Exceedingly Mundane

I just paid a couple of our bills online. I love doing this. Do most of you pay yours electronically now, or are you still writing checks? We do almost everything electronically, either online or via bank draft. Makes things so much easier.

I’m constantly surprised by how things have changed in my lifetime. I can remember when I got my first apartment, I had so many checks to write. Apartment rent, my one credit card, every time I went to the grocery or Wal-mart, every utility bill, dry-cleaning, newspaper, etc. I bet I wrote 30 checks a month or more. These days, I do good to write 3 a month. I think that’s one of the best advances of technology, at least for me. I love doing things online – paying bills, ordering, researching items. Most of my life I didn’t have the Internet but today, I couldn’t live without it. How about you? 🙂

Awww man – I just read in yesterday’s paper that our new Cold Stone Creamery in Madison opened yesterday! I had so wanted to go when they opened and sample everything. I had already driven by there last week and saw a huge red “Coming Soon” sign out front, so I was hoping it would open soon. It’s next door to our new Abner’s and I have already forewarned Tim that I am going to plan a trip to eat chicken at Abner’s then walk next door and get ice cream for dessert as soon as Cold Stone opens. Guess that will have to be this coming weekend, after Tim weighs in next Friday. Yipppeee!!!

P.S. If you’ve been to one before, let me know what you like and what’s good (not that they aren’t all good, sorta like picking a cheesecake at Cheesecake Factory!). Or do what I’ve been doing and check out the link and drool at all the choices!

Yesterday was fun – well, for those of you who like hanging out with guys and doing football related things! The big enlightenment of the day for me was that I learned that when they are promoting a “Black and Gold Scrimmage Game”, they are really doing false advertising. Scrimmage = Practice. Plain and simple. Stretching Exercises, Drills and a few fake plays. In the beginning, they weren’t even tackling each other, just touching each other on the shoulders. Lightly. Later on it got better, and then we had the autograph session. Boy, was that an experience.

Click the -More- link to read more about the Saints Family Fan Fest, and the rest of the day overall (yesterday, I’m a day behind!). Consider yourself warned, it’s very long and rambling, but does include lots of photos!! 🙂

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I just added 4 new reviews to the Reviews section of Hambones. Three of them are movie reviews, of movies we watched this past weekend. Hostage, Coach Carter and Princess Diaries 2. The other is a book review for the book I finished last night, “Big Stone Gap” by Adriana Trigiani. 🙂

Our family and friends website turns one year old today. Happy birthday, or should I say anniversary (???) to you, my little website – Hambones.org.

I’ve spent most of the day so far working on the celebrations at the website. We have several games and fun things going on over there. I hope everyone enjoys it. I know we really love having and maintaining the website, and love it when people get on and play games, post in the forums, look at and submit photos to share, use the recipes, read our book or movie reviews, or anything else they use the site for. That makes us really happy.

Here’s an excerpt from the book I just finished, “Big Stone Gap”. It has a subplot running through it about certain character’s mothers getting sick and passing away. These words really hit home to me. I still struggle a lot with missing my Mom. I asked Tim last night at supper (we were at Cock of the Walk), if he still missed his grandmother a lot. He said he did, but that it gets better with time. He told me he thought I was a lot better, and I told him that I thought I was just a lot better at hiding it from him. 🙂

Anyway, this really got to me. Read on, if you’re interested

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I cashed in some of my points this morning for gift cards. I had accumulated quite a few points over the last few months, and I cashed them in for two – $10 gift cards to Target. I have a few things in there I want to buy (not like I ever have any trouble finding things to buy in there, I love that store!), and I’m hoping the cards will come in the mail in the next couple of weeks. Then, I’ll head out on a shopping spree, courtesy of Mypoints.

I’ve been doing this points program for about 2 years now, and it’s really paid off. We’ve gotten a bunch of movie rental cards, and I have also gotten one Target $10 gift card before. You read emails, answer surveys, link through this site to merchants they partner with (such as Target.com, BestBuy.com, Cabelas.com, Hotels.com, etc, there are a lot of them), and then you accumulate points for your purchases. I really like doing it, but then again, I have a lot of time and my time is free. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll send you a referral and get you started on earning free gift cards to places like Best Buy, Target, Home Depot and Blockbuster!

P.S. I also do two other programs online, and have received gift cards and free movie rentals from Blockbuster from those. Let me know if you want more info!

I just took some more pictures of my new Explorer and posted them in the Photo gallery on Hambones (in the Misc photo album). Tim took it by the dealership this morning (also took care of the tag and insurance for us, what a sweetie pie!) and they cleaned it all up. I thought that was probably the best time for pictures – it probably won’t ever be that clean and shiny again!

I also made a new photo album in the Hambones photo section (page 2) for Brittany and Zack. Linda sent me some pictures of them riding a neighbor’s horse and also of a fish they caught that was over 36″ long. Those are now in their photo album. 🙂

Well, I blogged yesterday about trudging back and forth to the mailbox to look for my pictures from Snapfish. Color me stupid. The email said UPS not USPS. Duh. 😀 Tim found a small box on the front porch yesterday when he came in from work. Which is doubly weird, because I thought UPS or FedEx was supposed to ring the doorbell when they made a package dropoff. I was home from about 2:30 PM on and never heard the bell ring. Oh well, they’re here now!

