Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: March 21st

March 20, 2021 JanF Community 83

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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39 Comments

  1. Wednesday Meese. 39 degrees here in Kingston NY going up to 57 with rain.

    Puerto Rico

  2. Terrible night’s sleep. May have had to do with the 10 million times I refreshed the screen for a vaccine at the local grocery chain. I had already put on my schedule to shut down early today, may be making that even earlier. At least there’s astronomy shows on the Science channel.

    • {{{anotherdemocrat}}} Healing Energy. Enjoy your astronomy shows. moar {{{HUGS}}}

  3. Good morning, 42 and raining in Bellingham. My day was busy yesterday and I see I forgot to check in. Between the time change and needing to be at an early haircut appointment my morning was rushed and I had a doc appointment in the afternoon. But all’s well…I like my hair stylist and she now “knows” my hair so it’s easy to just relax and let her do what she decides to do. My doc appointment was a big relief as I’m always nervous when I see someone new. He is an allergy doc and thinks the reaction I had to the covid shot is due to the preservative. So he’ll test me next week for the 3 preservatives used in the 3 vaccines, and regardless thinks the J&J shot should be safe if I take an antihistamine before and have the shot in a medical setting. I do have some immunity from the first Moderna shot but will have more protection if I can get a second dose.

    I need to do some house work this morning and see the dentist this afternoon so it’s time to find some coffee and get busy. As always, my best wishes to all.

  4. Good news! I got my 1st shot yesterday! Pfizer. Somebody canceled and I was 1st on the call list. So far no side effects. I can sort of feel something less like soreness and more like a mild bruise in the site area on my left arm when I move it or lift something but that’s it. He said 3 weeks to the 2nd shot. So. In 5 weeks I’ll be as safe to be out and about as possible. (Yes, I’ll be masking and distancing anyway. But I may hug my son.)

    It’s 45 heading for 70 and beautifully sunny. We generated 9.9 KWHs yesterday – m-t-d is currently 263.38 – and look to getting at least half again as much today. I may wash some of the bed covers on the “spare” bed the cats have been sleeping on all winter. Those I can hang outside since I won’t be using them on my bed. LOL.

    It is so good to see our Decent Administration & the Decent folks in Congress doing Decent policy. Depressing of course that not all our Dems are actually Decent people and they are helping the Genocidal Q Party block as much decency as they can. There is much outrage and sorrow at what is going on, what the Deplorables are still doing. But there is a little joy and a lot of relief at what we are managing to get done despite them. A good thought to hold as I go about my daily business. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  5. Good Wednesday morning, Moosekind! Early this morning when it was still dark I took Monty to the courtyard. It was raining beautifully, a slow, steady performance enlivened by birdsong. Yesterday when I took him out and walked him round the circular path, I smelled a heavenly fragrance. I’m not sure what it’s called—wish I’d had princesspat here to identify it.

    It’s going to rain off and on all day, much to my delight. We NEED it. March for the most part has been dry as a bone. Right now it’s 54 F., going for a high of 59 F.

    Rainy spring nights always make me want a Chinese dinner with jasmine tea and fortune cookies. I shall speak to Dearly and together we will look up a good Chinese restaurant with carry-out. We just can’t face any more of the food here. We have done our best since Sunday, but dear Goddess.

    I’m just about to leave for the EKG I’ve got to have before my cataract surgery. Why? I shall never know. Probably I am not meant to know. I’m going to wear my black raincoat with a black hood that makes me look like a Witch to walk to the main building, where the doctor hangs out. I love walking in the rain.

    Bfitz, I’m so glad your son is better and thank Goddess for your jab! Princesspat, glad your doctor discovered it was the preservatives that made you miserable and will use J&J next time. Another, hope you can catch up on your sleep, how awful to be awake all night!

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond. Did you know that after President Clinton declared a ban on the sale of assault weapons in 1996, mass murders dropped by 49 percent? Interesting, isn’t it?

    • Interesting about the EKG requirement for your surgery. They don’t put you “under” for cataract surgery and from what I understand it is over pretty quickly. I wonder if it is an extra protocol based on age?

      • I shall question it this morning when I see my doctor. It took 5 minutes for the medical tech to put all those patches on my front, 20 seconds to actually conduct the test, and 15 minutes for the doctor to give her opinion on it while I waited in the examining room. I don’t yet know the results of the test. It all seems very strange to me.

