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!
– Page Three of Comments is HERE!
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Good Tuesday morning, Meese! Today is another overcast day in NoVa, although the clouds today are brighter than yesterday. It’s still dry, though, which means more watering of plants will be necessary. Right now in Ashburn it’s 57 F., going up to 68 F.
Very likely Nancy’s calling Thing “morbidly obese” will get to him like no other insult. Good. I don’t believe he’s taking the malaria drug, which I can’t be bothered to spell.
This country continues to go to hell in a hand basket. Will there even be a country on November 3?
Well, today is Recycle Day, so I’d better get on with getting it together and putting it outside our door. Everyone else puts theirs out the night before, but we are “last-minute Lizzies” in that respect.
Wishing everyone as good a day as possible in view of everything.
Ha! I have that problem too – I have no interest in looking up the name of the anti-malaria drug so that I can get the spelling correct. There is no way the White House is letting him take that drug – he is either lying or being lied to and given a sugar pill. Probably lying – he has to justify spending money to put 60 million doses of the drug in the federal stockpile PLUS using the drug on our poor veterans who deserve better.
Got in my ½ hour walk, now I’m working. It is supposed to hit 100 today. Ugh. Anyway, gonna eat my overnight oats & respond to some library patron e-mails. Have a great day!
It’s 62 heading back up to lower 70s and sunny again today. The PV system generated 22 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 254. Just as well. It comes down tomorrow – and please goddesses goes back up Friday. Just in time for the next spate of rain and cloudiness. Anyway, I baked orange molasses muffin bread this morning and have breakfast sausages in the oven right now. The first will last me just over a week. The second for almost a month.
As usual the MSM did a clip of Pelosi saying something about twitler, MSM cut it so the context wasn’t there, LWers started anti-Pelosi for fat-shaming, and BIPOC I’m following have jumped on that bandwagon because fat-shaming is part of victimizing BIPOC victims and blaming them for whatever health (& financial) mess they’re in. I wish our side wasn’t so good at taking the bait. There’s not just a hook in that bait, there’s poison in it. I can point out/have pointed out for years that the MSM is the propaganda machine for the fascists. Everybody agrees with me – and then goes right back to being manipulated by the fascist propaganda. Molly Ivins tried until she died. I guess I will too. But it’s depressing.
Gotta get back to my cooking (and cleaning up the mess). Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody, to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 56 and cloudy in Bellingham. Covid confinement is starting to ease in our community, and I’m having a hard time adjusting. Being so isolated is hard to manage but making decisions re what is safe to do and what isn’t is even harder. Whatcon County has 360 confirmed cases of covid and 32 deaths, yet many people have no first hand experience with the disease so the need to stay vigilant isn’t as personal as it is for us. I’m uncomfortable asking people to think carefully before planning summer activities and/or visits, and I’m even more uncomfortable with the thought of people staying here. It’s a dilemma in progress!
My mask sewing project is nearly finished but it looks like I’ll need to find some fall fabrics for the next go around. I’ve made over 50 masks now, using denim as the base fabric and prints for color and fun. The masks are reversible and have washed well but the summery prints are seasonal for my fashion conscious family members :)
Whatcom residents strongly urged to wear masks when out in public, starting Friday
Best wishes to all as we do what we need to do to stay healthy.
Wednesday Meese
45 going up to 71 here in the Catskills.
Puerto Rico
Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …
It is 50 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 68. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
I have about 4 projects going right now so I can’t even read the news. It seems to be in a bit of a holding pattern right now – the economy is re-opening, slowing and carefully in some places, with reckless disregard for life in others. I hope that the curve was flattened enough so that hospitals can handle the new infections – I live in a place with lots of hospitals and lots of smart people so unless I have an underlying condition I am not aware of, I should be okay. An article I read yesterday was disheartening – masks have become political with Democrats overwhelmingly in favor of them and Republicans considering them an assault on the first amendment. So Democrats support not infecting their fellow man and Republicans believe they have the right to spread a deadly disease, a fuck-you. Surprise, NOT! I hope more businesses require masks – “no mask, no service.” I may start considering that when I go shopping after the re-opening.
And now it is an hour after I started this comment! I need to finish the projects I am working on.
See all y’all later!
Another hot day or 2 here, then rain & cooler temps. Because Memorial Day weekend in Austin means rain. If we’re lucky, not flooding. For my morning walk, I used a cooling neckerchief – it was that warm even at 6am. Anyway, I’m working — answering e-mails & getting new library users set up.
It’s 56 heading for 76 and sunny today. So far. That’s good for my mood which always helps. Yesterday we generated 17.5 KWHs bringing the m-t-d to 270.9 – which is where it’s gonna stay until the system’s reinstalled and turned on Friday. The Ozark Solar guy is here and currently in the process of uninstalling the system. We’d generated about 5 watts when he got here and turn the system off so he could do that without electrocuting himself. (At least I hope it will be reinstalled Friday. We’ve got “scattered thunderstorms” in the forecast.)
