I hope it doesn't. I'm to get another infusion this Wed., so as long as my levels stay...well, level, I'll be golden.

Yeah, the world's burning all over, but I've since just turned off the news. Nothing but negativity and depressing stories in just the U.S. alone because negativity generates money for the news orgs, so I just turn it all off.

I'm doing good still in the sticks, but hopefully you and yours are just as safe and well. All the social media platforms are a, in my own words, "a festering den of circle-jerking and echo-chambers that frankly should've been Section 230'd into oblivion years ago". I mostly stopped using Twitter and I'm rarely using Facebook anymore.

We recently had a weather squall just plow through my neighborhood about a week ago that took down some trees (some of which, took down power lines with them) and was left for about 14 hours (thankfully, most of that time was at night) where the summer humidity and heat were absolutely unbearable.

Oh, speaking of trains, quite a-ways down the road from my house, there's this little toy train museum that has a tiny oval track that runs on the weekends and, if memory serves me right, a little shack with general tidbits of info about the history of the train. It's very quaint and adorable, I'm still surprised (and glad) that it's still around after all these years. Make sure to stay plenty hydrated when you go to the museum! :D

Hopefully I don't get any flare-ups or whatever, but sadly, that's not really something I can control 100%, so I'll just have to play it by ear essentially. Thank you for the well wishes, though. :)

I kinda wish it was cooler here where I live, but nope, it's just humid and hot a lot, but that's pretty much every summer, so... *shrug*

Yeah, I've essentially turned off the media. It's aggravating how they only report on stupid crap most of the time and all of it is 100% negative. It's negative against the president (not once in the past four years has he done anything, in their eyes, that warrants them giving him any positive coverage), it's negative against our citizens, and always has pundits on to basically say "orange man bad" and other shit that, frankly, disgusts me to no end. And with the rioting going on in the U.S. over what happened to George Floyd (who has since stopped being mentioned by the media at large), meanwhile we have people being shot and killed in our inner cities while our officers are being told to essentially stand down while they get all their funding stripped...it's only a matter of time before our cities collapse because the politicians there are just so damn inept.

I dunno, at this point, I'm more than okay with discussion about other ideas and things of the sort, but with how god damned polarizing my generation is and how they see a minor inconvenience as a assault on their own existence and try to get companies to bend over backwards to stop doing something or try to fire someone for something they may have said (either currently or in the past). It's just a mess and too many factors into why things are currently the way they are is, frankly, going to come to an end soon. Either peacefully or violently and, hopefully, they end with the former and not the latter.

A squall is essentially just a quick and powerful gust of wind that lasts only a few seconds, typically during active weather like a thunderstorm or whatnot. It only lasted for a brief moment, but it knocked down lots of trees all over the county I live in (some of them just snapped in two while others were essentially uprooted so there's a small patch of ground still attached to the downed trees). So with humidity and how hot it was then, coupled with no AC, it was very unpleasant to sleep in. Gotta admit, I don't know how they can handle it, but people who go camping in this kind of humid weather kinda make me jealous in a sense.

Thomas the Tank Engine was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid. I think it used to air on PBS in the 90s (PBS is the United States P.ublic B.roadcasting S.ystem) along with other shows like Arthur and a live-action show called Zoom. The 90s were weird times, looking back on it XD

Oh dear, I hope that bump isn't anything serious! Are you able to go see a doctor? I hope it goes away soon, too. :(

I can't remember the last time I was on a train...I mean, a few years ago I went to DC with a few friends of mine and we rode the metro around the city to go to Tyson's Corner (a big shopping mall type area) and Dupont Circle (there's a two-story Barnes & Noble bookstore there and lordy it's huge!), but I dunno if metro or city-wide trams count as trains. When I think of trains, I'm mostly thinking of cross-country types that take you past the city to other places. There's a few train stations fairly near me that all take you to DC, but the ride is about 2-3 hours with infrequent stops, so i assume it's a bit faster than if you drove your car in (DC is one of many US cities that has horrendous traffic).

I think both the US and UK have rich histories when it comes to trains, though I've never brushed up on any of it outside of general stuff I learned in school during history classes. The railway system did play one of many vital roles both before and during the civil war here (in Harpers Ferry, WV, for example, the town was taken over by an abolitionist named John Brown in 1859, just prior to the civil war, in an attempt to arm the slaves and captured several buildings - including a weapons depot - in an attempt to start a revolt across the South. there's more info about it here if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpe....._West_Virginia ). It's one of many towns that had railways that connected them to each other and the history seems fascinating, but I never get around to reading about it. XD

As for the settlers who came to America, I don't recall off the top of my head if they had any railways built. I always assumed that was during the mid-ish to late 1800s, like during the California Gold Rush for example. It's been forever since I even remotely touched up on my knowledge of that time period, so I'm sure I'm misremembering something about it. Pretty sure there are several documentaries about trains and their impact in different parts of the world that can be watched on places like YouTube and Netflix if you look in the right places. *shrug*

Anyways, I'm always open to listening (reading, since this is text-based chat XD), and not much really gets under my skin anymore (read: Crohn's disease diagnosis), so I'm pretty nonchalant about most things, but even I have my limits (see my mini-rant about the media above), so don't worry about it. If you are ever worried about something, you can always just DM/PM me. And don't worry about the lack of knowledge/understanding thing. One thing I was taught is that lack of knowledge or understanding is easily remedied by learning. It's worked for me in the past when I didn't know things, so I've always held that it's a kind of universal type of ideal (maybe ideal isn't the right word, but hopefully it gets the point across XD).