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 -11 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of -2. Chance for flurries.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Happy Frederick Douglass’ Birthday and Valentine’s Day!
23 degrees here in Kingston NY – going up to 35. No snow today – coming Monday, Tuesday and Thurs.
Puerto Rico
Please read this
Sunday music
Well, I wouldn’t mind some (very dark) chocolate as that’s the one staple I’m out of. ???? But I will very happily listen Ella today or any day. {{{HUGS}}}
It’s 27, which appears to be the high for today. The weather app on my phone says it’s going to get down to 10 degrees tonight. 10. I can’t wrap my head around a temperature like that. And it’s going to snow tonight, with negative wind chills tomorrow. I’m going to pile up mail from my shred pile in the fireplace, hope to supplement the heater. Since I haven’t been going to the office, that shred pile has been growing, so this will serve 2 purposes.
It’s 7 heading for 8 very overcast and snowing. (And the idiots who “own” those cats put them outside anyway this morning. I know they can shelter under the house across the street but there’s no water – nothing liquid outside right now. I can help with food but there’s nothing I can do about the water. Anything I leave outside will freeze in short order.) Yesterday we had enough lovely sunshine to generate 2.8 KWHs even through the snow on the panels. As far as accumulation of electricity is concerned that still sux (m-t-d is 58) but as far as my mood is concerned that helped a lot. At least until I mis-stepped on the steps coming in from putting out bird seed and fell forward – hit my forehead on the door and raised a lump but had also partly caught myself with my right hand and left knee so aggravating but not serious. The lump’s almost gone and the area isn’t even all that sensitive to the touch.
The propaganda machine is just doing its job no matter how much I hate that. What I hate more is enraged Dems picking up their propaganda and repeating it. Yes, technically twitler was acquitted since we didn’t reach the 67-Senator threshold. But when the headlines say “acquitted 57-43” that looks like 57 vote to acquit. And even folks who know better get outraged at reading that. (& DK picked up that headline as the header for one of their diaries which even more made it look true.) 43 Rs voted to acquit. We peeled of 7 Rs who voted with us to convict. And the LW Dems are just as outraged that Dems couldn’t magically pull another 10 Rs to convict as they were when they read the headline and assumed – as the propaganda machine intended – that 7 Dems voted with all the Rs to acquit. Since that doesn’t make sense what they said was cowardly Dems making a deal to not call witnesses and go straight to the vote, that Dems “caved” again & the witnesses were needed to get everything on the record. That doesn’t make sense either. I think very intelligent Dems decided that stroking the Terrorists’ egos with how much they’d frightened the wimpy Dems in Congress is a really bad idea. And that the Rs would lie under oath about it even if they could enforce the subpoenas needed to get them to testify in the first place.
Anyway, Sunday chores to do. More coffee needed on this very cold day. Stuff to do on twitter – presupposing the snow doesn’t bring down the power lines of course. ???????????? that it does not b/c if I were trying to stay warm in this w/o electricity to run the furnace and the electric bathroom heater, I’d have to camp out around the wood stove. And for burning 24-hours straight I’ve only got 2 weeks of fuel left. But I’ve got electricity now and will be happy to use it to listen to the music in Dee’s #BlackMusicSunday diary. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
bfitz, the left-of-the-left will always hate anything pragmatic that Democrats do, they would prefer to bern it all down and kill us all. Daniel Goldman, the impeachment attorney for House Democrats last year said that the only witnesses that might have helped the House managers case would have been people who were in the Oval Office with tRump after his rally and during the riot. They would have been hostile witnesses and would have to be subpoenaed and the courts would have to decide Executive Privilege issues. Months of litigation and in the end they would not have picked up any more votes AND the Biden-Harris agenda would have languished. Now we have three things: tremendous pride in the intelligence and passion of the House managers, a historical record for future generations to judge the Republican Party on and a very strong case to be made that we will never get 10 Republicans to help us pass essential legislation that we need for voting rights, immigration, commonsense gun reform, infrastructure and dozens of other things. We might peel off 3 or 4 but not 10 so let’s kill the filibuster and be done with it.