Nothing new under the sun. As far as our news is concerned especially. Evil Ones being evil. Everybody else trying to survive their evil actions. And help each other get through it. Meanwhile I’m hoping coffee will ease the headache I woke up with. Then I need to call the credit union and make sure the insurance “front money” checks have cleared plus see how much I’ve got in savings to shift over to checking. If this wraps up Friday as it’s supposed to I’ll need to write some sizable checks. I’m hoping the roofers get the “reimbursable depreciation” directly from the insurance company. The latter won’t release it until the job is done and signed off by me.
Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody, to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
A new roof is a big project bfitz. I hope you are done, dry and safe asap!
We bought a 30 yr roof 10+ yrs ago and it was a big relief to know we wouldn’t have to do that again! We do have to remove the moss growing on it, but the window washing company we now use has a 3 step plan that seems to be working and hasn’t harmed the plants. The upstairs windows are a bit streaky, but after the next solution is sprayed on the roof in June they will wash the windows.
{{{princesspat}}} it really is. Hopefully, if all goes as planned, it will be a done deal and my PV system will be back online by noon Friday. This will be the 3rd “20-year” roof I’ve put on this house – with interim out-of-pocket repairs for things the insurance companies consider to be “normal wear and tear”. They aren’t lasting 20 years. That’s why I went with this company. They have a life-time warranty. If I get leakage again in 5 years, they’ll not only fix it, they’ll repair the inside damage. I paid the PV installer 1/2 just now and just that piece of it is 1.5x my Social Security check that came in today. Definitely a big project.
I’m so glad your window washing company is taking care of the moss problem. That will help your roof actually last 30 years. And it’s good that taking care of one problem isn’t causing another. Healing Energy and moar {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 54 and cloudy in Bellingham. I think I’m feeling less anxious about how to live long term with Covid reality. Given my autoimmune issues I need to be more careful than others do but if I can keep most of my family interactions outdoors and limit my personal community exposure I should be fine. I’m not sure I can cope with our usual ongoing summer visitors though, so that part of the dilemma is still evolving.
I finished the masks for our neighbors yesterday, and today I’ll cut 8 more and when those go in the mail I’ll be done, yay! My usual seasonal pattern is to move from sewing to gardening but this year I think I’ll try to have a simpler garden agenda and keep my sewing projects going. It’s physically easier for me and requires less thought because the projects are all ready to cut and sew. If I can keep my focus I may finish last Christmas’s agenda before this one comes around :)
Best wishes to all on this quiet morning in May.
Good Wednesday morning, Moosekind! It was cold, gray, and hideous when I got up (late) at 7:30. This has been the coldest, cloudiest, ugliest spring I’ve seen since I landed here in July 1965. Last week I was wearing Bermudas and this morning I had to turn on the fake woodstove in the living room, it was so cold.At the moment in Ashburn it’s 54 F. on its way up to 64 F. and the wind is blowing at 10-20 mph. We now have weak sunlight and cirrostratus clouds stretching across a pale blue sky.
Not much to say except that today my SS money showed up in ye olde bank account, so that’s good. Yesterday our new sofa covering was delivered from Wayfair. I’m sick of the brown patchwork quilt type thing we’ve had on all winter.
Today’s chores include making a grocery list for Natalie to use tomorrow. I wish I had an Impossible Burger and some French fries. Wish I had tacos. Oh, well, never mind.
Wishing all at the Pond a good day, with not too much bad news from the outside world.
{{{Diana}}} – enjoy your new sofa covering. Small pleasures are sometimes large blessings. Healing Energy and more {{{HUGS}}}
Good Thursday morning, Moosekind! Another gray, cloudy day here, with rain possibly starting tonight. Right now in Ashburn it’s 49 F., going up to 66 F. This morning when I took Monty out to the courtyard at 5:45, it smelled strongly of skunk. Ugh.
Took a look at the garden plot yesterday. It was okay, not great. The people in the adjoining plot had put in a whole bunch of plants and while watering them, watered mine too. I watered mine again. I’m anxious about the Better Boy tomato and the zucchini. Only time will tell. The whole garden enclave is contained within an eight-feet-tall chain link fence, and people shut the door after they enter, so conceivably deer won’t be eating what we grow.
Yesterday at lunchtime the managing editor of the quarterly called and wanted to know how I’m doing on the stories I’m supposed to turn in. Gulp…not well at all, as in, I hadn’t even started them! Yesterday I mailed off questionnaires to a couple of people, today I’ll follow up with a phone call to be sure they look at their email. Also started work on an article the M.E. is not going to like, but if he rejects it there are a couple of other places I can post it—here, for one!
