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 Tuesday morning, Meese! It’s 67 coolish degrees F. here in Ashburn, going up to 87 F. later. It’s a nice sunny day right now but the humidity is coming back.
Had a lovely, drugged sleep last night so feeling MUCH better today! Might get something done. Got writing to do after I run to the store. I am determined to have strawberry shortcake for dessert before summer ends.
This day was once known as “Terrible Traffice Tuesday,” with everyone back from vacation and taking to the roads for work and school. I doubt it will earn that appellation today. It’s also the first day of school in Arlington and Fairfax counties. I’m holding my breath for kindergartener Ethan and also for little Karl, who is a first grader. Little boys his age find it difficult to sit still for long periods so I hope there will be “recess” during the online learning.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!
It’s 78 heading for 85 and I need to close up the house as soon as I finish this. Sunny at the moment and supposed to be most of the day. Some clouds moving in this afternoon but not supposed to be heavy cloud cover. Yesterday we got 15.4 KWHS which is on track for the day. The 86.8 for the m-t-d isn’t for the month but it’s gaining. Anything over 15.3 is gaining. So that much is good.
I slept relatively well last night but for some reason I woke fuzzy-brained and that hasn’t gone away. Of course being greeted with multiple cat barfs, an apparent spraying contest in the big bathroom, and a “you didn’t let me chase off an outside cat” dump beside the litterbox didn’t help. sigh. That’s all dealt with but I need to pull it together, do my twitter chores, and get back to proofreading. & try to focus channeling some Good Energy to my offline and online family.
So many Energy drains. But Earth has more than we can even safely use, so focus and channel what She offers in the amounts we can use it, refill as a well does from the underground ocean that is the water table. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
OMG, bfitz, what a wakeup call! Hope you can get through it all without barfing too! Oh, girlfriend!
Every time we go out and come home to find a suspicious object on the carpet, I think, “OMG, Monty left us a pile!” But then it turns out to be a king. When we have to be out I fill a small kong with plain Greek yogurt and chopped up dog treats, then freeze it. It entertains him all right.
I did the best I could/can. I got most everything but I can still smell the cat spray. Not directionally enough to figure out where it is unfortunately. But I got some of it. It’s not as strong as it was. I’ll take a break from the computer in a bit and try another area. {{{Diana}}}
Good morning, 60 and a smokey haze in the air. Yesterday’s breeze turned into a strong hot wind that blew all day so leaves that were summer green are now dry and withered. All my flower pots wilted so we watered heavily and they look better this morning. RonK will be busy picking up branches and raking leaves today. Fortunately the tall old maple trees moved with the wind and didn’t break. Made me nervous though!
My friend and I wore our masks and visited outside despite the wind. We’ve know each other for 30+ years and worked together in the drapery business so it was great to catch up and to reminisce. We carefully avoided talking about religion and politics so all was well.
Best wishes to all.
❤
Every time I think I couldn’t hate him more
He is a pig. People should be willing to crawl over broken glass to vote him out.
When I heard that comment, by the way, I thought of Nikki Haley, an Indian American woman who should care that her party is running on hatred of The Other. Does tRump think she should be president some day? Unlikely – I suspect he sees Ivanka as the ideal candidate. I will never understand people who embrace a party that hates them, hates them openly and encourages others to hate them. Do they think they are somehow sheltered from the firehose of hatred directed at minorities and women or are they fine with it because they are craven opportunists and see a chance to cash in? Like I said, I will never understand them – Log Cabin Republicans, Tim Scott and Nikki Haley.
Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …
It is 48 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 54. Rain is in the forecast. The house feels cold even though it is 70 in here – I have a sweatshirt on.
This election is ugly, we knew it was going to be ugly and we need to remember that insults and lies are the only weapons available to people who can’t win with their ideas. There really aren’t many votes to get or people who have no knowledge of our candidates and who would be swayed by the attacks. We know who our voters are and we need to work with them on a plan to vote – either getting them an absentee or early-vote ballot or getting them a reliable ride to the polls. We need to swamp the vote to eliminate the possibility of a contested election.
I woke up still tired but unable to sleep any longer. I think I am just weary – some days staying vertical feels like a chore. I have a pretty good to-do list but not much interest in ticking the items off. I have one thing I should do today so I will take a deep breath and get that done.
See all y’all later!
Jan, you haven’t even had a “staycation” this year, have you? Have you built in any vacation time to your schedule?
Hope you can get some rest.
GMTA! No, I have not had any time off where I can just be a bum and I decided to declare this “staycation week.” I finished that one thing for my client and now I am going to take it easy, ignoring any cries for help for as long as I can.
