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

Sorry, I closed off that last account due to nuisance factors and forgot to track replies.

Presently wrapping up a fourth month without work and pretty much losing what little mind that I had. But otherwise, life is going on pretty well. I did please Milady by arranging a rather enjoyable 50th birthday for her last week.

How'ss things and stuff in your warmer part of the world?

Heya!

I still need to answer your email. I have it half-written, sitting in my draft folder and shaming every time I look at my inbox.

Anyway, things are well, I suppose. The country seems to be in sort of a turmoil, but of the good sort. The sort where people seem to actually care about making this a place where you can have a normal life. I wonder what will come out of it.
As for myself, I'm still in the spot of trying to finish my thesis. It's taking more than I thought it would, which is frustrating... and of course, procrastination doesn't help.

Why are you out of work? Is everything alright?

Oh no worries about e-mails. When they miss by a day or 197, they really become fun to figure what the person was taslking about, but not super necessary

I know from our news that there are always things 'afloat' in your general neighborhood. It would be so nice if people could grow past a zillion years of grudges, but I sadly don't expect it in my lifetime or yours ...

There was too much generosity between the military and my company, filling needed billets over a few years, and in simplest terms ... The finite pot of money ran dry. The uber-overseers have rules and federal laws that then dictate that everything must go out to open competition nationally again. Coincidental with that problem was a national government declaring to scrutinzie closely every dollar spent. Slim the public service and make as much 'contracted' as can be done, which is who I am. But in the process, our major department that oversees the contracts, they've gone into "I'm soooo confused" mode ... So everything is just gone draggingly slow. Normal times, I would have been back to work in June, maybe the same company and maybe someone else that costs the government less and my salary wears the trimmings ... But any working-day salary has to be better than only our savings and Unemployment Insurance. (First time in 35 years of working that I actually called on them)

That's really a shame, about your work. I do hope some kind of solution comes up soon.

The current turmoil - the one I was referring to, anyway - is actually kind of related. It's a larg wave of protests on financial and social matters, and the fact that it's increasingly hard for the middle class to afford a normal life. Quite interesting, the way it's gathered momentum over the last couple of weeks; I actually haven't read about all the details, myself, so I'm not a very good source of knowledge, but look up 'tent protests', if you're interested in reading about it yourself.

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That's a shame. I'm kinda glad to have managed to stay out of that sort of thing, in most of my years here, but have heard complaints from others, and it always makes me sad. Feels like h2g2 should be a safe haven; it's really too bad that bad currents find their way here, as well.

'Bad currents' that began here have flowed over e-mail wires and even to FaceBook, so some folks who have never met me, nor even seen me about, are cold or 'blocked'. It is very personally annoying, but nought that I can do about it. Minds are well set

How-ever, one really nice thing to see around here is the number of earlier folks (I'd prefer to not call them Olde-Tymers ) that have dropped in since the announcements of the move. Amy P and a few others have been busy trying to track down folks, in case they would not want to be lost in the shuffle

Sorry for the lost post above, I am not allowed to mention that I am being watched, monitored, tracked, followed, any number of words that are one step shy of st...... things.

How odd; I remember that post, and wasn't aware it broke the HR. Did they give you a reason, about what got it yikesed?

In essence, history is what got it zapped. It did take four days for someone to run across it and hit the button though. But of course, I am not being closely scrutinized you understand.

Bah, humbug.

Indeed.

I'm looking for somewhere to send an excess of heat and summer-time humidities, but somehow I don't expect you are looking for any more. Any good ideas? (This town is on a bay, and any 2 or 3 days of sun and temps above the 30C marker sends the humidity upwards of 80%)

I don't know, they have winter in the southern hemisphere now, maybe try sending it to Australia or something?

We've actually had a bit of grey sky here, yesterday and today. And a bit of drizzle, too. Feels so odd, for summer...

We had a nearly ideal day for yesterday. An uncle of my wife has a friend of 30'ish years. She moved out of the "Big City" (Toronto) to a very obscure part of our local counties and is bored to death. And a sort of agoraphobia too. So them and us went off to Kingston, oldest town of this province, for a little one-hour river cruise. Temps were around 26C, just enough wispy clouds to diffuse the real heat, it was really quite nice, even when humidity made it feel about 39C. (For us, anything over 38C begins to be uncomfortable)

_Begins_ to be uncomfortable? Holy wow, man, that is quite the tolerance. We quite often have temps over 30C in summer, here, but it tends to stay in the low-to-mid-30s, and I'd say that anything over 35C would be seen as an unusually hot day. Anyway, even when it's in the low 30s I'd call it uncomfortable (hey, just because it's common doesn't mean we have to like it, right?) - and here we don't even have a lot of humidity most of the time. A humid 38 sounds pretty hellish.

I grew up in a farm-country part of southern Ontario where mid to high 90's in the F scale were not uncommon in the thick of summer. Always just when grains, corn and other really dirty and dusty stuff would stick you ya like a soft plaster. But humidity was reasonably low, far enough from big rivers and lakes. But here, on the edge of a large'ish bay, a few days of intense sun does make the air thick

To add to it all, there is a 'confluence' (love that word) of winds from the industrial parts of south-western Ontario and a couple of the northern states. We end up with about 60 or 70% of their pollution hanging in our air. So even though we have no industry heavier than assembling furniture by hand and a couple of cheese factories, this area sets pollution count records each summer.

Blargh. I got no better word for it. Just Blargh.

Dan's area actually seems to have largely escaped the heat wave. I miss the Pacific North West...

When I drive to work in the morning and already see a yellow'ish/brown'ish haze hanging in the sky ... Blargh is about right!

BTW, I hope you do not mind a lot, but I used and defined you a little on Facebook with a real "olde-tymer" ... Outsane. MsMonsy, also a one time Agony Auntie of <./>ThePost</.> loved the word.

Ah, outsane... that is a fine word indeed. Haven't used it in a while, myself.
By the way, I can't exactly parse the sentence 'I used and defined you a little on Facebook' - would you mind explaining it? I feel like I must have missed something.

Just described a bit of your on-line nature, and then the 'out-sane' part. All very general stuff ... It was ages ago now and I can't even remember where, but I expect probably with Ms Monsy