Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
live entertainment

qotsa again

Ten years ago this month, we took Jake to see his first concert, Queens of the Stone Age. When we heard they were coming to Pittsburgh again in support of their new album (this time to Stage AE), the three of us decided to go. Not surprisingly, it was a great show. Royal Blood was the opener, and they were good, too. We saw them open for the Foo Fighters a couple of years ago. Anyway, we were home by midnight, which is surprising for a Pittsburgh show, but things wrapped up really early. I wasn’t a huge fan of the venue as it was an outdoors show and everyone was packed in like sardines–at least the rain mostly held off.

In anticipation of being tired today, I took the day off. So far, my major accomplishment has been canning another batch of tomato soup (the third one this season!). Not that it’s any small feat–it took about 4 hours to do. Up next: a nap.

jake

almost an eagle

Jake wrapped up his Eagle project last night. What a relief! It kind of dragged on longer than it should have, but now everything is done except for the paperwork and board of review, both of which should happen within a month. After that, we’ll have his Court of Honor ceremony/party and that will be that.

gardening & landscaping

phil

Last year, it was mice, this year, it was a groundhog. One set up residence in the pond area and had to be dispatched. It’s just as well, because he thought my garden was his personal farmers market. Brian set up a trap and relocated the bugger once he was caught. It didn’t take very long to capture him–it turns out that groundhogs can’t resist cantaloupe.

food & drink

canning and freezing

I’ve continued to can and freeze as much as possible. One thing that’s not vegetable-related is that I canned up some BBQ Pulled Pork. I have not tried it yet, so I hope it turned out well. I also did another three trays of zucchini stuffed shells, so we should be good on those for the winter. The garden season is winding down, but I still haven’t canned any tomato-related recipes. I have two in the queue for the weekend, but I just don’t have that many tomatoes and the weather is turning cold already. I’m hoping that I can do at least another recipe or two down the road.

do-it-yourself, home improvements

driveway

Our driveway has needed redone ever since we bought our house 21 years ago. This should have been straightforward, but we share a driveway with our neighbor, so we’ve been trying to work something out with him for probably the last decade. But, it never came to fruition, so we had to draw a line in the sand and put a deadline on it (due to the fact that our move is in the not-too-distant future and there’s no way anyone is going to buy the house with the driveway like that). The deadline still didn’t work so we just got our part of the driveway done. It really wasn’t that big of a deal–they just cut out our portion and replaced it. However, the neighbor’s side looks even worse now that our side is good–like one of those double houses where one side is kept up with and the other side is falling into disrepair. The good news is that now we have a decent surface to park on.

We only got the top part of the driveway done, mostly because of the cost. We had $x allotted for the sewer work and driveway and that’s all it would cover. The lower part of the driveway wasn’t in anywhere near as bad of condition, so we did some filling and patching and it’s getting topcoated tonight. Once it’s all a uniform color, I’m sure it will look even better.