It won't be much longer now until things start heating up around here. It seems like just a few days ago that Christmas was here (or possibly it only seems that way because my tree is still up). I for one am getting pretty excited about enjoying the sun again when it comes. This summer I'm hoping to do quite a bit of camping and hiking. The campground reservation system for the lower mainland isn't open yet, but I found out that the one in Tofino actually opened the other day. So I decided to ...

I woke up yesterday to another sunny day here in CowTown™. I was debating going to the gym, but decided instead to go and try a local hike. So I pulled my hiking boots out of a box, found some clean socks, and drove up to the trailhead for Teapot Hill, which is only about 10 minutes from my house. Teapot hill isn't that hard of a hike, but considering I haven't been hiking really in years, it did a good job of wearing me out. The elevation gain is only around 300 meters, but a lot ...

So, this is actually a timely story, given my recent efforts to purchase more local food. The British Columbia Centre for Disease Control has recently shut down a local Chilliwack company that produces raw (i.e. unpasteurized) milk due to contamination with faecal matter. I won't argue whether or not that faecal matter is of concern, since I don't know the levels that were found or how they relate. The owner of the business is obviously upset with the government interference: But Home on the Range owner Alice Jongerden said the health agency has never contacted them with concerns, or ...

I have to say, I've always been in that camp where cheaper was generally better, at least when it came to retail items. Part of that was because usually my knowledge of what I was buying was greater than that of the 17 year old kid trying to sell the product for me. So in that case, might as well get the item as cheap as possible. Chilliwack has definitely undergone a fairly big transition in the last ten years, moving from small, family run businesses to mostly large franchise stores. A few years ago one of the ...

Well, I made it back home late last night. Thankfully, the border agents didn't grill me as hard as they normally do, otherwise I probably would have started with the smart ass responses. I gotta say, WordCamp Portland was a really amazing event, so major kudos to everyone involved in pulling it off. In fact, with each WordCamp I attend, I think that bar is getting progressively pushed higher and higher. For example, prior to my talk someone came and fitted me with a wireless microphone in addition to a normal microphone, the former being for ...

Yes, I realize Christmas is still a long time away. But truthfully, it'll be here in no time. This will be my first Christmas a resident of Chilliwack since I was 18, and I think it'll be pretty cool. The tree in my photo is my little Christmas tree from Vancouver. I've had him up a few years now, and he always makes me happy. Truthfully, I kept him up until almost July last year, simply because I didn't have the heart to take it down. I mean, I'd come home from work, and there'd he'd ...

Strangely enough, my home town, and the town I'm currently living in, has a reputation for smelling pretty bad. Truthfully, it's a farming community, so that smell is usually just manure or other organic matter than ultimately yields everyone's favourite Chilliwack corn or other farming goodness. I'd be the first to admit that as a kid that smell used to gross me out occasionally. But really, you only can smell it in the summer, and only pretty much in the heart of the growing season. Most of the time in the winter all you smell is that crisp, ...

I'll admit, keeping up with birthdays on my blog is pretty hard to do. I have a hard enough time remembering dates and making phone calls when they roll around, something I'm thankful my sister helps me out with. That being said, I missed blogging about one on Sunday, probably because I was so exhausted from Blogathon. It was my dad's birthday this last Sunday, and I just wanted to wish him a happy belated birthday from my website here. I managed to remember to call him on Sunday, but somehow this blog entry got ...

Since I wrote in detail about Vancouver in my last post, it's only fitting that I talk a little bit about my current place of residence, Chilliwack. Chilliwack is a little farming community nestled between a mountain range, approximately 100 kms east of Vancouver. My apartment is probably only about 5 minutes from one of the nicest provincial parks in the province, complete with it's own picturesque lake: I currently rent a 1200 square foot apartment for about $100 less a month than I was paying in Vancouver for my 700 square foot apartment. A new grocery ...

Vancouver is without a doubt one of the prettiest cities in the world, something that I appreciate more and more every time I go on a trip. In fact, I was just mentioning to a friend yesterday just how clean and inviting Vancouver is compared to most cities, specifically San Francisco and Los Angeles (both of which seem grubby and dirty by comparison, even though I happen to like aspects of both). And while Vancouver is a pretty city, it is not without its problems. In fact, Vancouver's lower-east side is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in all of ...