A new member of the family

This is Wilma. She is my new 13” MacBook Pro. Isn’t she beautiful?

It’s an early Christmas/Birthday present (my birthday is a week after Christmas, so it usually gets combined with Christmas when I’m getting something big). I do have good reason for spending the money on one of these babies though. Currently, I have a three-year-old HP laptop…with Vista. Therefore my laptop sucks. And it’s also going crazy. I actually paid almost the same price for that three years ago as I did for Wilma. Anyway, Ms. HP is convinced she’s dying. I’ve tried to convince her otherwise, but I think Vista has polluted her beyond repair. First of all, I have a 160GB hard drive on the HP. I have roughly 85GB between music, photos and documents…and yet it’s telling me that I only have 10GB of free space. I have deleted every program I don’t need or use, run disk cleanup, defragmented, etc and yet she still thinks she only has 10GB of free space out of 160 (actually, by the time you put Vista on there it says you only have a 140GB hard drive). I can’t figure this out. It has caused quite a conundrum. It just doesn’t make any sense. Plus, it’s been really slow lately with the stupid anti-virus software that’s on it, but you can’t really go without that software on a PC. And it randomly just deletes drivers so I have to reinstall them. Like my mouse (the touch pad one that is ON the laptop) randomly stopped working. It didn’t even register it. Luckily, I have a wireless optical mouse that I use at home. I had to completely reinstall the darn thing. Theeennn…I decided to use my husband’s Western Digital external hard drive to back up all my important stuff (photos, music, documents, emails, contacts, etc) because the thing was making me pretty nervous, and I didn’t want to lost all my info. Guess what? Stupid Vista doesn’t like the Western Digital hard drive. I tried all their troubleshooting tips online, downloaded drivers, etc…nada. Since we had a giftcard to Fry’s, we decided to use it on a new hard drive for me (since Corey already has one) that I could back everything up with and that would also work with Mac (because I’ve had it up to here ^ with Vista). The nice salesman ensured us that it would indeed work with Mac and Windows. I go home and plug it in and…nothing. Really? Maybe I just need to restart my computer….20 minutes later (because Vista takes a ridiculously long time to start up) I’m back up and running (well…sort of running). I double click “My Computer” fully expecting to see the 320GB portable drive listed. And nothing. My dang HP won’t even see the hard drive. So I head on over to iomega’s website for more troubleshooting (this seems to be all I ever do with Vista…troubleshoot). Literally, there are about 10 different steps. Each one ends with the hopes that you’ve done enough to make it work, but in case that STILL doesn’t work…try this… Two days later I’m at the Apple Store trying to decide which Mac I want. Granted, it took me about 6 months to decide I wanted make the switch to Apple. I was pretty apprehensive, but after I opened that box last night…I was in love. It seriously took 53 seconds to start up (yes, I counted). Maybe part of it is because you don’t need anti-virus software for Mac. I was in awe before I even made the first keystroke. Now I just have to figure out how to get all of my photos, pictures, documents, contacts, emails, etc onto Wilma. Apple has that whole one-to-one thing you can buy where you leave your computer with them for a day and they transfer everything for you, but it’s $100 and we live 45 minutes from the nearest Apple Store, so it’s not very convenient. Plus, we won’t be able to make it back up there for another 3 weeks. I don’t really want to wait that long. I think I’m going to try the old-fashioned DVD thing for some of the stuff like photos and music (since I can’t just plug the external hard drive into the HP and transfer everything…because that would be WAY too easy). Oh, did I mention that all I had to do with my portable hard drive on Wilma was plug her in and change one little setting to make it Mac compatible? Yes, 2 minutes after the initial plug-in, Wilma is being completely backed up to the portable drive. Such a relief!

I’ll quit my little campaign for Apple now. They should publish my testimonial or something. I might feel differently if it wasn’t for Vista. But probably not. I might just not dislike Windows quite as stongly.

If anyone else has made the switch from Vista to Mac, I would love any transfer suggestions/tips. Good day!

Recipe Time

I made an AMAZING chili this weekend and thought I’d share the recipe so you all can enjoy the deliciousness of this as well. It’s my sister-in-law’s recipe – something she just made up because she’s one of those people that can just make recipes up. I’m not there yet in my level of cooking, so in the mean time, I just get all HER recipes :D

No-Bean Chili
 • 1 lb stew meat
• 1 15oz can of corn (or 1 16oz bag of frozen corn)
• 1 can tomato sauce
• 1 can tomato paste
• 2 cans beef broth (you can also use vegetable broth)
• ½ onion minced (or 1 tablespoon onion powder)
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1 tsp rosemary
• 1 bay leaf

Throw everything in a crock pot and stir (there is no need to brown or cook the meat in any way prior to putting in the crock pot). Cook on high for 4-6 hours or low 8-9 hours. Serve over rice with a side of cornbread.

I actually doubled the recipe because I was feeding myself, my husband, my ever-hungry nineteen year old brother-in-law AND was hoping to have leftovers for lunch during the week. It’s really filling. We all only ate one serving, and I have a large Tupperware of leftovers in the fridge. Also, I actually served it WITH rice instead of over rice. I made some white rice separately in my rice cooker and then added a spoonful to each bowl as I served everyone. We just stirred it in and that made it all the more delicious! If you decide to try it, let me know how you like it. As long as you already have most of the spices, it’s a pretty inexpensive meal to make. Also, if you want to serve with cornbread but don’t want to make it from scratch, let me suggest the Krusteaz® brand of cornbread. We’ve tried several, but Krusteaz® is by far the best boxed cornbread we’ve had.

Flowers

Here are the pictures of all my flowers that I promised!

[caption id="attachment_202" align="alignleft" width="502" caption="Close up of my new orchid"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_205" align="alignleft" width="502" caption="What they look like when they're dying. Are those the most beautiful dying flowers you've ever seen?"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_206" align="alignleft" width="502" caption="Fresh blooms"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_207" align="alignleft" width="502" caption="Getting ready to bloom"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_210" align="alignleft" width="502" caption="The yellow ones"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_212" align="alignleft" width="502" caption="My pink/yellow dahlia in front (my favorites!)"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_216" align="alignleft" width="502" caption="close up"][/caption]