Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: January 24th

January 23, 2021 JanF Community 68

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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31 Comments

  1. The weather people are saying this is the weather people move here for. Cool morning, 60s this afternoon & sunny. (Then our 6 month long summer hits, and……) Watching the astronauts do a space walk. They’re very precise, the ground gives a number of turns and amount of torque and the astronaut repeats it back. It’s amazing to watch.

  2. Wednesday Meese. 27 degrees here in Kingston NY – we only got about 4 or 5 inches of snow last night. Waiting to see if our neighbor will come over with his blower.

    Puerto Rico

  3. It’s 32 heading for 35 and overcast. Again. Yesterday we got 3.7 KWHs and the m-d-t is 148. Including today there are 5 more production days in January. We shall see what we shall see. (& I’d like to see some sun!)

    There are groups – especially associated with “immigration” – that are blatantly disobeying Biden’s orders. He halted the building on the wall, but they’re still building it in AZ. He halted deportations, ICE is still doing it. He’s going to have to get those orders enforced ASAP. The rest of the fascists, the sleepers from twitler’s reign, are watching to see what he does. If he doesn’t enforce, they’ll stop obeying too. We’re looking at the Whiskey Rebellion all over again. If we don’t stop this now, the election didn’t matter. The fascists will run things as they please under Biden’s name and will take over again in the next election cycle.

    Holding the Good Thought for the COVID/stimulus package to get through. And soon. I don’t personally need it (at least as long as my tax refund gets applied for/comes in) but I know a bunch of folks who do. A month or two of help doesn’t seem like much – unless you’re the one who needs it, will be homeless & hungry without it. So. Hope. Work. Keep on keepin’ on. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  4. Good Wednesday morning, Moosekind! It’s gray today in Ashburn, although the blue is trying to break through. Morning clouds are to give way to afternoon sunshine. Current temperature in Ashburn is 39 F., going up to 42 F.

    Having trouble logging in this morning, so hope this gets through if I fill out the form below. I hate hackers. What the hell do they live on? Why hack all day when there are interesting things to do, like watching “Gilligan’s Island” on TV or something?

    Monty is at the vet’s, being seen to. It’s his least favorite place to be. He weighs 30.2 now, which is a weight loss of 12 pounds over the past year! Hail, wish I could lose that much. I’d be in great shape!

    Baked a loaf of bread for the week and made Peach Bran Muffins for grab-and-go breakfasts. The family are supposed to come to tea on Sunday but if there really is four-letter-word, they’ll probably stay at home.

    Not much news except that I continue to loathe Rethuglicans. I hold them in deep contempt. What else can any rational person do? They’e full of hate, fear, and racism.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and to our President and Vice-President.

    • princesspat mentioned an issue with logins yesterday so today I cleared cache; that may have impacted you. I am also going to update the PHP version which I have been avoiding – the last time I did that it rendered the site unusable. I think the new theme I had to install is more likely to work with the new PHP, though, and I will do that Saturday afternoon.

      Executive Summary: I will do some maintenance on the site this weekend to see if that helps.

  5. Good morning, 34, light snow and rain in Bellingham. I wasn’t able to log in yesterday so it’s good to see things are sorted out now. Good news…..we got our first dose of the Moderna Covid vaccine yesterday, yay! Our docs clinic finally got some vaccine, and the nurses were determined to use every dose so at the end of the day of scheduled shots they called us and we got there asap. Thanks to RonK’s office visits this month he could personally make sure we were on the call list. I’m so grateful and relieved.

    So far so good with side effects…..a Benadryl tab and and ice pack controlled the swelling last evening and the injection site is just sore this morning. Given my immune system issues a slight reaction is a big relief.

    Best wishes to all.

  6. Good morning, meeses! Thursday …

    It is -6 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 18. Sunny this morning then clouding up as we await our next storm system over the weekend.

