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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COUNTING DOWN THE TIME UNTIL DECENCY RETURNS …
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Good “morning”, Motley Meese! The week begins …
Morning low of 16 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 32. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Sunday Meese. 35 degreese here in Kingston NY with mixed rain/snow in the forecast.
If Rethug drama is making you crazy – this might help.
Thanks, Sis, I enjoyed that.
Women are now the majority in the Puerto Rican senate
“The call to the comrades of all the parties is to honor the courage of those who, from various political spaces, preceded us and led the way,” said the senator.
“It is important and necessary that this parity be given in terms of sex in the legislature. May we also see more diversity in issues of race, sexual orientation and social class in the body that is supposed to represent the people.” (A review of the parties A Brief Look Into Puerto Rico’s Political Parties)
PNP (New Progressive Party – who are not progressive, and are pro-statehood, most are Republicans, the new governor Pierluisi is a member, he is an elite Democrat. aka “penepés” )
PPD (Popular Democratic Party aka “populares” – anti-statehood, pro “commonwealth” most are Democrats, there are currently 3 factions within the party- center right, center, and center left)
PIP – Puerto Rican Independence Party,
MVC (Citizen’s Victory Movement which grew out of the protests that toppled the government)
PD (Project Dignity – anti-abortion, right wing)
The new senators are:
– María de Lourdes Santiago, PIP
– Joanne Rodríguez Veve, PD
– Ana Irma Rivera Lassén, MVC
– Keren Riquelme, PNP
– Elizabeth Rosa Velez, PPD
– Ada García Montes, PPD
– Migdalia González, PPD
– Marially González, PPD
– Gretchen Hau, PPD
– Wanda Soto, PNP
– Rosamar Trujillo Plumer, PPD
– Marissa Jiménez, PNP
– Nitza Morán, PNP
– Migdalia Padilla Alvelo,
PNP Trujillo Plumey PNP
“The new Senate is made up of 12 senators from the PPD, 10 from the PNP, one (1) senator from the PIP, one (1) senator from the PD, one independent senator, and two (2) senators from the MVC.
With the result of the November 3 election, the PPD delegation in the Chamber grew from 15 to 26 members, while that of the New Progressive Party fell from 34 to 21.”
Well, let’s hope having more women in the government will turn out to be beneficial for women voters.
Puerto Rico day count post Maria
Well, if someone built a diner and invited people wearing MAGA hats and overalls to drink covfefe in it, the MSM might get around to interviewing PR’s inhabitants. The MSM only wants to interview aggrieved white Rethugs, though.
Sunday music
Good morning — warm in Austin, will get up to 70 this afternoon. Got in a walk yesterday afternoon, and it was sunny & gorgeous, almost too warm for my long sleeves. Today: make next week’s food, maybe get in a walk. Had an awful night’s sleep last night. Sometimes the app on my phone that plays rain sounds overnight has a night where it just turns off repeatedly. My (plugged in) phone says something about battery use & turns it off, over & over. I have a 2nd one playing ocean waves, so it isn’t silence waking me up, I don’t know what the deal is.
It’s 35 heading for 55 and mostly sunny today. Hopefully we’ll get enough sunshine to at least cover my daily use. Especially my Sunday use which is more since I do most of my cleaning on Sundays. Yesterday we got 2.7 KWHs, a bit more than Friday, and the m-t-d is now a hair under 5. Which is nowhere near on track for the meet or beat goal of 237. I’ll be happy if we get over 200. We didn’t manage that for either December or November but the Light as well as the light is coming back. We shall see what we shall see.
As little as five years ago at DK the fundraiser for JoanMar would be a done deal already. As it is, who knows if we even manage to meet the $1500 match currently being offered. It’ll be great if we do – the met match of $3K added to the just over $2K raised last week is half her goal and would take some pressure off her. (Meanwhile Aji is running JoanMar’s fundraiser from her blog & twitter. And Aji’s own finances are not good. They only got 4 sales the entire holiday season – the season that in “normal” times brings in their greatest chunk of income for the year and carries them through June.) Other folks I know were helped enough with the $600 check to not need to ask for help for another month or so. That part is good.
I woke up with a skullbanger that is just now easing off. I’m gonna do music, twitter, and coffee before I get back to housekeeping chores. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Oh, you poor Sis, sorry about the skullbanger. That hurts so much!
Hope it goes away. Perhaps it’s the atmospheric pressure? Is the fundraiser for JoanMar the $10.000 one for her daughter’s funeral? Why isn’t DixieCollie helping with a fundraiser on dkos/ She seems to be in charge of those now.
