Today I sifted through the photos that I took of apple blossoms on old, tired fruit trees and sawmill ruins as I tried in vain to contact the census people.
Somehow or other they had managed to miss me when they handed out the forms two weeks ago and all I really wanted was for someone to give me one of the online codes so that I could once again make the governments aware that I do indeed exist.
That way they can continue to underfund the hospitals, inform the local elementary school that I will not be attending this September and once again change the name and borders of the electoral riding I live in.
But I'm being facetious. They do lots of useful things with the information, I hope, other than selling my name and adress to mailing lists so I can get junk mail.
I spent about two hours phoning repeatedly, pressing 1 for service in english and 2 for inquiries about the 2006 population census only to be told repeatedly that all the lines were currently busy, please call back during non peak hours, ie. 2:00-4:00 and 7:00-9:00. Of course, the first time I called was at 2:05.
Finally I got through to Edna. She did a search for my place of residence, which because the server was busy, took about 15 minutes, during which she made a few feeble attempts at light conversation, a la
I guess the network is really busy right now.
It doesn't always do this, just sometimes.
It's really slow right now.
Which I answered with polite yet disinterested phrases. The search, however, was in vain because my place of residence does not exist. No problem. I gave driving directions so that in 2011 someone will arrive at my door and drop off one of those forms. Then I finally got my online access code.
Today I made a trip to the fish hatchery just for the hell of it and the old guys running it were so excited that there was a female under the age of 60 somewhat interested in what they did that they invited me in and talked my ear off for nearly half an hour.
Apparently this year they've seen a higher than normal number of birth defects in fish. Missing fins, swimming on their side, two heads, that sort of stuff. Never a good sign.
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