h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sorry. Occupational hazzard. Sometimes it takes me a half hour to actually get a sentence typed.
Hey. I had never tried the Brunel. It has a little smiley bar at teh bottom. Course the rest of it is annoying.

Usually I do not get bothered by mosquitos. I find they like other people better than me. There is no standing water in my part of the city, though there is a river near my office.... I will look out for evidence of the little bastards and take steps if needed. The local tv stations are running public service ads to alert people to precautions to take.

Marv, standing water in an overturned hubcap or an old tire is enough for mosquito larvae. They only take a short time to hatch.

Mosquitos...

I'm lucky I guess, because they bite me, but it only leaves a very tiny red spot that is gone the next day - I've seen people with very big red and swollen bites, itching, scratching, making it worse...

My parents and I and my brother once spent a couple of summer weeks at my grandmother's place up in the north, close to the Swedish/Finnish border (well above the Polar Circle) - and it was a nightmare!

Each and every time you'd step outside you'd be walking into a swarm of mosquitos - and you could feel their wings against your face...

...and even worse - they managed to worm their way through the ventilation of the sauna into the guest room one night - my mother obviously spent the night trying to kill as many of them as she could while I and my brother were sleeping - well, as much sleep as you can get when you're used to sleeping in the dark, and suddenly trying to sleep in a room with no blinds, and the midnight sun shining 24 hours a day...

I sleep on one side, and then I turn over to sleep on the other side - in the morning the back of my night gown was full of blood-red spots from the fully-tanked mosquitos I had managed to squash when turning over...

...and my poor brother (a mosquito favourite) was covered by bites - my mother tried to count them while she was covering them with some kind of lotion - I think she stopped counting at 102 - and that was only his head...

WM, remember that I really do live in a desert. Water in a hubcao will likely evaporate in hours not days. There is a stream a few hundred yards away from my house, but it is very rapid. Were I closer to the Lake I would have more trouble with mozzies, but where I am is usally free of them.

I guess artic circle mosquitos don't carry malaria,

My love life has just taken a rather complex twist!, I'll spare you the gory details!

Correct Z - arctic circle mosquitos don't seem to be carrying any kind of disease - just being a general nuisance! (I and my brother spent most of those weeks rowing a boat out into the middle of a lake - the distance to land and the breeze kept the mosquitos away)

Sounds about right, are they simalar to what people in Scotland called midges? they're a right nuiscene as well... I've always wanted to go to the artic circle, it sounds good fun.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention - the mosquito plague is quite severe in some parts of Sweden - so severe that people have applied for and been granted to use heavily restricted chemicals

Going to the Arctic Cirle in the summer = midnight sun and mosquitos

Going there in the winter = darkness but auroras and lots of snow and ice

I guess every season has its charm - but for the northern-most parts of Sweden, I'd go for the winter season

oooohyes, well winter sounds nicer, you see I'd have gone for summer otherwise, still in two years time I'll be able to take holidays in both.

Actually no,as the one without kids I'll get holidays whenever no one else wants them!

[]

Does that ring a familiar bell or what?

Re Mosquitoes/West Nile: Eh... don't get many mosquitoes here. I've had Menengitis (sp???) once, and that's what West Nile is a strain of. There's no cure, and it's quite often fatal, but I got through it with only a few days in pediatric intensive care. I'm keeping my fingers crossed but firmly believing that lightning is only likely to strike once.

Re Harry Potter: Well, both my parents have summer birthdays... but my dad's is June 14th, before the book comes out, and neither he nor my mom is much into Harry Potter. Neither of them has read the first four books, so why would they want the fifth?

Re Z's Love Life: Oh, c'mon, we want details!

Eats merguez, drinks beer, smiles vacantly/happily

There is a campsite just up the road from here which has a very very bad midge problem. It's just above a big long chain of reservoirs going up the valley at the side of one of the larger streams feeding into the boggy ground above the reservoir

Aurora, something I'd like to see, as well as the midnight sun.

I'd like to see an aurora too but mostly I want to know Z's gory details.

I just have to take the top off a pot of Tiger Balm and it takes me back to Singapore. That and Calamine Lotion were the only things we had in the 60s to stop mozzie bites itching that wasn't on prescription only.

I would love to see an aurora, Dad has seen them in Scotland and Norway and said that it is the most amazing sight and sound. But it is supposed to be possible to see them as far south as Cornwall in certain conditions.

/* Ties a rope around his waist, through Zeppo's collar, and then to the backlog. That way it won't get too far ahead of him. Unfortunately Zeppo mistakes the rigging for a leash. */

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*tries one of PWM's spicy lamb sossies* Woo! I get it. These are to give you an excuse to drink lots of beer, right?

http://www.modestypanel.com/artorcrap/# -- a quiz, quite a short one.