{{{Diana}}} it’s easing up a bit. Need more coffee. Probably a combination of change in atmospheric pressure and that I’m sensitive to the smoke the wood stove “leaks” as the fire dies and the chimney gets cold.
No fundraiser on DK for JoanMar at this time. That one for her daughter’s funeral was years ago. I think that was the first personal (rather than food drives or winter heat/fuel drives) fundraiser I was ever involved in. Not that the pain of losing her daughter ever leaves her. DixieCollie and njm wait for people to do their own fundraiser diaries then ask either DixieCollie or njm to add the link to the community fundraiser list. The DK rules say the person can’t write more than one fundraiser diary a month or they get banned. njm’s rules say the person has to give her weekly updates or the one monthly diary gets dropped from the community fundraiser list. (Am I bitter about this? Why, yes, I am.) So JoanMar isn’t going to do her own diary. Heck, Aji had to practically pull the info on her situation out of her. And neither she nor Aji are going to mess with DK and their “eff the poor” rules.
Good Sunday morning, Moosekind. It’s cold, dark, and gloomy in Ashburn. Right now it’s between showers so I might be able to get Monty out for a walk. The current temp. is 38 F., going up to a whopping 40 F.
Verily, verily, I say unto you that my day hath already been made! The first thing I saw on Tweeter this moaning was a notification that Ken Paxton has blocked me! Wonder whether I once expressed the hope on Twitter that the crusty curse of Oliver Cromwell might fall upon his poxy penis? I don’t know what else it could have been. Anyway, that plus the nice breakfast I just ate have made me very happy.
Yesterday Elder Son called while he was driving to Trader Joe’s. t seems he and DIL were up most of Friday night with Hudson, their eight-year-old chocolate Lab, because he had a panic attack. DIL had to give him tranks. You see, Hudsie LOVES Christmas! During the holidays he lopes downstairs to the living room every morning to look at the Christmas tree and his stocking, hanging on the mantelpiece with the three others. He loves the lights, the decorations, the good smells, and the presents stacked under the tree. Well, yesterday DIL took down the tree, the decorations, and the lights to pack away—hence, the panic attack.
Hudsie is well used to tranks, which he has needed on and off for the last five years since little Ethan was born. Hud was used to being the center of attention and of course he now isn’t. Poor old dog!
Had a much better night’s sleep so now I feel I might make something of the day. As Dearly agreed to go to the store for me, that something will be finishing the laundry. Or I could make a sculpture out of Dearly’s socks, per an article in this morning’s WaPo. One little boy sculpted a unicorn. A little girl created a rose.
Both Elder Son and M’Daughter have a habit of talking on the phone while they drive. I wish they wouldn’t. I think Elder Son does hands-free calling, but I’m not sure about M’Daughter. As of 1 January in Virginia it’s illegal to hold a phone in your hand while driving, a misdemeanor that is subject to fines. I wish people wouldn’t do that. If WWIII is breaking out or civil war has broken out, one could conceivably use a phone while at a stop light. But just chatting to pass the time of day? Nothing is that important.
Wishing a nice, quiet, stress-free day to all at Pond and unlimited sunshine to bfitz!
This should happen to Ken Paxton!!
Being blocked by him is a badge of honor! I never reply to famous people’s tweets – I don’t need the headaches that come with gaining the attention of the followers of slimey blue checks.
Help for the old and clueless:
What’s a blue check?
Apparently blue checks mean you’re famous enough you can say anything and will not get banned, although folks replying to/protesting the evils of what you said frequently are.
The blue check mark is added by Twitter to indicate that it is a verified account – you are who you are. It is to block people from claiming to be someone who they are not those or those who would claim some sort of credential, for example, a level of expertise. Most journalists and media figures have blue checks, most politicians, authors and professors. But not having a blue check does not mean you are not who you say you are or that you don’t have expertise in your field or are deserving in any way – just verification and someone thinking it is important to verify. Many of the haters on the right – and left – have the blue check because their minions clamored for it. It is helpful, though, to help you avoid following a fake account. As soon as someone becomes famous (or notorious!), a Twitter account pretending to be them usually pops up. For example, there was a fake Sally Yates account that people who should have known better started following. Her real one showed up later with the blue check.
Thank you, Jan and bfitz. A guy calling himself Stephen King once pretended to be following me. At first I was thrilled but then I realized it was fake.
