Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
tv

roku

I bought one of these nifty devices recently. I haven’t had a lot of opportunities to use it, but Jake’s been giving it a workout and he seems to really like it. We used to have cable tv at the office, but we cancelled it recently so I bought Netflix streaming so Jake had something to watch (on his iPad) while he is there. I figured I might as go one step further and get a Roku so we can stream stuff to our tv as well. The one negative thing I will say is that of the 30+ items in my Netflix queue, only three of them are available for streaming. There are a bunch of free channels available which I haven’t had a chance to explore yet, but it looks like they might have some of the stuff I want to see, so that’s a plus.

Given the fact that more and more things will be available through streaming in the future, I think this was a good investment to make. Now, if only I could cancel our cable tv at the house. Maybe someday…

tech

texting…

…the new telegram.

I joined the revolution last year and finally started texting. This all happened when Jake got a phone. It was an easier and cheaper way to communicate with him. Telecommunications have definitely improved throughout the years–telegram, telephone, email, cell phones. But now it seems that texting is the most popular means of communication. I’ve heard that some from the younger generation don’t even use email (gasp!). With the popularity of cell phones, the home phone is definitely phasing out. In fact, I have plans to get rid of ours this summer. But, still, I can’t help thinking that we are regressing a bit by using texting so much. And, I don’t think it’s going to improve anyone’s spelling or grammar.

gardening & landscaping

jumping the gun

Along with everyone else, I have been loving the nice weather. Since the long term forecast is calling for more of the same, I decided to do some early gardening this year. For insurance, I put my cold frames in the garden (as nice as the weather has been, this probably wasn’t even necessary). This evening, I planted scallions, radishes, mesclun, and spinach in them. I also put some onion sets in the ground.

In pond news, I removed the winter netting from the pond. I still need to hook up the pump and filter–that will be done within the next week. The fish all look good and there are a couple of babies in there that must’ve been born last summer. Seeing them was a nice surprise.

books

look again

This book was ok–not as good as some of Scottoline’s other books, but not as bad as the last one of hers that I read, either. The thing I disliked about the last two books I’ve read is that the dialog was off. It was to a lesser degree in this book, though. For example, one of the characters in this book was a 3-year-old boy. I just couldn’t see a kid talking in the way he did in the book. While the book revolved around him, he wasn’t really a main character. In the previous book I read, one of the main characters was from the inner-city. This character’s dialog was totally unbelievable. This made the book difficult to read because, being a main character, there was a lot of this dialog throughout the book.

movies

mrs. doubtfire

Yet another movie from the past that did not hold up. Though, I have to say, it wasn’t as bad as some of the other ones we have watched–at least it had a couple of funny parts. You could tell that Robin Williams was improvising throughout the movie. But, with a run time of around 2 hours, they definitely could’ve tightened things up a bit and made a better movie.