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, Moosekind—it is still morning! Getting off to a very slow start this Friday. Currently the temp. in Ashburn is 43 F., going up to 54 F. with the chance of showers. It’s overcast right now. I have to get ready for the day and do a few errands.
As this is Day 3 of my cold, I won’t attend the Writers’ Group meeting this afternoon. I’m sure they wouldn’t appreciate my shedding germs all over them.
My DIL (Elder Son’s wife) appears to be better today, thank Goddess! Evidently the super-antibiotics kicked in.
Had a blissful night’s sleep because of the cold meds. Now making plans to do absolutely nothing for the weekend, aside from staying in. We had a huge, lovely lunch at L’Auberge Chez François yesterday. The salade contained tiny, peppery cress, which I haven’t seen or tasted since we were in England in 2016. We ate our way steadily through five courses, then staggered out of the restaurant feeling like a python who’d swallowed a couple of goats. My birthday is next week, so our little excursion yesterday was in honor of that.
Nothing intelligent to say this morning, except that Monty Beagle seems a lot better than he was two weeks ago. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!
Good morning, 40 and cloudy in Bellingham. Listening to Rachel Maddow interview Elizabeth Warren last night was poignant and fascinating. Two intelligent informed women, :::sigh:::
It was good to me away from here for a few hours yesterday, but I was very careful re where I went and what I touched. I got very tired though, so after a long nap I went to bed. Such is life in our age in place and avoid the virus home!
Best wishes to all as we find our way through another day.
had to copy this tweet here, before twitter refreshes it away – it’s from a college friend who is now a professor of media studies at U VA
Good morning, meeses! Saturday …
It is 25 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 50. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
I was laughing at Angry Black Lady on Twitter yesterday who pointed out that the next DNC debate will be two old white men yelling at each other; she is taking a hard pass on watching. I have watched none of the debates, they are political theatre (and bad theatre, at that!) and illuminate nothing. For one thing, I won’t watch cable TV news because they are the worst of the worst, going for eyeballs over substance and effectively giving us tRump, and for another thing it is just gotcha politics aimed at fluffing up the moderators and tearing down the Democratic Party. Count me out.
Universities in Washington state and northern California are cancelling in-person classes and finishing the quarter via online lectures. That is a good idea but they are insane if they think that doing that but keeping residence halls open – with kids crammed into tiny elevators and eating in shared cafeterias – is going to stop the spread of a virus. It is a nightmare in the making, where are they going to send the student population if hundreds start getting sick? Are they going to try to quarantine 18 to 22 year olds on a college campus? And, goddess help up, what happens when the skies are filled with planes carrying students to Florida and Mexico and other warm places over spring breaks which are going to start next week and continue through the end of March? I noticed that some of the airlines are offering the chance to cancel trips planned for March and receive credit for another trip. That is a good plan and I hope students planning to mass in Florida think long and hard about staying home this year. Spring break travel is a luxury.
By the way, no one cares who tRump’s chief of staff is. No one can control his worst impulses and, really, you would have to be self-loathing – or delusional about your public relations skills – to want to be the face of an administration that is going to be blamed (rightly) for the botched response to COVID-19. The problem is that one can’t even wish for MAGAts to get sick – following the lead of their president – because, sadly, diseases spread from terrible people to decent people and the red hats will infect the rest of us. That ignorance became something to admire is one of the most disheartening things about trumpism.
The Democratic Party Weekly Address is about the House’s coronavirus response and I will put up a post later this morning after I get a few projects percolating.
See all y’all later!
Have been following local issues here in NY with students who were in study abroad programs – and are being brought home.
Spring break gatherings should be cancelled.
Several schools in the University of Wisconsin system have cancelled study abroad programs and some are bringing students back.
My daughter is planning a spring break trip; I am hoping to convince her to stay home but people her age feel invulnerable! I think it won’t be much fun if you end up quarantined somewhere and/or things are shut down because of virus fears. I have a week to work on convincing her.