For someone who’s 106 years old, I’m receiving a lot of unwanted attention from some guy or female on Twitter and FB. He or she constantly changes names and photographs. I don’t know why they’er doing it unless (1) there’s nothing good on TV, or (2) they think anyone with white hair is stoopid and will respond to compliments. “Hello, pretty,” or “I want to be friends with you because you’re beautiful.” Duhh…
Good morning, 44 and partly cloudy, but no wind. Yesterday was very wet and windy so I hope my front porch reading spot will dry out today. I finished both books in The Chronicles of Saint Mary’s series and was sure I could find more at my local bookstores, but no luck. Buying books in a series is a hassle on Amazon because they are not listed in reading order and accidentally clicking on the kindle page means finding the book page again, grrrr! But I persisted and three more books are on the way. I’ll order the rest from Village Books, but it takes longer for the store to fill orders so the ones from Amazon will keep me entertained until they arrive.
We did get the tree out and the few ornaments we put on are all put away and the house is clean so we’re orderly again. It’s a nice feeling for as long as it lasts :)
Best wishes to all on this quiet Sunday morning.
You cleared away the tree and ornaments, princesspat? I trust you don’t have an overwrought Labrador.
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is 19 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 27. Foggy patches and isolated flurries are in the forecast. I am debating putting off my travel for one day – I have some flexibility. I really don’t want to be driving in dense fog if tomorrow will be a significantly nicer day.
Who could have predicted that a malignant narcissist would care more about himself than the Constitution of the United States, the rule of law, or really anything but his own likely legal problems? That the Republican Party is willing to cater to him, and set aside the laws and customs surrounding elections and the transfer of power, is deplorable. I am sure that the release of the telephone call threatening the Georgia Secretary of State will have no impact on the 12 men and women of the Senate who are planning to show that their allegiance is to tRump and their party rather than the Constitution they swore an oath to.
Tomorrow night, the people of Georgia’s votes will be counted and we will find out pretty quickly if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will have a Congress that will be able to at least vote on bills and probably pass some – and if they will be able to choose the people they want for the remaining cabinet positions. Someone suggested that Joe is holding off on the Attorney General pick because he wants to choose Merrick Garland but wants to be able to replace his seat at the DC Circuit with a solid liberal. It could just as easily be that he wants to choose Sally Yates and knows that Lindsey Graham will start screeching if she is picked. Graham needs to be de-gavelled – I hope Georgia has enough good people to do that for us.
I need to get some things done before the sun rises on this first Monday in 2021.
See all y’all later!
Monday Meese. Have about 2 inches of snow on the ground here – a light dusting. 33 going up to 39 in Kingston NY.
Puerto Rico
It’s 35 going to 55 and clear again today. At least so far. Yesterday we generated 7.4 KWHs bringing the m-t-d to 12.42 (or what covers about 2 days, not 3, of my use). But it’s early in the month and the days are getting longer. More production is just one more of the many hopes out there right now.
The good news on Aji’s fundraiser for JoanMar is there’s a $1500 match and we’re over halfway to making it. The “DK being DK” news is that the “community fundraiser team” had the fundraiser pushed under their noses (ericlewis0 posted a comment about it & bmscott picked it up) so they picked it up as if it were their own idea, “graciously” directed people to Aji’s blog w/o any recognition of the work Aji’s done on it – and slipped in the shive with a comment “reminding” people to use JoanMar’s links and not the donate button on Aji’s blog because that goes to Aji. As if the person doing all the work, setting aside her own needs to do that work, wouldn’t give any money accidentally sent to her to the person the fundraiser was for. Such a geedee slam from people who are only nominally doing fundraising to a person who’s raised hundreds of thousands for other people over the last decade. & even worse, white-lady-nice reinforcing the covert meme over there that Aji can’t be trusted. DK is getting more twisted and evil by the minute. And it hurts Aji so much that a place she thought she had friends, a place she did so much of her fundraising work over the years, is doing & saying this – with no pushback. I wish I could do something to make it better.
Tomorrow I need to be out relatively early. Aldi’s does senior shopping on Tuesdays as well as Thursdays so I’m doing my Aldi’s run tomorrow followed by Tractor Supply for critter stuff and Lowes for HVAC filters. So not sure when I’ll be online. But I’ll get here sooner or later. LOL. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Back from a trip into the office. Cold enough for a sweatshirt & gloves, but should be gorgeous this afternoon — 70 & sunny. Current plan is to log out at 4 today & tomorrow for walks. Anyway, for now I’m working on e-mails & voice mails. Listening to music between when I have to call someone.
Good morning, 54 and cloudy in Bellingham. I was making progress with tRump angst, but yesterday was a setback. Sixteen more days and he will be gone, and I have to hope that will diminish the power of his enablers.
