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 Wednesday morning, Moosekind! It’s too dark at 7:23 a.m. to see what kind of day it will be, but I believe it’s supposed to be another gray day. They spoke of fog and drizzle on the telly but they lied. Still no rain, now nearly 4 inches below normal.
I was so tired last night that I went to bed at 9. Unfortunately, I woke up at 4, thinking it was 5 a.m. Duh. This is not going to be a good day, I can tell. Problem is, Dearly is sleeping even worse than I, so he goes back to bed in the mornings and I have to catch it where I can. Oh, well, enough of that.
Shayda at Healthy Hound says Mandy is decompressing after the stressful changes n her life the last two months, and that’s why she sleeps so much. She found the perfect-size sofa for herself and it looked so funny I sent it to everyone!
Worried about the election. In Texas, I understand, some voters are gazing in horror at their ballots as they flip from Beto to Abbott! THIS is how the Rethugs hold on to power. I’m so sick of hearing about DFG and seeing his bloated pumpkin face. Why isn’t he in jail? Anyone else would be if they had done the things he’s done.
Not looking forward to my day, but at least I did my grocery shopping and went to the hairdresser yesterday, so I hope I don’t have to go anywhere. Still have to write to my poor aunt in a Rehab facility in Corpus Christi—she’s doing a LOT better—work on the deadline stories, and finally send an email to my writers’ group telling them what their new assignment is.
After the Quack, Dog-Murdering Mehmet Oz remark yesterday, I certainly hope the women of Pennsylvania will vote for Fetterman! He doesn’t even live in PA and votes in Turkish elections!
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.
Wednesday Meese. 61 here in Kingston, going up to 71 with rain. Will be headed into NYC this afternoon to speak in Brooklyn this evening.
Am shocked by this news of “culling cats” in Puerto Rico
:( for cats.
Hasn’t the government anything better to do than murder innocent cats?
Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …
It is 50 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 73. Sunny skies are in the forecast. We turned on the furnace yesterday afternoon to make sure it is working and we are set to go; one would not want to find out in the middle of the night – or on a weekend when there is no maintenance – that there is no heat. There is a fireplace in the main bedroom so we would not be in danger of freezing. Plus the overnight lows rarely get below freezing. So far this place seems pretty well insulated – the temperatures don’t drop much from evening to morning. That is a curse in the summer but could be a blessing in the winter.
I was glad to see that the idiots in the Progressive Caca backed off their insane demands that Ukraine negotiate with a war criminal. As someone pointed out on Twitter last night, it’s not our job to negotiate anything for Ukraine, it is Russia’s job to leave. Embarrassing.
So the polls say we are doomed, that Republicans will get dozens of seats in the House, take back the Senate, and install election deniers in state houses across the country. I think the polls are shifting but I am not sure the electorate is. My gut tells me that no one wants to admit to pollsters that they are voting for Democrats and certainly not because of the abortion issue or the concern about democracy. It is like the 2016 election when no one would admit that they were voting for tRump because he was (and is) a gross and disgusting person with low intelligence who is essentially a crime boss. This year with the ads screaming about the border overrun by criminals and fentanyl and inflation permanently destroying our way of life, no one wants to admit that they don’t believe the bs. They see with their own eyes that things are better now than they were under Republican rule and will quietly ignore the pollsters and vote with their brains. Call me Pollyanna – I can’t deal right now with thinking about the alternative. If the House flips, they will do everything they can to wreck the economy and faith in government in order to pave the way for tRump’s glorious return. Goddess help us if that were to happen – the United States would be uninhabitable.
Marco Rubio trying to gin up outrage that a guy he claims is a Democrat (he’s not) beat up one of his White Supremacist pals – probably for being an ahole – is classic Rubio. I hope that the Miami Herald reporting reaches enough people to expose him for what he is: a craven opportunist who does not deserve another term in the Senate. He is on my list of "Senators who I would most like to see lose." And by the way, if Pennsylvanians choose a quack remedy “doctor” over a man who is rehabbing from a stroke and had the courage to appear in a debate when he is not 100%, they deserve to be shunned. They are the MAGAts, supporting sociopaths and voting against their future well-being to own the libs. I am not sure what “abortion is between a woman, her doctor and local political leaders” means but if it is Oz trying to muddy the waters on his position, I hope that people see through it. Pennsylvania was a pickup opportunity (along with Wisconsin which was blown by the Mandela Barnes going full-berner) – we can still hold the Senate if we just re-elect our current Senators. Fingers crossed.
