Saturday we went to the drive-in for my birthday. We were running later than planned and hadn't eaten, so we stopped at McDonald's. We ordered food, and Mom & I both wanted kids' meals but with water to drink. She said she still had to charge us $1 for the drink, so we said fine - just make sure they are large waters. We get to the window and my sister asks for honey mustard. The only thing we had ordered that was allowed a dipping sauce was my nuggets and I already had BBQ so she said it would cost. At this point we'd already spent $2 on water, so my sister just said never mind and we started to leave. As we were leaving, Dad looked at the chick in the window and said, "I'm not lovin' it."
I know, I know. This is one of those 'you had to be there' moments, but it was freaking hilarious. I wanted to document it so at least I'd remember, even if you can't appreciate it. :)
Showing posts with label Misadventures of Angie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Misadventures of Angie. Show all posts
Ride 'em Cowgirl!
06 March 2011 at 11:14
Went grocery shopping with the whole famn damily. Unsurprisingly, it ended like this.
A White February
01 February 2011 at 17:38
We, like a large part of the country, got slammed with this crazy winter storm. It didn't really kick up until the afternoon, so I went in to work. The problem was, once I got there, they weren't being very accommodating of people who wanted to leave early. Eventually I did anyway. Andy said it was starting to get bad, and he didn't feel comfortable waiting any longer, so I left work about 1:15. I should have left sooner...or about 15 minutes later. Long story short, the roads were terrible. This mixed with rear wheel drive doesn't make for a pleasant trip home. It wasn't TOO bad until we got almost home. The state highway we live off of wasn't really plowed, and we got stuck in the turn lane. I had to get out and push, and eventually we made it through there. We then made it to the street we live on, which hadn't been plowed at all. We tried and tried to make it up the hill, and we were about to give up and park at the bottom, despite the fact that we'd get plowed in. We decided one more try, and ended up in the ditch.
A neighbor and I tried to push out, but the way the wheels were stuck it just made things worse. I called a tow truck, and they said it'd be 30 minutes. As I was on the phone with them, here comes the plow. They did a round and then stopped and said they weren't allowed to hook up chains but they'd help try to push. As I was explaining that only made matters worse, a neighbor stopped on his way home and said he had chains and would run up and get them. He got back and started talking to Andy. He said, 'I'm no physics major, but I don't think I can pull you guys up the hill....', which was pretty true. They decided to pull us out of the ditch down the hill. After a lot of flopping around in the snow, they found something to hook onto under the Mustang and they were off. I stood in another neighbor's driveway and we watched.
Andy & the neighbor, hooking up ;)
He got him out, and the neighbor I was next to said something to the effect of 'All right, he got him out!', and I was watching and replied, "Yeah, now if Andy can get his car stopped before he hits the truck," which was punctuated by the sound of the 2 cars hitting. Our neighbor, who we think is named Justin(?) pulled Andy out & stopped and Andy had too much momentum and not enough traction and sailed right into his trailer hitch. Luckily it didn't do anything to the truck, but the hitch mount poked a square hole right in Andy's rear bumper. Definitely a huge bummer. Come to find out, the tow trucks were gouging people for $300/ditch, so in the grand scheme of things I guess it's alright. The bumper will surely cost more than that, but it's not money we have to come up with TODAY, so that part is at least a relief. Even after all of that, we had to push the car up the hill to my house, and at that point it had been plowed.
When we got home I was exhausted and dirty and freezing. We hunkered down in our pajamas and just hid out from the cold. In the early evening we heard something outside, and another neighbor was blading the driveway for us!!!
Neighbors make rural living preferable.
