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 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 (right before “Leave A Reply”) and use the Pages Tool, shown here with 3 pages of comments available.
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Good “morning”, Motley Meese! The week begins …
Morning low of 59 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 79. Rain and thunderstorms are in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Same. I won’t take a vaccination that has not been approved by the Biden Administration – after he cleans the hacks out of the CDC and sidelines those who allowed their science to get trumped by politics – they should have quit rather than lie.
Sunday Meese. 60 degrees here in Kingston NY going up to 78 with rain.
I’m enjoying the ratio
Well, we can recognize a bee-yatch when we see one, can’t we?
I’m still walking on air at the thought of a Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Puerto Rico
13 Covid deaths
That’s great that both jockeys are Puerto Rican!
Something I hadn’t known: before a certain time in American history, all jockeys were Black. Someone’s racism put a stop to that. I forget where I read this, so much info passes through my mind every day.
Got back to walking this morning. Only 4 running segments, but it’s supposed to be actually cooler this week — lows in the low 60s! — and my coach friend says that will really help. Today’s Tour stage is…. alarming. It’s raining so hard you can hardly see, and they have steep mountains today. One young rider has taken off the front & is descending so fast he’s scaring the commentators. I’m up to $1,700 raised for the Walk, confident I can make it to $2,000. Today: make tea, cook veggies and risotto for lunch next week. Got laundry going, watching Velshi’s hour on disinformation.
Sunday music sermon posted
Good Sunday morning, Moosekind!
This morning when I took Monty to the courtyard at 6:30, it was cool enough that I thought, “Soon I’ll have to start putting on a coat over my dressing-gown.” I saw the moon, too: one side of Her was fuzzy, owing to a missing piece. Right now in Ashburn it’s an entirely delightful 67 F., going up to 83 F. with blue skies and sunshine. I need to go for a walk before it becomes too hot.
We had a wonderful evening yesterday at Younger Son Trevor’s house. Because it was such a perfect day we ate dinner outside on the deck. A married couple who are DIL’s friends were also present. Trevor, being an ex-chef, is a skilled cook so we greatly enjoyed our dinner. I supplied brownies for dessert that met with everyone’s approval. Thank Goddess for Jiffy Brownie Mix!
It all felt so normal. I know exactly what princesspat meant in her comment in yesterday’s blog about shopping with her granddaughters. I love feeling normal. Dearly and I are still being very cautious, however.
Today I’ll make a Victoria Sponge Cake for Elder Son Eric’s barbecue. I’m also taking fresh raspberries for dessert. Both sons are excellent cooks but balk at making dessert unless forced to.
Bfitz is making great progress on copyediting the book. I have the short story, “The Blossoms of Seville,” well in mind, must start writing it tomorrow. It can’t be more than 2,500 words, which is about eight typewritten, double-spaced pages.
Well, it’s time to be getting on with my day! Wishing a nice, quiet Sunday to all at the Pond.
It’s 78 heading for upper 80s, heat index in the hopefully low 90s, and sunny. I’ll need to close up the house as soon as I finish typing this. We got almost 17 KWHs yesterday which is at least on track for the day and the m-t-d is 54 (which of course is not).
I’ve got most of my Sunday chores done and some of my Sunday tweeting done. I’ll visit Dee’s diary for a bit. Then I need to finish up the first read through of Diana’s book. I want at least 2 and hopefully 3 read throughs before I’m finished. Diana of course caught everything obvious herself. So I’m doing my best to catch the not-obvious. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
I was skimming a book for work a couple of weeks ago (our patrons want ratings for amounts of sex, profanity & violence, so if our studio is going to record one, we check for that stuff)where a typo made it into the published book. It was really distracting. I wondered how it made it through proofreading, copy editing etc.
Way too many publishing companies trust the spellcheck programs and don’t hire enough proofreaders. Some don’t hire any at all. sigh. It takes people looking at the work to catch them all. We all tend to see what we expect to see when we’re reading a story. It takes multiple passes – and multiple people because something that’s missed by one is a glaring error to another – plus a lot of concentration to catch them. What’s really bad is when the error is an actual word that changes the meaning of the sentence/paragraph. Thank heavens that doesn’t happen very often.
Good morning, 58 and mostly cloudy in Bellingham. Just got off the phone with my daughter. She is teaching remotely this fall, and is exhaused from the focus it takes to manage the technology, interact with her students, and still deliver the level of content her work ethic requires. She’s got about 60 students this term and so far they are pleased with her efforts, but they are very unhappy with the university situation.