Well that was more than I intended to write and now I am late getting to my early morning projects.
See all y’all later!
Good morning, all! Very chilly here — 45 degrees. I don’t think my a/c ever kicked on yesterday. Working from home, so I’m going to take a short lunch and walk this afternoon. For now, watching astronomy & eating breakfast. Bfitz, I’m thinking about posting in the “helping Wednesday” diary – is it tacky to ask for donations for yourself? I don’t think the Mturk thing is ever going to pay enough to really help.
I’m sorry the Mturk thing isn’t working out. I know there are some kinds of paid online writing gigs but I don’t have a clue as to what and where, never mind how much they pay. You’ve been writing diaries & fundraisers for years so you’ve got the skill and experience. I just don’t know where to look for them.
When I was doing the community fundraisers, I wrote the diaries if someone else didn’t. Back then it was considered suspect for a person to write their own ask and in essence the person/people writing for the person needing help was/were vouching for them. I also posted them daily on the community links of any diary/community I had permission to do so. Since I was banned I understand the rules changed and the person – like you – needing help has to write their own diary, hope they’ve enough friends who know when it’s posting to keep it on the sidebar a while, and ask njm to put it on the community help list. AND confirm weekly, with updates, that it needs to stay on the list until the need is met. Last I heard you can only write one a month or you will be banned. (Aashirs nani will keep putting it on the HH diary but as you’ve seen that gets very little traffic.) Holding the Good Thoughts. {{{anotherdemocrat}}}
There was frost on the rooftops when I got up. Now it’s 44 heading for 67 and sunny. The sun did come out yesterday afternoon and we got 5.9 KWHs. The m-t-d is 198 so it will at least get over 200 today with 5 production days left after that. I have heard from neither SolarEdge nor the Ozark Solar guy.
Yesterday the computer fan started making nasty noises again. I didn’t wait for it to get as bad as it did the first time, just wrapped up stuff as quickly as I could and shut down for a couple of hours. That seems to have worked. I don’t know how long that will work but as long as it does I’m still online and communicating. And can put off upgrading the laptop to Windows 10 a bit longer.
Hands weren’t good yesterday and twitter kept borking. Hopefully today will be better. Off to twitter to find out. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Got in my mile. Chilly enough I needed long sleeves. In the office, drinking tea & eating breakfast. Today, I’ll just keep treading water, too tired to think of ways to make progress.
Thursday Meese. Bookstore event went well last night.
Posted.
Not good news for PR
Puerto Rico can’t catch a freaking break. I am sad to think that all progress will grind to a halt should Republicans take over Congress. I hope that our leaders have the courage to do a lame duck budget bill to get money set aside for the things that Republicans plan on defunding. It will be no time for “healing”, it will be time for brass knuckle politics to literally save lives.
Glad your bookstore talk went well last night, Sis! Enjoyed looking at the photo on Twitter.
Very sorry to hear about PR and other parts of the Caribbean. Hope they can all escape safely!
Good morning, meeses! Thursday …
It is 50 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 70. Sunny skies are in the forecast. It is very odd going from 90s to 50s in the span of about two weeks but I guess that is how it works. I retired my shorts (I may pull them out of the drawer for daytime hikes) and wearing my sweatshirt for my morning walks. I love the cool mornings and pleasant evenings – it is just a shock to my system!
My vote was received and the status is Verifying Signature. I did everything I can and now it is in the hands of others. I hope the tightening polls remind everyone that they need to get out and vote – there will be no landslides this year. The ads here now include some from the Republican Accountability Project, a Never Trump group which has found Republicans who are sad about what happened to their party and who are encouraging people to vote against the extremists. In a state that is red at its core – they voted against tRump more than for Democrats in 2020 – maybe that will help. I am convinced that the abortion issue is still on people’s minds and that the pollsters who think that people now care more about gas prices are not posing their questions properly. We are also getting a lot of blowback to the Republican’s plan to wreck Social Security and Medicare – you can convince younger people that gas prices are the number one issue, but the olds are laser focused on Social Security and Medicare. In any event, we can do without the "Democrats Are In Despair" headlines from the corporate media which will sacrifice our democracy to promote clicks. Fie on them!
Yesterday was another lost day as the morning got filled with unexpected projects and then the expected projects took longer than I thought they would take. So about 90% of my list is still pending and I really need to get some things done before the weekend. We have one October day next week but I really don’t want to wait until then to get October projects done.