A neighbor and I tried to push out, but the way the wheels were stuck it just made things worse. I called a tow truck, and they said it'd be 30 minutes. As I was on the phone with them, here comes the plow. They did a round and then stopped and said they weren't allowed to hook up chains but they'd help try to push. As I was explaining that only made matters worse, a neighbor stopped on his way home and said he had chains and would run up and get them. He got back and started talking to Andy. He said, 'I'm no physics major, but I don't think I can pull you guys up the hill....', which was pretty true. They decided to pull us out of the ditch down the hill. After a lot of flopping around in the snow, they found something to hook onto under the Mustang and they were off. I stood in another neighbor's driveway and we watched.
Andy & the neighbor, hooking up ;)He got him out, and the neighbor I was next to said something to the effect of 'All right, he got him out!', and I was watching and replied, "Yeah, now if Andy can get his car stopped before he hits the truck," which was punctuated by the sound of the 2 cars hitting. Our neighbor, who we think is named Justin(?) pulled Andy out & stopped and Andy had too much momentum and not enough traction and sailed right into his trailer hitch. Luckily it didn't do anything to the truck, but the hitch mount poked a square hole right in Andy's rear bumper. Definitely a huge bummer. Come to find out, the tow trucks were gouging people for $300/ditch, so in the grand scheme of things I guess it's alright. The bumper will surely cost more than that, but it's not money we have to come up with TODAY, so that part is at least a relief. Even after all of that, we had to push the car up the hill to my house, and at that point it had been plowed.
When we got home I was exhausted and dirty and freezing. We hunkered down in our pajamas and just hid out from the cold. In the early evening we heard something outside, and another neighbor was blading the driveway for us!!!
Neighbors make rural living preferable.So now we're trying to figure out something to make/buy for them. Andy's thinking of smoking some stuff. Shocking, I know, but I think that would be pretty cool - way better than baking cookies or something like that...
Be safe out there. Or better yet, don't go out there.
Be safe out there. Or better yet, don't go out there.
Nerdiness Prevails
10 January 2011 at 01:16
I spent the bulk of my weekend building Frankputer:
Several months ago, my aunt's computer (which was formerly my grandfather's) suffered from a hard drive crash. Having a laptop, she decided to just be done with the desktop. My father & I being the computer nerds we are got dibs.
Subsequently, my computer wouldn't run Star Trek Online, a game Andy purchased and was excited to play. It might have overcome the subpar dual core, since the clock speed was more than necessary, but my video card just wouldn't cut the mustard. He went online and bought the recommended card for the game. He should have consulted me, as the motherboard has an AGP video slot and he bought a PCI-E, so we couldn't use it.
This set in motion the plan for Frankenputer. We got the case from my aunt, and I had my desktop as well as Andy's virus-ridden one at the house. We'd been planning to combine our 2 to make the best machine we could out of what we had, but now there was another one in the mix.
Dad came over Saturday and we spent nearly the entire weekend assembling it, but for the most part it is paying off. Thankfully, even though it isn't dual core, it runs Star Trek Online pretty damn smoothly.
We ended up wiping Andy's hard drive and using it, using the RAM from his computer, and his wireless card. My wireless card was acting flaky. I left my system mostly intact and sent it up to my parents' house to live on the farm.
The computer my grandpa originally had, which is the bulk of what our 'new' system is, has some kickass features. It comes with built-in FM and TV tuners, has a remote control, records video, has S-video and composite outputs, etc. I'm actually pretty excited about it. Something was wrong with the DVD burner tray, so I took it out and had to take it apart to get a disc out of it, so we'll need to replace that. Also, I'm waiting on the hard drive cage to make its way back from the data recovery service, where it's still attached to my aunt/grandpa's hard drive. That's why the cover is off and top slot is empty in the picture.
Anyway, what we ended up with:
Pentium 4 3.0 GHz
2.5 GB RAM
160 GB HD, w 80 GB master in the works....and striped SATA drives to follow shortly
GeForce 9500 GT graphics card
...and all for the $30 that it cost Andy to get the video card, and as a result light a proverbial fire under my ass.
I'm pretty happy.