Ron just left to pick blackberries, so I think I’ll bake a cobbler later today.I would like to have dinner on the patio tonight but the evenings are chilly so we’ll have to be more organized than we have been.
Best wishes to all on this quiet Sunday morning.
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is 66 degrees in Madison – that is also the expected daytime high! Cloudy today then light rain expected overnight.
Kamala Harris will be in Milwaukee today for Labor Day! I have not seen the newspapers yet but reports yesterday said that she would tour an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) training facility and then meet with a roundtable of Black leaders. Labor Day is traditionally when Democratic candidates and electeds visit Milwaukee, the place where many labor reforms were born. The 40 hour week, the minimum wage, workers compensation protections came from labor “riots” in Milwaukee, some of them bloody. It always makes me laugh (bitterly) to see a Republican mention Labor Day or pretend to honor it when they hate unions, hate working people and hate the regulations that keep workplaces safe. QTip-head Pence will be in La Crosse – literally the opposite side of the state – pretending to care about the lives of people who he has spent a lifetime trying to destroy. That a majority of union households voted for Donald Trump in 2016 is a head scratcher to me. I wonder if “we need someone who will preserve white male privilege” will drive their votes in 2020 as well.
My plan today is to treat this like a bonus weekend day – no incoming emails to distract – and get caught up on a couple of accounting projects and do some research on some settings for a security product I use. I have a small trip that I need to make – I hope to get there and back before noon to avoid the busy holiday highways. If past traffic patterns hold, I should not get stuck in the congestion – the “heading east and south” will be the busiest leg as people from Up Nort’ go home to Illinois; I will be doing that early. Fingers crossed!
See all y’all later!
Safe travels – & a good, productive, “bonus” weekend day.
Good Monday morning, Moosekind! It’s a fine day here in Ashburn, with the sun rising goldenly against a pale blue sky and a smear of white cirrus cloud. Right now it’s 61 F., going up to 84 F. today with low humidity. I think I’ll try to get a walk in before it’s too warm.
Awake at 3, unable to go back to sleep so up at 4. I predict a crash after lunch. I do hope to accomplish a few things before then.
The gathering at Elder Son Eric’s house was wonderful, with excellent food. We heard to our amazement that little kindergartener Ethan will not be attended the program at Columbia Baptist Church after all. It turned out that DIL and Eric learned the program wasn’t what they had been led to believe, so there was a mad, last-minute scramble to find another place for him. Fortune favored them as they were able to secure the last place in a Spanish immersion kindergarten program. It seems the children study English in the morning but in the afternoon they learn math, history, and science in Spanish. Ethan’s nanny was Spanish-speaking, so perhaps he’ll remember a bit. Anyway, this program is completely accredited by the state and so forth, so the parents are feeling very relieved.
Other than that, hope we’ll have a nice, quiet day. Wishing the same to all of you at the Pond.
{{{Diana}}} – sounds like your family is being watched over by Somebody to get Ethan out of a Baptist “immersion” program and into a Spanish immersion program. If his nanny spoke Spanish to him – and not just a baby-talk version – the cadence, pronunciations we don’t have in English, and even some of the grammar are in his subconscious language center and he should do very well. moar {{{HUGS}}}
Monday Meese. 59 (nippy) going up to 82 here in Kingston NY
USVI/Puerto Rico
Good morning. Slept in, watching the news. Today’s plan: the cooking I didn’t get to yesterday. The cold front coming later this week is, of course, now not going to be as cold — only lows around 70, but at least there’s maybe rain. Anyway, that’s my day.
It’s 74 and the forecast is pretty much the same as yesterday. Weather widget’s taken away my projected ‘highs in the 70s/lows in the 50s’ that even yesterday was in the forecast. A little cooler than today starting about Wednesday but not by much. sigh. I need to bake Wednesday. LOL. We got just over 16 KWHs yesterday which is on track for the day and adding a bit (tiny bit) of making up for the month’s start. The m-t-d is 70 which is certainly not on track for over 400.
Like in “Alice” we all seem to be running as hard as we can to stay in the same place. But we’re really not. Some folks I know are losing ground and some are maintaining if not comfortably, in my personal circle so to that extent it’s true. Nationally we have a chance and our team is doing everything they/we can to nail it down. Even if we win of course there’s no immediate help. We’ll have to fight our way through a wannabe fascist dictatorship determined not to release power. But that will only work if the military backs him up. And if we’re that far gone, this is all for show anyway. And once we’re in office there’re so many emergencies to deal with I don’t know how soon help will get down to the folks in my circle anyway. Just…please that it be in time.