See all y’all later!
It’s 40 heading for 67 and sunny. At least at the moment. We generated 7.26 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is at least at 205. If we can somehow manage at least 7 a day for these last 5 days of October we’ll generate a little more than we did last October. Which isn’t saying much. SolarEdge did finally respond. The optimizer is out of stock and they “don’t have an ETA” on when it will be back in stock. They’ll ship it immediately once it is. And the Ozark Solar guy basically said there’s nothing we can do but wait. Apparently PV systems are now like computer systems. There are no “after-market parts” you’re stuck with the manufacturer. sigh.
I need to do some errands (milk, catfood, firestarter) so I’m heading out now. I’ll get to twitter and Dee’s diary when I get back. Holding the Good Thoughts for everybody. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good Thursday morning, Meese! Lawks, I’m late to the blog today but we rose late. That’s because we both had HORRIBLE nights. I woke up at 3:30 to find Mandy snoring gently in my ear. Carefully lifted her off the bed and put her back in her new crate. She did stay there. Then I read a book until 4:30, then went back to sleep for a couple of hours. The trials of being old and sleepless! Dearly had an even worse night and is making up for it in the back bedroom right now.
Beautiful day in Ashburn, 55 F. now, going up to 63 F. later. Today happens to be my Texas grandson’s 25th birthday. He’s working on his master’s in anthropology from UT. He loves the Austin soccer team, art, and, er, weed. I need to send him an e-card.
So is Elon really taking over Twitter tomorrow? Are we all supposed to get off it and join a new platform? I’ll miss Tweeter, but would prefer not to be on the same platform as Musky and DFG. I hate feelthy capitalists who lay people off at any time, but especially at this time of year.
It’s a gorgeous morning in Ashburn, but the winds are blowing up to 25 miles per hour. Dearly had his hat blown off twice! I’m going to take Mandy out in a little while. She has but one idea: she wants to get on the bed and sleep with us. Her new crate arrived yesterday, it was soft-sided and easy to assemble even though we can’t read Chinese. She hated being zipped up in it but we finally unzipped it so she could feel happier.
The neighbors in our hallway have been so nice in our time of sorrow and joy. One gave me a little pot of yellow chrysanthemums, and another wrote a note attached to a bag of doggy treats. Several wrote notes of sympathy and all expressed happiness that we have a new furbaby. She is very sweet, not barky, and loves other dogs and other people.
I told my writers the uses of dialogue in fiction, so they all expressed gratitude. That’s their next assignment. We are not going to write about Thanksgiving, turkeys, or Puritans for our November meeting.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!
My approach to Twitter is going to be to wait and see what happens. I use it not just to share my opinions but to follow news including sports and local news. I think what will happen is that I will prune my follows – if people tweet live tweets from gross people into my timeline, I will unfollow and if necessary block them. If people want to share gross people’s ideas, they can screencap the tweet and tweet that. I don’t want to share a timeline with terrible people who want to kill me and my family and destroy democracy.
Sadly, there is no alternative.
That’s pretty much what I’m going to do.
I’m with Marc Elias
I am hoping that the guys from Twitter that he fired (and still plans to fire) build something new. I don’t think Twitter survives financially if Musk turns it into a garbage heap – will businesses want their tweets in among the literal nazis threatening to kill people? He will try "his way" for a while then realize that a wild west free for all is not going to work. I am not sure how he fixes it after it is trashed.
I wish he had waited until after the midterm elections to implement his plan because the disinformation tsunami that will soon hit could tilt close elections. We will need to rely on traditional news sources to tell us what is true and what is not – that has never worked out well for us. :(
Good morning, 51 and light rain. Our furnace is finally fixed, but we need to re program the new thermostat because it’s to warm indoors now. I know we can figure it out, but having a new device to manage felt more complicated than I could cope with yesterday so I just went outdoors to cool down :)
I’m trying to ignore the upcoming election because I can’t cope with the thought of the R’s gaining more seats. I wander outside to avoid that reality too! Best wishes to all.
Some thermostats are like little computers! I wish mine was a little smarter – essentially I can select heat, cool or off and a temperature. I miss the ones I had (even in the short-term apartment) that let me choose a nighttime and a daytime temperature – without that, there is a lot of fiddling around. We leave it turned off overnight now and will have to manually adjust it before bedtime when it gets colder.
