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. This week has been a long year. I am definitely going to kickboxing today.
It’s 64 heading for 92/heat index 94 and sunny at the moment. Yesterday we generated right at 12.5 KWHs and the m-t-d at 201.5 neither gained nor lost ground. So that’s good.
Was reminded of something yesterday I’d totally forgotten. As of the beginning of this fiscal year (fed fiscal, not state) AR went off net metering. I forgot because I’m grandfathered in. As long as I don’t change anything about my system. If I add, subtract, or even rearrange the panels, I lose my grandfathered status. So as long as I do nothing except get them cleaned occasionally – which I’d better start doing because I need all the help I can get – I’m still swapping KWH for KWH. If I use 20 KWHs from the power company but give them back 20 KWHs from my PV system, we’re even. If I lose my grandfathered net metering status, if I use 20 power-company KWHs I buy them for 8 cents each but they buy my 20 PV-system KWHs at 2 cents each. I’m sure you’re not surprised that most of the PV installers in AR have gone out of business. Which was partly the point. Ozark Solar (my installer) is hanging on by doing maintenance on existing systems (including cleaning). It’s a 1-person concern so he might manage to keep going. Maybe. So. Cost AR jobs to give more money to a mega at least national & I think international corporate (AEP). That’s what our bloody red legislature calls “serving” AR.
Everybody’s tired. I think it’s adrenal exhaustion myself. Which probably also the point. But I’m lucky. My health may not be great but I have no need of doctors or prescription meds so I’m not dependent on the honesty or lack thereof in the health industrial complex. I own my home. And as long as my Social Security comes in, which it did, I’ve enough to live on and even a bit to spare for others. I count my blessings daily. Sometimes hourly. Meanwhile, I’d best be about my boosting day. Holding the Good/Healing/Protecting Thought for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}
Good afternoon, 54 and sunny in Bellingham. My slow morning is over so I’d best get busy doing something. Resting my arthritic joints makes everything more comfortable but it’s a very quiet life and I would like to do more. So I’ll wander around with my clippers and see what happens. Best wishes to all.
Good morning. Yesterday got away from me, then last night, my Democratic club had a meeting. We were supposed to have a joint meeting with the UDems; something we’ve done for decades, but University administration said “no outside groups”. Where’s that eyeroll emoji?
Good morning, meeses! Thursday …
It is 75 degrees in Tucson 🌵 with an expected daytime high of 93. Partly cloudy skies are in the forecast with a chance of rain. Yesterday’s chance of rain turned into a nice shower that lasted well over an hour and set the wash running.
Gak, the daily news headlines get worse and worse. There is no way to boycott media organizations that are rolling over to pay homage to the dictator – it is all of them! Arizona wants to rename one of the major highways in the Phoenix area after Charlie Kirk, a literal white supremacist who espouses the banning women from the workplace. There is going to be a lot of cleanup when America returns to its senses and realizes that the MAGAt movement is fascism and rejects it. There is nothing worthy of memorializing in the Kirk ideology. We can be sorry for his family and horrified that political assassination is rearing its ugly head again but goddess save us from those who are using this as an excuse to roll out a defacto repeal the 1st Amendment.
I lost track of some things that I needed to stay on top of over the last week and I have to figure out where the breakdown in my reminder system is. I may have too many lists and no way to make the HOT LIST any more prominent. I think what I need to do is get more things off my lists.
The Mercury forced a game three and the Valkyries came within one point of forcing a game three. We will have another few days of Round 1 in the playoffs! I feel badly for the Valkyries whose owner scheduled something else in their home arena during the playoffs and made them play their playoff game 50 miles south in a different venue instead of the warm confines of Ballhalla. Another reminder that the needs of women’s sports teams will always get short shrift.
See all y’all later!
I feel sorry for the Valks too. My Liberty sucked. Oh well.
I wonder if having Stewie back but not 100% took them out of their game plan. They did not look like the Liberty teams we have seen.
