Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
celebrations

birthday week 2005

We don’t just celebrate birthdays for one day per year around here–usually they’re drawn out for at least a week…

Today we went to my parent’s for the annual “birthday dinner”. The dinner was for both my brother and me. His birthday is on May 18, so we always have the “birthday dinner” at some point between the two birthdays (mine’s on June 5). Usually we end up doing this over Memorial Day weekend.

Today, we pretty much had a Thanksgiving feast–turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, etc. Everything was quite delicious. Oh, and my grandmother made a lemon meringue pie for dessert. Yum!

I got some cool gifts, too. I got a whole bunch of stamping supplies, some clothes, and a book about how dogs think (that should be interesting). All in all a good day. Except the getting older thing.

auto

scion tc

The loan check for my car arrived in the mail yesterday, so we set out to buy a new car. We went to Laurel Scion (which is at Laurel Toyota), grabbed a salesmen and quickly agreed on a price. The price on the Scions are not negotiable, so that part was easy. And, they gave us exactly what we wanted for our trade-in, so that didn’t present a problem either. However, we were at the dealership for 3 1/2 hours! This leads me to believe that car salesmen are sadists–since they were not able to torture us with a price, they tortured us by making us waste our entire afternoon at the dealership.

I don’t know what took so freaking long. I know it was a while until they inspected my RAV4. And then it was another long while until they cleaned the car, and then another 30 minutes were spent gassing up the vehicle. At this point, they realized that the car didn’t have a stereo in it, so there goes another 30 minutes. I guess it all adds up. Brian and Jacob were getting antsy, but I guess that’s because they weren’t getting anything whereas I was getting new wheels.

The salesman must’ve realized that we were getting pissed by this point because he had them put in a 6-cd changer instead of the single cd player that they were supposed to install. Nice. I guess this is why this was my 3rd vehicle purchase in a row from Laurel.

Anyway, the car is great–it’s loaded with every feature you could possibly want except 4 wheel drive and leather seats. Of course, there aren’t any sports coupes with 4 wheel drive, but unfortunately leather seats are not an option for this car, so I guess I’ll be stuck with dog hair all over the seats yet again.

Here is a good picture of the car. And here is a picture of Jacob demonstrating the proper usage of a sunroof.

This car certainly isn’t practical for family use, but at least I got my mid-life crisis over with early.

tv

deadwood

The season finale of Deadwood was last night. It’s a show that takes place during the gold rush in the old west. Not normally my kind of show, but I really like it–it’s probably because of all of the cussing. And sometimes they do it in such a unique manner that you really have to be paying attention. I like that. Unfortunately, I can’t print any of the gems here because this is a family blog, but it’s definitely a show worth checking out. And, Al Swearingen is my favorite character since Tony Soprano.

I did learn one thing last night. In the days before television, apparently people sat in their living rooms–just as we do now–and stared at the drapes instead of the TV. Interesting.

Normally I am sad when the season ends for one of my beloved HBO shows, but another favorite, Six Feet Under, is starting up in a week along with Entourage and a new one called The Comeback (starring Lisa Kudrow). So, it looks like I’ll have something good to watch all summer. Thank you, HBO.

trips

rehoboth beach, delaware

We took a vacation this past week (left on Sunday and came home Thursday) and went to Rehoboth Beach. The weather was crappy, but like Jake said, “Going to the beach is fun even when it is cold.” Truer words have never been spoken. I like the beach, but don’t like swimming in the ocean (or pools for that matter) and Brian doesn’t even like the beach, so I guess the weather is irrelevant when we go there. Jake had a blast playing in the ankle-deep water (that’s about the deepest you could go without having to worry about hypothermia). It was calling for rain all week, but it held off until Wednesday, thankfully.

This was our first time to Rehoboth. We stayed at a place called the Brighton Suites Hotel. It was pretty nice. I really like staying in suites. Having an extra room (and an extra TV) is ideal whenever you have a rugrat running around.

I think we’re all caught up on our sleep (two naps a day definitely helps that cause). I don’t understand how I go to bed early and get up early when I’m on vacation, yet there’s no way I can do that when I have to go to work. Maybe it’s because there isn’t anything to do in the hotel late at night but sleep.

Besides the weather, the other bummer was that Brian lost his keys in the Atlantic Ocean. That really sucks, but I guess things could always be worse–at least I had my set of keys with us.

They have a bunch of shopping outlets down here. I’m not normally a shopper (that is, I don’t physically like going shopping, but I do like to buy stuff on the internet), but I thought it would be fun to check them out. We bought a bunch of school clothes for Jacob and some other odds and ends, so it worked out pretty well.

We also went to a local brewpub and eatery, Dogfish Head twice (it was that good). They not only make beer there (which was pretty darned good according to Brian), but spirits as well. I had some of their vodka and it was so good that I couldn’t finish my second drink because I spilled it all over the table. Highly recommended.

Anyway, that’s our vacation for this year. Now it’s time to start planning for next year…

Hopefully, you can view the pictures here.