Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
tv

hit me baby one more time

For some reason, I find this show entertaining (or maybe I’m just desperate for Thursday night entertainment). For the uninitiated, this is a show where five one hit wonders from years past play two minute versions of their three minute long hit songs in the first half hour and then play a hit from a current artist in the second half hour. The audience then votes on their favorite. The artist who wins donates their winnings to the charity of their choice.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this show, it’s that old white men can’t sing. At least that’s true most of the time. Billy Vera proved the theory wrong tonight. But he didn’t win, either, so there.

It’s not like the show is the greatest thing on earth or anything, but I’m compelled to watch it each week. I think this show is directly aimed at my demographic (and maybe those a little older than me). In the past weeks, we’ve heard “867-5309”, “My Sharona”, “Working for the Weekend”. Finally, a show for old people! It’s about time someone caters to my generation.

gardening & landscaping

first day of summer

Could you have asked for better weather on this first day of summer? I couldn’t have. Much like most evenings, I spent my time in the garden. I’ve been having problems with some animal eating my beans and peas, so I replanted the beans and put up a temporary fence around them. The location of the peas doesn’t allow me to put up a fence, so I can only hope that whatever is eating them will stop because I will not be happy if I don’t get a crop of sugar snap peas from this year’s garden.

I guess there really is a first time for everything–I’m pretty much caught up on weeding. Brian made the observation this evening that weeding is kind of like sanding, but worse. I don’t agree. If the weeds get out of control, taking care of them certainly is a chore. But I’m in maintenance mode this year, so it hasn’t bothered me at all. It’s a zen thing.

Something also keeps making a mess of the mulch in my herb garden. I straightened that out yet again. Note to self: don’t mulch the herb garden next year.

It’s getting to the point where I’m going to have to find something else to do with my time in the evenings. The weeding project will continue all summer, but you have to give the little buggers a chance to grow before you pull them out. Looks like I’m going to have to dust off my “to do” list. Luckily, there are plenty of items on that list to keep me busy when the weeds aren’t calling.

holidays

father’s day 2005

The extended celebration (did you ever notice how everything’s an “extended celebration” when it comes to our families?) started yesterday when we went to my parent’s for supper in order to celebrate the holiday with them. We had a brief visit and then had to come home in time for Brian’s band practice.

Today, we went to Brian’s parent’s for supper. Jake and Brian planned on going swimming, but it was kind of chilly out this evening, so Brian didn’t want to go. Enter: Pappy Law. Jake asked his Pappy to take him in the pool, so he, of course, did (what are Pappys for but for stuff like that?). Once his teeth started to chatter, they got out of the pool. Brian will have to take him swimming when the weather is more appropriate for such activities.

All in all, a pretty good weekend. And, I got out of cooking two times! I love to cook, but since I do it every day, it’s nice to catch a break once in a while. I’m sure I’ll make up for it this week.

food & drink, tech

wine & computers

Last night, I took a break from the disaster which is Brian’s laptop and we bottled two batches of wine–a Chardonnay/Viognier mix and a Riesling. The Riesling was superb! I pretty much stuck to it all evening, but the Chardonnay/Viognier was pretty good, too. I’m looking forward to drinking it in the future. So there’s another 50 or so bottles of wine for my racks.

Brian’s new hard drive came yesterday, so I’ve been trying to get his laptop back in order. I’m not quite sure when I became the IT wizard around here, but I guess we all have a cross to bear. I was having all kinds of problems getting our wireless access point working with the laptop yesterday, so I quit working on it and started from scratch this morning and at least he has the internet now. I’m currently installing all of the windows service packs. When that is done I’ll have to assess the rest of the damage–there are still some drivers I need to install, but I can’t seem to find them on the cds that came with the computer.

I just hope to finish it up this weekend because I’m ready to move onto some other project.

tech

step away from the computer

This has not been the week for computer hardware at the House of Law. As mentioned before, Brian’s laptop hard drive died over the weekend. He took it to a company that does data recovery, but they were not able to do anything with it. Someone he works with has done data recovery before, so he’s going to take a look at it tomorrow. But we’re not holding out much hope.

After that debacle, we thought it might be a good idea to get an external hard drive in order to facilitate backups. Circuit City has a deal where they’re practically giving them away, so we picked one up there yesterday. I got it set up in a matter of minutes and started backing up files. The copying of files was going to take a while so I went upstairs to do some other stuff. After a bit, I went back downstairs to check on the progress and some sort of error had occurred. After this point, I was not able to see the hard drive on either of our computers. And, to top things off, the power button would only turn the unit on, not off. So, I went back to Circuit City today and exchanged the defective drive for a new one. I’m currently attempting another backup. Hopefully this time it will work.

So, if you are having computer problems this week, don’t ask me for help.