        Thank Goddess I was able to continue reading Mrs. Pollifax and the Second Thief on my phone while I waited for 15 minutes.

  6. Good morning, meeses! Thursday …

    It is 41 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 48. Cloudy, rainy and a chance for ice pellets(!) overnight. My weather widget says we will see sun tomorrow – I’m ready!

    I guess people are complaining that Vice President Harris has been put in charge of the migration challenge at the border, citing her “lack of experience.” Good lord, she was the Attorney General of one of our largest states and one that dealt on a daily basis with immigration and migration issues. She didn’t just parachute into the vice presidency as a token Black (check the box), Asian (check the box) woman (check the box). They are also attacking her because she is dissing the military by not saluting them. SHE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO!! Joe Biden is the Commander in Chief of the military, she is a civilian. I despise the media – they do such a disservice to our country.

    I have caught bits and pieces of the Klobuchar hearing on S1, the companion to HR1, the voting rights bill. I can’t watch it because there are too many icky people on that committee and, while I can mute, that does not fix the mental images of Ted Cruz that can’t be unseen. I am hoping that Joe Manchin is paying attention and sees that the Republicans are bent on destroying small d democracy and that the big D Democratic Party is going to permanently lose power as their voters are systematically disenfranchised. He will likely not be persuaded by the moral stain of racism on Republican resistance to making it easier to vote (he probably has that in common with them) but he seems excited about getting the infrastructure bill passed and maybe he will have a light bulb moment and realize that if he is in a permanent minority, those kind of bills will never pass and his impoverished state will suffer. We shall see.

    I have been watching the Women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament; it is more entertaining this year, there have been more upsets and close games because all the games are at neutral sites and there is no home court advantage. I haven’t watched for a while since women’s basketball has never been a priority for the boys who run the UW Madison athletic department. We have not had a good team for about 20 years (I had seasons tickets for years and gave up on them about 15 years ago) – they keep making terrible choices for coaches, firing their latest one at the end of this past season. All of our good state players go elsewhere and win championships for other schools. Fortunately we have an excellent women’s hockey team, a very good volleyball team, a good women’s soccer team and a good softball team so there is a lot of sports to watch and enjoy.

    See all y’all later!

      • I watched the White House video with Megan Rapinoe on Equal Pay Day. She is a good spokesperson for her sport.

        Transcript: Remarks by President Biden at an Event to Mark Equal Pay Day (lightly edited).

        THE PRESIDENT: Well, good afternoon, everyone. Megan and Margaret, thank you. Thank you for being here. And to all your teammates virtually, thank you as well. I’m an unadulterated fan.

        And both of you and your entire team have inspired our daughters and our granddaughters, who, I might add, are all really good athletes: one two-time All-State; my niece, All-American. There’s a whole lot of talent in the Biden family athletics, almost all on the women’s side of the equation. But I — really, thank you for what you’ve done.

        You know, you’re all heroes for so many people — and that’s not hyperbole to suggest that — on and off the field. You know, and it matters that you lent your voice to the issues and the issue of fair pay and decency for so many years. […]

        This year, Equal Pay Day falls in late March, which is a little bit better, but not much — from late April to late March. And, frankly, we shouldn’t be satisfied until Equal Pay Day is no longer even necessary to mention at all.

        The reality though is that in nearly every job — more than 90 percent of the occupations — women still earn less than men: 82 cents on the dollar on average. For AAPI women, it’s 87 cents for every dollar a white man earns. For Black women, it’s 63 cents. For Native American women, it’s 60 cents. For Hispanic women, it’s 55 cents.

        It doesn’t matter if you’re an electrician, an accountant, or part of the best damn soccer team in the world, the pay gap is real. And this team is living proof that you can be the very best at what you do and still have to fight for equal pay.

  7. Good Thursday morning Meese. It’s 51 here in Kingston NY – and it is going up to 73 which is weird weather for March. (I’ll take it)

    Really pissed about the MVP Harris attack crew

    • There’s an SOB named Sean Sullivan who loathes Kamala and seems determined to bring her down, an equally nasty harpy named Seung Moon Kim or something like that who wants to bite Biden by the throat, and a little bitchy-witchy named Ashley Parker who helps Sean. That’s not journalism, that’s “gotcha”-ism.

      May the fleas of a thousand pariah dogs infest their innermost crevices so they scratch and shriek all night. It would serve them right.

