[Rod_Cloutier]

Okay, I'm back. Two months without internet at home, it was either pay the phone/internet bill or take a vacation, I took the vacation. Zero sum game economics coming soon to a town near you.

Now it's 3 AM, I'm sick with a really, really bad cold and I can't sleep, I have to go to work in 3 1/2 hours. I thought I would start a relevant thread for other people here who end up browsing this web forum in the middle of the night, for whatever reason.

I read a good book on my holiday's about the settlement of the Prairies in Canada from 1850-1914. It spoke about how people with no hope, no future, 7th sons of landless peasants, were offered 160 acres of land in Canada if they moved from Europe, lived on the land, and cleared and farmed it for three years. It was fascinating. With all of the modern problems that people have, it was refreshing to see how people came to Canada, were given land, a tent, seeds for the first year, and 10 dollars and that's it. Some made it some didn't.

People made small houses of of soil, twigs, whatever they knew how to build. Farmers with no animals with teams of women pulling plows through virgin soils. In time it paid off for many, my own great grandfather homesteaded in Southern Saskatchewan in a similar fashion in 1898. Made me appreciate what we have now, for all of our cultural, environmental, and economic problems. It is possible to 'make it', starting from scratch, or at least it was.

Small community one room schoolhouses for all the grades combined and they were proud of them. No electricity or running water, and people felt they were well off owning and farming their own land. It shows how far we can fall from where we are now, and things might still be tolerable, survivable. The book gave me some hope.

I'm rambling, but I'm sick.

Anyone else care to share your 3 AM story here? *please limit posts to middle of the night, can't sleep testimonials*

[PrestonSturges]

I've had something the last few days and it has gradually settled into a sinus infection. Those can last a long time.