Several months ago, my aunt's computer (which was formerly my grandfather's) suffered from a hard drive crash. Having a laptop, she decided to just be done with the desktop. My father & I being the computer nerds we are got dibs.
Subsequently, my computer wouldn't run Star Trek Online, a game Andy purchased and was excited to play. It might have overcome the subpar dual core, since the clock speed was more than necessary, but my video card just wouldn't cut the mustard. He went online and bought the recommended card for the game. He should have consulted me, as the motherboard has an AGP video slot and he bought a PCI-E, so we couldn't use it.
This set in motion the plan for Frankenputer. We got the case from my aunt, and I had my desktop as well as Andy's virus-ridden one at the house. We'd been planning to combine our 2 to make the best machine we could out of what we had, but now there was another one in the mix.
Dad came over Saturday and we spent nearly the entire weekend assembling it, but for the most part it is paying off. Thankfully, even though it isn't dual core, it runs Star Trek Online pretty damn smoothly.
We ended up wiping Andy's hard drive and using it, using the RAM from his computer, and his wireless card. My wireless card was acting flaky. I left my system mostly intact and sent it up to my parents' house to live on the farm.
The computer my grandpa originally had, which is the bulk of what our 'new' system is, has some kickass features. It comes with built-in FM and TV tuners, has a remote control, records video, has S-video and composite outputs, etc. I'm actually pretty excited about it. Something was wrong with the DVD burner tray, so I took it out and had to take it apart to get a disc out of it, so we'll need to replace that. Also, I'm waiting on the hard drive cage to make its way back from the data recovery service, where it's still attached to my aunt/grandpa's hard drive. That's why the cover is off and top slot is empty in the picture.
Anyway, what we ended up with:
Pentium 4 3.0 GHz
2.5 GB RAM
160 GB HD, w 80 GB master in the works....and striped SATA drives to follow shortly
GeForce 9500 GT graphics card
...and all for the $30 that it cost Andy to get the video card, and as a result light a proverbial fire under my ass.
I'm pretty happy.
DIY Centerpieces Gone Wrong
11 December 2010 at 11:36
Ghetto rigging.
Tonight Jenny & I began working on centerpieces for Mom's party. I had a general idea of what I wanted - a photo cube with 3 wires to hold 6 pictures on each. We went to Hobby Lobby and found some wooden blocks, crafter's wire, some star & circle clips, and got some gold spray paint, and some ribbon to put around them. I bought some hot glue refills for my glue gun, and we were off to get the photos copied.
The pictures to be put on the centerpieces were pictures of Mom throughout time. I didn't want to use the original photos, especially since many of them weren't mine, so I planned to go to CVS and scan them in, edit some, and get reprints done. We headed to the CVS nearest my house, and the computer with the scanner attached was out of order. We waited 10 or so minutes for a lady at the neighboring kiosk to finish (read: get off of the phone and leave), and plugged the scanner into it, but that didn't work.
We headed to Walgreen's, and only had to wait a couple of minutes for someone to finish up with their scanner kiosk (Sidenote - why do people always use the scanner kiosk if they're not scanning?! Assholes.), and we were good to go. I went through the on-screen steps and then the system froze while the scanner was 'warming up'. We had the photo attendant restart the machine which probably took about 20 minutes. Then we did it all over again, only for the machine to end up frozen at the same step. FML.
Finally, we headed to the busier CVS a couple miles farther from my house. Lucky for us, third time's a charm! By this point in time, not only was it frigid cold but the snow was starting to look pretty foreboding. We scanned in the 72 pictures, and just an hour & a half later we were touching them up, and 30 minutes after that we were finished! Yes, it literally took 2 hours. The woman working the register actually said to us, "You should have brought some dinner, ladies!". About 15 minutes before we finished up we realized there was a portable DVD player on display right next to us, and it had a DVD in it, so we got to see the beginning of The Last Unicorn. I'd never even heard of it, but it's an animated movie from the early 80's and it has some pretty great actors doing voice work: Alan Arkin, Jeff Bridges, Mia Farrow, and Angela Lansbury! Okay, maybe Angela Lansbury isn't a GREAT actress, but she's pretty damn famous so it counts.
