Life on the Farm

Quiet day today. The Memorial Day plans for Alex's parents' house were canceled today because Paige got sick. Josh called late in the afternoon as he was on his way home from work and we chatted for a little bit. He was thinking about hanging out tonight but has to work from open to close tomorrow night and decided that it wasn't really the best night for it. 

The Farm in the blog title is an application in Facebook that Heather introduced me to, and I've been playing it since I started trying it this morning. It's a lot of fun. You start out with a plot of land and some coins and you plow your land and buy some seeds, wait for them to grow, then harvest them, sell them and do it again. The idea is to make your farm a working farm, keep it self sustaining, vary your crops, buy livestock (which make all the farm noises, which makes Ozzy do all the funny head-turning things), arrange them on your plot of land, etc. Eventually you can even buy more real estate, but that is way down the line. 

You can give gifts to your neighbors, and the idea is to be a social game, so you get more coins if you work on someone else's farm and have someone else harvest your crops. Heather and Lissa each gave me an animal and a tree, and you start out with a tree from the mayor. Since I didn't know what I was doing, I gave them each an animal back, thereby using up a bunch of my coins. Oops. But, I finished a harvest and got more coin, planted again and am waiting for that one (grapes) along with rice, potatoes, and strawberries. Oh, and fruit trees.

See how engrossing this game can be? The only thing is that you have to wait for time to actually pass for the crops to grow. Drat! Waiting - not my strong suit. I have the app set up for an email reminder for when my crops are ready but I beat it for my first crop - I was back there before it could tell me. I couldn't wait. I don't know how many times tonight I've been back there looking at it. Heather's farm just looks phenomenal. I don't know how she crams so many crops in one piece of land and makes it look so good. And all the animals you can have, roaming and fenced. And the buildings, crates, hay bales, ponds, silos, windmills, you name it, you can buy it.

So that's pretty much all I've done today. That and the treadmill. I've been pretty consistent that since I started this time. Every other day. I don't want to do every day because I don't want to overdo and sabotage it - I want to keep doing it for the long run at least up through Debbie's marathon in November.

I think I need to go look at phones tomorrow. I was going to do it all last week but I keep getting up too late. I'll keep trying to get up earlier and see what happens. But the Dash, which I'm using for the keyboard, has reminded me of the problems that made me put it away, besides just Josh not being able to understand me very well when I use it for calling him. It doesn't put all the calls through and the battery doesn't hold a charge well. At least with the iPod now I don't need a phone with all the bells and whistles. I have the iPod with me all the time so I don't need a phone that duplicates things that it does.

I hope you had a great Memorial Day, spent with friends and loved ones contemplating all the things the day was created for. I miss you Uncle 

Chuck.