I’m going to spend a few days in my sewing room and perhaps I’ll finish sewing the project I started a year ago. I looked at everything yesterday, and yes I would enjoy some new pillow covers for my very own living room :)
Best wishes to all.
Good afternoon, Moosekind. I can’t believe it’s already 12:15! I don’t know where my mornings go. (Well, yes, I do, the newspooper and Twitter.) Speaking of papers, the WaPo has FINALLY run a Rethugs-in-disarray story. It’s about time!
It’s cloudy and cold in Ashburn, 42 F. right now, on its way up to 45 F. I’ve been rolling up coins to take to the bank for my grandchildren. I save $10 per month for each of them, plus whatever odd bits of money come my way. It doesn’t sound like much but over the years it mounts up. There are times in a person’s life when a few thousand can make all the difference.
Normally I take the jar money to the bank on Bastille Day but we didn’t get out much last year so we didn’t spend much cash–therefore, we had very few coins left over. Perhaps we’ll do better this year.
Hoping for the best regarding tomorrow’s election and I hope all the Proud Boys are overcome by their own beer-induced eructations, to the point they will not be able to riot in the streets on Wednesday.
WIshing a good day to all at the Pond.
Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …
It is 25 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 32. Sunny skies are in the forecast. Yesterday we had a coating of rime on the trees from our freezing fog and it was lovely! I can say that because the roads were okay – had the freezing fog settled on the driving surfaces, I would be less delighted. Some of the stands of trees looked like the frost was part of the foliage and was made up of snowballs. I wish I could have taken a photo but I was driving.
I’m sorry but how is “Pence torn between loyalty to Trump or the Constitution” delivered with a straight face? That the Vice President of the United States has to decide whether or not his oath is to his party’s leader or the Constitution of the United States is deplorable. I hope none of these people being shown the door come anywhere near the levers of power again – and that any platitudes they mouth about their love of country and democracy is met with derisive laughter for all the days of their lives.
I wonder if there is any way to separate out the Presidential Medal of Freedom medals give by tRump and those given by legitimate presidents. That Devin Nunes has received the same medal that John Lewis received is disgusting. Maybe a permanent asterisk by it or maybe a new medal series to replace this one – and re-awarded to decent human beings and ones not in the employ of Russia.
Polls open in Georgia at 7am Eastern and close at 7pm Eastern and if I recall, Georgia is one of those states that is allowed to tally early voting as it occurs so that they can report the results fairly quickly. I want to know the winner before I go to bed. It would be fitting if the “must get a majority” election scheme put in place to block Black people from winning elections would come back and bite the white supremacist David Perdue in the face. He had beaten Jon Ossoff but had not gotten over 50% so the race is in a runoff. The majority vote rule was put in place by a guy named Denmark Groover after he noticed that when African Americans voted as a bloc and coalesced around a candidate, the white vote was split between the white candidates and the Black people could get elected and soon they would have power!! We will have none of that, said Groover, and set up this scheme. Karma, do your thing!
I woke up with plans to Do Many Things and I got two of them done. The next thing on my list will take too long and can’t be completed before people begin work so I have to set it aside until tomorrow. I will choose something else to work on or catch up on my news reading.
See all y’all later!
Actually Georgia has the same problem that Wisconsin does – mail-in ballots can’t be counted until 7pm, when the polls close:
Praying to every deity I know of – for us to take Georgia
Good morning. I didn’t get out yesterday, allergies attacked mid-afternoon. Turns out the cedar pollen was at an all time record of 31,000 parts per cubic meter. Still don’t feel great this morning, think I’ll “call” (e-mail) in sick, at least for part of the day, woke up with a headache.
Another, sorry to hear about the allergies. Hope you’ll feel much better as the day goes on.
My daughter suffers so much from the cedar allergies that she has to take to her bed when they strike. Hope a nap and meds will help.
Did a couple hours of work, including attending a zoom meeting. Logged out now, maybe a nap after lunch. Just feel blah.
Ironically, one of the things covered in the zoom meeting was the rise of Covid in the area & what we’re doing — and articles in local news about how to tell the difference between Covid & Cedar (basically, a fever — even though we call it “cedar fever” you won’t actually have one, you just feel that miserable)
{{{anotherdemocrat}}} Healing Energy.
Tuesday Meese. 34 here in Kingston NY, going up to 38. Waiting for a firewood delivery – want to have backup wood here in case we lose power during the winter. Am used to having my own firewood, when we lived on the farm. Hope this guy works out.
Puerto Rico
Loved seeing this
Ohhhh boy!
Karma’s coming and she’s coming for Outgoing!
Some help needed sharing this thread targeting Puerto Ricans in GA