We head home, after Jenny's car threatened to not start in the cold, to put the centerpieces together. I go to the last place I saw my glue gun, and you guessed it - not there. Not ANYWHERE for that matter. I decide to focus first on drilling the holes in the wooden blocks and then crossing the glue bridge only when I have to. Come to find out, my cordless drill is still at my parents' house from when Andy helped them with a couple of projects. I think that's okay because Andy has a corded one on the shelf...only it turns out that's not a drill; it's some weird drywall screwer or something like that that has virtually no depth and will be completely useless to me.
I found an aluminum roofing nail that I'd found in the yard the previous day (Great news, right?!) and we use it to hammer holes into the block. Getting it back out of the block takes a fight, and the holes aren't as deep as we'd like them to be, but we think we can make it work. Several blocks split as we try to hammer the holes through them. I find some wood glue and clamps to try to repair the split ones.
FINALLY we get holes in all of them, and I look around for the glue gun, to no avail. I find some spackle and decide it will work. It sort of did.
We assembled the wires and clips before we put them into the blocks, and the plan was to just twist the wire around the clip with some needlenose pliers....except Andy doesn't have any at the house. So we used regular pliers.
...You get the drift. It was a nightmare, and what should have taken us a couple hours to produce quality products, will now take a day and a half to produce shoddy work.
Such is my luck.
What a wimp!
06 November 2010 at 12:07
Oh, how I wish I'd have taken pictures of the desk move. On Saturday I got myself into a predicament not all that different from the lawn mower incident (Oh nostalgia - my very first blog entry!). I'd inherited a refrigerator from my aunt earlier in the week, and went downstairs to spray it out & clean it. I sprayed some spray in it, and decided to let it 'soak'.
In the meantime, I thought I'd move a desk upstairs. It was given to me as a birthday gift in August, and I'd yet to move it upstairs to the spare room. I ran up and moved the wing chair that lived in the hole I intended to move the desk into. Back downstairs to move it. I tried to lift and realized it was much heaver than I'd anticipated, but this would not deter me.
I pushed it over to the staircase. Now I am not talking about a nice carpeted regular staircase - this is a cliche basement staircase: narrow, and STEEP (This would have been another useful thing to photograph). I tried lifting the desk up and walking it up the stairs but that wasn't working. The staircase was too steep to do it that way.
I decided that if I flipped it over it would be easier to slide the surface up the stairs. I didn't want to mess the surface up, though, so I found some flannel shirts and buttoned them around it. I started to slide it up and that wouldn't work. I found my way around it and had a little bit more luck pulling it up. The grade of the stairs was still an issue - it was making it HEAVY, not the easy task I'd envisioned.
After realizing that if I pulled the desk up high enough to go up another stair my legs were stuck, I had to do it sitting down. Stair by painful stair I got it going up. I had to lift my ass up each stair with my elbows and the wall, as it was the only way I could go anywhere without dropping the desk. I got pretty near the top and my hands were all sweaty and I was about to lose the desk. One more step.
Got it! Now just one last burst of energy to pull the desk up to the landing! ...except a drawer fell open and now I can't pull it past the bathroom floor/garage ceiling. FFFFUUUU---
At this point, I don't have enough fight left in me to do anything but drop it. I start to guide it down the stairs as slowly as possible when I realize it is going to take me with it. Palms sweaty, I am frantically searching for an option other than watching the desk crash to the basement floor. Finally I got it wedged in the staircase by shaking it until a drawer falls all the way open and catches on the railing.
I'm gasping for air, and when I stand up my legs and arms are weak. I can't help but wonder how I've gotten myself into yet another one of these situations. I go find some work gloves and some water and take a 20-minute breather.