Friday Meese. Took my computer in to the store yesterday. Blue Screen of Death issue was not resolved by remote techs. They have to send it out – so may not have my puter back for 3 weeks. I’m using my husband’s – but his is not set up like mine and doesn’t have my bookmarks. Sigh. Mine won’t have them either when I get it back since they are going to wipe the whole thing. Grrr.
It’s 40 here in Kingston NY going up to 57.
Puerto Rico
Flooding
Be careful- don’t go near rivers or streams
Sorry about your computer! There is a way to save off bookmarks for just about every browser. When I shut down my office and knew I would be working from my laptop for at least 10 days (and maybe forever if my moving van ended up in a canyon!), I backed up my FireFox and Edge shortcuts and saved them to the cloud in case I needed them. By the way, you can set up a new user profile on any Windows computer so that you don’t have to disturb your husband’s settings as you re-build bookmarks. Then you could back those up and restore them to your computer when it is returned.
Thanks Jan!
Supposed to rain this morning, not a drought buster but something is better than nothing. Got in my mile. Going to a movie/concert this evening. Coldplay is simulcasting a concert to some movie theaters. Closest I’m gonna get to a concert. Happy pop music.
Good morning, meeses! Friday …
It is 46 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 72. Sunny skies are in the forecast. It will be a little warmer tomorrow but highs in the low-70s upper-60s are going to be the norm for a while. Excellent walking weather but it means slippers in the house.
Planned Parenthood is reopening its Arizona abortion clinics after a state judge put the 1864 abortion ban on hold while the case against it works its way through the courts. We have the chance to get rid of it completely if we can elect the right people – people who are interested in protecting the right to choose and willing to defend that in the courts. There is at least one lawsuit pending (I am not sure if it has been filed yet) that challenges the abortion ban on the state’s constitutional right to privacy. The US Constitution does not have that right – it was inferred from the 14th Amendment which is on its last legs – but many state constitutions, including Arizona’s, have that right enumerated. Our Attorney General candidate is all over it and she has a good chance of winning.
I am ignoring polls EXCEPT the one that shows Sharice Davids up by a lot in her ratfked Congressional District. Kansass legislators tried to gerrymander her suburban district into a solid R and if she wins it will be a giant poke in the eye to the haters and destroyers of democracy. She had suburban voters in the Kansas City metro area and college kids and they gave her a bunch of wheat farmers. Fingers crossed that the poll is right!
I got a few things done yesterday but not enough to feel confident that I have everything I need as I head into the last weekend of the month. Microsoft released a new feature update for Windows and I should run it on my computers and then release it on client’s computers this weekend once I get it vetted.
See all y’all later!
Good Friday morning, Moosekind! When I took Mandy to the courtyard before daybreak there was a beautiful clear night sky glittering with stars. Wish I weren’t so ignorant of astronomy. Right now it’s 45 F., on its way up to 60 F.
People love Mandy! She received three presents yesterday, two from neighbors and one from M’Daughter in Texas. She STILL wants to sleep on our bed and this morning I once again woke up to find her lying next to me. Gods! As of 1:30 p.m., we’ll have had her for a week today. If only she were potty-trained! And if only she’d sleep in her soft-sided crate. As it is, we’re debating moving her crate into the kitchen. Oh, well, I don’t want to blether on and on about our domestic arrangements.’
Got a lot done yesterday and hope to get more done today. I have to make folders for my four big piles—stories for the quarterly, the legacy letter stuff, Writers’ Group offerings and so on. The downside of living in a home for the aged is that people one likes are always popping their clogs. Yesterday I learned that a lovely woman upstairs is suffering from an incurable lung disease. Her husband is on portable oxygen. Oh, man!
My poor husband feels worse and worse. The pulmonary doctor he has been seeing for years and years doesn’t listen to him. He’s going to try a lung specialist at a different Kaiser office. Sometimes I do wonder how long he’ll be with me. If he continues to worsen I’m going to take a leave of absence from the Committee work. I can’t concentrate on interviewing people when he needs me!
Well, that’s all I have for now. Dee, I am so sorry for your computer problems. That’s awful! Not to mention annoying.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.
It’s 52 heading for 57 and sunny at the moment. Clouds are supposed to move in this afternoon. sigh. Yesterday we generated 7.3 and the m-t-d is 212.76 – if we can just pick up 25 in these last 4 days we’ll inch out of last place for October generation.
