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!
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Good “morning”, Motley Meese! The week begins …
Morning low of 45 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 43. The forecast calls for light rain.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Sunday Meese 35 here in Kingston, NY going up to 61.
We had snow yesterday for a few minutes.
Puerto Rico
Jeez!
Snow? Well, hope you at least need the moisture. Hopefully that was Winter’s last sashay into Spring territory. Having fun in the new house? (Healing Energy to your husband – and you of course.) {{{HUGS}}}
Sunday music
Another beautiful day here. Nice chilly morning in the 50s & a high around 80. Might get a walk in, but the usual Saturday U2 fan concert video watch was moved to Sunday this week in celebration of Bono’s 60th birthday. 2 hours of fun chatter with other fans is also a good, healthy thing to do.
Good Sunday morning, Moosekind, and a happy Mother’s Day to all mothers! And an equally happy day to all who have “brain children” rather than physical children. We were treated to an unpleasant low of 35 F. this morning, but the high today will be 63 F. Currently it’s 53 F. in Ashburn.
Never made it here yesterday—somehow the day got away from me, even though my funk lifted slightly yesterday morning because the sun was shining and I’d had a decent night. Friday night we were FaceTiming with Elder Son and Mr. Preschooler on the tablet, when all of a sudden Younger Son started FaceTiming on the phone. Elder Son cleverly patched Younger Son in on the call so I was able to enjoy the sight of my unshaven darlings and the two little boys. With men, the first thing to go is shaving, with women, it’s the hideous binding undergarment and makeup.
Was in such a bad emotional state Thursday and Friday that for the first time I began to understand the plight of bfitz’s friend Amelia. To know that you have tasks, somewhat unpleasant tasks, awaiting you, and to be unable to summon up the mojo to do them is a really bad feeling. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get something done today. During this period of awfulness I did bake a loaf of bread. Today I will happily scrub the toilet with my Trump-headed toilet brush, so that’ll cheer me up.
Yesterday Elder Son brought out the plants I wanted, along with a huge bag of potting soil and two Weird Beers for Dearly Beloved. Now I have three different sorts of tomatoes waiting to be planted in the garden plot I’ve snagged. I won’t do it yet, though, not until all danger of frost is past. For the screened porch I now have parsley, mint, and basil (all three of which are must-haves for my kitchen in the summer), and a big pot of lavender. He also brought a little zucchini plant. I hope to Goddess that the little thing has already been fertilized! Once I had to help a male zucchini plant and a female zucchini plant have sex, so to speak, and I did not enjoy it at ALL. I think zukes, cukes, and everything else should be able to manage their own sex lives without any help from me.
Have been staying away from news, Twitter, and blogs, and that does seem to help my mood. There are all these awful things going on in the world and nothing I can do about them. It makes me feel helpless.
Wishing all at the Pond a nice, quiet, Sunday.
{{{Diana}}} – Healing/Helping Energy – and yes, staying away from the various media outlets is wise. Constantly being hit with the appalling things going on that you can do nothing about saps your strength and ability to do what you actually can. (Yeah, Amelia lives with that. And it’s not even unpleasant tasks. It’s any tasks. Some days it’s all she can do to color or watch basketball games. And that’s not a bad day, just a not-good one.)
Good luck with your gardening. It’s great you have things growing on your porch, right there for you. Having growing things about just helps. moar Healing/Helping Energy. moar {{{HUGS}}}
It’s 54 heading for mid to upper 60s and sunny, which is nice. Yesterday was another 22 KWH day and the m-t-d is 147. Gaining even if not on track. (Wish we weren’t looking at a solid week of rain and clouds starting tomorrow.) So I will enjoy this day and deal with tomorrow when it gets here.
Cross fingers or otherwise wish me luck. I’m trying a Garbanzo bean flour, Teff, cornstarch, ground flaxseed mixture in place of my BRM All-Purpose GF flour mix that I haven’t been able to get since quarantine started. It’s in the oven right now. (Peanut butter, eggs, brown sugar, pumpkin, and cocoa in this lot.) We shall see if it’s edible and also if it holds together enough to cut into squares or basically becomes a peculiar granola.
It being Sunday, since I haven’t done them already, after I check in everywhere I need to do my chores. But it’s a pretty day and I don’t have to fight the urge to just curl up in a corner somewhere. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good luck with your baking, bfitz! Yesterday Amazon delivered three blinking pounds of stone-ground whole wheat flour or whatever. It’s such a long, skinny shape I have no idea how I’ll get it into the fridge after I open it. Might have to put some in the freezer and some in the fridge.
