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Tuesday Morning Herd Check-in: Greetings of the Moosekin

  Make sure you let your peeps know where to find you!  

The morning check-in is an open thread posted to give you a place to visit with the meeses. Feel free to chat about your weather, share a bit of your life, grump (if you must), rave (if you can). The diarist du jour sometimes posts and runs, other times sticks around for a bit, often returns throughout the day and always cares that meeses are happy … or at least content.

For those new to the Moose, Kysen left a Moose Welcome Mat (Part Deux) so, please, wipe your feet before you walk in the front door start posting.

The important stuff to get you started:

– Comments do not Auto-refresh. Click the refresh/reload on your tab to see new ones. Only click Post once for comments. When a diary’s comment threads grow, the page takes longer to refresh and the comment may not display right away.

– To check for replies to your comments, click the “My Comments” link in the right-hand column (or go to “My Moose”). Comments will be listed and a link to Recent Replies will be shown. (Note: Tending comments builds community)

– Ratings: Fierce means Thumbs Up, Fail means Thumbs Down, Meh means one of three things: I am unFailing you but I can’t Fierce you, I am unFiercing after a mistaken Fierce, or Meh. Just Meh. (p.s. Ratings don’t bestow mojo, online behaviour does).

– Finally, the posting rules for a new diary: “Be excellent to each other… or else

(Some other commenting/posting/tending notes for newbies can be found in this past check-in and, of course, consult Meese Mehta for all your questions on meesely decorum.)

You can follow the daily moosetrails here: Motley Moose Recent Comments.

~

From the Moose collaborative news team, the current Open News Thread:

Explosions at Boston Marathon and Open News Thread

From fogiv in the news thread (WaPo story):

   A Kansas surgeon had finished the race moments before he ran to help the wounded.

   The first blast came about 30 seconds after Dr. Chris Rupe, of Salina, Kan., crossed the finish line. At first, he thought the sound came from a building or grandstand collapsing. He hurried to see if he could help and spent about an hour in the medical tent treating the wounded.

   After that, most had been taken to hospitals.

   “I’d just run 26 miles. I was starting to get tired,” Rupe told The Salina Journal. “There were a lot of great people who were there. There are a lot of good people in the world.”

~

Let the (somewhat subdued) greetings begin.

~


101 comments

  1. slksfca

    Slept a few hours but woke up at 3AM unable to get back to sleep. I can’t find a comfortable position to put my leg into and I think I’m going through mini-withdrawal from the oxycodone, since I didn’t have a pill since before noon yesterday.

    So I just popped one and hope it will help.

    Another reason I can’t sleep is, of course, the Boston event. Lying in bed awhile ago I pondered how the middle of April is an unlucky (or at least very eventful) time of year. Lots of bad things have happened around this time of year, and while I’m not superstitious, I think it is remarkably coincidental at the least. From the Titanic sinking and the San Francisco earthquake and fire to Columbine, things happen in these middle weeks of April (not to mention Hitler’s birthday!).

    Anyway, I feel terrible for everyone who is affected by this tragedy and I hope the perpetrator(s) and cause are discovered quickly, before the country becomes even more unhinged by fear.

  2. DeniseVelez

    Valley NY

    Had a hard time sleeping – probably because I kept flashing back to feelings from WTC.

    On the other hand – right in the middle of typing yesterday – heard noise on back porch, and one of my dim-bulb hens proudly displayed 7 chicks she hatched in a flowerpot.

    3 more she had squished.  

    Another hen is occupying a planter, sitting on a pile of 14 eggs.

    With 5 acres around the other hens here find more secluded spaces to lay, but these two lay on the porch- even in winter and will sit on frozen eggs.

    Well, at least hens are not as dumb as turkeys.

    Life goes on on the farm, even when tragedy and sadness dominate the airwaves.

  3. I woke up sometime after 3, looked at the clock finally about 3:30. Hauled my butt out of bed after 5, tired of flopping around, not sleeping.

    The main good thing about being awake was I heard the barred owl calling. They used to be fairly close to the house, but I haven’t even heard them for months. This time it was distant but clear.

    I went downstairs and sewed for an hour, and Jim got up and made me coffee.

    It’s clear and cold here this morning, about 32. Mr Hourly says it’ll get to about 50 and be cloudy all day. Spring…  

  4. With major arthritis and headache from storms coming in my sleep was very restless. I awoke to a kitty kiss from Pixie. She puts her little mouth on my cheek or lips. So sweet. Really needed it this morning.

     photo FallWatercolorRose_zps6f23a40c.jpg

  5. Our niece was nearby waiting to greet him as he finished. We were relieved to hear from them and they were ok.

    Attacking innocents is the lowest form of behavior. It makes no statement other than ‘not caring about anyone’. Senseless and brutal.

