Exceedingly Mundane

I haven’t done a meme in a really really REALLY long time! When I first started blogging (more on that soon, I’m coming up on my 5 year anniversary), I did a lot of memes. As in two or three or maybe four a week. I think there were more memes back then, or maybe more interesting ones. But, I’ve seen this one before and liked it, and have read several responses to this one lately on the blogs I like to read. So, thanks for the inspiration, my bloggy buddies, and thanks to Linda at 2nd Cup of Coffee for doing this Here’s her post with this past week’s meme, which I’m doing ultra late!

1. When was the last time you craved a food–what was it, and did you cave? I crave chocolate all the time, and I always cave. Always. I crave Chinese food fairly often but don’t get it that frequently. That, however, makes it all the more better!

2. M & M’s or Skittles? M&M’s, but I do love both

3. Have you ever read the Bible completely through? No, but I want to. I’m just not sure I can get through all of the Old Testament, but I do want and need to try.

4. How long does it take you to really wake up in the morning? At least an hour. I’m not kidding. A shower and coffee and breakfast help, but I’m not a morning person. It takes me a while.

5. Have you ever been on a cruise? If not, would you like to? Yes, for my senior trip in high school. Tim and I want to go on at least one or two, one to Alaska and one to some part of the Caribbean.

6. Who is your favorite actress? Oooh, that’s a hard one! I guess I’ll say Meryl Streep since I just saw Julie & Julia last week. This might change depending on what movie I’ve seen lately

7. ______ is something that I will just never understand.
People who are rude and inconsiderate, people who pull out and make me slam on my brakes, people who pierce or tatoo every part of their body, etc. This list could be really long!

8. How much of a technology junkie are you? On a scale of 1 to 10, I think I’m probably a 14 or 15

9. Do you enjoy selecting greeting cards for people, or is it more of a cultural “have to” for you? Sigh. I wish I did, but I think greeting cards are so grossly overpriced and most get tossed in the trash a few minutes or days after they are received. I do love to get them though, but I think a lot of the ones I send are to people who really just don’t care.

10. When was the last time you got a new style/haircut? Double sigh. I am not adventurous at all with my hair. It’s changed very little in twenty years probably. Although I will say that I am growing it out for Tim, and it’s longer now than it’s been since I was in school. Not sure how long I can keep it like this though

11. What do you enjoy shopping for most? Food and books. I dislike shopping for traditional girl things like clothes, shoes, purses, make-up, etc. I know, I’m weird.

12. What’s the last thing you think of before you leave the house? The normal “did I cut that off” things. The stove, the coffee pot, my hair dryer, curling iron or flat iron, etc. I worry about what could happen in the house while we’re gone and Beau is left trapped, unable to get out if he needed to. It worries me constantly.

Whoops, I did it again! I had the best intentions of keeping up with the blog, but again, I fell behind. Here’s a quick rundown of some things that have happened since my last post:

* Tim and I went with my sister Gail and her husband Don on a “birthday golfing trip” for Tim. Tim’s birthday is a big one this year, and a while back I asked what he wanted - something big, a trip, a big party, etc. He said, I want to go play lots of golf! So, we went to Alabama for a few days, for the guys to play 3 days of unlimited golf at the Robert Trent Jones golf trail (they played several courses in a couple of towns, even though there’s tons of them from the top of the state to the coast). The guys had fun (vacationing together and playing golf, LOL!) and Gail and I had fun together, hanging out, going shopping and eating at girlie food places. I’m not sure if I’ll go back and post photos now, but I might

* We celebrated Thanksgiving with my family at my sister Gail’s house.

* We celebrated Tim’s birthday with his family at his mom’s, a couple of days before his birthday. He went hunting with his dad, brother and nephew but didn’t see anything. The day of his birthday was quiet, with church, grilling out a humongous steak and watching football. We watched the Saints win (over the Patriots) on Monday Night Football the day after Tim’s birthday. He said that his golf and the Saints staying unbeaten were all the gifts he wanted, LOL!

* We have decorated the house for Christmas and started Christmas shopping. Started - not finished, but we have started. I’m trying not to stress about it, but sooner or later I will, I think

* Our church celebrated the last worship service in our regular sanctuary, and look forward to opening the new worship center this coming Sunday. Fun stuff

* I’ve been reading, but not nearly as much as I normally do in a year. I joined two reading challenges, but I think I’m going to fall short of both. By only one or two books, but I still probably won’t complete the list that I picked. I am, however, enjoying the books I am reading, so that’s all that really matters, right?!