We opened up the box and it had 3 paper envelopes stuffed to the gills with my 160 pictures from our DC trip. Tim was very happy with them, but I wasn’t quite as satisfied. Of course, my standards for photos are a lot higher than his. I will say that they are not as vibrant and crisp as I would like, but I think that is because I ordered matte finish and not glossy. Glossy prints are always a lot more colorful to me. I will say that I think they are comparable to the matte photos I have had developed at Walmart and Sam’s Club – which is where I normally get my digital photos printed. But at 12 cents a print (before shipping costs), they are cheaper than either of those places. So I guess I’m satisfied!

The only thing that bugged me about the shipment was that they were totally out of order. I uploaded them in order, and they came in 3 envelopes and all mixed up. Some photos of the Capitol were in each envelope, Mount Vernon pics in different envelopes, that kind of thing. So, it will take me some time to go back through and sort them, and get them back in order – grouped together by day and event. Which I have to do in order to sit down and try to plan out my scrapbook pages. 😀

Gail sent me some pictures to post on Hambones (look in Grayson and Ava Clair’s photo album for some of them when they stayed for a week at Gail’s with Shanna, in late June). They’re so cute! Grayson looks like he had so much fun in the pool with Don!

She also sent me two from Alan Barger’s rehearsal and wedding (and those are in Gail’s misc album on Hambones). Looking at this picture really makes me miss my nieces and nephews… I soooo wish they lived closer and we could see them more often. Sniff Sniff. Trent and Shanna, and Kathryn and Jermey — we miss you guys terribly! 😥

I think I held my breath on and off for over two minutes this morning, while the Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center about 9:39 AM our time. I said lots of prayers and apparently a lot of other people did too, as the shuttle lifted effortlessly into the sky and then into space. I was so relieved, and so very glad. I’ve always been a huge space and astronomy nut (I wrote more about this a couple of weeks ago, when Discovery was originally supposed to have launched), and I am a firm believer in our right and need to explore space. I know a lot of people might disagree, and say that money was better spent on poverty, medicine or other avenues, but I’m a huge proponent of exploring our last frontier and discovering more of God’s handiwork. I think it’s an integral part of mankind’s nature, to reach out and look for more. I, for one, am very hopeful they will continue our space program and continue to reach further, go faster and do more. I am going to be paying close attention the next few days and find out how all the work at the International Space Station is going. I want to go there one day. 🙂

On another front, I think it’s going to be very hot here again today, but hopefully not as hot as the last few days. I think we hit 100º yesterday or the day before. Tim and I were watching the news last night and they said we had not hit 100 since 2000, but that year we hit it several times. It has really felt scorching lately, and I know my flowers and the grass are suffering. I spent over 2 hours out watering and running the sprinklers all morning. Everything is just so parched.

I say … and you think … ?

Believing:: Seeing is…
Invasion:: of the Body Snatchers
Boys:: will be boys
Island:: The Island (new movie)
Repeatedly:: over and over
Normal:: abnormal
Hex:: hexidecimal
Tuxedo:: prom
Virgin:: girl ???
Cereal:: Raisin Bran Crunch

A few tidbits to share this afternoon:

1. We watched Million Dollar baby this afternoon. Wow. I just wrote a review and posted it here on Hambones.

2. It’s hotter than blue blazes outside. I went outside late afternoon to water some of my flowers. They are just so wilted out in this heat. My outdoor thermometer was in the shade and read about 105 degrees. Geesh.

3. I was reading the Sunday paper this afternoon and in doing my favorite part (looking at all the ads), I noticed one prevalent theme — everybody is having Back to School sales. Gee, it’s still July. These poor kids go back so early these days, in early to mid August around here. I don’t remember much, but I swear I remember from some point in my elementary or junior/high school years that we didn’t have to go back till right before Labor Day in early September. I know I remember this because I remember thinking every year how silly it was that we had to start one day or a half day before the Labor Day holiday on Monday. Why not just let us start back that Tuesday? I guess that’s what you call “the good ole days”🙄

Whew, I finally finished going through all the digital photos I took on our vacation to Washington DC and got them uploaded to Snapfish. I haven’t used Snapfish before, and I’m crossing my fingers that the quality will be good and I’ll be happy with them. Because, I just uploaded 160 photos to be printed out and mailed to me. I hope I didn’t just goof up! At 12 cents a copy, the processing fee was good, but boy – they slapped a nice little shipping fee on me, over $8.00. All in all, not a bad deal, and it sure is nice to sit here and do it all from the comfort of my home and then have them show up in the mail. I hope they’ll be here in a week to 10 days. I’m anxious to see the quality and how they turn out! It sounds like a lot of pictures, but I took a whole lot more than that, and I had to whittle them down. The big thing is that we saw so many sights and went to so many museums, monuments and buildings. We covered a lot of ground in those 5 days!

I realize a lot of people that read my blog are not as “techy” as Tim and I are. I thought this was a mildly interesting article about just how many people out there (according to the latest survey) haven’t heard of and don’t know what the terms “RSS feed”, “podcast” and “phishing” mean. 🙂 Might make some of you guys feel better to know you’re totally NOT alone.

I, on the other hand, am familiar with all of these terms personally. I have been “phished” before, I upgraded to the latest version of iTunes so I could download podcasts (and I currently have two or three I download regularly and listen to, on my PC or iPod), and as long as I’ve been blogging, I have had an RSS aggregator that collects RSS feeds of some of the favorite blogs and sites I like. So there. 😛

Click here to go read it for yourself. In case the link is not working, I will post the text of the AP news story in the extended section of this post. Just click the -More- button to go read it.

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