Ups and downs
-------------

For a good chunk of June I had the opportunity to travel through
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Belarus with my wife on a great summer
holiday.  We got to enjoy fantastic weather, extremely favourable
pricing compared to Finland, and some very interesting parts of the
world.  I had plenty of chances to indulge my weird (and not at all
politcally motivated) fascination with the material remains of the
Soviet Union (especially military stuff).

We got back home just before the mid-summer public holiday here, where
a huge chunk of the population heads out to summer cottages in the
woods to spend time relaxing, swimming in lakes, walking through
forests and, of course, enjoying sauna.  We don't have our own summer
cottage, but thanks to some contacts at the university where I work,
we were able to very cheaply stay in a small cottage on a small island
in the local archipelago.  The cottage is owned by the university and
was built to accommodate researchers doing fieldwork on the island
(mostly marine biology stuff, I think).  It's very minimal - no
running water, no electricity.  It was amazing to spend 3 nights on,
literally, our own private island, living an extremely simple
lifestyle.  I brought my shortwave radio along and had the best DXing
time of my life, hearing many stations I had never heard before.  Not
just the usual national public broadcasters and religious groups, but
utility stuff (like a time station I haven't identified yet, but which
certainly wasn't the WWVH station in Hawaii that I often heard in NZ,
and also the Deutscher Wetterdienst) and even the famous Chinese
jamming station "Firedrake"[1]!  My enthusiasm for the hobby is much
renewed, and I have emailed requests for many QSL cards.

So, I had been feeling pretty good lately, and looking forward to
resuming the bicycle projects I put on hold whie travelling.

My wife got a phonecall at about 5am this morning from her brother
back in Australia.  Their mother died of a heart attack the night
before.  We are flying back tomorrow to help with the funeral
arrangements and to figure out what to do with her belongings.  She
rented, and lived alone, so everything needs to be sorted out fairly
quickly.  Dealing with such a huge undertaking at the same time as
coming to terms with the loss (which I don't think has even begun to
sink in for anybody yet) is going to be brutal, and a very marked
contrast to the rest of June.  I won't be without access to SDF or
Circumlunar Space while we're away, but obviously I will be far less
active on email/gopher/Mastodon than usual, even though I just got
back from a long absence.  I will try to keep my aNONradio show
going, but we'll see what happens (tonight's show will certainly go
ahead as planned, as it's already fully  prepared).

[1] https://www.hfunderground.com/wiki/Firedrake