Downton Abbey

So this weekend I am recovering from the exhaustion of last weekend in NOLA.  I am very overloaded and overwhelmed at work and at home.  But at least now I'm relaxing on the couch and mostly caught up from the craziness.

Yesterday I spent the day doing long overdue housework.  It amazes me how much nicer everything looks when the dishes are put away, the carpet vacuumed and the laundry done.  I don't blame Sam, but my goodness, I wish that he would have the decency to pick up after himself a bit more.  It's tough to come home and have a kinds of things going on for me to clean up.

I also stopped at Lowes and picked up some plant food for our budding hydrangeas and rubber plant.  I also bought some soil acidifier to help turn my hydrangeas blue.  Apparently that is what keeps the blooms blue!  I sometimes wish we had a bigger patio area so that I could put more garden in.  Of course, now that Hunter likes to eat most leaves it might not be so great to have a garden.  But I suppose I could train him to keep away from all of them.

Sam really wants to move somewhere with a yard for Hunter, nothing too big, but somewhere were he can runaround.  Obviously I think that would be ideal, but I also think that Hunter prefers to be with us as opposed to outside alone.  It would be great if I could get a doggie door and have him potty outside by himself while I'm at work, and let himself out to sit out into the sun in the afternoon.

Today I bought the first three seasons of Downton Abbey on our AppleTV.  Mom and Nonna just love it and I have lots of friends who are in love with it too.  So here I am, a bit late to the party, but catching up with the masses.  I am enjoying it so far, and I can see why ladies enjoy it.  It reminds me a lot of A Game of Thrones to be honest... all the chivalry, the royalty, the servants being treated as family.

I think I will like it quite a bit!

New Mac & Apple TV

So my personal laptop has been falling apart lately... I did get it back in 2007.  I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and buy a new MacBook Pro since I love my current one so much!  I did a lot of research and was debating between a solid state drive (SSD) and upgrading the memory on a ATA drive.  In the end I went with the ATA because I don't usually drop my laptops and they are relatively well taken care of.  Plus, I always seem to need more memory space, my poor iTunes couldn't even play movies I had such little hard drive and memory left.

So anyway, while I was in the store they were mentioning Apple TV and I had looked into getting it for Sam.   He hooked up the AirPlay device his Dad got us last year before we had cable so we could stream music wirelessly from our computers and iPhones to the living room stereo.  Unfortunately, we couldn't have cable TV and cable internet both in the living room because we didn't have enough cable output from the wall.  Oops.  

Apple TV is better anyway because you can steam movies, and rent movies, and basically access all of your movies, tv shows, and anything else through iTunes (like Sam's video games on his iPad).  So this is really much more versatile, and it's all through just power, an HDMI cord to the TV, and our wireless router in the guest room.  Very, very neat.  

Sam's been on call a lot the last week and he's pretty exhausted, but we did play around with the Apple TV a little bit last night and I think he was pretty impressed.  I'm excited for him to get home from being on call tomorrow- hopefully we can put on a movie and Sam can pass out on the couch while I work on some marketing collateral for the trade show we are attending in March.

I am in the process of downloading all my iTunes movies and it's amazing- I have been at it for over 24 hours and only 1/3 of the movies have downloaded!  Can you believe that?  Good lord, the Harry Potters are SO long to download.  This whole thing makes me want to buy faster upload and download internet speed!  

The other really freakin neat thing is that iCloud syncs all music, movies, calendar events, and reminders on my computer and phone.  So that means when I change something on my phone (add an event, an item to my grocery list, buy a song, etc.) it automatically syncs with my calendar, reminders, iTunes library on my computer.  So there is no need to constantly plug in the phone and update things via a cable.  This is going to make my OCD so much easier- and probably worse!

But seriously, the convenience of all the new technology is really, really amazing.  Even if it is expensive!  With all the bachelorette planning, and now I am heading up planning our 10-Year High School Reunion in June too, I am going to need a functional computer that IS NOT my work laptop.