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!
Puerto Rico
When men can’t control anything else, they always take it out on women and the poor.
Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …
It is 70 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 88 with a heat index of 91. Sunny this morning but a chance for thunderstorms tonight.
I “watched” responses to Herr Twitler’s speech on Twitter – it was horrifying. I was glad to see that this morning the headlines spoke the truth, even the New York Times, which often insists on cleaning up after tRump to appear Fair and Balanced: “Park Police Tear Gas Peaceful Protesters To Clear Way For Trump Church Photo-Op.” Our president, Barack Obama, asked for calm and our next president, Joe Biden, met with faith leaders in the black community. I am not sure how this all ends – I am just heartbroken that people protesting are at risk for a deadly disease and that they are risking the lives of their family members as well. Goddess keep them safe. As for the looters and those who are chaos agents wanting to foment a race war and destroy civil society, I hope that the authorities deal with them harshly. I don’t expect it – the tRump “Justice” department has coddled his base, the “very fine people” who are nazis and white supremacists and have shown little interest in sorting out the protesters from those who want to escalate into violence.
I have about a dozen tabs up to read later – busy day here.
See all y’all later!
Good Tuesday morning, Meese. Whereas yesterday was a perfect June day—high in the mid-70s, blissful sunshine, blue sky, and birdsong—this morning we’re back to a week of overcast skies, heat, and humidity. Right now it’s 58 F.on its way up to 81 F., with showers predicted. So far said showers have failed to materialize.
After reading the today’s paper I wonder why I bothered to get out of bed this morning, which, of course, occurred at 5:15 a.m. I’ve decided this is to be the pattern of my days: early rising, then pack as many chores as possible into the eight hours before I collapse. After lunch, life in our house is all downhill.
We did go to TJ’s yesterday. Dearly sat in the car while I went in. Every single person (and there weren’t very many) was masked. Usually that place is jammed, even on a weekday morning in the summer, but I swear, I think the staff outnumbered the customers. Was careful to sanitize the cart before I went in. There was a plastic shield between me and the cashier, and I was asked to use a card rather than cash.
Although I always enjoy shopping there, yesterday was particularly blissful because I could pick out exactly what I wanted. This is strawberry season, so the offerings were luscious-looking, dark red and smaller than the usual large, woody, half-white giants. Because I was shopping for myself, I could root among the tubs of cut mango until I found mango that was really ripe. Well, enough about that.
Today I need to finish formatting Chapter 3 of Iron and Scarlet so I can upload it to my website, and do a couple of other chores. I’m going to avoid the news, it’s so depressing.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.
I am glad to hear that your visit to the grocery store was blissful and very glad to hear that people were masked. I had to run to the store and pick up a few things during non-senior hours on Sunday morning and found it to be pleasant and with 90% masking. I think that 7am on Sunday morning is probably pretty seniorish simply because many youngs like to sleep in. In any event, I did not linger but went right to the places where the things I wanted were and got out quickly.
I read a piece in the New York Times this morning about the politics of masking and it was very interesting. That “caring” vs “not caring” has a partisan political component is not surprising but I was pleased to hear that it is not really a North vs South thing. As long as there are decent people in all regions of the country there is hope that we may finally put down the rebellion. Goddess help us get there sooner rather than later.
p.s. I was NOT sad to see that Robert E. Lee’s statue was damaged and that the building housing the Daughters of the Assholes Who Started a War So That They Could Own Humans was torched. I am sad for downtown Richmond but not sad when I see the symbols of the glorification of the Confederacy dismantled.
Very hard 1.56 mile walk/run. Was supposed to be 8 rounds of 60 seconds running, made it to 3. Did add 5 more of 30 seconds running. So, so hard. Today: may make a run into the office, I’m almost out of new applications. Our demonstrations were peaceful again last night. There were many pictures on the news of police talking to protesters, walking with them, even holding their fists up in solidarity. At least here, and at least the past couple of days, it has been going right.
