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

Hi, Raymond, your little sloop of a page is very inviting. Greetings from Russia. I hope both you and the cat are OK. Boni the cat would give her his regards were he not asleep. I'm sure he would. Take care. Just sailing by.

Greetings! Glad to hear from you. I put that page together by looking at how other people did things and just doing the same. If you want to tinker with your space, have fun.

I'm feeling well, but I'm sorry to say we lost Sassy about a month ago. Cancer, I believe. We miss her, and I haven't had the heart to remove references to her from my space. I think I'll just leave them for a while.

Give my regards to Boni and 'sail by' again soon.

LL&P
RtC

Dear Raymond, thanks for your letter. Letters are very encouraging, this week being my second week on the net. Sorry about Sassy. Boni, I suppose, feels worthy of attention and greetings from far away. It's 2 p.m. in Moscow. Good night.

Made a mistake. It was not 2 p.m., but 2 a.m. in Moscow. Shows how sleepy I was. Cat (incredibly!) even prouder and haughtier than he normally is - that's what fame does to people.

The time right now is Sunday at 12:15 AM or 06:15 UTC. We're 6 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time. How does that relate to Moscow time?

Glad to see you're still on the internet. My first week on the 'net was almost my last, I got so frustrated with things. Now, I find the internet challenging, and informative. I find it the easiest way to keep in touch with people long distances away, like my son who is currently in Okinawa. He's 15 hours ahead of us, or Sunday at 3:15 PM. We trade messages all the time, and he sends photos constantly.

Take care, and, as I said, feel free to 'sail by' for conversation any time.

LL&P
RtC

Good morning! Thanks for your kind invitation to sail by. It's forty minutes after you dropped your letter, 10.15 Moscow time, and, according to your calculations, it must be 7 a.m. GMT. I didn't realise we were 3 hours ahead of Greenwich time. I have a sister in Texas. they are 9 hours behind us. What does UTC stand for?
It's Christmas in Moscow and it's snowing! We are having an unusually warm winter - temperatures above zero and no snow. We went to church for the night Christmas service and it seemed more like Easter! Bye for now, you are asleep anyway, and my kids are desperately trying to make some food for our Christmas celebration, friends will be coming over, it's easier that way, as we are the biggest bunch. Did I tell you I've got 5 - two sons and three daughters, four at school and one univ. student. So - I've got to go, no food ready and the flat a mess. Bye. Take care.

Greetings. Almost all of Texas is in the Central Time Zone, so I would be 9 hours behind you in time also. UTC stands for a phrase that means Universal time, same as GMT. Sometimes you even hear time given as "1100 ZULU". The ZULU stands for Greenwich Time. Usually that's the military way of listing time. They've got a Time Zone Table on the Hitchhiker's Guide. Might be interesting to look at that. The website has researchers all over the world and a lot of them are listed there.

We're having a warm winter here also. Temperatures have been 20 to 30 degrees (Fahrenheit) above what we normally have. We've had only one good snow, less than a foot, and it melted the next two days. I don't mind. My heating bill is much lower that way.

Got to go for now. I've got two grandsons coming home from school soon and I have to babysit for an hour until their father comes home from work.

LL&P
RtC

Just dropped to say hello to an old acquaintance.
How are you doing these days?
Elena

Greetings and Salutations!

It's been a while. The Schnauzers and I are just relaxing and kicking back, just trying to get motivated for the day. My wife is napping, as she has had a very long week. She started getting a migraine so I think she deserves it. I might mention that we now have another cat, thanks to two of my grandsons. He's two years old, neutered and declawed. Goes by the name of Max (I think it's short for Macavity). It took him two weeks to learn to tolerate the dogs. Now, though, he'll lay in the middle of the living room just daring them to start something. He also likes to raid their food dish. So, things are back to normal. I think it's lunch time. So I'll chat with you more later.

LL&P
RtC

Nice to hear from you!
Fancy a look at my cat and dog //public.fotki.com/weirdo07/?

http://public.fotki.com/weirdo07/

Marvelous photos. I can't seem to get my computer to do things right so I currently don't have any on the internet. I'll try to get some put on some other way.

LL&P
RtC

I am so sorry about you being disabled .
What are the pressures and limitations that you experience - if I may ask, of course.
I'm beginning to feel the limitations of growing older by the day - truly unpleasant! .
And my mum, who is 82, is slowly and painfully dying...

I've got lung problems. C.O.P.D., which is Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. I have about 1/3 normal lung capacity. Right now I'm on oxygen continuously. Kind of slows me down a bit. Any activities I engage in are a bit more sedate than I'd like. I still do what I can outside. I used to do a lot of hunting, but not so much any more. Oh, well. I've got a lot of stories to tell the grandchildren.

