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”, Motley Meese! The week begins …
Morning low of 52 degrees in the Desert Southwest 🌵 with an expected daytime high of 73. Partly cloudy skies are in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Good morning. Got a lot done yesterday, and this morning I have my tea steeping, so that’s one accomplishment. Today: registration for the AIDS Ride opens, church and thawing out/packing up next week’s food — a 5 day work week is going to feel super long.
registered for the AIDS Ride, shared on FB, Twitter & Blue Sky, will do a diary at the orange place this afternoon
Good morning Meese. 25 here – brrrr.
Black Music Sunday posted
Good cloudy Sunday morning, Moosekind! ‘Tis 28 shivery degrees F. here in Ashburn, going up to a balmy 39 F. later. Evidently the towels and tender treatment I’ve given the citrus in the cooler on the porch is working, because when I retrieved a red grapefruit this morning it was perfectly chilled, not frozen.
Today I MUST plan the Winter Solstice ritual, which will happen three weeks from yesterday. Also must do full duty at the gym. I did an abbreviated version yesterday. Yesterday I ate a LOT of carbs, which of course showed up on the scales this morning. As long as that second number is a 2, I can be fairly content.
This afternoon there is an event sponsored by the Catholic church, of lessons and carols. The lessons will send me right to sleep, but I’ll enjoy the carols. I’m taking someone with me, one of my writers who feels completely at sea without her best friend, who unfortunately died last month. She needs a whole new set of friends. She and I will go to a “Woman to Woman” session at some point in December. That’s a group of women who gather to discuss life in general. I attended one or two meetings years ago, but there they were, drinking wine at two o’clock in the afternoon. I felt uncomfortable. Then I felt like a Puritan for being judgmental and uncomfortable. The meetings may have improved by now.
I keep emailing my friend to ask if she approves of the article I wrote and not hearing anything back. Crud. Gotta turn it into the Managing Editor tomorrow, so if she hasn’t responded by then, too bad!
Everyone in the Northeastern Corridor is receiving snow except bone-dry Virginia. Sniff. Oh, well, one is too old to play in it anyway.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!
It’s 31 heading for 51 and overcast. Not a great start to a new month. We finished November with 184.6 KWHs which put 2024 in 4th place for November generation, life of the system. The best December ever got was 202.16 so the “it’d take a miracle” goal is 203. The worst December ever got was 142.66 last year so the “at least” goal is 142. Realistically anything between 160 and 180 I’ll be delighted with.
Creaky, clumsy, and groggy so very slow. But I’ve got the bathrooms and the vacuuming done and the bed stripped. I’ll put on the clean sheets later today after I’ve cleared my first round of boosting. Which I’d best get to. Holding the Good/Healing/Protecting Thought for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}
Here’s my AIDS Ride diary at the orange place: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/12/1/2289607/-First-Hill-Country-Ride-for-AIDS-2025-diary
Good morning. Diary yesterday was pretty successful — got nearly $200 raised! Cold for my walk/run, had to talk myself into every minute, but I managed 1.1 running out of 1.5 total. Maybe it was the terrible night’s sleep — longest continuous stretch was maybe 4 hours. Ugh.
It’s 30 heading for 50 and sunny. Yesterday we generated 6.6 KWHs which starts us off on track for 180. A good sign. I hope.
It’s hard to get out of a warm bed and start my day, whether or not I got good sleep – which I didn’t – but obviously I did it. Cats have been fed and are asleep. Litterboxes dealt with, outdoor critters (birds & neighborhood cats) have food out, mail’s in the mailbox awaiting the carrier to pick it up. Just finished my own breakfast. Time to start my boosting day. (I lead a boring life. Thank Goddess/es.) Holding the Good/Healing/Protecting Thought for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}
Hearing about your day is NOT boring to your friends! We adore you.
{{{Diana}}}
Good cold Monday morning, Moosekind! ‘Tis 31 F. in bone-dry Ashburn, hubby has gone to sleep after eating his breakfast, and I’m shortly going to get ready for the day. We have a wildly exciting day planned–going upstairs to the storage locker to get the Christmas wreaths, followed by a 1 o’clock visit to Costco. I have to get my hearing aids cleaned. I’m incapable of doing it myself: have tried and failed miserably in the past.
I did something that neither my primary physician nor the dermatology nurse practitioner was able to do: diagnosed my own condition. I apparently have eczema. It’s an itchy redness on my throat, my earlobes, and a small patch on my cheek. You can get it by living with someone who has asthma, which is one of Dearly’s many afflictions. I have some really strong cream that helps, but I can’t use too much of it—it’s a steroid. Old age is not for sissies!
Have a difficult email to write. Because we now have a vacancy in the Writers’ Group, I invited the first person on the waiting list to join. I told her what we are going to be working on. I’m teaching the group how to get started writing a novel. She wrote back that she’d been expecting to critique other people’s drafts and have her own critiqued. She asked if I knew she was a published writer (yes), and that what the group will be doing is too elementary for her.
Will grit my teeth and write a nice email back. (My new year’s resolution is to be kind.) I will tell her we’ll be working on how to write a novel until APRIL, which is of course Shakespeare month, so April will be devoted to poetry. We’ll explore writing villanelles and free verse. I’ll ask her if she would feel more comfortable starting her own group so she can do what she was expecting to do. As for me, I will continue to run the group as I see fit. People evidently like it, as they’re still with me after three years.
Needless to say, I was LIVID when I returned home from the carol singing yesterday and saw her email, so decided to wait until I’ve calmed down.
