Exceedingly Mundane

I haven’t been online in more than a week, and have been unable to write about our experiences with Hurricane Katrina, and with our families and how they fared. Here’s a quick synopsis, and I’ll be trying to write more in the days ahead.

My dad’s house in Hattiesburg (90 miles north of the MS Gulf Coast) was spared, in spite of all the pine trees in his back yard. Tim’s brother Mark and his family were equally lucky, as they had no trees fall on their house. Most of their neighbors were not as lucky – most every house had one tree or more on the roof or house or car. Dad and Mark’s family rode out the storm here with us in Madison (we’re about 200 miles north of the coast). Our house is fine, and we had no damage from either wind or trees. The wind did get pretty bad, and we’re a long way from where it was so devastating. We lost power Monday afternoon, and got it back about 48 hours later. The ones in Hattiesburg are not so lucky – no power yet and no idea when they might have power restored. My in-laws in Smith county got power back yesterday, so they are understandably ecstatic! No fun with no air conditioning in the South in August and early September.

I didn’t take any pictures during the storm, but tried to take some afterwards. Click the -More- link for the first couple… I will try to load more tonight or tomorrow.

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Things are slowly starting to return to normal around here, more than a week after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and our MS Gulf Coast. We are back at home, and have power, and have lots to show and tell, so hopefully today or tomorrow I can start back blogging. Or at least catching up on emails! 🙂

Today, I’m happy that the lights, phone and Internet are still working!!!

The lights have blinked twice so far, with the hurricane coming through, but so far (cross your fingers), they have come right back on. We’re all very grateful to have air conditioning, tv, and all the good stuff we are used to!

Elizabeth blogged about a pet peeve of hers the other day, and got me to thinking. Geesh, I have tons of pet peeves!

The first two that spring to mind are bad drivers. First, there are those that pull out in front of me with not enough room and force me to slam on my brakes, or else I’ll hit them. Secondly, there are those that insist on getting through a red light and pull out into the intersection, thereby blocking the intersection and not letting others get through on their green light. Argh. Drives me nuts.

Last night, I realized another pet peeve I have. This one involves Tim. Now, before I launch into this, I know everyone will pipe up and defend Tim. And they should, he’s a great guy who doesn’t deserve to be picked on in my blog. Like I tell him all the time, you look like an absolute prince in my blog. I never write anything bad or off color or anything that even remotely makes him look anything but perfect in my blog. Up till now, he’s coming out smelling like a rose. That’s about to change. Hahaha.

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OK faithful blog readers (and a few of you guys are actual Star Wars fans, I know of 2 or 3 in particular!), I have a dilemma. What to do, what to do.

I was surfing yesterday and saw at Amazon.com that the DVD for Star Wars Episode III comes out on November 1. I am in a quandry over whether to buy this one. See, I’m a huge Star Wars fan and I want all the movies. We owned the original trilogy on VHS, then Tim bought it for me for my birthday last year on DVD. We were still buying VHS tapes when Episode I came out, so I own it on VHS. By the time Episode II was released, we were buying DVD’s, so I own it on DVD. I want to must own this one and obviously my choice is DVD, but I’m in a quandry about whether or not to wait for a box set. I haven’t actually read anything about a box set coming out, but I’d rather have that than the individual DVD’s.

So, weigh in with your choice – should I replace Episode I that I own on VHS with a single DVD and buy Episode III in November, or buy Episode III and not replace Episode I and hold out for a box set.

Such earth-shattering decisions weighing on my mind today. Oh my.

Today I’m happy because I’ve knocked out some things this morning that I really didn’t want to do, but have been needing to do. I’ve been procrastinating terribly on getting them done. But I knuckled down this morning and got them out of the way (at least for a while). I…

1) cleaned the hummingbird feeder and put new nectar in it
2) cleaned out my stove burners (I will be very happy one day to own a smooth top range and not have these coils, liners and underneath the burners to clean)
3) cleaned out the inside of the Explorer, including vacuuming the entire thing.

A sense of accomplishment is a good thing. 😀

Catching up on some things in my to-do list. I just entered movie reviews for the two movies we saw last weekend, over at Hambones. We went to the theatre to see “Fantastic Four” and then rented “Man of the House” with Tommy Lee Jones. We enjoyed both. Both were light and funny and fairly clean. Pretty predictable in plot, but we like those some times!