Krugman nails it:
(Bolding Mine)
You can’t reconcile his ideology and a multi-cultural society that includes women working, women running companies and women being elected to high office. Anyone who lionizes Kirk and embraces Kirkism rejects women, people of color and non-Christians. Fk them, really.
Nice fall weather here today in Kingston.
Puerto Rico
It’s 64 heading for 88. Sunny at the moment but clouds moving in and we might get some rain. We did get .2″ yesterday afternoon. Yesterday we generated 10.99 KWHs and the m-t-d at 212.53 is still on track but lost a little ground.
The news keeps getting worse. I mostly don’t read it. I’ve a headline aggregator I see 2x a day plus whatever shows up in my notifications on Xitter, Spoutible, & Bluesky. That’s bad enough. There’s nothing new going on. Not even new for here. Just loud & proud stuff we thought/told ourselves we’d overcome/gotten past. But America has always been at least 1/3 fascist. And the fascist-lite have always swung back and forth between freedom for more and freedom for cis WASP men only. Whether or not we can get back out of the 19th century within my lifetime I don’t know. We’ll probably need outside help to do it and unfortunately our military is bigger than the next 10 countries’ militaries combined.
Oh well, as long as I have an online voice, I will use it to boost the needs of folks in need. And I’d best be about that now. Holding the Good/Healing/Protecting Thought for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}
Good Thursday morning, Meese! ‘Tis a lovely day, 68 F. right now in Ash-no-longer- burned, going up to 83 F. or thereabouts. We’ve had RAIN, lovely, lovely rain, .82 of an inch or more. They said it would move out last night, but They was wrong: this morning, when I arose at the unearthly hour of 6 a.m., I could feel that my pot of basil on the porch was wet, and after the sun rose I could see that the edges of the screened porch floor were wet. Lovely!
Finally got my Plavix and baby aspirin yesterday. Took them at dinner, again at breakfast. Odds are I won’t pop off any time soon unless I’m run over by an elephant. I hope I don’t have to have another three-way screaming match over the telephone when this prescription runs out.
Jan, you got me to subscribe to Paul Krugman, whom I adore. Agree with the rest of you that it’s too disgusting to read anything in the newspoopers. However, I would rather like to know the details of those killer whales that decided to bring down that boat. My friend, who is currently on vacation in Cancun, swam with a dolphin and was even allowed to kiss it on the nose. She said their skin is very smooth. That’s the thing I miss most about not going to the beach: I loved to get up early and watch them playing close to shore.
Kamala’ book will be out soon. Wonder if I dare read it. Still haven’t managed to read Hillary’s book because 17 years later it still hurts.
What other news? I’d better get busy with personal grooming–I’m receiving a TDAP injection at 11. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!
I bought (as a gesture of support) but never read Hillary’s book and then donated it in my pre-move book purge. I might buy Kamala’s for the same reason but will buy the eBook so that I don’t have to store it and since I never plan to read it. I know what happened – an entitled white male of a certain generation decided that “he alone can fix it” and refused to step aside and let the next generation take a crack at it. His selfishness led to the chaos of the 2024 election cycle when he had to step aside and our nominee did not have enough time to define herself and the election ads were lies and discredited memes because that was all there was. We lost valuable time and then lost. I would like to say we learned a lesson but “learning a lesson” that is too late, when so much damage is being done, has been done and will be done, is a not very valuable. There may very well be no country left to save in 2028.
Friday Meese. 58 going up to 78 here in Kingston.
My Liberty plays Jan’s Mercury tonight at 9PM. (past my bedtime)
Puerto Rico
The Liberty v Mercury game will be on past my bedtime also. I will probably watch the first half then go to bed.
I was disappointed that the Racist Enabling Indiana Fever won because it may require me to root for the Evil Empire in the next round!
Lots of close games and lots of terrible officiating. I think that the players need to lobby for a different way of officiating playoff games, the action is clearly too fast for a 3 person refereeing crew and one challenge per game is a joke. It should be one per quarter and they need an additional ref whose job it is to review the mistakes of the other refs and fix them without needing a review. The fans see the mistakes (double-dribbling should be a no brainer to see and call) the people at home see the mistakes and it makes people angry and upset. The best team is not always winning the game.