You’re right, of course. I wish the LW would quit being suckers for the RW propaganda though. Heck, even I can use google well enough to see just how misleading a headline is – and do before I blow up at our team. Basically neither America or AmeriKKKa really cares what anybody does as long as the economy is strong and they can lead their “normal” life. But America stops paying attention to politics and unfortunately usually stops voting. AmeriKKKa votes in every election. sigh.
Good morning, 31 and still snowing in Bellingham. Looks like about a foot of snow is covering the garden, but the cold wind is gone and rain is in the forecast so I’m going to relax and enjoy our quiet snowy world this morning.
Best wishes to all.
did I mention that our weather is crazy?
very light snow, but it is accumulating:
{{{anotherdemocrat}}} – stay in, stay warm, stay safe is a good plan. Seriously Holding the Good Thought the grid holds up and you have heat for the duration. Healing Energy & moar {{{HUGS}}}
Stay warm! The news said rolling blackouts there to preserve electricity with the demand for heat so high. Up here, what you are having is “just another winter storm” but we have the infrastructure to manage it.
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is -8 in Madison with an expected daytime high of POSITIVE 3. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast and there is a chance of snow overnight.
Whew! I survived the Second Impeachment Trial of Donald John Trump which had too much tRump video and voice PLUS I now will be able to break my cable news habit. Yesterday MSNBC was 90% “what are tRump’s plans” with Lindsey Graham clips from Fox News playing on a loop. WTH, MSNBC? I much preferred when Brian Williams on Saturday told the viewers “trigger warning – we are going to show a statement from the former president’s office” and I could switch away. Yesterday I spent so much time muting I finally gave up and watched Weather Nation and HGTV. The headlines today were more hopeful – “Biden takes center stage” but I am fairly certain that the cable news will go back to covering tRump and his GQP 24×7 which is how we ended up with him as president. Hard pass.
Joe Biden will be in Milwaukee tomorrow hosting a CNN town hall at the Pabst Theater. I will probably wait and catch clips because I am boycotting CNN for still employing Kamala Harris birther Chris Cuomo. Yes, I hold grudges. Yes, this one will be forever.
The “open the schools” debate rages on and it follows the lines of the horrifying disparity in rich school and poor schools across the county. The rich schools will have adequate ventilation and space for social distancing and soap in their bathrooms and teachers whose family members are not working in “essential industries” getting exposed to COVID at their work places. The poor schools will be pushed to open, their teachers and janitors and administrators will get sick and they will likely have to close anyway. Once again, teachers unions are the “villains” and teachers will be forced to work in dangerous conditions. The science says you can reopen schools if the conditions are right which they are in a very small percentage of places. Madison schools and some of the Madison suburbs are planning to open in hybrid mode for K-4 or K-5 in March – I suspect that the only thing that will keep the infections from overwhelming them will be that about half the students will opt to stay home.
Two work weeks left in February and my hard March deadlines are approaching. Today is a federal holiday so I will hide in my office and try to get my to-do stack sorted down into project lists.
See all y’all later!
Monday Meese. 25 degrees and snowing lightly here in Kingston NY, going up to 28 – with freezing rain predicted for tomorrow.
I need to rant about the so-called “left” (DSA Chicago) depicting Officer Goodman as a “slave catcher”
Puerto Rico
Good Monday morning, Moosekind. It’s a nugly day here, just like the nugly days before and all the ones that are to follow. Right now in Ashburn it’s 34 F. with showers predicted. We shall see.
The good part is that Younger Son and family are supposed to come to tea, this being a holiday. We have a whole carpet of carbohydrate to spread before them: red velvet cake, chocolate covered strawberries, and strawberry cream cake slices. Tomorrow is Miss Pink Cheeks’ 12th birthday. She’s at the age when she resists what grownups want her to do, such as brushing her hair. It’s comforting to think when she turns 13 she’ll be spending 11 hours a day in the bathroom, washing said hair, brushing it, and experimenting with different hair styles.