I think I got about 7 hours of sleep, but it was shifted down. So I’m “behind my time” again. I’ll be glad when we get back to standard time. I wish AR was one of the states that didn’t do “daylight” time. Oh well. I guess I’d best get over to twitter – I’m not leaving until they ban me (or at least until they ban the folks I went to twitter in the first place to find/follow after I was banned at DK) – and find out how folks are doing. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 49 and cloudy outside my window today. I was in my sewing room yesterday and finally made a table cloth using fabric and trim I’ve had for years. The main fabric is a lovely woven damask with a leaf motif, the reverse is burgundy woven with a nice sheen, and the trim is a lovely tassel fringe. I have a low round table in the center of my living room and it’s covered with stacks of books. We repainted the pedestal a deep burgundy last winter so the new table cover covers the old top and compliments the curved legs of the table base. So all was carefully planned but now I think it’s a bit fussy! Oh well, I’ll get used to it and if I don’t it can join the stack of things I’ve sewn but no longer use. My poor kids are going to have quite a legacy someday!
Best wishes to all.
It sounds lovely. It may just be an issue of getting used to it. I have an issue with changing stuff myself. {{{HUGS}}}
Saturday Meese. 33 degrees here in Kingston NY. Brrrr. Going up to 61. Got a call from Best Buy – they wiped and reinstalled my operating system – because they think there was corruption. I can pick it up today – if the Blue Screen problem persists they will have to send the puter to HP to repair hardware and/or give me a new puter (it’s under warranty)
Fingers crossed that it was a software issue.
Puerto Rico
I’m glad to hear that you got your computer back but don’t envy the task of rebuilding your profile. Now you can get see firsthand the value of having your content in the cloud and, after determining what is missing, take steps to put more things up there to make recovery easier (like the bookmarks you noticed were missing). I take periodic screenshots of my desktop and Start Menu so that I can remember what programs and apps I have.
I hope that the OS corruption was the cause. I am still suspicious of a failing video component. My recommendation would be to slowly add your software back so that if it is one of your programs stressing out a component, you can maybe narrow it down.
Good luck!
Good morning, meeses! Saturday …
It is 52 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 73, sunny skies are in the forecast. I had been looking for my moon and found her last night in the southwest sky. She is a perfect waxing crescent, one of my favorite moon phases.
Count me as one of those NOT surprised that there was an attack on a Nancy Pelosi family member. All you have to do is see the horrible attack ads on TV this election cycle – they are predictably anti-Nancy Pelosi (have been for years) but now they have her face (and Biden’s face) superimposed on video of migrants swarming the border and people rioting in American cities. Add those old standbys to the unleashed rabid MAGAts being told that theie white supremacy is being challenged and it is the perfect toxic stew for a political assassination attempt. What was also predictable was that Republicans were largely silent, refusing to denounce their followers, and some of them, like Governor Dumbkin of Virginia and Ronna WontAdmitToBeingARomney at the RNC, are using it in their stump speeches: "Send Nancy home to care for the husband almost killed by one of us!" Another reminder that there are no good Republicans, they are all terrible people and their party needs to be burned to the ground and the earth salted where it once stood.
In other news, it appears that the complicit media is ginning up crime fears (as opposed to reporting reality) ahead of the midterms because their corporate overlords have determined that a functioning democracy doesn’t generate enough ad clicks and that they need the chaos of a trumpian dystopia to survive in the 24/7 news cycle demanding to be filled with something. Remember when people went to bed at night and woke up to read the news in their morning newspaper or hear it on the radio during their drive to work? No more! A firehose of information barrages us all day and all night, the “legacy” of the tRump era and the overnight tweetstorms. Speaking of Twitter, it sounds like Musk realizes that the value of his “investment” has already shrunk precipitously as advertisers are now aware that their ads will be posted on the same timeline as Kanye West’s anti-semitic tweets and Nazis threatening to kill people using graphic language. My hope is that Musk gets tired of his toy and turns it over to experts to run it. We shall see!
I woke up thinking that my mantel clock had stopped chiming and it turned out that it had gotten out of sync with my bedroom clock and I had simply missed it donging 4. Whew! I have no idea where I could get it fixed here – the last time it stopped working, I had to give it to the last living clocksmith in Madison and he had it in his shop for three months. It is possible that it would have to become a non-working antique ornament the next time it stops. Fingers crossed that that doesn’t happen!
See all y’all later!
Good morning. Had a good time at the concert/movie last night. I was surprised at how few people were there, but that means the closest person to me was several seats away. Cold (by Texas standards) this morning. I slept really poorly, but I’m up & watching the news. Today: groceries…..and that’s all I think I’ll have energy to do.