It’s 68 going to mid 80s – I guess summer is here – and overcast. We’ll see what the new configuration can do with cloudy. Yesterday we started the month with 22.3 which does at least start us on track for 569 – LOL. I really wish global warming didn’t mean cloudiness for multiple days on either side of less than 50% chances of rain! Oh well. At least we’ve gotten enough rain. Unlike Aji – who really needs it until she can scrounge up the $15K to get the well/irrigation system put in if they are to grow food for humans and horses. Both at their place and various Elders and disabled folks in the surrounding area they’ve been helping for years. But the last few years have proved that there just isn’t enough dependable snowpack in winter or monsoonal afternoon rains in summer to grow that food without a well/irrigation system. Nor enough dependable sales to buy it.
Twitter “unsupported” the workarounds that allowed me to have the old format as of yesterday. So as little as I’ve been on twitter, I will be on it less. Boosting Aji’s stuff, Dee’s twitter roundups here & on Black Kos, & staying connected with Amelia via DM is just about it. The “new” layout hurts my eyes and makes it hard for me to focus. Even without the auto-refresh – that makes me slightly nauseous. At the moment that means I have to be on Edge rather than EdgeDev for twitter but also for Moose and DK to be able to boost Dee’s tweets. Basket, bless him, is planning a shared session with me this afternoon in hopes of doing something about that. EdgeDev not only has all my recent activity so it comes up in the dropdown box and I don’t have to look for it, it also doesn’t jack my youtube searching/playing. We shall see what we shall see.
Worried about the nation. Can’t do anything more than I’ve done. Worried about the pandemic. Can’t do anything more than I’ve done. Worried about Aji, Amelia, Fineena… Can’t do anything more than I’ve done. But I can and do Channel Healing/Helping Energy to everybody, to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
I got the notice a couple of weeks ago about the Twitter workaround extension Firefox and removed it. It helped me in one way – the workaround would not let me paste text into new tweets, I had to start the tweet from a news site, clean it out, paste my stuff in and then send it. The format is not as clean as the old one but I rarely use my browser for Twitter – I do most of my tweeting from my phone from the comfort of my couch.
What is EdgeDev? I use Firefox for blogging sites and the new Edge Chromium for most everything else (I never mix the two to keep their cookies separate). I still use Internet Explorer 11 for some financial sites that need stronger security and will continue to do that until they stop supporting it. As long as Microsoft has active Windows Server versions that came with Internet Explorer 11, they will have a version that will work with Windows 10. But a lot of sites have stopped working with it so it won’t be long.
Firefox and I never got along well. Of course being pretty much technically illiterate doesn’t help. I don’t know what EdgeDev is – Basket knew about it and set it up for me. But it works like Edge pretty much and allowed the “goodtwitter” app to be installed and gave me the old twitter format until twitter stopped allowing old format apps to work. And it did work – was exactly like having the old twitter format back. Such a blessing to my eyes and concentration. That twitter has now forcibly removed. If it weren’t that twitter is the only way I connect with some folks, I’d stop using it and just boost Dee’s stuff from here and Black Kos. But it is, so that’s that.
EdgeDev and Edge Chromium are the same thing :)
{{{basket}}}
Good morning, 54 and partly sunny in Bellingham. I helped our son put his kitchen together in the new house yesterday. He has more kitchen things to move but now he knows where everything goes so that’s progress. We both got tired though. It’s going to be a long week for him but once he’s moved in it will be a good place to live.
I’m feeling down and weary this morning, so I’ll have another cup of coffee and try to find something life affirming to do. tRump only lives in my head when I let him in! Best wishes to all on this sunny June morning.
Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …
It is 66 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 84. Sunny skies are in the forecast. We had storms come through when I was trying to sleep and it upended my sleep patterns. I finally fell asleep but woke up much too early, went back to sleep and woke up unrested when my alarm was about to sound.
I opened a bunch of stories in tabs to read later. It is beyond irritating that berners want to delay our nomination until the convention so that they can trash it again and demand things that we don’t need and ratfk Joe Biden’s chances. That they have learned nothing from 2016 – and that I still see tweets tweeted into my stream labeled “I won’t sell out, I won’t vote for Biden” – really ticks me off. What part of “if trump is elected, we will all die” do they not get??! And Biden’s 10% lead in the national polls is bullshite – there are still enough undecided/won’t-say to give the election to tRump even if the national polls meant a damn thing. We won the national popular vote in 2016 and now we have a global pandemic, an economic meltdown and civil unrest.