Saturday was spent screaming and cursing because TurboTax was giving me fits. They want to know the most obscure information imaginable! However, after wrestling with it for hours, I finally won and efiled. Later that evening I was notified that the Fed. return had been accepted. Yesterday the state return was accepted.
However, that wasn’t the end of my wrestles with the Devil. The printer, for reasons best known to itself, utterly refused to print. Oh, it would spit out a page of Printer Settings if asked, so I knew it wasn’t lack of ink, lack of paper, or lack of electricity. It was lack of sense. I did everything I could think of, warm reboot, cold reboot, unplugging the power cord and plugging it back in, downloading a software patch for that printer model (Apple wouldn’t let me open or install it), the lot. After dinner I sat at the keyboard, morosely clicking around “Settings,” when lo and behold—whatever sleeping goddess decided to wake up and stretch, did so. The printer regurgitated not one, but two copies of my tax return. THANK YOU, GODDESS!
This morning at 11 I have an appointment to tour the gym in the new club house. Before and after, I totally need to finish the article I’m working on. People at the Zoom meeting on Thursday will want to know where the hail it is. The idea I pitched for a new series, “My Brush with History–Residents Recall Significant Moments” is having some success. After I asked for an ad to be inserted in the weekly in-house paper, I began receiving replies from people who were at te Pentagon That Day, or who’d met President Eisenhower, who signed a book for her, or who attended the funeral of a pop star on a beach in Hawaii or something like that.
So, a busy day lies ahead! Jan, hope you get a handle on the work. Bfitz, I hope you are feeling better after your mishap. What a thing to happen! Dee, glad you aren’t getting snow today, and another, hope you can keep from freezing. A freezing Austin is not the Austin I remember!
Wishing a good day to all at the Moose Pond, and agonies of constipation to the Rethugs on the Hill, just because I’m feeling mean..
It’s 7 degrees in Austin. The news keeps telling people how dangerous the cold is, and not to go outside. There are rolling blackouts, and my upstairs neighbor and I think our water heaters may have frozen. We might not get above 20 today, and if that happens, it would be the coldest day in Austin history.
Yikes! ????????????????????
It’s -1 maybe heading to 5, the windchill is -20 (yes, I’ve been out in it) and the PV system is offline for the duration as it’s now got about 6 inches of snow on it. We got .4 Kilowatt hour before it shut down yesterday. The m-t-d is 58.4 – ta! da! – 100 may be the best we can do this month. I am most certainly not opening the back door to put out birdseed! I found my snow boots – which I haven’t worn in over 4 years and had almost forgot I had – and took the hammer to the gate latch. Once the ice was gone and I could open the gate I took birdseed and suet (and a broom) around back for the poor birds.
I have another cat. How long I will keep this one, I don’t know. It’s the sweet little gray and white one I’ve been feeding for the last several weeks. It’s had overnight shelter somewhere for the last couple of days. When it got to my house for food the fur wasn’t cold enough for it to have been out over night. But last night, after 7 pm with the temps at 6 and the windchill -6, it showed up at my back door wanting in. I wasn’t about to leave it out there. So it now has possession of my bathroom. Surprisingly the guys aren’t reacting to it being here. They’re watching bird and napping as usual. When I go in there a couple of them show up at the door. But they’re just wondering what’s going on. No hissing or nasty cat noises. I’m almost tempted to bring it out and see if this is a miracle of acceptance. (I said almost.)
Same ol’ same ol’ about political stuff. As long as 90% – or even close to 50% – of the media is owned by 5 bircher/fascist/KKK/RW corporations nothing is going to significantly change and what changes we get will be rolled back quickly. The propaganda machine has always been key to the fascist takeover. That’s why the Birchers started buying up radio stations back in 1958. Moved to more expensive stuff and consolidated networks, cable companies and what they carry – they went at it step by step. As long as we just target their bought-and-paid-for politicians and don’t break up that propaganda machine they are going to win. They’ve been working on this for over 60 years. A few more election cycles don’t phase them any.
