Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
holidays

memorial day weekend

The weather finally got nice. In fact, I think it might be a little too nice tomorrow. We already have plans to get out the slip n slide for Jacob. So much for getting anything done outside tomorrow afternoon. Yesterday was pretty decent, though, so I was able to plant the rest of my garden. Some creature already ate one of my cucumber plants. Argh.

It was pretty hot today, but we went to my parent’s for dinner, so I didn’t have to contend with the weather this afternoon. My brother’s birthday is in May and mine is in June, so we usually end up going to my parent’s Sunday of Memorial Day weekend in order to celebrate the two birthdays. As usual, we had a great meal and I got some nice gifts. After we got home, I sat around for a while and waited for it to cool off a little before I went outside to mulch the garden. Now, I’m sitting around waiting for Brian to get back from a short motorcycle jaunt and then the three of us are going to go outside and celebrate the official start of summer by lighting up the chiminea.

movies

open water

Brian’s manager at work is a bit of a film buff, so every once in a while he throws a DVD our way. Last night, it was Open Water. This was a very low budget movie ($30,000) shot by a husband and wife team over a few year period (as they had the money to finance it).

The movie was about this married couple who went on a scuba-diving trip. Due to a headcount mishap, they missed the boat (or so to speak) and ended up stranded in the middle of the ocean with a bunch of sharks.

I found the acting to be a bit stilted at the beginning, but it improved as the movie went on. The ending was absolutely perfect–it couldn’t have been written any better.

The movie wasn’t quite as good as the Margarita and black bean dip we consumed while watching it, but I’ll be thinking about this one for a while. That’s all I ask for in a movie–one that makes me think.

jake

another biker

Brian has been trying to teach Jake how to ride his bike this spring. All of the hard work has finally paid off. This week, Jake was able to go quite a distance without any help from Dad. He still could use some practice using the brakes and turning, though. But, I guess he has the rest of the summer to work that out.

household stuff

water, water, everywhere

So, I’m washing clothes today and was putting a load in the dryer when I heard running water somewhere in the house. No one was upstairs so I knew it wasn’t coming from there. The washer wasn’t running at the moment, so it wasn’t coming from there, either. It sounded like it was coming from our “furnace” room, so I went in there to check things out. There was water all over the floor and the hot water tank was making funny noises. I grabbed a chair so I could turn off the water supply to the hot water tank, but it wouldn’t budge. Given that, I had to turn off the water supply to the house.

Jake and I removed as much stuff as we could from the room and then I grabbed the shop vac and started vacuuming up all of the water. While I was doing this, Brian returned from an auction he was at all morning. Imagine his surprise. Luckily, he was able to turn the shut off valve to the tank so at least we had cold water at our disposal throughout the rest of the day. We finished cleaning up the room and he started calling all of the plumbers in the phone book while I made us some lunch.

Here’s a tip: just because a plumber’s ad says they offer 24-hour emergency service, don’t count on it. At numerous places he either got an answering machine or simply no answer. A few of the places that did answer couldn’t do the job because they didn’t have a hot water tank in stock and the place they get them from was already closed (none of the plumbers would install a Lowe’s or Home Depot-type tank). He did leave a message at one of the places he called (that guy did end up calling back but we had other arrangements made by that point) and kept calling others in the meantime. Finally, he talked to the owner of J. Clawson Heating and Cooling, who had access to a tank and could do the job today. Well, this evening, anyway. The poor guy was on his way to a wedding and was going to cut out early so he could fix our water problem. He and his wife arrived around 8pm this evening and had the new one up and running about an hour later. Now, that’s service. Nice people, too.

weather

somewhere over the rainbow

Did I ever mention that we live in the rainbow capital of the world? Well, we do. More times than not, when it rains and the sun is shining, you can catch a pretty nice rainbow or two in the back yard. Before we moved here, I had only seen a few rainbows in my life. Now, I get to see a few rainbows a year.

This evening was no exception to the rule. It was raining and the sun was shining, so I thought to look out the window. There it was–a double rainbow (we get those occasionally). This rainbow was particularly nice, so I tried taking a few pics of it. Here is the best one of the lot.