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

hmmmmmm the brother of a guy I used to go to school with got struck down by lightening and everytime his brother cries when there is thunder and lightning

couple of years ago we had a real heavy thunderstorm, lights out for 60 mins.. next morning neighbour's kid comes around and tells that yesterday night the house got hit, fire, half the roof gone.. So I said.. "yeah.. sure.. ".. and he kept on telling and explaining.. so I got out, looked at the neigbours house.. HALF THE ROOF GONE.. burnt , scorched, I never noticed the fire trucks, the police, everyone running around.. I just had a quick (in the dark) and went ..

I don't remember the last time our electricity was cut off for any significant amount of time.
So, what have I missed in the last 3 months?

I remember the other week my power went off and I thought oh great I am stuffed now i can't do a uni assignment

obviously you haven't missed your electricity bill
as for the rest..

The longest power outage I remember was 10 days. It was after Hurricane Andrew hit Florida and then Louisiana in 1992. I was moving house that weekend. Fortunately, the place I was moving to had electricity already.

10 days.. longest I've been in was 8 hours.. I was visiting an energy company in north Azerbaijan when the lights went out (coincidence.. really .. honestly.... reason was insufficient fuel for the power plants).
Over here in Netherlands .. I read about outages of more than half a day.. well mind you .. not a lot of hurricanes over here .

F57497?thread=87237
Maverick is my pre BBC account.
We were expecting Hurricane Lili to be as bad as Andrew, she missed us entirely.

I was out for a while..
obviously we never have hurricanes like that.. last storm was 1953; flooded half a province and drowned almost 2000..

2000?!

We don't get much in the way of blizzards, snow, or really Winter for that matter.

on the whole the weather in NL is quite reasonable.. summer temp avg 20..25degC, winter temp avg 0. Occasionally a series of cold days (-15) and then the skating tours start (200 km , 135 miles ice skating)
Now last winter I was in Moscow. That was different minus 20 .. 25 &

*currently watching a tropical storm move towards Texas*

NL sounds nice. Moscow is just a bit too cold for me. Ice skating is a real novelty here.

Moscow is too cold for me .. I found it hurts when walking > 5 minutes in minus 20. any uncovered skin hurts. Ears hurt whether covered or not
Ice skating is a bit out of season right now (+30) but several relatives are already training for the winter season...

How much time did you spend in Moscow?

Since last August average 3 weeks/month. 3weeks there 1week home I almost have Aeroflot silver wing status

That is 75% of the last year. What does it take to reach silver wing status?

I haven't really been posting a whole lot lately...RL intervened again *sigh*.

How are you?

RL.. tell me about RL I hope nothing serious happened??

the correct question is not "what does it take to reach silver wing" but rather "once you reached it, what does it bring".
The answer to that is much easier
So far all I got is an encouraging smile from the cabin crew.. she looked as if she came from tractor factory number 5 (staff or product.. not sure which).. very charming

I was out for a little while.. minor surgery (nothing serious)..

Have you recovered from the surgery?

Nothing all that serious happened. There are some things around the house that needed some time and attention: A new air conditioner, a new motor for the lawn mower, some cleaning and reorganizing...

Also, when logged in here, I may not be surfing just h2g2. I've been working on a few projects with my computer: Cookbook, WWII research, digital photography, digital photo albums.

minor surgery.. nothing.. I got opened and closed

reorganising the house.. continuous effort this new, that new, replacements.. and bills

Usually I'm supposed to be w*rking when logged in .. every now and then I just take some time to hammer in h2g2 text

COOKBOOK !! WWII research.. Europe? Asia? Both?

Glad you are feeling better.

Spent weeks looking for bookshelves, then decided it would be more to the point to have them made(out of real wood). Already asked someone, and he is supposed to start next week. Next is couch/sofa shopping. There is one in a nice simple lined style, upholstered in denim that feels real squashy that I kind of like... Maybe it will go on sale soon.


The cookbook is a collection of all sorts of recipes, mostly from the internet, and a few dozen of my own. The originals are on my computer or cds. The book is for my niece who hasn't done as much cooking(yet).

I've collected recipes and cookbooks since I was about nine or ten (sort of explains the bookshelves). For almost ten years I was the Kitchen Manager of the natural food store where I work currently. During those ten years the menu was my responsibility. So, I made my own vegetarian recipes because we couldn't find a Cajun vegetarian cookbook for large quantity cooking. I'm not completely vegetarian, the menu was supposed to be, though.

My father was a WWII veteran. He didn't tell us a whole lot about the three years he was in Europe. My research started as an effort to find out where his unit (712th Engineers Tank Destroyer Batallion, U.S. Army) was at any given time. Then one thing led to another and all sorts of stories started to mesh together...the Flying Tigers(Chenault was from Louisiana), the Battle of Britain, the Army Air Corps. volunteers, the Landing craft were designed by a New Orleans boat builder...

These links were most helpful:
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/100-11/100-11.htm
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/7-8/7-8_CONT.HTM

The National D Day Museum is in New Orleans. We've been twice, never finished the whole building before closing time. The Pacific wing was added after our last visit.

http://www.ddaymuseum.org

I haven't gotten to the war in Asia yet, probably will out of curiosity. Are you interested in history?

That was probably one of my longest postings ever on this site.