Just added some great photos that Wendy sent of Nathan, and also a really great one of her and Nathan. Check them out in the Photos section of Hambones, they are really good! Nathan has the greatest smile 🙂

This was in an email I got…. so true! I work very hard at making this a beautiful reality. 🙂

Surround yourself with what you love, Whether it’s family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your refuge.

Just saw this, in someone’s signature and it made me laugh 🙂

“I used to skinny dip….now I chunky dunk.”

Forgot to mention that Tim and his buddies at work have disbanded their weight loss group. He told me tonight.

We’ll still try to follow the same healthy-eating plan that we’re doing, and hopefully still keep up with our walks and exercise. He’s been in this group several years, but I think it was time to stop or at least break for a while. I think/hope that between the two of us, we can put together enough discipline not to go hog wild now that he is not weighing in (with money involved!) on a weekly basis. We’ll see! Wish us luck! 😀

Sometimes, you just have to admit that some people are smarter than you are. No matter how much it hurts or how much pride you have to swallow.

I had posted in the Forums at Hambones a silly mundane item about some glass cleaner I had bought – Windex Drip Free. Well, it might be drip-free, but it sure ain’t streak free. I have been using it for about 2 weeks and now my bathroom mirrors are all streaked up, big white streaky marks all over them. I’ve tried a dozen times or more to clean them, lots of cleaner, a little cleaner, newspaper, soft paper towels, cheap paper towels, big strokes, little strokes, baby circles. You name it, I’ve tried it. Decided it must be the new glass cleaner. Put “glass cleaner” on my Walmart list to pick up a new bottle next trip and throw this crap away.

This morning, Tim is getting ready for work, and finally (he’s a good guy, never fusses about a thing) he remarks “what is up with this mirror, why does it look like this?” I started to tell him the story and before I got one sentence out of my mouth he goes “why don’t you just mix up some ammonia and water and clean it?”. Silence. HUH? He looks at me like I’m a total clueless alien from another planet. “Ammonia will clean it” he says. OK, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I thought I was halfway smart. I had no idea you could do that.

And, he’s right. I mixed up about 5 tablespoons of ammonia (I have a jug under the kitchen sink that’s been there for years) with some water in a squirt bottle. Cleaned the mirror and in a few seconds, the streaks were gone. Not to mention now I have my own bottle of glass cleaner mixed up for just a few cents. Don’t cha hate it when other people are smarter than you? 😀

The moral of the story – Tim is smart. And I may never buy Windex again.

Geesh. I bet we get between 3 and 5 pieces of junk mail a week, for each of us, from places like Capitol One, other credit cards, insurance places, etc. I stand at the shredder after I come in with the mail, and end up shredding half or more of what we get. Today, we got two from Capitol One, about their “No Hassles” reward program. You know, the one with the goofy magnets they want you to place on your refrigerator. 🙄

For a change, I decided to read the fine print and found a 1-888 number to call to try to “opt-out” of some of these offers. They list a toll-free number to call to opt-out of prescreened offers of credit from 4 consumer reporting agencies: Experian, Equifax, TransUnion and Innovis. You can call this number (1-888-567-8688), like I did, or you can visit the website, that I heard them mention at the beginning of the recording. So, me being the computer geek I am, I decided to do that. Go to www.optoutprescreen.com

I had to fill out information on both of us, including SSN and telephone number (it showed being a secure site), but I will gladly do that if it will cut down on some of this credit junk we get so frequently. I chose to permanently opt-out, but you can also choose 5 years. They did clarify at the end that our names are already given out to several companies, so it may take a few months to stem the flow of mail. Any relief will be welcome, however.

Hope that helps someone else!

What a hoot – I love this post from Amanda’s blog, about our nephew Ethan. He’s such a cutie pie, and quite the artist!

Yes, an odd name for a blog post.

I was reading our local paper earlier today. On Wednesdays, we get the grocery circulars and a small “Food” section. One of the local columnists today was talking about how Southern cooks make several things from scratch. Like biscuits (check, I do that, haven’t bought a tube of biscuits in almost a decade), cornbread (check, Tim likes one recipe I make), iced tea (duh, can you actually buy this premade?), and pimento cheese. Now, pimento cheese I have probably never made. Or maybe I have tried once or twice, but mine never tastes like my mom’s. I think I have tried it before, probably when I was single or first married, but it just paled in comparison to my mother’s.

Now, any of you who know me, know that any memories I have of growing up are spotty at best. And perhaps this is a memory from later in life, when I was older and my mom was getting on in age and her health starting to decline. But, I do remember the last 10 or 15 years of her life, her making pimento cheese.

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