Regret to say I have put on four beastly pounds since my lowest weight. I just eat all the time. Yesterday I ate tropical trail mix for no compelling reason. This makes me determined to get out for a decent walk this morning and this afternoon.
Wishing everyone a good, safe day! Quarantine is getting on my nerves.
Ha! “Yesterday I ate tropical trail mix for no compelling reason.” I find that I am snacking out of boredom and that is new with the lockdown – I had been very good over the past year. I have, so far, not gained any weight but I think that is because the stress makes me twitchy and that movement may be helping. :) I started taking longer walks (without the dog who stops to sniff too often) and that should help as the stress is starting to dissipate a bit. I have reached a better place where I realize that I can’t change any behaviours in other people or governments and just need to take care of myself and advise my daughter. I still long for a haircut but will wait until my regular hair salon is back in business and not travel to the next county to find one. It is simply not worth it.
{{{Diana}}} – air-popped popcorn – that’s 35 calories a cup. You can eat 4 cups of it, which takes a while if you nibble rather than eat it by the handfuls ????????, for only 140 calories. That and carrot sticks are my “go-to” for nervous eating. Hope you get in a good walk today. That might burn off some nervous energy and help you concentrate on your writing. Healing Energy and moar {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, meeses! Thursday …
It is 54 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 70. Sunny skies are in the forecast. I got my afternoon time in the sun yesterday and it looks like I will have more today. Twenty minutes sitting baking in the sun totally charges me back up – the sun is a healer.
Once again, I was too busy this morning to check the news. I did see an article last night that tracking data showed that most Wisconsinites rejected the advice of the Supreme Court and continued staying at home. Only about 3% of trackable cell phones escaped the “tyranny” of living a long and healthy life while an uncontrollable infectious disease is on the loose. Sadly, that 3% probably got drunk and sprayed COVID-19 over everyone they met so we will have to be more vigilant than usual for the next 2 weeks. Our number of cases spiked yesterday. :(
The rest of the news is tRump and his minions trying to change the subject from his incompetence literally killing Americans to his Senate sycophants trying to find something, anything, that they can blame on President Obama and, by extension, his vice president Joe Biden. Good luck with that! Just like health care was the key issue in 2018, health care with the addition of the incompetent global pandemic response will be the key issue in 2020. People don’t want to get sick and they don’t want to die, period. Republicans will never support the health and well-being of ordinary Americans because it is not important to their donors.
See all y’all later!
Got in 1.6 miles, in between rain. It’s supposed to rain a lot in the next few days. Working now, going in to the office later to take in forms & pick up new ones. The new routine.
It’s 64 heading for 78 and I feel totally weird not checking my PV display this morning. But the PV system is disassembled and in my backyard so it would be kind of silly. Even though – or maybe especially – since it’s sunny right now. The roofers are running behind. They should be here in about 2 hours, hopefully a little sooner. At least we have daylight until after 8 pm so they should be able to finish the job today even with the late start. As long as that 40%-chance-of-rain doesn’t show up. The PV guy is supposed to be here in the morning to put the system back up but now the rain chance has shifted from below 30% to just over 50% first thing in the morning instead of in the afternoon. Holding the Good Thought the rain will hold off until everything’s done!
The only way I’ve found to manage not reacting to the propaganda the MSM spews is to not watch it. And since my tummy is giving me enough trouble as it is over things closer to home/the heart I don’t. I know the Evil Ones are doing evil. I know they’re both covertly and overtly torturing and killing people for fun and profit. I don’t need the details. I just need to do whatever I can to get them out of power and clean up whatever is cleanupable. And honor the dead by helping those left.
All these strange people coming to the house has made the cats antsy. When I’m up and with them they mostly sleep. But every morning I’m getting up to floors covered in shed hair and shredded cardboard. Which I need to go sweep up. LOL. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody, to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 51 and partly sunny in Bellingham. My sewing room and RonK’s study are adjoining rooms in the lower level of our house and the doors were removed years ago so heat and sound flows from room to room. Ron prefers quiet when he is reading and/or writing and needs privacy for the online meetings that are now a fact of life. I like to listen to music and/or keep the tv on when I’m sewing so we’ve had a few territorial issues to resolve :)
Yesterday our son started installing a french door between the two rooms and another between Ron’s study and the rest of the basement. The doors had to be custom made due to size requirements, so we’ve been waiting. The old door frames also need to be replaced so that means cutting away the plaster, and that means a dusty mess. Our son taped up a plastic bubble to work in and that contained most of the dust. As always the projects are more complex and require more tools than I imagined but we’re grateful he has the skills and feels well enough to do the work.
Once the new doors are installed we’ll paint them in place. French doors with multiple panes are fussy to paint, but the glass will keep the rooms visually open while containing sound and heat. And one more project will be off the list!
Best wishes to all as we deal with yet another day.