Good morning. Another restless night. Tough to sleep in a fascist state.
Yeah, you really don’t even know what rights you are poised to lose next. The First Amendment right is being pooh poohed by the MAGAt cult including a lot of Republican electeds. We are finding out just how much the Republican Party hates the rights enumerated in the Constitution when it helps people who are not them – it is bad time to have a Supreme Court who puts party over country. :(
Good morning, meeses! Friday …
It is 73 degrees in Tucson 🌵 with an expected daytime high of 90. Partly cloudy skies with a chance for thunderstorms later in the day. Right now the sky is mostly clear and I can see all my stars over the mountains. Yesterday we had a lot of lightning and some rain but I don’t think it was a lot – definitely more over the mountains. I don’t think this is rain from the monsoon but rain from the hurricanes. The earth does not care, rain is rain!
I guess it is good news that RatFKjr’s vaccine advisory death panel is allowing the MMR, just not for children under 4. Parents can get the individual immunization but not as a single dose. I was reading some scary articles about when “herd immunity” will end for America for certain diseases – it sounds like the low vaccination rates in states like Texas are making it more likely. I feel badly for people who can’t get immunized and who rely on herd immunity – the others who are choosing to let their children die of preventable diseases get less of my sympathy.
It is finally Friday and I can put together my list of projects that I can do over the weekend that require blocks of time that do not exist during the work week.
See all y’all later!
It’s 63 heading for 85/heat index 90 and sunny at the moment. It clouded up around 3 yesterday and we ending up generating 9 KWHs. The m-t-d at 221.5 is still on track for 360 but losing ground. There’s a lot of afternoon clouds the rest of the month in the forecast. We shall see what we shall see.
Waiting for a call from the vet. I left her a message yesterday, update on Cloud’s condition, to see if she wanted to adjust his meds before I take him back on the 29th to run the numbers again and see how his thyroid is doing. Also to get his 2nd monthly shot of the OA treatment if the numbers show that’s doing anything.
Not much else to say. Personally everything’s going reasonably OK. I’m not more creaky than usual. Natalia’s divorce and the various financial things that go with it are not going along as fast as we’d like but they are going alone. Friends and family are managing. And the news of the outside world sux. Sigh. Oh well. Off to start my boosting day. Holding the Good/Healing/Protecting Thought for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}
I did not realize that this guy was on Bluesky. MAGAts are very unhappy that he has weighed in on the latest assault on our small d democratic values.
Good afternoon, 55 and light clouds in Bellingham. Between managing my boring medical realities and avoiding reading the news I’m officially boring! Sorru I’ve been absent but the days are all blurring together and I’m not doing much. We are going to the bookstore cafe for lunch today and if energy allows I want to stop at the native plant nursery. The plants under the hemlock tree are not growing so they need to be replaced with more dry shade tolerant plants. Marcus will be here tomorrow to remove an aspen tree and trim overhanging branches in other trees so that area will get more sun. I think native plants will do better and I’ll add some variegated leaf hostas for color, and if that doesn’t work I’ll just cover the soil with compost and bark. I don’t have enough gardening energy to spend it nurturing plants that are not responding. Wish I could cull the orange guy and his evil minions as well!
Best wishes to all.
Hahaha! Yes, the current regime could use a thinning of the brownshirts although I doubt that much will grow in that fallow soil.
Good morning, meeses! Saturday …
It is 77 degrees in Tucson 🌵 with an expected daytime high of 93. Sunny skies are in the forecast. We had some storms in the area yesterday evening but they did not drop rain here. Our moon is nearly dark, at 2% this morning, and will be new tomorrow at 12:54pm MST.
