugerties NY, 49 going up to 57 with rain.
Puerto Rico
So glad to hear that Oprah made a huge donation to Puerto Rico! She has a great heart. Too bad Rethugs are born without them.
Woke up early (made myself stay in bed till 4:30) got downtown early & walked — got 1.1 miles in. Eating breakfast, drinking tea. Too early in the morning to be thinking about how Trump & his people are dismantling our whole system of government. Supposed to get up to 90 today, sigh. Listening to an oldie from U2, Mercy.
I love how the video has clips from their history. Pretty, upbeat song — which I need.
Good Tuesday, Meese! At a quarter to six this morning I took the dog out to the courtyard. It was still quite dark but I could see traces of an overnight shower on the sidewalk. The temperature was mild—60 F.!—and the air smelled as fresh as if the dawning day had been washed and hung out to dry.
The current temp. is still 60 F. and will rise to 80 F. in Ashburn. Eighty is great-y! The rest of the week will be cooler.
Still need to sort out this dreadful apartment, go to an exercise class, and start packing. There’s no time to learn French before we leave but I’ll look at some online tutorials.
The WaPo finally deigned to notice that a WOMAN is also running for president! Whoopee! They actually said that Elizabeth Warren has—gasp—policy positions! I watched Kamala on Chris Hayes’ “All In” last night and enjoyed seeing her. Someone on Twitter suggested that the women candidates get their own channel on YouTube as the Misogynist Male Media seems determined to ignore them.
In other news, the Virginia Cavaliers won last night! Most bore games bore me except for English football and American women’s soccer, but it’s nice when the people around one are happy.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond.
It was a bit of a redemption for the Cavaliers after last year’s embarrassment. I don’t follow men’s basketball – pro or college – but it is impossible to avoid the coverage of Dick Bennett’s son Tony when it consumes the local headlines. Dick coached in the state of Wisconsin for years and at the UW bringing them a lot of tournament wins but alas never a championship.
Good morning, Meesefolk; 47 now and going up to a mostly sunny/partly cloudy 57. Yesterday turned out to be be sunnier and warmer than forecast (70!!!), but I don’t think we’ll be so fortunate today. Still, we seem to have turned the corner and seen a glimpse of things to come…and it is good.
I’m seeing the same thing as so many others…the effective blocking of the women candidates, making it difficult to break through and achieve the notice that their ideas and policies deserve. The B boys+Eric seem to be sucking all of the oxygen out of the room for no apparent reason (if I hear “Kennedyesque” used one more time, you may hear my scream in your livingrooms). A good number of my friends aren’t paying attention yet, so I’m planting the seeds of “watch the women” while I can.
Good day to and for all!
It’s a little chillier this morning at 52 – I wore my coat in but only barely needed it – but heading for 80 today and so far at least it’s sunny. Today and tomorrow the late spring/early summer temps. A front’s moving in after sundown tomorrow and the temps will drop back into the more “seasonal” highs in the lower 60s. And evenings when building a fire is a very good idea. Which Murf will love. (Once the stove is really kicking out heat he comes out of my bedroom and curls up on a cushion on the hearth.)
Evil ones being evil. No news there. If the MSM weren’t the propaganda arm for those evil ones they could fire all their talking heads & reporters and just have “twitler did something deplorable and lied about it. Rs support him” running as an endless loop. But they are. And that’s how the evil ones got into power in the first place. Circumventing or breaking up that monopoloy/consortium is required for any permanent (or as permanent as humans get) change. Meanwhile we decent folks will continue to do what we can – beit large chunks of money as Oprah just sent to Puerto Rico or the $25 here and there that I manage to send out. And we will work to overcome the propaganda, the gerrymandering, the voter suppression…and get decent people in office. We can’t stop the evil until we do.
Everybody still up in the air. From Aji not knowing the biopsy results to fineena not know how much her rent is going up to jan4insight not knowing if she’ll make her mortgage this month to…Just everything. Grandmother Moon smiled at me last night. Hopefully she’s about to get things moving again. Speaking of which, I need some coffee and to get back to work. I’ll read DoReMI’s post as soon as I can. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}