{{{Diana}}} it turned out fine. I may leave out the teff next time and see what just garbanzo bean and corn starch come out like. I like simplicity. LOL. Definitely freeze some of the flour. It will last much longer. Just let it come to room temperature before you use it. moar {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 54 and partly sunny in Bellingham. We are invited to our son’s house today for a mom’s day visit. We’ll be outdoors, with appropriate social distancing, so I hope it’s a wise decision. Our grand girls are making a dessert from the Betty Crocker cookbook I gave them for Christmas and have been very busy helping their mom plant the flower and veggie gardens so they want to share and I want to be with them. We’ve been very strict re covid isolation so it’s hard to know how to manage the next phase.
Best wishes to all. May our collective memories of our mothers bring us comfort today.
{{{princesspat}}} mask, gloves, and don’t touch (as in not close enough to touch even accidentally) but not necessarily 6′ apart I think is the next phase. Have a lovely Mothers Day. Gardens and food – nothing is more life affirming. Healing/Helping Energy. moar {{{HUGS}}}
Thank you, princesspat.
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is 37 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 48. Sunny this morning with a few clouds rolling in later today. We had about a half hour of snow yesterday – big fat flakes that melted pretty quickly. I think our last snow – historically – is around May 10th so we should be done.
It is beyond frustrating to see the states – and idiots in states still locked down – out and about infecting each other; the worst was a Kentucky church service was filled with worshipers bellowing out songs and spraying virus droplets on each other, including small children (in February, 15 members of a choir in Washington state died after a choir practice). I saw a photo of a jam-packed United flight on Twitter while airlines are crying about revenue – well, then, don’t show people that you don’t freaking care about their health, doodieheads!! People don’t get it and they won’t get it because in Trump’s America, smart people are mocked, scientists are ignored and the Republican Death Cult propaganda is so appealing “the pandemic is over and it was only the godless cities anyway – go buy stuff!” that people are throwing caution, with their COVID-19 infected spittle, to the wind. Stores here have a lot of people in masks but not all and their cluelessness is scary. I shudder to think about what will happen when the Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidates Governor Evers Safer at Home order – it will be a free-for-all. I am pretty sure that the grocery stores will continue doing what they are doing but the odds of running into infected people while shopping will increase dramatically. Tomorrow is a senior morning at our local warehouse food store – we will stock up and expect to not be able to leave for at least 14 days.
My daughter’s college has finals this week and then she will be done with her hybrid in-person/online semester. She is hoping that they open for in-person in the fall but is mentally ready in case they don’t. She much prefers in-person and this past semester only worked because she had met the teachers and knew some of her classmates and they could study “together”; that won’t be true in the Fall. Her friends who are art majors – dancers and musicians, especially – are thinking about taking a semester off if they close the campuses again. I hope everyone is able to stitch together their lives after this disruption. It is worse than the Bush Great Recession because that was mainly a financial setback – this one may leave hundreds of thousands of people dead and millions more with permanent health damage that will change their lives completely. Goddess help us.
See all y’all later!
Monday Meese
37 going up to 58 with thunder and lightning and all things frightening to my dogs here in Kingston NY today.
Things are okay here – have to go to the store to buy a few things – so far most folks in the neighborhood are masked.
Saw this tweet – it goes to show it isn’t just the MAGats who are a problem
Puerto Rico
Moved my walk to later in the day, last week I was fading out too early. It’s still cool enough that a mid day walk shouldn’t be too bad. Anyway, time to process some e-mails. And this week, we’ll be processing applications. We may be working from home for quite some time.
{{{anotherdemocrat}}} good idea about mid day walk – very good that you be working from home for quite some time. Healing Energy & moar {{{HUGS}}}
Good Monday morning, Moosekind! The weather is annoying today, it can’t make up its mind. One minute scraggly white veils of cloud are drifting across a pale blue sky, the next minute we’re treated to the sight of a puffy gray eiderdown moving very slowly across the heavens. Anyway, right now in Ashburn it’s 54 F., going up to 57 F., with the threat of winds gusting 15 to 25 miles an hour. Just wait, though, at the end of the week our area will be in the low 80s! Or so they allege.
Yesterday was yet another completely wasted, nonproductive day. Not only did it get off to a bad start with a too-early wakeup, as the day wore on I discovered I was suffering a Little Misery. Can’t think why: at the moment one’s allergies are quite enough to cope with.
