Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
movies

bad santa

Now, that’s my kind of holiday flick. No one’s going to mistake this movie for It’s a Wonderful Life, that’s for sure. The movie was fairly amusing, but pretty much forgettable. Billy Bob Thornton, while a total freak in real life, is actually a pretty good actor. I like him (and Angelina Jolie) ever so much more now that they are divorced.

The whole Santa concept was interesting. I’ve done my best not to perpetuate the whole Santa thing with Jacob, but, as you know, he does have grandparents, so I cannot totally shield him from the myth. I remember figuring out the Santa thing at a very early age–mostly because Santa had the same hand-writing as my mom and stored our gifts under my parent’s bed. And, oh yeah, we didn’t have a chimney for him to come down. Jacob, being the little genius he is, is sure to figure it out himself sooner rather than later. But, we’ll keep going along with the idea as long as is necessary. Just don’t expect to see me at the mall in the line to see Santa.

The Flick Filosopher totally loved the movie, but what do you expect from an atheist?

holidays

let it snow!

Well, the first official snow of the season is upon us. Jake’s all excited about playing in the snow. Lucky for me, my dad watched him while I worked today, so he got to go out and play in the snow with Jake. Surprisingly, they were out for quite a while.

On a sort-of related note, the “by Angela” stamp I bought for my Christmas cards came on Saturday, so I got all of my cards ready and they are being mailed this week. Seeing that I’m too lazy to go to the post office, I’m putting a few in our mailbox each day this week so they’ll all be mailed by Friday. Friday, incidentally being “gift wrapping” day. Jake will be at preschool in the a.m., so Brian and I will get his gifts wrapped while he’s gone (we’re both off on Friday). After he comes home, he’ll have to entertain himself upstairs while we wrap the rest. I guess we’ll have to decorate the house a bit between Friday and Saturday as well. We also need to get our tree on Saturday. The place we buy our trees is only open on Saturdays and Sundays, hence the wait.

And, I’ve been baking dog treats like a mad woman since the weekend. Three recipes down, two to go. I still have my human treats to make. All of that should be wrapped up by the weekend. Busy week–not only here but at work as well. It seems like I’m always ridiculously busy at work around Christmas. You’d think I could catch a break somewhere. The main problem is that I’m doing some testing for a project I reviewed, and the testing takes four days. So, pretty much everything else is getting pushed back until I’m done, which will likely make my next few weeks incredibly busy. Oh well, at least it makes the day go fast. I don’t mind having a lot of work to do, I just hate getting interrupted every few minutes when I’m trying to do it.

holidays

weekend update

Today, the boys went to see Santa Claus at a Shriner’s function in Altoona. They went with Pappy Law and Jake’s cousin Erika. This gave me an opportunity to accomplish a few things on my Sunday “to do” list. First off, I took a nap (of course) on the couch with the pups. Then I went down to the shop to work on one of my finishing projects. Note to self: never do a finishing project after sleeping on the couch with the dogs. I spent about as much time picking yellow hairs out of the project as I did shellacking it. I guess we’ll call it my “Mission Hair” finish.

Afterwards, I wrapped a few Christmas gifts. This coming Friday is our official gift wrapping day, but I thought I’d try to get a jump on things. Now that Jake is in the picture, gift wrapping has taken on a whole new dimension. After that, I ran to Em’s for a sub. By the time I took two bites out of it, Jake and Brian returned (about an hour earlier than I expected). So, I still have some things to accomplish. Maybe after the Steeler game is over…

motorcycles

driving

Every time we are in the car, Brian says “just think, next year at this time, we could be on the motorcycle.” This statement is patently false for two reasons:
1. Jake is always in the car with us. Three people cannot fit on one motorcycle (at least not legally without a sidecar–of which Brian’s motorcycle is not going to be equipped).
2. It is winter and we live in Western PA.

Needless to say, he is even more excited about the motorcycle! motorcycle! motorcycle! now than he was before. He even has a timeline in place to get him through the next few months:
1. Christmas=good (presents!)
2. January=bad (nothing good ever comes out of January)
3. February=good (new tattoo for him and it’s also his birth month)
4. March=good (time to order motorcycle accessories)
5. April=good (new tattoo for me & motorcycle safety course for him)
6. May=good (motorcycle delivery)

One subject that keeps coming up is whether to drive the motorcycle home or to have it delivered. Seeing that he will be taking the motorcycle safety course before delivery, I think he should decide after he sees how that goes. I mean, if he wrecks the bike at the course, he’d probably be better off having it delivered, you know? Otherwise, I guess I’ll be trailing him in the RAV4 after pressing the 9-1 portion of 9-1-1 on our cell phone.

gardening & landscaping

is it spring yet?

I ordered a bunch of gardening stuff over the weekend–the main thing being a “grow light” system so that I can start my own plants from seed. Now, I’m anxious to start planting! The seed catalogs usually start coming out after Christmas, so the planting season is closer than it appears. I’ll probably have to start planting stuff inside around February/March. I already have my garden plotted out for next year–how’s that for anal?

Yes, I am the Queen of Anal Retentiveness. What can I say, I like to plan. I got it from my mother. I used to think all of her planning was ridiculous, but I have far eclipsed any planning benchmarks she ever set. I mean, I even have a “to do” list for the house that has the year a change is planned for. I could go on and on with more examples, but I probably shouldn’t. That said, I should probably go and make another list or something.