I opted for a windowed door for my office. I needed to isolate the sounds (mine and the rest of the house) but I wanted the light flowing through and also to feel like I was part of the house. Plus dogs over the years needing to tell me that they want to come in and “help” me work (there is a dog blanket under my chairless desk). I also have a windowed door into an unfinished part of my basement that leads to where exercise equipment is. That space would have had no sunlight at all. I am sure the guys who finished the basement thought I was crazy spending that kind of money there but I am glad I don’t have to turn on lights when I am walking through that space to get to a storage closet. One less light bulb lit!! (We won’t talk about the dusty unused exercise equipment).
Welp, I’m TOTALLY pissed off. The roofers didn’t finish their other job until 1 so instead of actually doing my roof today, they’re tarping it against the rain. And then we wait for a dry enough day to do the roof. Which might be Saturday. And might be next month. Meanwhile my PV system is disassembled in my backyard and I’m using coal-fired SWEPCO electricity – and if we don’t get back online within a day or two I’ll be paying an electricity bill. Which of course nobody’s gonna reimburse me for. And “oh well, it took longer than we expected” doesn’t cut it. If you can’t estimate their job right, why am I supposed to trust you’re estimating mine right. Yeah, great. Thanks for thinking of my leak and tarping the roof. Which you’ll have to untarp before you can do the actual job. (& no, the venting isn’t helping. I’m still TOTALLY pissed off. But thanks for being here for me to vent to. ???? )
Bummer! I hope they don’t have to wait too long. Roofing seems to be one of those projects where the weather and the state of the existing materials make it difficult to schedule well. As long as you are “next” on their list – and they work on weekends – that is the best you can hope for, I would think. May the sun shine brightly and the rains end.
I hope to heaven they work weekends! There are no days when rain isn’t in the forecast in the foreseeable future – and haven’t been for months. Even the days that turned out sunny had rain in the forecast. But this weekend the rain chances are below 50% and they’re above 70% all next week. It’s just been a dark year.
Kamala is on Last Word tonight! I’ll post video when it’s available.
They divided it up in several segments, here’s the first one
Thanks!
Good morning, meeses! Friday …
It is 57 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 70. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast. Yesterday’s “afternoon sun” did not materialize – we maybe saw 15 minutes total and that is not enough to heat the air for comfortably sitting in the sun. Today doesn’t look much better. We are going to warm up considerably over the holiday weekend but it is also expected to rain. The “Grand” Reopening of Wisconsin, which includes plans to keep dining rooms closed but serve customers in outdoor space, may not work well. I wonder if restaurants will set aside their good intentions and open up their dining rooms. Many establishments are going to remain closed probably waiting to see what happens. If staff in the reopened restaurants get sick, the ones that stayed closed and can still do curbside pickup and delivery will be happy and healthy.
My favorite stories these days are the polls showing that the number of endangered Senate Republicans keeps growing. The latest is McSally who the voters of Arizona rejected and then who was appointed senator by their governor who essentially said to them “I know better than you.” She is being challenged by Mark Kelly, the astronaut husband of Gabby Giffords and the polling shows him with a good lead. We can hope that tRump coattails are infected by the COVID-19 virus response and that Iowa, Arizona, North Carolina, Colorado, Maine, and Georgia seats flip. With Vice President Kamala Harris breaking ties in the Senate, we only need to flip 3 of those and keep all of ours. Assuming we will lose Alabama – not a given but pretty likely – we will need 4. It would suck for President Biden to be unable to confirm his cabinet and his judges without having to go through Mitch McConnell so the Senate has to be priority #2.
Speaking of COVID-19 virus responses, tRump says the nation will not be shut down again if there is a second wave in August. It is time for Americans to suck it up and die by the millions to keep the Dow Jones Industrial Average high! Good luck with that. No one can make us come out of our houses or make business owners risk dying and killing their employees to serve Republican ideology. We will take our chances that the Senate will pass new relief bills to keep us alive until January 20, 2021.
I made some good progress on projects yesterday but it required working much too hard! Today I will do light organizing and lay out a plan for working over the long weekend when it is quiet.
See all y’all later!
Friday Meese
58 here in the Catskills going up to 80!!!
Yay!
She’s #1
If she is not the pick, it will be an enormous letdown for any number of reasons. Besides her obvious qualifications, the alternatives are either too old (sorry – we don’t need a 70 year old woman a heartbeat away from a 78 year old man), too untested (sorry, Stacey, win a statewide race and then govern for a while), or in the position to lose us red/purple state Senate or gubernatorial seats. The “she would make a great Attorney General” meme is true because there is no job in government that she could not do and do well! But there are a dozen great Democrats who could be AG – but only one that meets the test for VP with these credentials: smart, engaging, from a solid blue state, won a statewide race three times and has experience running a large multi-dimensional governmental agency.
Puerto Rico