Have still been trying to go “news lite.” I’ve concluded that keeping up with the news minute by minute is like overindulgence in alcohol or drugs: it saps one’s energy. My mental health has improved with the transition to a personal rather than national focus.
Northern Virginia is not ready to reopen. The caseload is still climbing, the number of deaths is increasing, so Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William counties have put their collective foot down: no reopening yet. Although I think this is the right thing to do, I’m wondering whether school will even reopen in September. We’ll have a kindergartener, a first-grader, and a sixth-grader in our family this fall.
Also can’t help wondering what life will be like post-plague. Has anyone here read The Plague? Read about it in the WaPo this morning but I won’t read the novel itself. In the first place, I dread French novels nearly as much as Russian novels, and secondly, I am no fan of dystopian fiction.
Well, that’s quite enough from me this morning, so will shut up for now. Forgot to mention that the Powers That Be left two little translucent pink bags on our outside shelf yesterday, filled with greetings for Mother’s Day, and crackly tissue paper that revealed a small bottle of bubbly in each bag. The note regretted that owing to the lockdown, Dining Services was unable to prepare a nice Mother’s Day dinner for us all. I gotta give ’em credit—they do their best!
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.
It’s 49 heading for 52 and overcast enough I need the desk light. However the PV system is actually on, so even overcast days aren’t as dark this time of year as in Winter. Yesterday we generated 21 KWHs and 167.8 is the m-t-d as of this morning. I’m not entirely sure it’ll get over 170 today and unless it clears off it certainly won’t get to 175. So I hope it’ll clear off.
I got the word back from the insurance adjuster. The news ain’t great but the roof replacement is approved. They estimated a little over $6K when it actually should be $8K (allowed under half of the actual cost of uninstalling and reinstalling the PV system), then subtracted $2K for it being an old roof with “normal wear and tear” then subtracted another $2K deductible. And are sending me a check for just over $2K. I’m hoping my agent can widget some way to get that up – at least enough to cover the PV system for heaven sakes. Meanwhile there’s a roofing company supposed to come out this afternoon to inspect and give me a quote. I’ll see what they say they can do it for. Some roofing companies have “deductible assistance” programs so I’ll check that out, too. Otherwise I either get to choose to get a line of credit from my credit union or sell another chunk of my TIAA mutual funds because it’s looking like I’m gonna be on the hook for about $6K. Which beats $15K that I’d originally feared. $6K is doable. $15K is not.
The baking came out fine. There’s a faint odor to garbanzo bean baked goods that’s not bad exactly but definitely not what I expect to be smelling from baked goods. The texture is coarse – my baking would never win a County Fair cake contest – but that’s never been an issue with me as I was baking with whole wheat flour before I had to stop eating wheat. I don’t like white flour products. (Which is partly why I don’t like the rice-based GF flour blends.)
Late and moving slow today. Had trouble sleeping last night. Sinusitis. sigh. From about 2 til about 4:30 I was mostly sitting up and scraping mucus. I finally turned on the light and read until 5:30 (the sky was starting to lighten up) then managed to grab an hour or so, call it cat nap rather than real sleep. I hate sinusitis. Oh well. I’m still breathing and that’s what matters. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody for their shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Hope that lousy sinusitis departs, bfitz, and I hope you got some sun today.
{{{Diana}}} It eased up a bit at least. Nope on the sun but we might get some tomorrow. Hope your day goes well. moar {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 60 and partly sunny in Bellingham. Yesterday was fun and busy so I’m I’m pleasantly tired this morning. I sew a new pillow cover for my DIL yesterday morning, chatted with family via iPhone, enjoyed out door family visiting in the afternoon, and dinner on the patio with RonK and our son at the end of the day. Our more low key family times together may last past covid confinement…..it’s certainly easier!
I need to focus on my desk today, and then I hope to spend some time in the garden. Best wishes to all as we start a new week.
Tuesday Meese
40 degrees here in Kingston NY – going up to 56. Had spectacular thunder and lightning last night which freaked out our dogs. Unpacking…unpacking …unpacking (feels like it will take months)
#RiseUpNewYork
Ahmaud Arbery
Puerto Rico
Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …
It is 32 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 55. Sunny skies are in the forecast. If the wind stays calm, there will be back deck sunning in my future.
I am shocked – shocked, I say – to hear that Mitch McChinless disapproves of President Barack Obama. Why, the man who said “we will consider our tenure a success if we block everything he does and make him a one-term president” during what was (then) the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, can’t possibly have anything but the best interests of our nation at heart!! And that Republican Senators don’t want to pass any more aid because they worry that it will help people who live in blue states is the most craven assholery I have ever seen in an era where craven assholery has been raised to an art form.
