For Deena

I have no pretty words to mark this occasion. I have no fanfare to set this day apart from all the other days of our life together.

I have only the same words I share with you every day. I love you.

I have only the same choice I make anew each day. I choose you.

Happy ninth anniversary.

- your everyday Tim

Roleplay to a cleaner house

If everyone in your household already enjoys cleaning, this post isn't for you. If you never have problems getting the chores done, then feel free to stop reading now.

Deena and I have just discovered a new way to keep track of chores and have fun doing them. It's called Chore Wars, and it's awesome. You register (for free) on the site, start up an adventuring party (your team), and decide what chores will merit rewards. When you complete a task, you claim it on the site. According to the FAQ,

Experience points are tracked both as weekly high-score charts, and as ongoing character sheets - every time you rack up 200XP of chores, your character gains a "level", and their class changes to match the type of chores that they've been doing.

Think of it as a kind of Mary Poppins "spoonful of sugar" for people who are mostly grown up and enjoy roleplaying.

We've only just started, and we're already having a blast. Deena's almost ready to level up already. I'm only halfway there, but I have some dirty dishes waiting to help me catch up as soon as I post this.

I don't expect we'll end up like this, though I know some who might use it this way:
There are some promising testimonials on the site. We'll have to wait and see how well it works out for us. But it has all the right elements. It's fun (we love roleplaying); it's practical (it doesn't take much effort to do); it's free.

So, if you like games, and if you'd like to try motivating yourself to do more housework, give Chore Wars a try.

[Edit: Just figured out how to do this - here's an image of my character (updated regularly).]

21st century farming

I've mentioned before that I grew up on a farm.

It was a fairly standard western-Canadian farm, as far as I could tell. We grew stuff; we shipped it out to customers by rail or truck; we grew more stuff. (And by "we", I mean my dad, his dad, and his dad before him - a real family farm. I helped out, but was never farmer material.)

And, from fairly early, it was clear that my little* brother was the most likely successor. Mom and Dad never put any expectations on us to become farmers - it's not the kind of business that anybody should be pressured into. But John was such a natural.

Four or five years ago, after studying various farming techniques at college, he returned to the farm to practice his trade. I remember hearing from Mom and Dad that John had some interesting ideas. I remember hearing that things were a little different on the farm.

But it wasn't until last year, when Deena, Kaia, and I were in Canada for several months over the summer, that I realized how much John had done.

He started growing flowers. And rather than bringing his product to the customers, like 99% of farmers do, he set up a U-pick business to bring customers to the product.

He created mazes to attract people out to the site. He started holding festivals - Lily Festivals and Pumpkin Festivals - to promote the farm.

Last summer, over the weekend of the Lily Festival, there were more people visited the farm than the entire population of Bowden, the nearest town. Several times over.

People hear John on the radio and see him in the paper - he's always promoting the farm.

He's joined local and regional farm tourism groups to further promote his operation and that of other local producers.

He's cranked up the farm's web presence with a major website, Google ads, and now a blog.

He's even getting his family in on the operation. I helped out at the Lily Festival last year. And here I am, giving him a big plug on my blog. I do this in full appreciation of the fact that he gets more people visiting him in person than I get visiting this blog in a whole year. I'm not going to swamp him with extra visitors.

But that's okay. I'm basically just doing this to brag about my brother. Farming these days isn't what it used to be, and isn't that grand!

Just in case it begins to sound like John is the only innovator on the farm, I'd like to point out that it was Dad who, not long ago, shifted the focus of the potato-growing operation from a more conventional bulk business to a mail-order, internet-driven operation catering to gardeners across Canada who want to grow specialty varieties of potatoes. John is an amazing entrepreneur, and he comes from a generations-long tradition of business-savvy and adaptable folks.



* Little as in younger. It has been several years since I, at 6'3" (191cm), was taller than either of my younger brothers.

Photo credits:

All photos from the Eagle Creek Farms website. I'm assuming I have permission to reproduce them for the purposes of bragging about the farm.