  8. Puerto Rico

  9. Well, that was interesting — we had a hail storm around 4:30 am. Didn’t last long but wow was it loud. Should have stayed up & started refreshing the vaccine page. I’m also registered with the City, maybe they’ll contact me today. Anyway, today’s agenda: work, listen to music, watch Biden’s presser this afternoon.

    • Good Thursday morning, Meese! It’s gray and foggy but very mild this morning, with birdsong. When I open the window to lean out and sniff the air, it brings back huge memories of March 1965, after I’d first arrived in England and was staying with friends of my parents in Surrey. Mrs. B. used to bring me early morning tea in bed. I felt like a princess.

      Right now it’s 56 F. going up to 71 F., with occasional showers this afternoon. Good. We’re still under par for rainfall this year.

      Dearly rose early, made the coffee as a good husband should, and hotfooted it down Route 28 at 8 a.m. His doctor appointment is at 9. As soon as he arrives home (it’s to be hoped by 11 a.m. at the latest), I’ll have to walk to the club house to see my doctor. She has to fax the clearance to the eye doctor. The surgery coordinator rang from the eye doctor’s office yesterday to tell me the hour-long appointment would involve instructions for the surgery on April 9, and so on. I asked her if my eyes would be dilated and complained I nearly had a car smash driving home after my last visit. She expressed horror and said that my eyes would not be dilated.

      Yesterday, unable to bear the food here a minute longer, I went to Trader Joe’s and bought a frozen Chinese meal, which I cooked for dinner and which we ate with gratitude. Dessert was fresh orange sections in almond custard. Sometimes ya gotta eat what you want to eat instead of the totally weird concoctions dreamed up by Dining Services. One of my biggest complaints about the food here is—where’s the fruit? That’s why I cook so much. Where are the apple crumbles, the peach-blackberry crisp, the fresh strawberries to dip in confectioner’s sugar while holding them by their own green stems, the blackberries layered in a tulip glass with vanilla yogurt? They never serve anything like that here, which is why I so often prepare dinner myself. We get 20 meals a month each but often use only 15 or even fewer.

      First-world problem! It’s time to get washed and brushed and walk the dawg. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and a stomach-churning day to all the Rethug pols on the Hill.

    • {{{anotherdemocrat}}} Holding the Good Thought you get your vaccine soon. Healing Energy & moar {{{HUGS}}}

  10. It’s 49 going to 54, dark, and raining. The PV system is on – surprisingly – but generating in barely double-digit watts. Yesterday we generated 15.7 KWHs before the clouds moved in (m-t-d 278.7) but I’ll be amazed if we get 1/10 of that today.

    Welp, my tax refund got here yesterday. That’s the good news. It was down by 30% which is the bad news. And I cannot reach IRS to find out why and see if I can get the part I’m missing. There’s no email or site mail contact with IRS. And the call volume is so high they aren’t accepting any more calls right now. As in I can’t get into even a menu – or the callback program. So I don’t know what to do next. Or even how much time I have to do it in. It’s not an urgent deal. There’s still enough to get the brakes fixed and do Cloud’s dental. And to pay back most of what I borrowed from the savings accounts earlier this month to cover a larger-than-usual credit card bill. But it certainly shoots some plans I had for not-urgent-but-would-be-nice house maintenance things, most of my charitable giving plans, and definitely the catio I’ve been hoping I could get the handyman to build as a sort of extension of the front porch now the big Rose of Sharon is gone. Oh well, I’ve lived with the house maintenance things for years, the cats have the run of the house, and. . . I guess prayers and boosting links will have to do for the rest. (I need to get some new litter boxes though. The ones I’ve got are not only too small but they’re over 20 years old and the plastic’s getting brittle.) I’ll manage.

    RW propaganda is going to do nothing but target Biden and Harris – all the stuff that twitler & cromwell II actually were and did are being and will be projected onto Joe and Kamala. Because that’s what they’re paid to do by the RW/KKK/fascist corporations that own them. The Cabal want our team to deal with the pandemic and get the economy going again – just enough to prime the pump for them, not enough to really “lift all boats”. Even if some of those boats weren’t chained to the ocean floor so the rising tide will do nothing but swamp them. We have to find work arounds for the MSM until we can find a way to dismantle the propaganda machine. Or we will be in office/power just long enough to do what the Cabal wants and no longer. And that is a fact.

