Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
books

jack & jill

You thought the James Patterson marathon was over? Think again. My mom lent me another stack of Patterson novels. Fortunately, I had already read all of them but one, Jack & Jill. This was another one from the Alex Cross series, so that automatically makes it a good read. It was about this pair of serial killers (with an extra killer thrown into the mix later in the book) whose ultimate goal was to assassinate the president. I won’t give away the ending, though. There was also a side story about this teenager who was going around killing these little kids. I guess that makes him a serial killer as well. Boy, that Alex Cross is one busy guy having to track multiple serial killers at once.

With each murder Jack & Jill completes, they leave some great poetry like this:

Jack and Jill
Came to the hill
To kill
To kill
To kill

I’m not kidding.

My only regret with the Alex Cross series is that I did not read them in order, so I never know where I’m at in the “big picture”. Patterson does a pretty good job of explaining this in each story, but it still would’ve been nice to read them in order.

gardening & landscaping

harvest

It’s harvest time once again. What we haven’t been eating, I’ve been freezing for winter use. I had to pick my potatoes today because something was eating the tops and killing the plants. So, I didn’t get quite the harvest I hoped for. But at least we’ll get a few meals out of them. We had the first meal today and it was quite delicious–nothing beats fresh potatoes. I’ve been getting tomatoes on a regular basis (Jake eats them about as fast as I can pick them), but it doesn’t appear that I’ll be having a bumper crop this year, so I might not have enough to make tomato sauce at the end of the season. And, as it usually turns out, I’m up to my ears in zucchini. Note to self: next year only plant one zucchini plant. I don’t even grow the zucchini for us–my mom’s the one who wants it (she doesn’t have room in her garden). I like to plant a lot of different things so I never end up with too much of any one thing, but I do usually have some extras to freeze. I’ve got quite the array of herbs this year thanks to my new herb garden. I’m actively freezing some of the herbs and I’ll be drying the rest of them at the end of the season.

me

i got carded at the liquor store

Everybody sing it now!

I got carded at the liquor store…
I got carded at the liquor store…
I got carded at the liquor store…
But yet I’m thirty-five!

Getting carded always makes my day. Well, it only happens about once a year anymore so I guess it makes my year. Remember the days when you’d get carded every time you tried to buy alcohol? It wasn’t fun then, but it is now. My goal is to one day get carded when I’m 40 years old. Of course, I may have to dye my hair in order for that to happen the way the gray hairs are sprouting up these days.

There was a new woman working at the register today (who was a good 15 years older than me). When I was pulling out my credit card to pay for my purchases, she asked to see my ID. I showed it to her and she let out a small guffaw. I don’t know what was so funny. I guess I will have to ponder that this evening while I’m sipping on my Margarita.

family

friday night

Yesterday evening, Brian’s parents came over for a cookout. We had some good stuff to eat and then chatted and drank wine and beer the rest of the evening. Brian’s dad made some delicious Italian sausage-stuffed hot peppers for the occasion–I’ll have to get the recipe from him some day. These went well with dinner, which consisted of the following: BBQ boneless pork chops, three bean dish, a mesclun and romaine salad, thyme potatoes, and a yellow cake with chocolate icing.

Jake and Pappy Law played their version of “Calvin Ball” most of the evening. This involved most of the items on the porch, a few hockey sticks, and a big plastic puck. Interesting.