* Tim and I are really enjoying this football season, of course! As lifelong Saints fans, we’re thrilled beyond words at the season they are having Chris and Elizabeth have made it over for every game, so we have a great time watching and hanging out with them every week. We have a set of rituals we are following every week, and so far it’s working, LOL!

I’m actually one of the weird people in the world. I’ve never been personally affected by bad weather or storms, so I don’t have a healthy fear of them. Quite the contrary, I normally like bad weather and am oddly fascinated by it.

A week or so ago, when we had all of our rainy weather, we had a weather system move through during the middle of the night. It started thundering and lightning, and a particularly loud clap of thunder (or so I thought), woke me up. And I mean, I sat up straight in the bed and must have gasped or yelled. Because then Beau jumped up and started barking (Tim says I scared him, but I think the weather scared him too!). I told Tim it sounded a lot louder than a regular clap of thunder, but he said it was fine, go back to sleep.

Come to find out the next day, our neighbor told him that lightning struck the tree behind their house. Woke our neighbors up and scared them to death too! It wasn’t as bad as I though it would be, but still sort of fascinating. I’ve never seen lightning just strip bark and not cause a burn or anything. It doesn’t look like much in these pictures, but it was all over the tree, all the way around, which I also thought was really weird. The other thing that was strange is that all of the dirt was pushed away from the base of the tree. Like the lightning had gone from the top to the bottom and then blown out, pushing all of the dirt away from the base of the trunk. It was really weird, but hard to photograph, so I didn’t get a good picture. Here’s what the stripped bark looked like, but again, this was all the way around the entire tree, so it may not look like much here, but believe me, it was pretty weird!

I blogged a couple of weeks ago, here, about having to drive my cardboard and magazines to a recycling bin a mile or two from my house. Well! I’m happy to report that I won’t have to do that any longer!

My city/county apparently changed contractors for their recycling pickup. Which, I failed to note in my previous post, we pay for, whether we use it or not. Of course, I’ve always been a recycle/reuse/save the planet kind of girl, so I’ve recycled stuff as long as I can remember. Anyway… last week, we all got dropped off on our driveway a brand new recycling bin! In a pretty green color Inside was a list of what all they will and will not accept.

The main thing we lost is glass recycling. I’ve been recycling glass bottles for over 16 years, and now they will no longer accept them. Which is not bad, it’s probably one of the least recycled things in my bin. I used to have more kitchen things that were glass, but a lot of those have been converted to either plastic or paper containers. But, here’s the good news… they added paper of all kinds! The handout says you can recycle flattened cardboard, magazines, phone books, junk mail, office paper, etc. So, that’s going to be a huge boost for me! Not only do I no longer have to drive this stuff to the drop-off center, maybe I will get better about not throwing junk mail and stuff in the trash! Also, this is even more motivation for me to go through the piles of magazines I have around here. Shhh, don’t tell Tim where all I have them hiding!

All in all, I think it’s a good trade-off, giving up glass but gaining paper, cardboard and magazine recycling. I seem to have paper coming out of my ears

Hooray for recycling!

My buddy Desert Songbird tagged me with this fun photo meme that I’ve seen going around. I have been in a decidedly untagging mood lately, but I also have had trouble coming up with something to blog about! I’m still really on the fence about continuing to blog. I just can’t think of anything interesting to yack about any more Anyway, I thought I’d play along with this one. It’s always fun to look back at old photos.

Here’s the rules:
1. Go to your Picture Folder on your computer or wherever you store your pictures.
2. Go to the 6th Folder and then pick the 6th Picture.
3. Post it on your blog and tell the story that goes with the picture.
4. Tag 5 other glorious peoples to do the same thing and leave a comment on their blog tellin’ them ’bout it.

I’ve only had my laptop a couple of years, so these pictures are fairly recent. This was taken back in late summer 2007. I was really pleased to see that the sixth photo in my sixth folder was one of my favorite subject - Beau! Tim would say that is because I take more photos of our dog than anything else!

I’m supposed to tag 5 others, but as I mentioned, I’ve been in a real un-tagging mood lately. So, I’ll just leave this one open, and if you’d like to play along, please do!

Have a great day

I read online over the weekend, that in addition to Saturday being Valentine’s Day, that it was also National Donor’s Day. Apparently, this was started in 1998, but I think it might have been the first time I’ve heard of this holiday. I imagine it’s hard to get more press than Valentine’s Day, with its flowers and candy

Anyway, I thought this would be a good Question of the Day. I’m not a blood donor (I have a serious needle aversion), but I am an organ donor. And I have been for many years. I don’t know when I’m going to die or how, but when I do go, I hope that I have something or some part that would help someone else live a better life. I’ve told my family that they can have any and every part of me that they can use. If there’s not enough left to bury, they can just cremate me. After all, I’ll already be home in heaven, so it won’t matter much to me.