Saturday Meese
33 here in the Catskills going up to 44
Nancy LeTourneau ( NLinStPaul from DKos) has a good piece on the new mental health attack on Biden
Well, they canceled SXSW yesterday. I haven’t been in years, I hate crowds, so it’s not a big deal to me personally. But it feels like the air went out of Austin. So many people worked so hard to set it up, so many people were going to work during the fest & make money they really needed. And the tax revenue. This is huge. So, on to my stuff. I do have to cook this weekend, but at least there’s no blockwalking. It cooled off overnight — yesterday it hit the 70s, today it’ll barely be 60.
Yeah, I read that yesterday. And knew the economic hit from top to bottom is gonna be bad. Holding the Good Thought for Austin. & you of course. {{{HUGS}}}
It’s 34-feels-like-28 heading for 63 and sunny at the moment in Fay., AR – I hope it stays sunny but the forecast is partly cloudy. We shall see what we shall see. Yesterday we got 15.5 KWHs (highest single day for the year thus far) and the m-t-d is 65.5 – so we’re on track for 300 (which isn’t good for March) but not 400 (which is).
It being March I really need to set up an annual visit with my doctor’s office. Also set up a mobile vet visit annual for the cats. And, sigh, according to my son I need to take the car in – get the brakes checked and find out why the gas mileage is so low (based on how much gas he’s buying for the amount of driving he’s doing, not based on odometer readings as the odometer only works when it wants to). I’m trying to hold back money for other folks’ emergencies but I’m not sure I can do it any longer. double sigh. Of course if this country had a decent safety net that wouldn’t be an issue.
Now that we’re having more sunshine I can actually see the cat fluff and dust motes being blown around – and up – by the forced-air furnace. No wonder I’m coughing all the time. Mixed in with all the stuff I’d do to help others if I won the lottery (yeah, I know – buy a ticket) I’d build myself a “tiny” house (the 600 sq ft one so I’d have a spare bedroom for when basket comes to visit) and it most certainly would not be heated with a forced-air furnace. Since I can’t do that, I’ll have to think of something else. This can’t be good for the computer either.
Holding the Good Thoughts for those folks on my “list” – whatever’s needed to make things better. At this point I don’t even ask for good although that would be appreciated. Just better. (Wretched Daylight Savings Time starts tonight. Back to it not being daylight when the cats want to eat.) Healing/Helping Energy to everybody. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 40 and cloudy in Bellingham. This is spring allergy season for me, and my brief walk around the garden with Heidi this morning has my eyes burning, and I’m sneezing and coughing. It’s all normal, but COVID-19 reality in the PNW makes me question myself. So far there are no reported cases in Whatcom County so I’ll stay calm and carry on.
Heidi kept her eye on the door yesterday as if watching for her guy, but between food treats and frequent sniffing walks she has settled in. Our son will be back on Monday so she has a few more days of keeping track of exactly where we are.
I’ve got a day of laundry and housework planned, the comfort of busy work! Best wishes to all.
Good Saturn’s Day morning, Moosekind! At 20 minutes to noon it’s 46 F. in Ashburn, with beastly howling winds. Today’s high will allegedly be 50 F.
So thankful I don’t have to go anywhere this afternoon. This is Day 4 of the cold. The meds last night gave me a drugged sleep, which is good, but left me feeling slow-witted, which is bad. I’ve laundry to finish and papers to put away. The shred truck is coming next week, yay!
I did sign up for Hulu last night, but by the time I did I was too tired to watch Episode 1 of “Hillary.” I’ll do that today.
Have lots of unfulfilled ambitions. I should stay off Twitter for sanity’s sake because I might lose my mojo. There are persons saying they’ll write Anita Hill’s name on their ballots in November rather than voting for Biden. So what if Biden isn’t our ideal candidate? He might pick a woman VP and hand off to her in four years. Who knows?
In the meantime, we’ll just keep on keeping on. Wishing a restful Saturday to all at the Pond!