Need to do a few things then get back to proofreading Diana’s book. I’m 2/3s done with the second read through. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 62 and partly sunny in Bellingham. One of my oldest friends is coming for a visit this afternoon, and I have mixed feelings. She now lives in Arizona and has been traveling so her exposure to people is more than mine, but we will wear masks and stay outside so that should be ok. I just hope I can stay focused on what we share and not talk about what we don’t re politics and religion. She will be careful, but my tolerance seems to have a short fuse lately so I’m going to have to do the same.
A breeze is blowing in my window this morning and the smell of salt air reminds me of being on our boat. It’s been nine years since we were but memories do linger.
Best wishes to all on this sleepy Monday morning.
{{{princesspat}}} seriously Holding the Good Thought regarding your visiting friend this afternoon. On all levels/in all aspects.
It’s ironic or something that the least-regarded sense is smell but that’s the one most connected to our memories. And our feelings connected with those memories – to the extent that we feel the feelings even when we can’t place the memory. moar {{{HUGS}}}
9 years? Wow!! I remember when you were no longer able to go out on your boat after BCH and how sad it was for you. At least you are able to live near the ocean and have its sights, sounds and smells a part of your daily life.
WooHoo!!!
New post
I love Lauren Underwood! I wish we had a hundred more like her in the House of Representatives – young, smart, engaging, pragmatic. There should be more media focus on her and not the left-of-the-left who win in solid blue districts and marginalize themselves in the House with their bomb-throwing and disrespect for those who “dare” to represent their constituents rather than bow to the berning god of purity.
Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …
It is 52 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 54. It will be raining all day.
I am glad that Kamala was in Wisconsin yesterday – videos of her arrival and her engaging the crowds in Milwaukee would have been marred by umbrellas!! She was greeted like a rock star and her tennis shoes were trending on Twitter yesterday. The energy she is bringing to the campaign is wonderful.
The White House press conferences are now campaign events and the complicit media appears fine with passing on tRump’s lies and rants as if they were consequential. The White House press corps should be embarrassed but that would take self-reflection, something they are incapable of. They created tRump and most of them want him “re”-elected because chaos sells toothpaste and soap with very little effort – just aim the camera and go live.
Today is a Tuesday that will feel like a Monday or a Sunday – I am not sure yet! I think it is the first day of school for some school districts and some of the state universities. UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee started school last Wednesday but some of the other UWs begin today. Madison already put 9 fraternities/sororities on quarantine and yesterday announced a two-week ban on “socialization” – good luck with that! My guess is that they will send everyone home at the end of the two weeks because they can’t keep them from becoming superspreaders and filling up our hospitals. Dane County has seen spikes since they returned to campus and over half of the new cases are UW-Madison students. So our masking and social distancing and shutdowns are being undone by letting out-of-town students party down and act like the 18-22 year olds that they are! Who could have predicted that?
I did not get the projects done that I had hoped to complete over the long weekend – I am still re-organizing my work space and consolidating my to-do lists. It is probably for the best – it is actually more complicated doing project roll-outs over holiday weekends because it is can be difficult getting in touch with people before the holiday and then after the holiday everyone comes back with vacation brain. So I will finish note gathering and planning and put together a schedule for project delivery later in the week. The hard deadline is the end of September so I have a couple more weekends of
procrastinationcushion.See all y’all later!
CSPAN: “2020 vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) spoke to reporters in Milwaukee following a roundtable with workers and business leaders on Labor Day. She was joined in speaking by a local business owner and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D-WI). The visit to Wisconsin marked Senator Harris’s first solo campaign event since accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination to run for vice president. ”
When she says “Wisconsin is part of my story” she is reminding people that she lived here in Madison for a while when her mother worked at the university doing breast cancer research.
“Vacation brain”—I love it!
Tuesday Meese. 60 here in Kingston NY going up to 85.
Kamala
Puerto Rico
Not as cool as I hoped this morning but better than it’s been — 77 and very humid. Still hopes for actually cool Thursday; I’m going to get a shirt with long sleeves out of storage just in case. 4 segments of 1 minute & 1 for 45 seconds. Now I’m watching Le Tour, getting ready for work.