As one of my old hunting buddies likes to say when he gets philosophical, "The grass is NOT greener on the other side. We're at least still looking at it from the top side down, rather than the bottom side up".

Just have time for a few words. I've got a meeting at 6:00 AM so I'd better sign off for now.

LL&P
Ray

I hope you get down to writing some of your hunting stories and post a copy of them in this thread - or on your PS - or even - why not - in the Guide itself!
I look forward to reading them
Kind regards to your family,
Elena

Speaking of hunting: I heard geese yesterday. They're migrating already. Spring is truly around the corner.

A hunting friend, Bob, had a Black Lab hunting dog by the name of Ole. Ole grew up to be about 110 pounds, good sized for a Lab. Bob taught Ole to retrieve and Ole loved to chase and retrieve anything from balls to sticks to plastic lids for 5 gallon pails. He wouldn't quit. You'd wear out before he did. One time Bob's brother finally grabbed two sticks the size of your arm and threw them both. Ole grabbed them both, and after about 10 minutes of maneuvering, managed to retrieve both sticks at the same time. The first time Bob took Ole out goose hunting, Bob managed a very good shot and bagged two Canadian geese at the same time, both weighing around 15 pounds. Ole plunged out into the cattail and was gone about 15 minutes. When he finally came back, he was dragging both geese. He managed to retrieved both at the same time. He is quite a dog.

There: one of my favorite hunting stories.

LL&P
RtC

Thanks for the sweet story!
Did you have to travel far when you went hunting? What kind of landscape is it?
Having never been to your part of the world, I can't picture the setting to the 'Ole and the geese' story. Tried to look up 'cattail' in the dictionary, but to no avail.

My end of North Dakota is fairly flat, open prairie. My town is located on a river, and the river valley has cut down at most 150 to 160 feet. So any hills we have are low. I remember one time I was over at a friend's farm. He had purchased a new spotting scope (about 90 power) and we had to check it out. Through that scope, which we set up on the hood of his car, we could watch a fellow put gas in his car at a gas station about 6 miles away. The prairie is dotted with lots of small sloughs ranging from an acre or so to the size of small lakes. They're all shallow, though, and many dry up during drought years.

Most of our hunting is close to home. I don't usually have to go more than 10 to 12 miles at the most to find excellent hunting. A favorite spot for Whitetail Deer ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitetail_deer ) is only 5 miles from home. It's all farmland around that area, and wild game is plentyful.

By the way, this link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typha , gives you a good description and photos of cattails (or bullrushes). Wikipedia is a good source of info. Some of their "experts" have been less than truthful about their information and sources, but on the whole they're good.

I'm trying to get my computer up and running to do photos, but I don't have anything working yet. The best I can do is this: Feed the Zip Code 58072 into "Google Earth" and you'll see my home town. If you put 46 degrees 55 minutes 39.53 seconds North Latitude, 97 degrees 59 minutes 47.85 seconds West Longitude into "Google Earth" (Just use the numbers 46 55 39.53 N 97 59 47.85 W), you'll be right on top of my house. Zoom down to an Eye Altitude of about 2,000 feet. The only problem is that 2 summers ago in 2005, for the first time in about 40 years the street in front (west) of our house got completely torn up and replaced, and THAT'S when the sattelite photo was taken. If you don't have "Google Earth", go to their website and download the free copy. Marvelous fun!

It's almost 3AM so I'd better try to get some more sleep. My asthma woke me up so that's why I'm on the computer. Talk to you later.

LL&P
RtC

I hope you got some sleepand are feeling better !
It's half past two here and I'm between lessons. Have to off to work soon.
Of course, your cattails are bullrushes! They are quite common here, kids love to bring them home - if only they didn't get the house covered in fluff!
When you used the word 'chat', I felt uneasy, as I don't quite understand this kind of human contact... I admit to having a guilty conscience, since the only excuse for my spending time on-line is language practice. But why should people talk to strangers on-line in their own tongue is almost a mystery for me...
I am very grateful to you for your prayer and your messages.
Take care - and take a picture of your church, if possible!
Elena
P.S. Hope I can find your house...sounds fun

Dear Raymond!
I hope your silence does not mean you feel worse.
Hope you will drop a line more or less regularly, to let me know you are praying this side of the grass. Being on oxygen sounds quite serious...

Took my mum to hospital this morning, and the doctor to whom I explained her condition said to me nicely, "You understand that soon she will only be able to live while in hospital, don't you? Provided there is a hospital that will agree to take her in..." Fortunately, he didn't send us away.
I haven't gone through this before, my father died when I was only 12 and barely conscious of what was going on.