    Biden’s cabinet is filling in and his staff and advisors are doing presentations to help us understand things and are answering questions. It is very refreshing! I have to say that I am a Jen Psaki fan; after 4 years of craptiffic Press Secretaries, the contrast could not be more stark. I will say, however, that I have no idea how someone can be “on” so perfectly when faced with our current press White House press corps, filled with Foxers and CNNers who want to be the guy who did the “gotcha.”

    Tim Kaine is really not very smart, is he? He lazily suggests that a censure is “just fine” and that going after a former president who incited a riot that ALMOST KILLED HIM is not important enough to take time to do. And Republican Senators saying that they will be wasting “weeks and weeks” on the trial when there is “so much to do” are full of crap. First, the trial won’t take “weeks and weeks”, it will probably take about 4 days. Second, their entire agenda consists of blocking Joe Biden’s initiatives – they have no intention whatsoever of addressing the needs of the American people. That will become apparent when Chuck Schumer brings bills to the floor and they vote them down. At least now we will have the votes (Mitch McChinless refused to bring bills to the floor) and we can use them in our ads against them and their colleagues who will be running for re-election in 2022. In 2009, we had 60 Senators and we got the ACA, Dodd-Frank, the CFPB and other important legislation. We will likely never have 60 Senators again but maybe we can get at least two more who are willing to kill the filibuster so we can get something done in the 118th Congress.

    It is already Thursday of the last work week of January – I have two days to get organized enough to send out emails laying out my planned schedule for February projects so my clients don’t forget how much they love me! Time is so odd; someone was asking me yesterday about an event and it turned out to be from 2019 – it is like all of last year compacted into itself because routines were so disrupted that the normal signposts were missing. I am hoping for a more normal year to get me back in sync.

    See all y’all later!

  7. Thursday Meese. 25 degrees here in Kingston NY going up to 28 so I’m way warmer than Jan. :) I see another snowstorm in our forecast for next week. Sigh.
    Very impressed with Kristen Clarke

    • I am very impressed with a lot of the Biden-Harris appointees; I hope they get swift confirmations! I was just reading an article about how the temporary heads of departments are already draining the swamp – the transition time was well spent identifying the deplorables so they could get them out of the building before they could do more damage. The article quoted Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian who is a great twitter follow and is a contributor at MSNBC:

      “In making appointments as a new president, Biden has a much tougher job than Trump,” said Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian, who has written about many transitions. “It’s harder to rebuild a government than it is to ransack, demoralize and hollow a government out.”

      Indeed. I was glad to see that he is wasting no time.

  10. Good morning from much colder Austin, it’s in the 30s and will only get up to around 60. Brrrr. Today: just work. If I keep saying I’ll log out at 4 & walk, maybe some day I’ll actually do it.

  11. Yesterday it never got above 32 and the sun never came out. At least the sun’s (mostly) out at the moment. It’s 29 but heading for 46 which I hope will happen as I have a few outdoor things I need to do. Maybe 15 minutes worth is all but still. We didn’t even get 2 KWHs yesterday but we got enough to push the m-t-d to 150. Before I retired that was my average monthly usage. It’s possible for us to get up to 180 which is my current average monthly usage. Fingers crossed and all that.

    It’s so nice to once again live in a space where I don’t have to worry about presidential appointees. Check them out at my leisure, of course. Probably be pleasantly surprised at their backgrounds and what they bring to the post, yes. But not worried – especially not worried at just how competently they will destroy the office they were appointed to. We have enough to do, enough crises to deal with, not having to worry about who is appointed to deal with them is such a relief.

    Eating oatmeal (with a cat staring at me because he’s planning on licking the bowl if I set it down and walk away from it) and drinking coffee. Hands a little stiff but mostly OK. I’m gonna alternate between boosting stuff on twitter and reading Dee’s diary this morning. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  12. Good Thursday morning, Moosekind! This day’s ugly post-dawn clouds have given way to bright sunlight and strong northwesterly winds, ugh. It’s 31 F. at almost noon, going up to 34 F.

