1)A questions meaning simply 'how are you?' or 'how are things going?'. Sometimes taken very seriously by the recipient.
2)A question used to fill an awkward silence.
1)John Doe: So, how's life?
Jane Doe: Good, good. And yourself?
2)Jane Doe: I cut myself.
(awkward silence)
John Doe: So, how's life?
Fogey/fogy /fougi/ sl. (early 18C+, orig. Scot) old-fashioned, stuck-in-the mud.
Person with old fashioned ideas which he is unwilling to change: Come to the disco and stop being such an old fogey!
You think me an old fogeyand an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three generations since O’Connel’s time. I remember the famine. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O’Connel did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things. (James Joyce, Ulysses. Penguin Books,1992. p. 38)