Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
gardening & landscaping

garden

So far, the garden has been producing nicely. This year, for the first time ever, I picked some large onions and beets. Normally both run small. I don’t mind it for the beets so much, but tiny onions are a pain to deal with. I’m not sure what’s the cause for the large vegetables–all I can figure is that it has something to do with the early spring because I planted everything at the same time of the year that I usually do.

No red tomatoes yet, but the plants look great. I should have a good crop this year. Due to the blight problem, I bought some fungicidal spray for the plants. I’ve only sprayed once so far. I’m trying to do it the least amount possible since I don’t like using stuff like this, even if it is approved for organic gardening. Blight is dependent upon the weather (cool, rainy weather). I sprayed during one of the cooler times, but it’s been pretty hot and dry since then so I haven’t bothered to do it again (yet).
I’ve been canning and freezing some things, too, but that won’t get into full swing until more things start to ripen. I’m trying to stay away from novelty items this year (pickled butternut squash, anyone?) and just stick to things that I can really use.
books

cross fire

I was in the mood for a quick read and this did the trick. I always enjoy James Patterson novels whenever I haven’t read one in a while, as was the case with this book. It seems like his older books had a little more substance to them, but maybe I’m remembering wrong. At any rate, it was a good read.

tech

google chrome

Firefox, my browser of choice for some time, had been acting up in recent months–it was hogging all of the RAM on my laptop and running slowly. A reboot of Firefox would fix the issue, but having to reboot several times a day was an annoyance.

During all of this, I heard that Google Chrome topped IE as the most popular browser, so I thought I’d give it a try (again–as I tried it when it first came out, but didn’t care for it). Well, I am converted this time. In general there’s not anything I don’t like about it–it has a clean interface and is super fast. The only negative is that one of the toolbars I use, the Web Developer toolbar, is missing some features that I need. So, I still need to use Firefox when I want to access these tools. I still see no need for IE beyond testing websites to make sure they render correctly in it (which I something I do at work, not as a hobby).
movies

contagion

I was hoping for a little more “apocalypse” in this movie (there was some of that, though not too much), but it was still interesting to watch how quickly a global pandemic can occur. Jake is my new movie-watching partner and he liked it, too.

tech

smarter

In anticipation of disconnecting our home phone later this summer (actually, I’m going to try to port it to Google Voice for voicemail purposes), Jake and I got smartphones (Brian already has one for work). While having a smartphone is more of a luxury than a necessity, I do really like it. In fact, it paid off for the first time yesterday while we were at family day at Boy Scout camp. Two of the people there had ridden motorcycles to the event (Brian being one of them). I checked the radar at one point only to find out that it was going to be storming soon (despite the fact that the forecast called for nice weather). It was decided to pack up camp and leave while the weather was still ok. So, it will definitely come in handy when we are on our bikes.

And, I’ve found that I fool around a lot less on the computer since I got the phone. I normally have my computer on at all times because I use TeuxDeux for my “to do” list and I’m constantly referring to it to find out what needs to be done next. Also, Google Calendar. Since the smartphone is less convenient for internet browsing, I tend to do the bare minimum on it and am not tempted by the internets as much.