  6. slksfca

    I left my apartment yesterday evening to go to the corner store, and saw that a tree had broken across the street from my building. The top half of it was sprawled across the sidewalk. It’s amazing that it didn’t take out a power line.

    All afternoon and evening gusts of wind were literally SHRIEKING (sometimes like a train whistle) around the corner of my building just outside my kitchen. It was unnerving.

    Less wind today, but there are still small craft warnings for the ocean and bay.

  7. Jk2003

    40 going to mid 50s today.  Took me forever to go to sleep last night.  We are going on a LONGwalk this morning.  My brain needs it.

  8. nchristine

    But, the main show is supposed to be tomorrow and Thursday with slight chance of severe weather.  It’s 10 degrees colder this morning than yesterday…. BOOOOOO!!

    Well, so far things have gone reasonably well. I only sent it to the co-worker.  She technically agreed with me.  But, reminded me that this ‘system’ will be going away sooner than later.  Told her and she agreed that getting the layouts from upstream would help and lessen the work and create a foundation for the conversion.  She stated that “we’re” fine as TPTB have signed off on the data going into our system and the print images…..  We’ll see what the boss has to say about it.

    Reminded of the ‘system’ going away alieves some of my concern.  I did tell her that one of my concerns was that if something went ‘wrong’ that was traced back to what we’ve found so far and didn’t express concern that we’d be blamed for whatever it was that went wrong.

    One of the problems is that it uses redefines galore…. that is dangerous.  God alone knows when and how this program came into existence and then how many hands touched it to the time we got custody of it.  Who knows why things were done the way they were as there is no documentation.

  9. pittiepat

    mid-50s in Columbia today with a 50% chance of rain.  The weather clerk needs to look out the window — it’s been pouring, with thunder and lightning, for the past many hours.  Tomorrow will see possibly severe weather.  Hope I can get all the stuff done I need to do tomorrow before it gets too bad.

  10. Broke and Unemployed

    In an earlier comment I talked about all the different cultures I come into contact with by riding the bus. Sometimes it puts things into perspective. A lot of things in our American system aren’t working as they should right now, but we’re still very lucky to be in America.

    In my environmental seminar class, we talked about wetlands and how they are protected, and about the EPA and Clean Water Act. There’s a student in the class from Nigeria, where there is no such thing. He talked about how polluted and unsanitary the Niger Delta is getting from the oil drilling there, and was really intrigued that there was even such a thing as environmental protection. He wanted to know how it worked, how it started, and things like that. Sometimes we take for granted the fact that we turn on the faucet and clean water comes out, or that oil companies can’t just dump toxic waste whereever they please, like they apparently can in Nigeria.

    I mentioned another Nigerian in the other comment, a woman who was a practicing doctor there but needed more school to practice there. I met her about the time Obamacare was passed and there was a big controversy. “I don’t understand” she said… “In my country there’s big, big problems. But here you could solve problems like healthcare very easily. But people just don’t want to do it. They won’t fix it and I don’t understand why.” That made me a little embarrassed of our government, that we couldn’t push a Public Option through to help more people get the healthcare they need in the greatest country in the world.

    What really made me think of this was an Arab woman I see all the time on the bus. I hadn’t really talked to her much, but I knew she hadn’t been here long, so I was kind of watching out for her, making sure she knew where she was going or that the bus driver waited if she was running to catch the bus.

    Today I talked to her. It turns out she came all the way here from Iraq. Wow, that must be some culture shock. She’s still kind of learning English, and has only lived here 3 months. She has never seen temperatures below “10 centigrade” (50 F) and arrived in the middle of an Ohio winter. I joked “10 c? That’s like 50 F, that’s a nice day in Ohio!”

    I thought about her when I heard about the Boston bombings. What happened there was unthinkable, gruesome, horrible. But this lady from Iraq has probably had to deal with this kind of terrorism, death, and destruction all the time. Compared to Iraq, terrorism here is realtively rare. But we take for granted that we can walk out the door and ususally be safe.

    My heart goes out to the Boston bombing victims. We should always remeber though that despite our problems, we are lucky to live in America.

    Gotta go, that was a wall of text, but it was on my mind. Have a good day, meese.

