Frog and Goat

On Christmas Day we were creating a gift certificate for the better-half’s aunt and heard a loud grinding noise spit out of the late-1990s Dell we have. Good-bye hard drive. The old Dell is the machine that used to be our daily machine but has now become the storage shed for old documents, tons and tons of pictures, our household accounting software, etc. It also served as our print server.

Naturally, we do not practice what we preach and that machine had not been backed up in a long, long time (except the accounting software). The better-half found a hard drive on the Internet that matched our exact model and bought it for about $50. His plan is to take the board off it and put it on the dead hard drive to see if we can recover the data.

The death of the machine pushed us to buy one of these instead of waiting like we thought we would. I ordered it from Amazon yesterday. It is already out for delivery and we should receive it today. That’s pretty awesome.

The Niece spent Monday night with us and I feared the better-half was going to bludgeon himself after watching a few minutes of a Barney movie. I’m not sure why we turned it on because The Niece lost interest in about .003 seconds. And, who could blame her?

While she was here she dropped a stone cat we have and the already chipped ear sheared off. I scooped up the cat knowing I should have put the kibosh on playing with a very heavy stone cat and took the cat to the vet. Now staring in dual roles! Frog as aunt and as vet! As it turns out a huge amount of glue, some patience and the concern of a little girl does wonders for a stone cat’s prognosis. We decided to let the kitty sleep since he’d just had surgery.

The next day I had an dental appointment and, while I was gone, The Niece dropped a glass heart we have. (I gave it to the better-half one year for Valentine’s day back during the dating years–yes, a sappy gift but the heart is actually very cool and as it turns out very sturdy). After the crash, The Niece told the better-half she broke it. He was duped, though, because she followed up the bleak news with “just joking”. I was delighted to hear about that exchange. My heart grew three sizes.

The other week when we went to the movies we had to sit through the Coke commercial that’s running non-stop. The one with the polar bears and the penguins. Then we had to watch a trailer for some crack-headed movie coming out next year where animated penguins dance. When that trailer was over, I leaned over to the better-half and said, “I’d like to eat a penguin”. Enough with the birds already. So there was a feel-good documentary about penguins. Every. single. person I’ve heard talk about that movie has said something about the baby birds dying. I’d like to see the polar bears swig down their Cokes and then top off the evening with a nice snack of penguins.

Yesterday we went out to breakfast and then went to two different wine shops. One was a specialty store and the other was a big box wine retailer. When we want something really special we go to the little shop with the knowledgeable staff and the clean layout. As we had several people on our list that need to get wine as gifts this year, we purchased several bottles and also found a champagne for ringing in the new year.

We headed over to the big box store to stock up on our regular supply of wine. I’m sure there are knowledgeable employees there but they are usually busy stacking box after box of wine. The better-half likes to take his time and carefully select new bottles to try. I usually grab the 3 or 4 usual suspects and then head over to the beer section to see what’s new. That’s exactly what happened yesterday.

I entered the beer aisle from the front of the store and noticed an older couple stalled in front of the import singles. I knew they’d be there awhile so it took a little wind out of my sails. I like to get my shopping done fast. Then I can wander around with the better-half and prod him into shopping faster, faster. With the stall in front of the imports, I decided to look at the domestics.

I’m not overly found of American hops when compared to the smoothness of foreign hops in a good IPA from anywhere but here. I don’t usually spend a whole lot of time looking at the domestics because of that. Which is not to say that I don’t like to drink the domestics and some are quite good. I drank a Stone IPA last night-delicious. I digress.

I did a holy cow move right there in the aisle and was pretty glad the old folks were too busy fumbling through the stouts. Genesee Cream Ale, right there in front of me. I grabbed two six-packs and practically ran back to the better-half. I slid those cartons into the cart, smiled, and said, “Don’t Worry” and then scurried off. The better-half looked stunned and pretty happy. I scoured the case area to no avail and went back in for two more six-packs. I would have cleared the shelf but didn’t want to deprive other Genesee fans. Now all we need to do is to get someone to carry Strongbow around here.

We’re creating heaven in the form of a ham again this year. The soaking of the country ham has started.

We cut the hock off with our porky ham hacksaw blade–you have one don’t you?

I just got off the phone with my sister. Among other things she had to tell me that our parents just bought cemetery plots so no worry about what to do with them when they are dead. My sister and I practically cackled over the news (sorry to the ‘rents if you are reading, but c’mon that’s funny).

I had no sooner sat down when some freaky weird noise started up from the other room. I seriously thought the better-half had snuck into the house and was razzing me. I walked around trying to identify the sound. I thought maybe I had nudged a Christmas ornament and it was chirping. I quickly got over that idea because of all the weird ornaments we have we don’t have ones that chirp. I walked past my purse (again) and realized it was my cell phone. The one that is supposed to be off. The one I think turns itself back on just to annoy me. You can tell I don’t get many calls.

Naturally, with all the wandering around, I missed the call. I checked the call log and then googled the number. Someone I don’t know who lives in Midlothian, VA. Most of the messages left on my cell phone have to do with someone who sells cars and is either too stupid to put the correct phone number down in the ad or the interested buyers are too stupid to call the correct phone number. In this case no message.

Tonight I made corn and crab soup for dinner. More importantly, I used our new camera (Canon PowerShot S2) and took a picture that didn’t suck.

I’m off from work for the next two weeks. I have big plans while I’m off and they include sleeping past six and eating breakfast out at least once. And, I’ll be painting one of the upstairs rooms.

Speaking of sleeping past six, this morning I got up at 7:30 and thought OH THE LUXURY. The better-half asked, “Aren’t you going to sleep late?” Hehe. How different we are about sleeping. He ended up getting up shortly after I did so we could have breakfast and then bake another round of molasses cookies. The first round went mostly to a couple of people at work and since we were seeing the hairdresser today we made a batch for her.

While out we saw a car with the license plate “A MILF”. The woman had kids in her car and I can’t get past the idea of the woman having to explain what her license plate means. I shouldn’t worry about it too much. I’m sure her plate will get recalled once DMV figures out what MILF means.

Once a month I turn a spreadsheet into a PDF file with all kinds of mad security on it for the person who is the boss of my boss. Today I received an email that said something to the effect of “can you convert this report”? I quickly did my thing and emailed her back and wrote, “Not only can I, but I just did. Please see attached.” Bet you wish I worked for you.