I have to find a brain to do a few things before my clients start work – it may already be too late.
See all y’all later!
Good Wednesday morning, Moosekind! It seems to be partly cloudy this morning and it’s already so warm (72 F., on the way up to 94 F.) that I couldn’t bear to slop around in my fleece dressing-gown, so I’m dressed for the day. The rain we were promised yesterday never materialized, nor will it the rest of the week, I’ll bet. They say we’ll have 90s and thunderstorms starting tomorrow but as usual, they lie.
Owing to interruptions in the supply chain, my annual May cold didn’t show up until yesterday. No wonder I’ve felt so weird! Going to try to do a few things before the 1 p.m. collapse.
White supremacist Steve King lost his primary yesterday, so my day is already made. I love it!
Will keep an eye on the news today to some extent. What I really want to do is just flop.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and a bad day to Rethugs and haters everywhere.
I was actually rooting for Steve King after I found out that Karl Rove was for his primary opponent! I wanted the Republicans to own him and his toxic white supremacy for one more election cycle. I am sure the other guy is awful as well – he is a pro-trump Republican – but he might be more difficult to beat.
Hot in Austin, and if the tropical storm in the Gulf goes east, it will get hotter. Boo. Today is a non-walking day, so abs & arms. Protests continue peaceful here, worst thing last night was a drunk driver in a pick up. Plan for today: work, and take breaks to do the 15 minute standing ab workout I found.
Wednesday Meese – I’m late – was rushing to post a PR diary – done!
Got it!!
It’s 77 heading for upper 80s today and sunny at the moment. It may or may not rain. Yesterday we generated just over 19 KWHs taking the m-t-d to 41 – at least the 1st 2 days of June are on track for the 569 target. ???????????? My garden boxes are not thriving although the tomato and green bean plants in them are at least still alive. About the best I can say is that it’s a good thing I have an income and don’t have to depend on what I grow to be able to eat. It’s disappointing of course. (Yard guy must need money. He called this morning about mowing. And no, the last 30′ of fenceline still hasn’t been cleared – and now will need loppers and saws rather than lawn mower and weed eater.)
Anybody who’s got a strong line to the PowersThatBe…well, it’s probably too late. It was probably too late when Aji first let us know the dogs were missing. But please send whatever kind of Energy in whatever form you do it toward getting her dogs home safe and sound. Or at least that she finds the bodies. That was the worst about Blue and Crow last year – they just disappeared. Now it’s Chinook and KitFox – they just disappeared. I checked twitter before I came here in hopes of a good word but…
Goddess, I wish there were a way to move the Evil Ones off somewhere they couldn’t hurt anybody else. Antarctica maybe? But it probably wouldn’t work even if we could. So. Hang onto our music. Hang onto and support each other as best we can. (And there are good people out there. I am blessed to know some of them.) Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody, to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 51 and partly cloudy in Bellingham. Our storage locker is a family memory vault. While looking for something else yesterday I found letters from my grandmother, my old tutu making notes and patterns, small gifts and letters from my young children…..treasures! Later in the day I helped our son sort and pack more boxes so it was a busy family day. We had planned to move his porch furniture yesterday but the afternoon rain was to wet, so that may happen today.
Best wishes to all on this now sunny June morning.
Going stir crazy – so writing diaries – lol
Also stir crazy – but at least I can read and RT your diaries. & the tweets in them. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, meeses! Thursday …
It is 64 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 84. Sunny skies with a chance of thunderstorms this evening. That seems to be the pattern right now – hot with unstable air and then thunderstorms in the evening.
