Modern WenchCooking, Baking, Gardening, Parenting, Pregnancy, Photos, and Humor. Enough?

I’ve been having ever-worsening computer problems over the past several months. My power settings weren’t remaining as I set them. I stopped being able to use the “restart” option, because when I would do so my computer would freeze on the “logging off” screen and sit there for 16 hours. My folders stopped refreshing themselves when I would make a change. A slew of other things added to this, and I decided it was getting time for a fresh start.

I’m a pro when it comes to backing up data and reinstalling my OS. I’ve done it no less than 100 times since I got this laptop in 2008. Most of those times were attempts to run Linux as an alternative to the Vista I was sold with the computer. I’m not one of those Linux nuts. Frankly, I prefer the ease and usability of Windows. Vista, however, was a trainwreck on this computer. I had every single problem possible with that damn OS. Since my computer isn’t a standard brand, and has some funky extra doodads and whatzits, every Linux we tried failed in some way.

Anyway, as soon as it was available I got myself a copy of … Read the rest

10 days ago I took this picture. I was in my crafting/storage/laundry room, working on some necklaces for my Etsy store. I made myself a lunch of blackberries, cherries, and grapes, and a huge cup of coffee. I was listening to NPR while I worked, I was content, and I thought I should snap a shot of the gorgeous colors. That blue surface is my cutting mat. My nice, clean, devoid of clutter cutting mat.

The next day I decided that my crafting/storage/laundry room just had too much stuff in it for me to continue to be productive. So I set out to solve the problem. I removed everything that was in the room, threw away half, and resolved to put the rest back in a more organized and accessible manner.

I spent the better part of last week trying to accomplish that goal. I assembled furniture, unpacked and repacked tons of stuff, threw away a mountain of papers and boxes, and sneezed 2,000 times from all of the dust.

The room I live in is complete, but my craft station looks like this:

I don’t yet know what to do with the water pump, I don’t have anywhere useful … Read the rest

We grew this pepper:

I couldn’t help myself. I had to do this:

Isn’t that the “hottest” pepper you’ve ever seen? She’s winking at you, in case you couldn’t tell.… Read the rest

As I’ve mentioned before, my husband and I use a homemade DVR system. At the time of that post, we used Beyond TV as our media center.

It turned out that running Beyond TV when we didn’t have it connected to tuners for recording television made little sense. While it is a wonderful program that had served us well for years, it was just too bulky for our purposes. Since we were simply downloading and watching things, what we really needed was a file system and a viewer. Keep in mind that we were running a very old laptop as the HTPC.

So we tried Boxee, we tried Media Portal, we tried Sage TV, we tried others. Nothing really worked for us and our dated machine.

For a few months we used the standard Windows file system and GOM Player as our video. While it worked, it looked a little cheap. Okay, very cheap. I mean, who wants a plain white-with-yellow-folders menu as their media center?

A few weeks ago my husband dropped his netbook and broke the screen. He disconnected the old laptop from the TV and put the screenless netbook in place of … Read the rest

About 12 hours after I took those pictures of the baby birds my husband saved, one was gone. It was pretty apparent that he wasn’t doing as well, but I had high hopes. I guess he died in the nest, and was removed. It’s sad, but it’s nature. At least the one was still there, right?

Well, yesterday morning I went to look at the nest and it was empty. I went back inside, told my husband, and sadly went on with my chores. 20 minutes later, he comes bursting into the room saying “He’s alive! They’re all in the front yard!” I guess one of the reasons birds build their nest in a tree is to keep the babies from wandering off. Since we moved their fallen nest to an area that was at ground level (in one direction only), the little guy just hopped out, walked along the fence line, and made it into the yard. The parents were feeding him.

Saturday is the busiest day for our business, and the only day that I go to work outside of my home. We left for work with a “survival of the fittest” shrug, hoping that we’d see a … Read the rest

Yesterday I sat outside for a while, listening to birds chirping loudly. Squawking, actually. My dog was near the tree that their nest is in, so I wasn’t surprised. A few hours later, though, I walked over to that area and saw a nest on the ground. Then I saw a dead baby bird. I started to cry and called my husband over to clean up the mess. As he walked towards me, I noticed another baby bird, which was still alive. I was so happy! My husband spotted a third, also alive.

I got him a roll of paper towels. Using a huge handful, he scooped the 2 living birds back into the nest and hunted around for a place to put it.

This is where it happened. The center right area, between the 2 chain-link fences, is where the nest fell. You can see how the corner of this raised patio area is sinking in. On the other side is some wood that was meant to hold back the hill, but is instead starting to bow from the pressure of the earth behind it. It’s collapsing our patio, which sucks, but it made a decent spot to put … Read the rest