  11. anotherdemocrat

    Let me start with 13 examples of people being awesome after the explosions

    Despite valerian, melatonin & ambien, I don’t think I did more than doze last night. No, I didn’t know anyone there. But I knew everyone there. This is my tribe – athletes & people who love races. This was families out for a fun day, people who don’t care about races, but this day is part of their tradition (lots of people last night talked about how they always go to the game then to cheer in the runners — one even said she cheers louder for the later people because they need it more — she was talking about me) Today I say Bill Maher is right, handle it Israeli style — in fact, bring in those scary Mossad people. They blew people’s feet off. There is no message to that.

    I’m not here today, but I want to get here:


    I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up against our most bitter opponents and say: We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you…. But be assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.

    Martin Luther King Jr., A Christmas Sermon for Peace on Dec 24, 1967

    Damn, back in tears. Can’t have throat all closed up when you work in a call center.

    Today: work, tri group (I have a training shirt that’s in the Boston Marathon colors of blue & gold, or I have a shirt from the Austin half — people are talking about wearing either the colors or your own race shirt as a symbol of support today, so which, colors or my race?)

    posting this because I don’t feel peaceful:

  12. slksfca

    …it’s already a stunningly beautiful morning. All the wind has cleared away every trace of haze or smog and I can see Mt. Tamalpais across the bay just as clear as anything. And the cloudless sky is a perfectly lovely shade of still-darkish blue.

    I think I’ll take a walk early this morning, it’s just so pretty outside. The wind has even died down so it’s peaceful and still — reminding me in a way that it’s a wonderful thing to be alive.

  13. iriti

    So I am least in sight and I apologize. I was sick last Thursday & Friday and into the weekend, and this week I am at a dead run trying to first get caught up and second get everything done ahead so I can leave early this Thursday and be on vacation Friday and Monday.

    So I’m posting my check-ins, but sociability = FAIL.

    Hope everyone is having a great week.

  14. bfitzinAR

    There’s a statistic I ran across many years ago – a piece of research done by one of FDR’s people (he was P.O.’d that his “voluntary” stuff started great and then petered out and wanted to know why) – no I can’t cite the source any longer and I’m freely paraphrasing his results – but 20% of any given population will do what’s right because it’s right, even if it’s hard; 2% of any given population are greedy manipulative sociopaths who do what they want when they want and don’t care who gets hurt (or dead) in the process; and 78% of any given population are basically good-hearted but gullible and rather sensitive about it – they’ll start to do what’s right but if anybody (say one of that manipulative 2%) makes fun of them, they’ll stop immediately.  That means 2 things – 1) “there are a lot of good people in the world” and 2) whoever controls the message basically controls the 78%.  (And apparently a sizable chunk of the good 20% of the given population of bloggers is on MM.)

    I won’t be here tomorrow – I’m going to see a foot doctor about this sore place on my foot that makes walking painful especially when it’s cold or rainy.  I’ll let you know Thursday what I found out (if anything).  {{{HUGS}}} Y’all take care, bf

  15. JG in MD

    Just went to my first Seniors in Action exercise class. There’s a leader, but what we did was the Leslie Sansone 4-mile Superchallenge tape.

    I actually powerwalked four miles.

    Slowed down some in the middle, walking around the outside of the class, everybody does it at their own pace.

    Then we danced for 20 minutes to cha-cha music. My shoulder shake attracted attention and I went up front with the leader for a bit.

    It was amazing.

  16. princesspat

    Thanks for sharing you thoughts today…..makes me feel less alone with mine. The sun is shining so we’ll have a nice drive over Snoqualmie Pass to eastern Wa.

    Yesterday I made my MIL two fake flower arrangements (it’s to hot for real flowers to last very long) for her apartment. I’m determined to fill the place with color and interest and make it feel more like her home.

    We’ll be there all week so I’ll check in when I can.

  17. DeniseVelez

    that there will be no cross-post of Bkos here today, since we are posting a special edition which is addressed to the orange world. Will be back next week with the usual Tuesday stuff.

  18. wordsinthewind

    started way too early for one thing. Since mr w stayed over to take me to the dr. he needed an especially early start today. Then I had to get a ride to the pharmacy because they couldn’t fill them yesterday. It was for a $110 bottle of cortisone oil-60 ml worth. The dr. tells me oil delivers more efficiently on hands and since I’ve never seen it before thought it worth a try. Putting stuff on my hands and moving the water has kept me busy so far. Oh and sitting with our outdoor cat for meals, she’s a peckish eater and company encourages her so we spend time every day making sure she’s getting enough to eat.  

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