    Meanwhile I’m running behind. Not due to my hands, fortunately. This morning multiple cats decided it would be a good day to both flip the litter boxes and to hork up hairballs. (Oh, it would be nice if the backyard were safe for my cats. As in they couldn’t get out and nothing else could get in.) So. More coffee and then back to work – online and off. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  11. Good morning, 44 and cloudy in Bellingham. I don’t have any scheduled appointments today so my mind is wandering, thinking about where I can go now if I chose to do so. Emerging from covid confinement takes some thinking about!

    Best wishes to all.

  12. Good morning, meeses! Friday …

    It is 32 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 52. The weather widget says it is snowing but I am not seeing it – the streets are wet but no snow that I can see. We are supposed to see the sun later (with clouds) but will lose it again tomorrow.

    I watched the Biden press conference and he did a good job. Anyone watching would come away with the feeling that he knows what he is doing, that his years of experience in the Senate and the vice presidency are a plus for our country. That we are in the middle of a global pandemic and economic devastation not known since the Great Depression and the questions were all about the border (“why did you open the borders, tRump had things under control!!”) and the filibuster (“why are you allowing the filibuster to destroy your agenda!!”) should be an embarrassment to the press. They clearly did not want him to take a victory lap on his vaccine rollout and the American Rescue Plan – their only purpose was to ding him on the border. He has been in office for 58 days and his cabinet was just filled this past week – give him time to rebuild the humane and legal infrastructure that TFG dismantled. Joe Biden cares about the children and at this point that matters more than what he can actually achieve immediately. This:

    THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, the idea that I’m going to say — which I would never do — “if an unaccompanied child ends up at the border, we’re just going to let him starve to death and stay on the other side” — no previous administration did that either, except Trump. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it.

    I sure wish our press was smarter – Joe Biden can’t kill the filibuster with an executive order; it is a Senate rule and only Senators can change it.

    I have to take back the mean things I said about the UW Badger Athletic Director and his neglect of our women’s basketball program. They hired a new coach, Marisa Moseley, a woman from the Geno Auriemma UConn coaching tree (9 years) who has been head coach at Boston University for the past few years.

    She is a woman of color and her Twitter background shows a “#BlackLivesMatter” hashtag. Her hiring will be announced today. She was an assistant at Minnesota for a few years back in the 0’s so she will know the BigTen conference and the climate.

    The last weekend of March is upon us and I need to get my project list lined up and make sure that I have what I need from clients to be productive.

    See all y’all later!

  13. Friday Meese. 57 going up to 74 with rain here in Kingston NY.
    This has me furious!

    • I hope the House and Senate can reach a compromise on the HR1 and S1 bills and cobble together something that will pass. That Georgia can disenfranchise their voters and essentially block money and resources that help people vote is unconscionable.

    • Bloody hell! This effing white supremacist nation is the overriding cause of ALL the misery!

      At the very least, I hope this legislator can use this shocking situation in a campaign ad.

  14. Puerto Rico /USVI

  15. Still trying to get a vaccine appointment. I did wake up a couple of times last night & refreshed the tab, no luck. Chilly morning, 47 degrees but it may get up to 90 this afternoon. Today: work, obsessively refresh the vaccine tab….. and that’s it. Not gonna say anything about going for a walk, because I logged off work at 3:30, and sat inside refreshing the tab.

  16. Good Friday morning, Moosekind! It rained during the night and we started off the day with gloom and mist. Now, however, we have a freshly washed Friday, a current temp. of 68 F., and our area is looking fine, except for one thing: wind. We’re under a high wind advisory with threats of falling trees and whatnot, so I want to hurry up with my errands in Reston. They say it will be worse at noon.

    Woke up at 6 a.m., which is bad, but I went to bed without a sleeping pill, which is good. Book club today, right at my nap time. I heartily recommend Megan Rapinoe’s autobiography, One Life, to all who enjoy reading about strong-minded women.

    Bfitz, I’m glad you received your tax refund but am as mystified as you as to why one-third is missing. I hate to say it, but it will probably be ages before you get that. Have you received your stimmy?

    Jan, the rules for my upcoming cataract surgery are mind-boggling. When my husband had his cataract surgery, he went by himself, came home by himself, and didn’t seem at all discomfited. Because I’ve elected laser cataract surgery, I have to be accompanied by Someone who will stay the entire 3+ hours and drive me home. Have to sleep with my eyes bound up afterwards. Before surgery, no eating or drinkiing, NO makeup, please remove all jewelry and bring a copy of your last will and testament (which I certainly shall NOT do), and stuff like that.