I read a few articles yesterday that showed up in my aggregator, looking for a glimmer of hope. There were very few. We are left hoping that “this overreach will finally be too much” and always disappointed when Republican electeds, who hold all the power, are fine with it. It is not much different from the George W. Bush administration where norms were broken daily, the power of government was used to punish political enemies and the courts, particularly the Supreme Court which installed Bush into power, were fine with whatever the Republican president and vice president wanted to do. We did at least have the mainstream media and colleges and universities. This time around, the dictatorial tactics are attached to a petty vain man who is driven by personal grievances and buoyed up by a cult that includes some of the most powerful people in the country. One commentator called it the “Orbánization of America”, named after the strongman in Hungary, where we are devolving into a dictatorship bit by bit. No white knight will save us but if we can have fair elections in 2026, maybe just maybe, there will be enough people horrified by what they see that they will give Democrats a chance to fix things.
I watched what I think was a basketball game last night but looked more like a brawl, at least in the first half. I am not too pleased with how physical the game has become. I believe in defense but not hacking and whacking on every single possession. Every blocked shot attempt does not have to take off someone’s arm, every drive to the basket does not have to end up with a body on the floor. The Mercury now move on to play the Lynx, a team that has owned them all year and who is driven by their loss in Game 5 of last year’s championship game. At least the semi-finals start in Minnesota. Tomorrow there will be a nazi rally in Phoenix attended by the Felon and his Waffen SS and it will take several days to get the stench out before the city can host a game.
I have a full morning of work ahead of me and then I will take time off and regen some brain cells. It has been a hectic week.
See all y’all later!
Congrats Jan. I’m with you about the game physicality.
Saturday Meese. 52 going up to 70 here.
Puerto Rico
Good morning. Slept in (aside from the 5 or so wake-ups) and watching the local news. Today: laundry, kickboxing and groceries. The state of the world is just too depressing.
Posted:
It’s 66 heading for 83, raining and so dark the lights are on and the PV system isn’t. Yesterday we generated 13.46 KWHs and the m-t-d at 234.95 gained a little – all of which and a bunch more it will lose today. But at least it is actually raining and not just cloudy.
We just keep on keepin’ on. Those of us who can. As the political situation gets worse. I’m not a historian but I do read history and there is very little, if anything, in history to give me hope of the fascist regime being removed in my lifetime. But I will do what I can to help who I can. And pray a lot. Off to start my boosting day. Holding the Good/Healing/Protecting Thought for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}
Good Saturday evening, Meese! Everyone in my house is still alive, thank Goddess!
We had a much better day today than yesterday. I texted The Boyz and they’re coming over tomorrow. Elder Son is bringing pizza. This morning Dearly asked me if I should call Fairfax County government to make sure I get his pension after he goes. I gently reminded him that we did that before we moved here 7 and 1/2 years ago. It was the first thing the Financial Office checked on.
He is very anxious to vote, so I told him that Monday, if he feels up to it, we’ll drive to the early voting place in Leesburg and vote there. Our Rethug gubernator has made sure we don’t have conveniently located places to vote early. Neither Dearly nor I trust absentee ballots or drop boxes—there have been too many horror stories about the Rethugs setting fire to the drop boxes, or else hiding boxes of absentee ballots somewhere so they’re “not found” until after the election.
Have had a really busy day getting ready for the Reader Theater play. It is the fourth RT play I’ve written this year. Today I played the part of the newcomer to the retirement community, a fellow member played the jealous neighbor, and her 94-old-boyfriend stepped into the breach to play the Campus Casanova when my leading man came down with Covid. We had some laughs from the audience!
Dearly ate breakfast, lunch, and half his dinner this evening, so that’s encouraging. It’s now 8 o’clock, so I need to study my lines. I do wonder if the understudy will have to take over…she played the part I’m playing 6 years ago, when the Drama Club did the same play. I don’t know WHAT I’ll do without Dearly. I suppose in time I’d learn to “assimilate” it, but it’s been nearly 58 years.
Hope all at the Pond had a good day. Goddess willin’ and the creek don’t git up, I’ll see you tomorrow.