Work gloves in hand, I take some painters' tape and tape the 2 drawers I can reach. I'm still not sure how I'll get the third drawer closed (the one I opened to hold it up), but a restored sense of confidence has me tugging again...
I got it all figured out, and even finagled the last drawer shut. I jerk with all my might and the desk pretty much doesn't want to fit through the oddly-narrow doorway of the stairs. I forced it. There was no other option.
So finally, I got the desk upstairs. I got it where it needed to be and then proceeded to scrape all of the visible paint off of it (paint from the doorway). Anyway, it looks great now - wish I had a picture of that to put here too!
Long story short, I didn't take a picture on Saturday. Daaaammit.
In the meantime, I thought I'd move a desk upstairs. It was given to me as a birthday gift in August, and I'd yet to move it upstairs to the spare room. I ran up and moved the wing chair that lived in the hole I intended to move the desk into. Back downstairs to move it. I tried to lift and realized it was much heaver than I'd anticipated, but this would not deter me.
I pushed it over to the staircase. Now I am not talking about a nice carpeted regular staircase - this is a cliche basement staircase: narrow, and STEEP (This would have been another useful thing to photograph). I tried lifting the desk up and walking it up the stairs but that wasn't working. The staircase was too steep to do it that way.
I decided that if I flipped it over it would be easier to slide the surface up the stairs. I didn't want to mess the surface up, though, so I found some flannel shirts and buttoned them around it. I started to slide it up and that wouldn't work. I found my way around it and had a little bit more luck pulling it up. The grade of the stairs was still an issue - it was making it HEAVY, not the easy task I'd envisioned.
After realizing that if I pulled the desk up high enough to go up another stair my legs were stuck, I had to do it sitting down. Stair by painful stair I got it going up. I had to lift my ass up each stair with my elbows and the wall, as it was the only way I could go anywhere without dropping the desk. I got pretty near the top and my hands were all sweaty and I was about to lose the desk. One more step.
Got it! Now just one last burst of energy to pull the desk up to the landing! ...except a drawer fell open and now I can't pull it past the bathroom floor/garage ceiling. FFFFUUUU---
At this point, I don't have enough fight left in me to do anything but drop it. I start to guide it down the stairs as slowly as possible when I realize it is going to take me with it. Palms sweaty, I am frantically searching for an option other than watching the desk crash to the basement floor. Finally I got it wedged in the staircase by shaking it until a drawer falls all the way open and catches on the railing.
I'm gasping for air, and when I stand up my legs and arms are weak. I can't help but wonder how I've gotten myself into yet another one of these situations. I go find some work gloves and some water and take a 20-minute breather.
Work gloves in hand, I take some painters' tape and tape the 2 drawers I can reach. I'm still not sure how I'll get the third drawer closed (the one I opened to hold it up), but a restored sense of confidence has me tugging again...
I got it all figured out, and even finagled the last drawer shut. I jerk with all my might and the desk pretty much doesn't want to fit through the oddly-narrow doorway of the stairs. I forced it. There was no other option.
So finally, I got the desk upstairs. I got it where it needed to be and then proceeded to scrape all of the visible paint off of it (paint from the doorway). Anyway, it looks great now - wish I had a picture of that to put here too!
Long story short, I didn't take a picture on Saturday. Daaaammit.
Project 365 (day one.)
21 September 2010 at 16:23
Project 365 is an iPhone app where you take one picture every day for a year, to sort of chronicle your year. I'm not trendy enough to have an iPhone, but since my phone does have a camera and I like this concept, I've decided to do it completely on my own, without the help of an app. WHOA, I know right?!
In the interest of my project being original, I've decided to call it Project 363 (subject to change) - mostly because I started it Saturday and then forgot about it until today.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll stop rambling and give you the good stuff. Here is my Day 1 picture, from Saturday, September 18th:
The story:
I dragged my ass out of bed an hour later than intended, thanks to a keg of Lagunitas IPA on Friday. My head was pounding, but as you can see my lawn was too far gone to ignore any longer, since the mower broke over a month ago and I just got around to having Andy fix it. I put on my shittiest bra and some big sunglasses, and out I went.