    Have been jonesing for a Texas-style breakfast for weeks so this morning I cooked one. The bacon was, of course, mostly fat. I dislike American bacon. The biscuits, although out of a can, were actually good. The scrambled eggs were not to my satisfaction, and as for the country gravy, it was terrible. I think it was highly spiced sausage gravy. If I ever make this again (in a year or two), I’ll make my own dam’ gravy, as Grandma used to. As it is, the breakfast supplied the day’s total of sodium, fat, and carbs.

    This morning after breakfast we had to hastily wash and dress to go to Costco so the audiologist could show me how to clean my hearing aids and change the domes. I’ve never been good at that sort of thing, so I have to be shown over and over. It involves sticking iinfinitesimal wax tablets into the aids with a weird-lookin’ tool. Oh, well.

    It’s fiendishly cold outside with that wind. I’m a little stymied by the article I’m supposed to be writing. It’s about the library here. Its origins have been amply described in two previous issues of the quarterly, so I’m trying to think how I can avoid regurgitating what has been said earlier. I’ll think of something, I always do.

    Deeply disgusted and outraged by the decision to “censure and move on” regarding Thing’s criminal incitement to riot and insurrection! Dear GODDESS, I hate how the Rethugs get away with whatever they want to and the MSM are complicit in going along with it.

    Well, it is now noon and there are lunches to be prepared. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and to all Democrats on the Hill. I hope they think of and plot some way to get around McTurtle and Beastly Kevin. Ansi-soit-il.

  13. Good morning, 39 and cloudy in Bellingham. The family phone and email has been busy this morning…..everyone is basically ok but needed to vent to mom. My mom and demand years are basically over but occasionally a session is still needed:)

    Thanks to Sue’s help yesterday my house is clean and the laundry is finished so I’ll see what today brings. If RonK can help me this afternoon I want to rescue his mom’s cedar chest from the storage locker, bring it here, and start washing all the wool sweaters so I can store them in a safer place. We wear fleece more now, but the sweaters are all “good” and I don’t want moths to make holes in them.

    Best wishes to all.

  14. Good morning, meeses! Friday …

    It is 5 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 25. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast. I am not sure if the snow is still in the forecast because my weather widget just crashed and I am too lazy to restart it!

    Republican Senators from the math-challenged Gang of 16 (hey, doodieheads, we need 10 Republican Senators to break cloture, 8 is not enough) are butthurt because their attempts to water down and destroy the effectiveness of the Biden rescue bill will be thwarted. This will be the signatory challenge of the Biden Administration – can Joe set aside kumbaya and play legislative hardball to deliver needed relief to Americans? If Democrats pass a watered down bill – like the flawed Affordable Care Act or the weak 2009 Recovery Act that extended the recession long enough for Republicans to take back the House and 20 statehouses – they will show that they have not learned a damn thing. The faux tears of Republicans saying that pushing them aside will poison the well for any bipartisan support need to be ignored. They can vote for the final bill and if they don’t, we will lash them to their vote. No quarter!!

    No one – literally no one – is surprised that Republican electeds have embraced tRump and trumpism and have decided that they can build a winning coalition with insane conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and white evangelicals. I am not so sure about that – I think that they need the donor class and capitalists woke enough to realize that anarchy is bad for business. GM has just announced that they will not make vehicles that burn fossil fuels after 2035. If that is the future that big business envisions, they will not put their money into an ideology that caters to flat-earthers.

    I made it to the end of another work week without any solid progress. This morning I will concentrate on organizing my to-do list so I can triage and have a productive weekend. My sore leg – made more sore by the physical therapy, at least at this point in the process! – is limiting how long I can sit at my computer so I have to direct my time to the most urgent tasks.

    See all y’all later!

    • Hope the leg improves, Jan! How tiresome for you—as far as work is concerned—but on the other hand, how nice it is to have a good excuse to do something besides work!