So. We do what we can, what’s within our reach to do. For me, that’s mostly the online boosting stuff on Twitter. If I had more money I’d give more money but I don’t. So I’ll give my time, attention, and use my access to the internet instead. Off we go. Everybody stay safe. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 34 and raining in Bellingham. The snow was pretty yesterday and it’s melting away today, yay! I’ve got some desk work to do and then I’ll prolly do some plant rescue if the blooming hellebores are recovered enough to be rescued. They are winter blooming plants, and were in full bloom before being buried under the snow so the old blooms will need to be removed and then the new ones can grow and bloom again.
Best wishes to all.
Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …
It is 3 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 14. Partly cloudy skies, maybe some flurries. Our expected warming appears to now be delayed until Sunday but at least the daytime highs will be above 0 – maybe even some teens!
Ron Freaking Johnson has wrested the title “Stupidest Man in the Senate” back from Tommy Tuberville. RoJo now claims that the Capitol riot was not an armed insurrection because he personally did not see any weapons! I guess he doesn’t consider metal baseball bats, flagpoles, fire extinguishers and stun guns to be weapons and the 160 law enforcement officers who sustained injuries must have all slipped and fallen. Good lord, I hope we can vote this idiot out of office next year.
The left-of-the-left are still complaining about the Democrats “cave” for not calling witnesses. It makes it painfully clear that they don’t want the Democratic Party to have any success and that they are ignorant, unable to follow a train of thought all the way to the station without being derailed. No one else wanted to testify and subpoenas would have been fought tooth-and-nail for years. We got what we could, Nancy Pelosi is going to convene a January 6th commission to call witnesses and duke it out in the courts while the rest of us concentrate on good government legislation to get ourselves out of this hole that tRump and his minions dug for us. And pay attention to who wants Joe Biden to waste political capital on a Donald John Trump criminal investigation by his Justice Department – Mitch McConnell and the Wall Street Journal. Nice try, Mitch, we see you! You can’t investigate a former president especially one who could conceivably be a political rival in 3 years – there is no way it would be seen as anything but political. Let Tish James take down his business “empire” and shut down his illegal fund raising schemes and then let the chips fall where they may. Our DOJ effort needs to be put towards identifying and rolling up the right-wing militias and those who fund them.
I have about 5 things I am trying to do at once and – not surprising – none of them are getting completed!
See all y’all later!
8 degrees. My upstairs neighbor & I each think our water heaters may have frozen. She gets nothing when she opens a hot faucet, I at least have a trickle. I have cold water dripping in the kitchen & “hot” in the bathrooms. The news is just begging people to stay in; lots of pictures of people falling leaving their homes and talking about how the roads are worse today because of layers of ice & snow. I have my heater set on 66, and wearing 3 layers. My agency is closed, but people set up to work from home are not affected by that, so it’s back to work for me.
{{{anotherdemocrat}}} Holding the Good Thought that even if the water in your hot water heater is mostly frozen it’s not completely frozen so it won’t have ruptured anything. And that your power stays on so you have heat. Healing Energy in whatever form needed & moar {{{HUGS}}}
Noon update. It has warmed up to 19 outside, I still have power, worked all morning and I’m watching NASA’s press conference about Thursday’s Mars landing. My neighbor texted me that she’s going to walk to the grocery store about 12 blocks away. I think she’s crazy. We’re going to get more ice & snow tonight, I really hope my pipes can withstand it.
Good that you have power. I agree with you on your neighbor. Definitely holding the Good Thought on your pipes. If it’s putting another layer between the pipes and the air, snow is good. Its insulation could save your pipes if you get enough. Sunshine then clouds late afternoon is also good as it will keep the overnights a little higher than otherwise. ???????????? Just a few days to go, then safer weather. {{{HUGS}}} & Healing Energy of whatever kind needed.
Thanks for keeping us updated – you are in my prayers!
It was -5 when I suited up and went out to refill the birdfeeder. No wind thank goddess so no windchill added to that. The sun is shining brightly and the snow looks like it’s been dusted with crystals. As it has of course. Just water crystals and not rock ones. It makes it look nice outside. Which it most certainly isn’t as far as being out in it is concerned. There’s at least 6″ of snow on the panels so no electricity generation until that’s gone. But the strong sunshine will sublime off some of it even with a high of 20. (Which is gonna feel warm after what we’ve had the last few days.)