    Yesterday my primary doctor said she was mystified as to why an EKG was required but signed off on it anyway. “You are disgustingly healthy,” she joked.

    The EKG is because of the anesthesia. Okay. When I had my Lasik operation in 2004 and the touch-up in 2018, I didn’t need anesthesia. The doctor talked me through the entire 20 seconds or whatever it was.

    So, with respect to cataract surgery, the regular way seems to be less expensive and troublesome than the Lasik kind.

    Enough about me! Hope everyone has a good day. Wish the Georgia Assemblywoman could sue-sue-sue for mental anguish and humiliation. It should NOT be illegal to knock on a door while Black!

    Wishing all at the Pond a good day.

    • Ah, Lasik cataract surgery and it requires anesthesia. That makes more sense. Do they do both eyes at once? I will be doing whatever the cheapest basic Medicare paid-for procedure is. Apparently there is something more expensive that my opthamolagist told me about which I decided I don’t need.

      • Hi, Jan, no. They will do one eye at a time, thank Goddess! I have to use three different kinds of eye drops, spaced five minutes apart, four times a day beginning the day before surgery. This whole thing is going to be a giant PITA but I need my sight. It’s even more important to me than hearing, although both are actually important.

        • I would never want to have to choose which sense I would be “fine” with doing without – seems to be unnecessarily tempting fate – but I could not function without being able to read and reply to emails.

          I am glad to hear that it is one eye at a time – I wondered since it was such an elaborate process. Definitely a PITA. I am looking forward to having highway signs in focus again – it has been a long two years waiting for this surgery.

  17. G’morning, Meeses. It’s 41 heading for 71 and sunny. The rain stopped and the clouds moved off yesterday afternoon a (very) little earlier than forecast and we ended up generating 4.46 KWHs (m-t-d 283.38) which isn’t good but better than expected.

    It’s my older son’s birthday. 50 years ago at this point he was 2-1/2 hours old, in the nursery at St. David’s hospital, and would be brought to me for nursing in another hour or so. His father was in MO on a government construction job. I was in a semi-private room but the other bed was empty and I’d already called both his grandmothers and his father’s boss’s wife. All of whom showed up with flowers by the end of the day. My mother’s flowers were bluebonnets quite illegally gathered from the roadside on her way up from Houston. (She’d left my barely-12 year old twin youngest sisters at home with $20, saying she wasn’t sure when she’d be back.) He was 2 weeks early so nothing was ready. During the 3 days I was in hospital the grandmothers got everything set up to be “nice” for when we came home. – A lot of years, a lot of miles, and many different roads traveled since then.

    I’m glad we’ve got experienced folks in charge right now. Biden’s not the person I wanted but his history in the Senate and as veep – as with LBJ’s in an earlier time – just might, maybe, give us a “moment in time” to break the Deplorables’ grip on our election system again – and do some good work for the various minorities who’ve always done good work for the nation. At least for a while.

    Rolling up on 3 full days since vaccination and still no side effects. Need more coffee. Then off to do my twitter chores. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • He shares a birthday with Speaker Nancy Pelosi! The March Aries are the stars of the universe, by the way. :)

  18. Good morning, 44 and mostly cloudy in Bellingham. Despite my good intentions I rested the day away yesterday and then was restless all night. So today I’m going to try to go to bed physically tired from actually doing something. My favorite garden shop is now open and I want to find a trellis so I can move and feature a climbing hydrangea. I planted it too close to the laurel hedge, hoping it would ramble through branches but it doesn’t get enough light to bloom.

    The news of the day has overwhelmed me, so I’m staying partially aware today and hoping for the best.

  19. Saturday Meese. 44 going up to 66 here in Kingston NY.
    We had a major windstorm yesterday – which knocked out internet off and on – thankfully it passed.

    Am going through Jim Crow déjà vu watching events unfold in GA.


    Callaway Plantation Painting

    • Reading the WaPo account of this outrageous and appalling Rethug power grab in Georgia made me feel sick. You’re not supposed to overthrow the will of the voters just because you didn’t like the election results. I didn’t like the election results in the case of Tr*mp, Dubya, Ray-gun, and Tricky Dicky, but I didn’t join a movement to overthrow them.

      Y’know, if Georgia and the other Rethug states succeed in this, they should secede and set up the Jim Crow States of ‘Murica.

      I feel nauseated.

  20. Puerto Rico


    Some history:

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