Wonderful. Take care of yourself. You deserve it and you need it. {{{HUGS}}}
Good for you! Enjoy!
Wednesday Meese. 61 here in Kingston NY going up to 85.
Puerto Rico
Good Wednesday morning, Moosekind. It’s mostly cloudy here in Ashburn with a current temperature of 69 “They” say it will go up to 80 F., with showers in the afternoon. Uh-huh.
Had a so-so night, so must achieve as much as possible this morning. Have the usual stuff to do. Bfitz did a splendid job copyediting the manuscript, so I will need to work on that soon. There’s one thing that’s very difficult to achieve, which is removing the highlighting from a section. The usual fixes don’t work, so I will have to consult experts. Apple Pages is the worst word processing software I have ever seen, and there’s really no excuse for it.
Update on the insurance fiasco: We are dropping the insurance, the payment for which has risen to $500 a month for an alleged $40,000 payout. Fairfax County provides $12,500 free, so there’s that, and the $10,000 from United Airlines is also free. The $200 Dearly used to pay for the insurance will go into a special savings account. Take it from me, folks: insurance companies will screw you! He’s paid into the insurance since he retired in 1994 and this is how they treat him! I hate insurance companies.
Apologies to all if this is more information than you care to have, but if it can help anyone from facing a similar fiasco I would be glad.
Time to get on with breakfast. Wishing a good day to Biden and Kamala and to all of us here at the Pond. Did you see how Kamala is advising early voting? We can avoid long lines AND mail-in ballots that way!
I still say you should contact the local news. Here, they always have commercials saying if something needs investigating, contact them. Well, y’all aren’t the only people they’re screwing, they should be stopped.
The cold front that was in doubt made it anyway. Just rain for now but it may be as chilly as 60 tomorrow morning. I set out long pants & long sleeves for tomorrow morning’s walk in case it’s not raining. Today: going in to the office to drop off my finished applications & pick up new ones. And maybe open windows this afternoon (it’s still 78 now, so with the rain, it’s like a steam room out there, glad today’s not a walking day).
It’s 75 heading for 82 and the supposed “cooler than yesterday” is more in the heat index than the actual air temps. Yesterday’s generation of 15.3 is right on target with no wiggle room but that means no making up for earlier this month either. The m-t-d is 101 which is not. The rest of the week is projected to be cooler but not by much until we hit the weekend. And even then that’s overnights, not daytime highs. Still, low overnights are lovely for baking in the morning. Which I need to do. (Unless I find something GF & edible at Aldi’s tomorrow morning, it’s toast for breakfast until Sunday morning.)
The new yard guys are efficient. Half again as expensive (& only that low because I’ve set up to be a “regular” customer) as the old guy but these guys do what they’re asked to do at the time set up for them to do it – and they don’t leave until the job is done. They did the “special” job of clearing the very overgrown fence line yesterday. They’ll be back to mow and weedeat on Monday. I hope they have stuff to do winter over because I’m really looking forward to next “mowing season” if they’re still here. But that’s next year. For now, there’s at least 4 mowings including Monday’s to go unless we get a very early frost. (Aji got hard freeze and snow last night so who knows with this year.)
Holding the Good Thought for everybody. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Yay for competent yard guys! Hope you get some sun today.
Good morning, 56 and smokey in Bellingham. Fires are burning about 20 miles from Forest Grove so Erica is worried. Her community is surrounded by fields so they should be ok but between the smoke, power outages, and the stress of on line teaching she is fraught.
It’s calm and quiet here so I’m going to listen to music and try to ignore the news this morning. Best wishes to all.
Thursday Meese. 65 and cloudy here in Kingston NY going up to 77 with thunderstorms.
Puerto Rico
Good gray Thursday morning, Meese! Apparently it is raining all around us to the point where flooding is expected elsewhere, but here in Loudoun County it’s dry as a bone. The current temp. is 73 F., climbing to 81 F. later. Thunderstorms are predicted for the afternoon just as they were yesterday, and like yesterday’s nonexistent thunderstorms I expect today’s to be phantoms.
Had a pretty good day yesterday, which was the third in a row with no walk, but I just had to get some stuff done. I did manage that, to my joy. Also made a pretty decent start on the short story, although to my dismay it’s coming to me in first person and employing a flashback. Oh, well, we’ll see what happens.