The mower started right up, which I should have known to be a bad omen, as I've never had luck starting it on the first try. I mowed for about an hour when I got to the treacherous hill out front. I know there is a tree stump somewhere in this jungle, but I also know there's about 4.5 passes I can make between the deck and said stump. I'm on the 4.5-th pass, as far as I think I can go, so I throw it in reverse to finish up the rest of the front yard - BAM!
I hit the motherfuggin' stump. Of course. There's about 1.5 mower lengths between the stump and a lamppost. I try to do a 3 5-point turn, and since the ground is wet and the grass is long and also wet, FAIL. I start sliding down the hill toward the rock wall - FFFFFUUUUU -
I stop and turn on the parking brake, knowing that won't make a bit of difference if there's no traction. I hop off and wait. Luckily it stops. I try to pull it back up the hill, and then rock it back and forth to get some momentum up.... no luck. Instead I'm sliding down the hill too. Knowing I have no choice but to get the mower down via the wall, I start looking for things I can fashion into ramps. Aha! A door, and a folding table!
I put each item under a front tire, and though one is about a foot higher than the other, I know I can make it work. I walk up them, they hold me, so I try to push the mower onto them. I get it about 6 inches and it doesn't budge anymore. This is when I take the picture. The mower deck is stuck on the top of the door.
So that's the story of my Day One picture!
(In case you were wondering, I called Dad. He came and helped me, and it took us literally 3 minutes to get it down. He unstuck the deck and it came rolling down, with me not-so-gracefully trying to stop it/being dragged along beside it. )
In the interest of my project being original, I've decided to call it Project 363 (subject to change) - mostly because I started it Saturday and then forgot about it until today.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll stop rambling and give you the good stuff. Here is my Day 1 picture, from Saturday, September 18th:
Don't drink and mow.
The story:
I dragged my ass out of bed an hour later than intended, thanks to a keg of Lagunitas IPA on Friday. My head was pounding, but as you can see my lawn was too far gone to ignore any longer, since the mower broke over a month ago and I just got around to having Andy fix it. I put on my shittiest bra and some big sunglasses, and out I went.
The mower started right up, which I should have known to be a bad omen, as I've never had luck starting it on the first try. I mowed for about an hour when I got to the treacherous hill out front. I know there is a tree stump somewhere in this jungle, but I also know there's about 4.5 passes I can make between the deck and said stump. I'm on the 4.5-th pass, as far as I think I can go, so I throw it in reverse to finish up the rest of the front yard - BAM!
I hit the motherfuggin' stump. Of course. There's about 1.5 mower lengths between the stump and a lamppost. I try to do a 3 5-point turn, and since the ground is wet and the grass is long and also wet, FAIL. I start sliding down the hill toward the rock wall - FFFFFUUUUU -
I stop and turn on the parking brake, knowing that won't make a bit of difference if there's no traction. I hop off and wait. Luckily it stops. I try to pull it back up the hill, and then rock it back and forth to get some momentum up.... no luck. Instead I'm sliding down the hill too. Knowing I have no choice but to get the mower down via the wall, I start looking for things I can fashion into ramps. Aha! A door, and a folding table!
I put each item under a front tire, and though one is about a foot higher than the other, I know I can make it work. I walk up them, they hold me, so I try to push the mower onto them. I get it about 6 inches and it doesn't budge anymore. This is when I take the picture. The mower deck is stuck on the top of the door.
So that's the story of my Day One picture!
(In case you were wondering, I called Dad. He came and helped me, and it took us literally 3 minutes to get it down. He unstuck the deck and it came rolling down, with me not-so-gracefully trying to stop it/being dragged along beside it. )
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