Okay, enough griping. Off to look for a Winter Solstice ritual for a group of 20-plus persons who are not Witches but who are Pagan friendly. I really want to do a good job on this.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!
Late greetings Meese. Not much news from Puerto Rico:
Good morning, 33 and foggy outside my windows today. A neighbor across the street has very bright Christmas lights outlining the roof of her house and the fog has muted the colors, which I prefer. LED lights are too bright for my old eyes. I’ve started but not finished getting the Christmas decor in place so I hope I can be more productive today. I’m tempted to tie a bow to the step ladder be done! Best wishes to all.
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is 68 degrees in Tucson 🌵 with an expected daytime high of 79. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
I am not sure yet how I feel about the Biden pardon. I understand that the failure of the government to finish the case is political and that someone close to Joe Biden would suffer because of who his father is rather than the merits of his case. However, Hunter will have his problem taken care of exactly because of who his father is. What about the hundreds of others who are swept up in the politics of the Biden-Trump-Biden transitions who will not be pardoned?
I am going to ignore the news today so that I can concentrate on getting some projects out the door. I missed one deadline over the weekend and I have another one looming. I think one of the projects handed over to me is going to be a big mess because there are too many gaps in the project scope that appear to need someone to step in and do. I had been told that I would have a very narrow role and that seems to be expanding but not in a good way. I have no interest sitting in the blame chair. Anyway, I need to get my expected part of the project done so that I can see if that will be enough.
See all y’all later!
Tuesday morning Meese. Cold weather continues here in Kingston – it’s 26. Snow predicted for tomorrow.
Puerto Rico
Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …
It is 50 degrees in Tucson 🌵 with an expected daytime high of 77 degrees. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast. I have not seen the waxing crescent yet as she is very thin and rising in mid-morning. I may be able to catch the moonset this evening if I can remember – she should be visible just after sunset before she drops below the buildings in the WSW.
I will be following the DNC chairman elections. I hope that Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair, gets the nod. He has good instincts and while he couldn’t pull off a miracle at the top of the ticket, he saved Tammy Baldwin’s seat and over the past few years got them two Supreme Court justices who helped end the partisan gerrymandering that plagued the state. We only lost the 2024 election by a total of 110,000 votes in three states – that is a gap we can close with the right kind of leadership.
Joe Biden’s Legacy
1. Trashing Anita Hill and giving a lifetime seat on SCOTUS to Clarence Freaking Thomas
2. Ratfking the Democratic Party’s 2024 Election chances by insisting that “only he could beat Trump” and dropping out after it was too late for anyone to make up lost ground.
3. Pardoning his son Hunter in a shocking show of disrespect to the Justice system he pretended to care about.
I am not even going to include palling around with White Supremacists in the Senate and his full-throated support for a crime bill that targeted Black people. He rehabilitated himself as Barack Obama’s Vice President and then tossed all that into the dumpster. Yes, I am bitter. If Kamala could have gone through a normal primary season and made her case to the America people for the full 10 months, she would have had a better chance to defeat the fascists and become the first woman President.
I have many things to do today and a nice quiet morning to do them in so I should take advantage of that.
See all y’all later!
Good morning. I voted in local runoff races yesterday — and reminded my neighbor about voting. Getting ready for work, and I will log off early because we had to enter the whole month’s time early, so if I don’t I’m not just not exercising, I’m also robbing myself. Anyway: work, exercise and avoiding the news — the new normal.
Good frosty Tuesday morning, Meese! It’s 30 F. in Ashburn, clear as a lake in the northwoods, and we’ll have a nasty wind later on. The temp. will rise to 43 F. I must hurry to get washed and brushed so I can work out. Didn’t have a chance yesterday (I did walk, though), so must make up for it today.
Then Dearly and I must do errands. He’ll go to Target, I’ll get my hair done and pick up my ritual dress from the tailor. It needed alterations. Will spend the afternoon looking for a ritual. I like the idea of meditating on the long dark night we’re about to endure, but don’t want to keep 20-plus coveners standing about in the cold. Will think of something.
Yes, I’m going to go about my biz today and avoid the news. I’ve stopped listening to the car radio. I’m just sick of it all. We tried, we failed. Now we must, in our own ways, decided on strategies to impede the Trumpanzees. If the French in Occupied France could do it in WWII, so can we.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!
I changed my default car radio station from NPR news to local public radio classical music. That is the same as what I did at the end of 2016. We will survive but there will be a lot of pain.
It’s 26 heading for 48 but the windchill will be around 40. At least it’s sunny. Yesterday we generated 7.4 KWHs and the m-t-d at 14 is on track.
Rocky night. Sinusitis. Sigh. Hands are stiff and achy and I’m moving rather slowly this morning. That’s pretty much a cut-and-paste until next June. But the waning year is almost waned and will start waxing again soon. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst is all we can ever do. So we will. Off to start my boosting day. Holding the Good/Healing/Protecting Thought for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}
Good morning, 32 and partly sunny in Bellingham today. I see the PT this afternoon, my last session for this year. Learning to use the walker has not been easy but with his assistance I am more mobile and in less pain so I’m very grateful. I’ll do a few more Christmas tasks and that will be my day. Best wishes to all.
Good morning. Not really cold today, sorta rainy, I set my mint out to get free water. Watching astronomy until it’s late enough that I can start calling people. Got a lot of work done yesterday, but there’s always more people.
Wednesday Meese. Snowed a little bit here last night – just a dusting, and we may get more today. This made me smile:
Puerto Rico