Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
movies

parasite

For lack of something better to do, I watched this on New Year’s Eve. The movie told the story of a lower-class family that infiltrates an upper-class family by earning positions as part of their house staff (driver, maid, etc.). The upper-class family does not know that everyone in the lower-class family is related. Anyway, as you can imagine, things go terribly wrong. It was billed as a black comedy, but while I didn’t think it was particularly humorous, it was engrossing.

Factoid: it won four Oscars and was the first non-English language film to win Best Picture.

My rating: 3.5/5

tv

the office

I watched this show again from start to finish and it was just as good as the first time, if not better. I finished it in the nick of time, too–it’s no longer going to be on Netflix as of January 1. Netflix is losing shows left and right to all of the other streaming services, which is a bummer as I like to have a sitcom going at all times. Most of the shows I watch are dramas, so it’s nice to switch to something light every once in a while. The sitcoms are in short supply on there anymore. I’ll have to see if Hulu is faring any better with that.

Anyway, I loved the show. It got a little weird after Steve Carrell left. He was always cringey, but in a good way. The people they got to replace him were over the top, in a bad way. And I hated the Jim/Pam thing in the last season or so. Things worked out in the end for them, but did they really have to sully it like that? And, Andrew Bernard is still my least favorite character.

My rating: 4/5

holidays, movies

it’s a wonderful life

For lack of something better to do yesterday afternoon, I watched this movie for the first time. I’m not really into classic movies, but it wasn’t bad.

But, this was definitely a weird Christmas all the way around. Jake and I spent Christmas Eve together, where I cooked a typical holiday meal (ham, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and rolls). After dinner, we viewed some old family slides on the projector. It’s been a while since I dusted those off.

On Christmas Day, we opened gifts in the morning, then Jake went to Brian’s, which left me to my own devices. To fill the time, I watched the movie after a lunch of Christmas Eve leftovers, then took an extended nap (90 minutes!) and then got to work on dinner, which was a new stuffed shells recipe. By the time dinner was ready, Jake returned home, with some additional gifts for me from my ex-family.

In the evening, we did our own thing. We have yet to meet up with my family to swap bags of gifts. Hopefully, tomorrow we’ll do that.

household stuff

short-lived victory

I did another load of laundry this evening. I checked on the dryer after it had been running for a while and it was cold. Again. So, guess who’s getting a new dryer? I hope Krisay’s is open tomorrow. While a dryer isn’t as mission critical as a washer, I don’t have a lot of room to hang clothes to dry, so there is going to be a bit of a holdup with the laundry until this gets resolved.

That said, I’ve been pretty happy with the Speed Queen washer I purchased last year, so I’m going to get the matching dryer. That will hopefully make my trip to the appliance store quick. I was hoping I could purchase it on their website (the url shopkrisays.com would imply that), but there was not an option to do so.

Oh well, the dryer is the oldest appliance I have in the house so it was bound to go sooner or later. But, I would have preferred later.

household stuff

threes

They say that bad things always happen in threes, so let me tell you about the past few days.

First off, the dryer…the part I ordered from Repair Clinic arrived today. Conveniently, they had an instructional video that showed how to take the dryer apart, install the new part, and then put it back together. It was pretty simple, if not a bit time consuming, but the dryer is working! I’m not going to get too excited about it, though, as my past experience with fixing old appliances shows that sometimes other things break. But, I’m happy about it for now.

Two. Last night, I was going over my credit card statement and found four charges that I did not make. They were all for Amazon (so you’d think that will be easy for the credit card company to research as the order number was shown on my statement). A quick call to Chase this morning got the wheels in motion. So, all should be good there now.

Three. Last week I ordered crossbars for the Kona’s roof rack. They came today and the box was pretty busted up, so I wanted to get them installed to make sure they were ok (Jake helped me with it. When I say “helped”, I mean that he did it while I stood there in the cold giving moral support). Well, the one plastic cover had a crack in it. It’s usable, but I’d really like a replacement, so I sent a message to the seller (I got it on eBay) and they’re supposed to send me a replacement cover. We’ll see. The roof racks do look very nice, though. I bought them because I want to get a cargo box for when I go on trips. When Jake and I went on vacation last year, we couldn’t have fit another thing in the car, so the cargo box will free up some space.

If these are the worst things that happen to me in December, I’ll count myself lucky, but it does seem like one thing after another.