  15. Friday Meese. 7 degrees here in NY’s Hudson Valley. Going up to 20.

    RIP Cicely Tyson

    In a remarkable career of seven decades, Ms. Tyson broke ground for serious Black actors by refusing to take parts that demeaned Black people. She urged Black colleagues to do the same, and often went without work. She was critical of films and television programs that cast Black characters as criminal, servile or immoral, and insisted that African-Americans, even if poor or downtrodden, should be portrayed with dignity.

  16. Puerto Rico

  17. Good morning from Austin where my heater hasn’t kicked on since yesterday evening. Supposed to be sunny & in the 60s this afternoon. I swear when I log off the work computer at 3:30 that I’m going for a walk. The weather guy I’ve watched for years in the mornings got promoted because the long-time chief meteorologist is semi-retiring. Bfitz – I bet Jim Spencer was doing the weather when you lived here. There’s nothing on TV, so it’s music while I work today.

  18. Good Friday morning, Moosekind! I’m due at the nail salon in an hour, so will have to make this quick. It’s a lovely cold blue-and-white morning outside, with rather restrained-looking sunlight. The current temp. is 26 F. and I’ll be surprised if our day’s high reaches the projected 33 F. It’s still windy as hail.

    My darling hubby saw the full moon when he took Monty out to the courtyard this morning, so he came back, went out again, and photographed it for me on his iPhone.

    I am having all sorts of difficulty trying to approve the galley proofs of my forthcoming book. I downloaded Adobe Acrobat Reader to try to look at them in the two-page view, but it didn’t really work. Also, despite the fact that the correction I requested, which was to change Copyright 2020 to Copyright 2021 wasn’t done is disheartening.

    Also, when the online converter failed to convert the Unix Executable files, which the files of my 1990s novels are in, I tried looking at the files in Text. I could actually read them (of course there were a lot of weird characters), but there was nothing I could do with them: couldn’t get a screenshot, nor Select All, Copy, and Paste to a new document, or anything. I’m beginning to think I should buy a copy of WordPerfect and see whether that will read them. I have three more novels in WordPerfect and although I don’t claim they’re great art, they do represent an awful lot of work and time! So we’ll see.

    It’s beginning to look as if I won’t see Younger Son and family for tea on Sunday. It’s supposed to four-letter-word, which will make driving dangerous and unpleasant. We get a lot of ice where we live when four-letter-word threatens.

    Feeling very disheartened that the criminal slime buckets in the Rethug party seem to be consequence-free. There is nothing I can do about it, though.

    Wishing a good, quiet day to all at the Pond.

    • The sad truth about electronic documents is that you often need to have a working copy of the program that created them in order to render them into another format. That is why PDFs became popular – Portable Document Format was needed to be able to move through the various decades. There are some tools that work with different formats but the only ones I know about are on PC not Mac. Have you tried to find out if there is a place that will convert your files once and for all into PDF? You would also want to purchase a PDF program that would allow you to not only read but edit and convert. Adobe is too expensive for ordinary people; I found a program called FoxIt PhantomPDF to be pretty good and reasonably priced. They have a Mac version as well and a Free Trial Download.

  19. It’s 36 heading for 52 and sunny. Yay! (At least so far, clouds are supposed to move back in – hopefully late – this afternoon.) Yesterday was a chilly but lovely day and we got 9.57 KWHs! The m-t-d is 159.7 so we’ll definitely get 160 before the morning’s out. If we do as well as yesterday we’ll be right on top of 170. Not great but getting better. Like things in the world right now.

    I have no idea whether or not my boosting stuff on twitter makes a bit of difference but it might so I’ll keep doing it. Helps me feel like I’m doing something anyway. And I need to do something. I’m OK and because I’m OK but wasn’t always, I need to do something. So I do/will. And had best get to it. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  20. Good morning, 33 and cloudy in Bellingham. This year has brought a so many changes to our life, including telephone med consults. Oh well, no zoom was involved so I didn’t have to be dressed. Grey day here so I hope I can keep from being gloomy as Covid confinement is feeling very real today. I need to do a few errands so I’ll double mask and hope I can still breathe.

    Best wishes to all.

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