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 to view previous pages, shown here with 3 pages of comments available and Page 2 circled.
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Good morning, 41 and mostly cloudy outside my window. Seems like days are longer now and more daylight is most welcome. I worked at my desk yesterday and will try to do more today. And I want to make a quick trip to the fabric store for some zippers and thread. Infection rates are high here so I’ll double mask and try to avoid the temptation of looking at new fabric. Best wishes to all.
I notice that quite frequently your comments are the ones that cause a new page to generate. While that is nice to have a clean slate for your words, it does seem lonely!
Our infection rates are up also. Of more concern is that our hospitalizations are up because we have regional health care centers here; the unvaxxed hinterlands send their diseased tRumpers here to fill up our hospital beds. It is a good thing I am not in charge because I would turn them away and let them die, gasping for breath, on the sidewalk.
Between the time zones and my sleepy mornings I’m out of sync with the early morning moose pond, but I enjoy reading everyone’s comments. Just wish I could contribute more content but my mind seems to be on hiatus.
Your comments are just fine. I very much enjoy hearing about your gardening and flower arranging projects, your sewing plans, your family visits. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, meeses! Saturday …
It is 18 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 21. Flurries this morning, sunny this afternoon and then flurries again overnight. We have another front bringing sub-zero weather in early next week. Our local weatherman point out that we are now in the period of time when it traditionally the coldest in our part of Wisconsin. If we can make it to mid-February, we will be past the worst.
I was looking at the Gallup Congressional Approval poll and it is NOT shocking that Congress is very unpopular. They are one of the least popular institutions and – other than a few spikes – have been consistently under 20% for most of the 21st Century. It is also not shocking that for Democrats the bloom came completely off the rose when the reality of “thin majority” sunk in. In the Senate “thin majority” means “blocked” and without both houses of Congress, nothing big can happen. Democrats have always harbored this fantasy that Congress can do things but, really, holding Congress has been more of a way to avoid the worst than a way to progress. It is better to have Congress than to not have it for a lot of reasons (we need the bare majority Senate to confirm judges) but if an initiative can’t be passed under reconciliation, it is dead in the water. Democrats need to take a deep breath, be glad that tRump is not president and do everything they can to get pumped up about holding on to Congress in the mid-terms so that Biden is not treated like Obama was treated when the Tea Party and Freedom Caca took over in 2011. Lots of ponyless “progressives” stayed home in 2010 and because of that things sucked for quite a while. Let’s not do that again – it exhausts me thinking about it.
I woke up with a work plan but it requires good Internet and my Internet has sucked for two days straight. I think it has to do with how my computers are getting the Internet in my new office space and some conflicts with my network server. I have plans to decommission the server but it will be very time consuming and I really can’t take time away from other projects until the beginning of March. I may need to revisit the plan and see if I there are shortcuts. In any event, it is probably not a good idea to do it until after tax returns are filed; I need to know where all the data is.
See all y’all later!
Saturday Meeses – it’s minus 1 degrees here (have no idea what the wind chill is) in Kingston NY. Ugh.
Unsuccessful presidencies…Nate says what?
See his well-deserved ratio.
Ha! “Nateism” – too many Nates not enough History Reading.
Puerto Rico
Good morning, one more freezing one here. This afternoon, I’ll uncover my plants & water them. There’s no more freezes in the forecast. I need to do some cooking today, it’s my first regular 2-day weekend in a long time — maybe since before Christmas, so I need to be conscious of the time passing. I might also get in a walk now that the weather is back to normal.
Good Saturday morning, Meese! I need to hubba hubba as my late mother would say, because I’m interviewing someone at 10:30-ish. Woke up at 7, cheery as a Munchkin, after 7 hours’ sleep. I really must get on with typing my notes this afternoon.
It’s difficult to get meals here on the weekends (unless we want to dine in the restaurants, which we don’t), so tonight I’ll make a chicken pie and tomorrow a slow cooker beef stew. Our dinner last night, chicken and cheese quesadillas, was so overcooked and awful I am ashamed of the Deli that provided it.
Had a nice interview yesterday with a man who had served in Nigeria. He said the country divisions in Africa had been arbitrarily and capriciously formed by the Brits in the 19th century, with no regard for tribal boundaries. He said where he served the tribe was mostly Yoruba. The most unusual thing he said was, “Nigeria was 40% Muslim, 40% Christian, and 90% Pagan.” Unlike the other two I interviewed, his subsequent career was not international. He just went back to work at Bethlehem Steel.
It is FEARFULLY cold here, but sunny, with 18 F. At least there doesn’t seem to be much wind. We won’t get out of the 20s today. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!
It’s 21 heading for 44 and sunny at the moment. Hopefully it will stay that way until late afternoon. Yesterday between sun and warmer temps the snow melted off the solar panels and we got 5.46 KWHs. The m-t-d is 98.9 so at least we’ll get over 100 by noon. We’ll see what else.
I’m moving slowly this morning. Actually most mornings. I suppose that’s not surprising and really doesn’t matter as I’m retired and don’t have to be any certain place or do any certain thing by any given time. But remembering what I was doing even 10 years ago. . . sigh. Not quite a full 8 hours of sleep (and of course interrupted) but close enough to count as a 3rd day in a row. Hands are borderline. (And of course are a large part of what makes it take so long to do stuff.)
Bobby’s teeth are infected so he’s on antibiotics before he can get them extracted. Which of course means coming up with at least one and probably more visits’ worth of transportation costs to get there and back ($36 round trip – he has to take a cab going but can get Uber back). Amelia’s got what she hopes is a cold or allergies and not another breakthrough COVID – she doesn’t leave her room much but when she does (as she did Thursday evening) she’s always passing people who aren’t masked. The motel staff are great but other people staying there aren’t. Jill’s got more drama in the family but thankfully not directly to herself. The university decided not to shut down after saying they were so my son, at the time working a “cover” shift in another store, had to scramble to get a crew together and open his store – then after he’d completed that cover shift go to his own store and work closing shift. Because his entire night crew is in quarantine. Hopefully everybody else is OK. Or at least hanging on.
Off to twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 40 and light clouds, but I can see a hint of blue in the sky. RonK has started pruning the hydrangeas and I’ve done a bit of clean up on the patios so the garden is starting to look better. It’s really wet though so I hope we have a few days without rain. Best wishes to all.