LW likes RW propaganda because both want to destroy the only thing – “center-left” Dems – standing between them and their brand of despotism. About the only difference between the two is which despot they want. And about the only difference – which is a major difference – is the RW actively wants to kill BIPOC, LBGTQNBIA2S, non-WASPs, the disabled, elders… & the LW just ignores us and are OK with letting us die as long as they get what they want. Which of course they deny every time they’re called on it. We gotta break up that propaganda machine. We need honest media b/c otherwise RW & LW get exactly what they want out of that propaganda and we are fighting a losing battle. Maybe not war. But you can only lose so many battles before it’s moot because you’ve no resources left to fight with.
The little cat slept most of yesterday. Didn’t do more than look up when I came in the room. Didn’t get up unless I was putting food in the bowl. I guess being out in the cold all that time really pulled it down. It’s more active this morning. I’m waiting to hear back from the vet. I really do want to get it checked out before I try to integrate it in with the boys. Who are still pretty much doing their regular things and ignoring that there’s another cat in the house.
So. Coffee. Thanking the goddesses that both my power and my water are still fine. (So glad I have back up for the one and sort of for the other. As in I’ve a gallon of water in bottles for me, 1/2 a bucket for the cats, and I can – have before – flush toilets with melted snow.) The sunshine just changes my whole attitude about what’s possible in the world. Off to twitter to boost stuff. Bright the day, Meeses. {{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 39 and light rain in Bellingham. I thought the snow would be gone but the lawn is still covered. It’s really soggy outside!
I finished reading Book #5 in The Chronicles of St Mary’s , son one to book #6, What Could Possibly Go Wrong. The books are light reading, with just enough fantasy to be intriguing and enough history to make me curious.
Best wishes to all.
Wednesday Meese. 20 degrees here in Kingston NY going up to 31 – snow predicted for tomorrow and Friday. I am headed to the dentist this morning – I hate to go out of the house but have to get a denture adjustment. Then I go to pick up my car from the shop.
Still no vaccine for me and hubby in our area tho we are registered and qualified.
Puerto Rico
Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …
It is -13 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 16. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast. Tomorrow we are expected to see a high of 20 – we are not projected to be above freezing until next Monday.
Our Spring primary was yesterday. It whittled down the candidates for the “non-partisan” State Superintendent of Schools to two candidates – the top two vote getters were the Democrat who supports public schools and the Republican who wants to shovel all of our taxpayer money to church schools. The Democratic candidate came in first and with the votes from the 3rd place candidate (who is also a Democrat) and 6th place candidate would be at 51%. There were several candidates who were hard to figure out but I think the Republican (who claims to be a Democrat because who wants to be known as a Republican!) does not have the votes to win as long as we vote in April. Here is what our candidate, Jill Underly, said:
I’m with her!
Good lord, Texas! They are a poster child for the terrible outcomes of deregulation and letting the market control public services. “Let’s have our own power grid but not require it to be built to any standards! Wahoo!!” – what could possibly go wrong? I hope Democrats can find a good candidate to run against Abbott next year and drag the state into the 21st century. I am sure it is not lost on all the companies (looking at you Elon Musk) who just moved to or are looking at moving to Texas. Ignorance will have consequences.
When I first heard about the lawsuit that the NAACP and Rep. Benny Thompson filed, it sounded like something that would be dismissed out of hand. After hearing the legal pundits talking about it yesterday, it sounds like it has a chance of prevailing! Let’s bankrupt Donald John Trump and his white supremacist groups like they bankrupted the KKK back in 1987. If nothing else, the depositions will be painful and will expose the Republican Party’s rotten core.
I need to get a few things done and then hunt down some stories on Joe Biden’s town hall in Milwaukee. The city got over a foot of snow yesterday and it sure looked cold! I am glad that Air Force One landed and took off safely.
See all y’all later!