I was glad to see that Dr. Fauci has not been Birxed and will appear before the Republican Senate and tell them the truth about how disastrous it will be to reopen too early. It will probably be pretty contentious because he will now be “the enemy” and Republicans will have to attack him. Hey, doodieheads, re-opening too early will cause spikes in infections, a lot of sick people and deaths. Sane people will not venture out of their homes and into the malls until it is safe, period.
Today are the live oral arguments in the Mazar and Vance cases at the Supreme Court. The question in the Vance case is whether a president has complete immunity from all legal actions, even ones related to his actions before he was sworn in, while he is president. The court already ruled on this once, during the Clinton presidency, and ruled against Clinton, forcing him to be deposed. But the precedent involved a Democratic president and, as we know, in the Roberts Court, precedents are easily discarded when they would result in discomfort for a Republican president. Party over country – especially with two tRump “justices” on the court. I hope to be able to listen, carefully muting the people I despise.
See all y’all later!
Good Tuesday morning, Meese! After a rill ugly start to the day, we now have sunlight, blue skies, and the everlasting, never-going-away WIND. The trees in the woods across the way have that half-dressed, “not-ready-to-face-the-day-yet” look. The current temperature in Ashburn is 45 F., on its way up to 61 F. I’m so tired of cold and wind.
Completed one or two tasks yesterday, which included changing the sheets on the bed and doing some laundry. Today I’m going to water my newly acquired plants. I might even put them out on the porch for a while. Perhaps by Thursday I’ll be able to transplant them into bigger pots.
Summer used to mean grilling steak and corn on the cob on the patio. For a while I cut 1/2-inch slices of eggplant lengthwise and brushed them with Worcestershire sauce, hoping they’d look like steak. That was during the Great Vegetarian Tryout, which I failed miserably.
We can’t grill any more, of course. On the other hand, we are very well looked after here, even though I do gritch a lot.
I’m still mostly staying away from Tweeter because my mental health is precious to me. With a pretty decent night’s sleep last night I might actually get some things done today. The mop from Amazon came yesterday, so I’ll see whether I remember how to use one.
BTW, Robin Givhan, whose work I usually ignore because she writes about fashion, has an extraordinary essay called “Silence” in the WaPo today. It blew me away to the point that I felt I had to email her about it. Rats, I can’t find the link. Anyway, it’s amazing.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and a better day to the innocents Beyond.
Thanks Diana……What does a pandemic sound like? For many of us at home, it’s a heartbreaking silence.
Got in a 1.5 mile walk. Was thinking about adding to that at lunch, but there’s an 80% chance of rain later today. I set up 4 new library users yesterday. It is really complicated to do, especially without a desk. But it’ll get easier. Have a great day, y’all!
It’s 45 going to 54 and overcast enough I’ve got the lamp on. We got 5 KWHs yesterday and the 172 m-t-d isn’t even on track for 400 much less 500. Of course if my roof it replaced this month, the count will be shot anyway as the PV system will be uninstalled for 3 days – if they can do it that fast. The insurance company is being helpful now they got around to me. Except the $2K deductible they’re paying 100% of replace what I’ve got. If I upgrade anything, that’s on me. But if I replace the roof with the same kind of shingles, simple uninstall and reinstall my current PV system – they’ll cover it all. Coming up with the $2K deductible isn’t going to be easy. But it’s doable. Not a “can I?” but “what do I want to tap?” So there is that. Had a fire last night. Will have another this evening. Looking at the forecast these may be it for the season. If so, I’ll have 1/2 pallet of wood bricks in the mud-room closet to start next season with.
The news doesn’t get any better. At this point I pretty much let Rantt email me the “headlines” and stay away from everything else. I only check my twitter TL to try and catch how folks I’m following are doing. I can’t keep a separate tab up on everybody. LOL. But staying “in touch” with the news right now is like trying to stay alive “jumping the waves” as a storm is coming in. Hard, stressful, not sustainable, potentially fatal – and totally keeps the focus away from whatever can be done to prevent or at least mitigate the damage.
Anyway, need to get coffee. And do laundry. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 54 and raining in Bellingham. I may have a hair cut/color appointment this morning. It’s been rescheduled several times and I haven’t been able to confirm today’s time, so I’m going to go to the salon and hope for the best. I’ve been trimming my own hair, with mixed success, but the color is fading fast and the silver/grey roots are surprising to see.
Best wishes to all on this quiet rainy morning in May.