I know I said I wouldn’t talk about nights from hell any more but I had a night from hell. At least I managed to get five hours’ sleep after transferring from the perfectly comfortable bed to the green recliner. I’m convinced that because of sins I committed in a previous incarnation I am now doomed to sleeplessness. Either that or someone has cast a no-sleep spell over me and I don’t know how to neutralize it.
Enough about that. On the national scene, as you all no doubt know by now, all hell broke loose yesterday. Not only did Thing know all about the virus since February and downplayed it, thereby costing 195,000 lives, but Bob Worthless knew and didn’t report it because he wanted to rake in big bucks from a book! I certainly won’t buy it. I’ll never forgive him. Add to that the revelations about doctoring intelligence reports so Thing wouldn’t be disturbed about Russian interference and there you have it: a sh*t storm. Just now I caught a glimpse of a headline that said new COVID cases among children are not being reported in Florida because it would disturb Gubernator DePantsis.
Well, I’m going to go boil down a cup of apple juice to half a cup so I can make delicious apple muffins for breakfast.
Wishing a good day to Joe and Kamala and to all at the Pond. Hope we can keep our hair glued on today!
Actually cool this morning — 58 degrees! Made it to 6 running segments, I was going to stop at 5, but it started raining so I got in one more. For years, I had a coach who would have us out no matter the weather — only stopped for lightning — so I don’t actually mind being out in the rain. Today, I’m stopping work early to meet my friend Gary for a free running form assessment. Apparently I missed some excitement at the end of yesterday’s Tour stage, will look for something online about it.
Good morning, meeses! Thursday …
It is 46 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 57. Rain is in the forecast again. Things will get back to normal on Sunday with low to mid-70s for highs and some sunshine.
I think our press has done a disservice to our country and I will never forgive those who had the opportunity to expose lies that literally kill decide to choose “access” over human lives. Woodward has been guilty of that for years – he did the same thing for George W. Bush as he did for tRump. A reporter from the LA Times posed the question about whether it would have been better for Woodward to have sounded the alarm that it wasn’t a hoax back in March – when it might have just added to the noise – or to report his conversations now when the story might at least serve the purpose of making the case that Trump should not be “re-“elected. Good question and I will ponder that. The MAGAts wanted to believe it was a hoax and Bob Woodward playing a recording would have not dented their hard heads. Plus there was no fix back then – the government agencies that would have been able to respond had been destroyed. Now, after months of death and economic destruction, we at least have a fix on the horizon – vote him and his incompetent family and government out.
I have a bunch of interesting articles up in tabs and will save them to Pocket and then go offline, having reached the limit on what I want to do sitting at my computer today.
See all y’all later!
It’s 71 heading for 76 and lightly raining. Got only 12 KWHs yesterday and doubt we’ll get that today. M-t-d is 113 – not on target for 459 and not really on target for 400. sigh. I’m heading out for Aldi’s and a few other places. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 60 and smoky in Bellingham. The air is better than yesterday, but seeing a fire map of the west coast is alarming! Too many fires! The one burning close to Erica is 50% contained but photos of the smokey skies made us very nervous last evening.
Diana, I’m usually with you and sleepless nights, but for some reason now I can’t stay awake. I’m taking long naps, going to bed early, and waking up late. Needless to say I’m not accomplishing much but that will have to be ok.
Best wishes to all as we make it through another day.
Good morning, meeses! Friday …
It is 52 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 61. Rain is in the forecast again.
Absentee ballots are being sent out in some states and voting will begin soon. Every day that people are early voting is another day that any October
SurpriseRatfk from the Trump Maladministration will be rendered ineffective. Speaking of absentee ballots, in the failed democracy known as the State of Wisconsin, the Republican controlled Supreme Court has decided that having the Green Party on the ballot – despite their failure to comply with Wisconsin election laws and their disqualification by the duly authorized Election Commission – is a good thing for their party and their president. So they have put the mailing of absentee ballots on hold until they can invent some state laws or twist the constitution to put them on the ballot (necessitating a reprinting of ballots ready to be mailed!). In 2016, the Green Party’s Jill Stein won 30,000 votes and tRump won by 22,000 votes. The Republicans know that is a good way to peel off disaffected berners who think a planet destroyed is better than a planet without their leader in a position of power. :::insert angryface emoticon here:::Here is a palate cleanser:
Senator Kamala Harris Roundtable with Black Leaders in Miami
“2020 Vice Presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) was joined by Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) and other African American leaders in a roundtable discussion held in Miami.”
See all y’all later!
Friday Meese. 61 going up to 70 here in Kingston NY
Thinking about Trumps lies, 9/11 and Puerto Rico