We are in one of those news cycles where so much is happening that we careen from story to story unable to light (and digest!) because some new outrage/important-thing pops up. Yesterday we had good coverage of the blowback to tRump photo op stunt, Treasonous Tom Cotton – the ugliest man in the Senate – showing us AGAIN how awful he is, tRump’s former (and still awful) Secretary of Defense calling him a menace to democracy, our president, Barack Obama, speaking to the nation, more cops and white supremacists charged in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, more Confederate and racist statues coming down – and above all a growing sense that we are in frightening times – in the midst of a global pandemic with a murderous madman in the Oval Office who is being propped up by one of our political parties. I feel like I need to pay attention so I can understand what is unfolding but I certainly can’t do anything personally except promote the good and vote. I hope that is enough.
Yesterday, a half dozen new projects arrived in my Inbox to add to the unseemly stack of notes next to my keyboard. I had one of my development computers crash – it was very old and had just recently been rehabbed and put back into service for a specific project so the only loss is the time I had put into it and the time I will need to put into a replacement computer. I am considering getting a new laptop – my travel one is pretty old and slow and not really a very good option for the project I was setting up. I will have to ponder it.
See all y’all later!
Thursday Meese. 61 going up to 88 in NY’s Hudson Valley.
Proud of my little town of Kingston.
I’m not going into crowds – but did a drive by
This made me smile
Puerto Rico
It’s 64 going up to lower 90s today (it was 70 at dawn before the rain moved in and dropped the temps). So dark the PV system is still in night mode. I hope the rain finishes up – or at least tapers off a lot – before my son gets here. I’ll be out most of the morning shopping – hopefully for the next 5 to 6 weeks (except milk and produce of course). Masked and doing as much social distancing as I can.
Amelia got another day’s “grace” before paying since Corporate messed up the rate and only the manager can fix it. But the asst manager could OK the delay in paying and got her the new key card and parking permit so it’s just a “formality” waiting for the manager to come in today. Keep working/praying for Aji’s dogs, please. They now think the dogs have been abducted rather than killed. Apparently somebody in the area is making up for COVID unemployment by snatching pets. And since Aji and Wings have their own house – a built house, not a trailer or RV – on Rez land that can’t be taken from them equally apparently somebody is putting them in the same category as the rich white “settlers” with their “western-style” mini-mansions. But even snatched, it’s tricky to get animals back once the ransom has been paid. Aji & Wings will pay it – Goddess knows how considering – because getting them back is more important right now than anything else.
Evil Ones being evil. Twitler is a rabid squirrel. Those who put him in power are the true evil. Those who support him, whether or not they “agree” with him, are true evil. Most of those who support him do agree with him, they just think he should quit saying the quiet parts out loud. And of course Christo-Fascist Cotton is true evil. Cromwell and Hitler and probably Caligula in a single, stringy, ugly package. Like Jan said – promote the good and vote – it’s what we can do and so we do it. And hope it’s enough.
I need to get ready for my son. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody, to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Hot already — was 72 when I did my walk/run. I have one of those cooling neckerchiefs, depressing that I need it at 6:30am. Only made it to 3 rounds of 60 seconds running, did 3 more of 30 seconds. I’ll keep on this stage till I can actually do it. Austin’s protest turned into a jam session last night. Going in to the office today to get more applications. I hope we can keep working from home for a long, long time. I’ve gotten used to the only noise being my music, or on Wednesdays, the Miss Fisher mysteries. Going back to an office would seem really loud.
We got a serious temp drop (well, if feels serious) when the rain moved in. I’m not looking forward to the sticky once the rain stops and temps start rising. You know how that goes. I would hope that having gone to the trouble to make working from home viable, they’ll look at the benefits of not having to keep the office open and staffed full time and continue the work from home model. It really is more efficient. It’s just control freaks (GOP) who insist workers must be working where they can be watched. Quiet is nice. And very much more productive. {{{anotherdemocrat}}}
OK – change of plans. My son just called. Something came up at work so he had to go in early and it’s raining so hard that several of the streets I’d need to use to get to the stores I use are currently flooded. So. Since dealing with his emergency today will mean he can take Saturday off, we’ve rescheduled for Saturday. (Which feels more “normal” anyway – but is harder to social distance because more people in the stores.) It’s a good thing I always plan my shopping at least a week ahead of when I’ll need it. ????