So, how about you? Are you a blood donor or an organ donor? Vote in the poll or leave me a comment and let me know what you think. Hope you have a great day!

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P.S. Today is my sister Gail’s birthday! Not a very cheery post today from me on her birthday, so hop on over to her blog and wish her a Happy Birthday

Test post

We’re busy celebrating Christmas with family, so I won’t be posting much until after the holidays. I’ll try to post some after Christmas, and before New Years. I have one or two reading challenges that I am probably going to participate in for the upcoming year. But until then, I won’t be on the computer hardly at all. I wanted to stop and wish each and every one of you a very blessed, very joyous Christmas!

From our family to yours - Merry Christmas!!!

I took this photo a few days ago, on Saturday, when we got back from the movie. It was actually really cloudy, some clouds dark and some white, and then there was this little strip of blue peeking out. It was like this almost the entire 360 degrees around, above the horizon. The photo really doesn’t do it justice, but it was the best I could do

I’m headed out today (Tuesday) to get my hair cut and run some errands. The big news today is that we have a new great-nephew! My nephew Kirk and his wife Nichole had their first baby last night. No name yet, but a happy healthy baby boy is enough! This is my sister Suzanne’s first grandchild, so I imagine she’s pretty excited! She’ll have to get some pointers from our other sister Gail, who already has five grandkids, and counting

Hope everyone has a great day!

Well, it’s finally here. I’m not sure how it will turn out, but today’s election could be quite historic. We’re going to head out in a little while to cast our vote. We’re trying to let most of the office workers vote on the way into work, then we hope to catch a lull mid-morning. We’ve been watching the news reports this morning on a local TV station and they’re showing video of extremely long lines.

I plan to cast a VoteReport via Twitter. I ran across a reference to it last night and thought it was pretty neat. They even have a free app for my iPhone that I downloaded, so I can log information directly from my phone when we leave - info about how long I had to wait, conditions at the polling place, if there were any problems, etc.

And, for your reading pleasure, I saw this on Yahoo this morning and thought it was interesting. It comes from this link:

Why do we vote on a Tuesday… in November?

The short answer: We used to be a nation of farmers.

The long answer: Congress chose November because the harvest was over and the weather wouldn’t be bad enough to prevent people from traveling.

As for Tuesday, people used to have to travel overnight to their polling location. (In 1845, horse was the preferred method of transport.) In an effort to avoid religious days of rest, Congress chose Tuesday, leaving Monday and Wednesday as travel days. Tuesday was voting (and horse-resting) day.

Have a great day, and God Bless America

I’m really enjoying the new features that I have with the upgraded blog software that Tim installed for me. One thing I downloaded to try was a polling system. Not new to most bloggers, but new to me in this format. I thought I’d try one out and see how it goes. Please play along and let me know if you have any trouble with it!

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I’m having a great birthday this year! Tim has been extra generous and I’ve ended up with a lot of good stuff We had talked about it, and I had given him a list to help him out with some ideas. We went shopping a couple of weeks ago, and I picked out several things I liked and that were on my list, and so he said “let’s get them all.” So we did, and I was really happy to get some great loot! THEN….

We had to go get our drivers licenses renewed this week (well, I did, mine ran out on my birthday and his runs out next month on his birthday, so we just went ahead and went together to get it over with!), and after we left the DMV, he said, “let’s go look at new phones.”. He’d been talking for months about getting iPhones, but I didn’t want to add the extra monthly expense. The phones are high, but we’d have to add a data plan on each of our phones to be able to use all of the iPhone’s Internet features. But, he *twisted my arm* and so we got new iPhones for our birthdays! Then, I find out he had ordered me some more books, and some perfume, so I really made out like a bandit!

Wanna see?!

P.S. Food is always a big thing with me, I never cook on my birthday. We went out last night (the night before my birthday) to Biaggi’s and had some great food. Tim had linguine with lobster and I had their Ziti al Forno, then we had coffee and tiramisu for dessert. Tonight, we’re going to go to PF Chang’s, so I will have to get back on that lovely treadmill next week!

I’ve changed the look on my blog to one not quite as fall-looking…. I really liked the other one with the trees and leaves, but it didn’t display properly in IE. Thanks to Dawn for letting me know! I will have to remember that not everyone uses Firefox or Safari, and some people actually do still use Internet Explorer

I’ll post a book review very soon, maybe in a few hours

Today, I’m trying to catch up on some blog reading and emails. And Facebook, man have I been behind there!

I just discovered the new update status feature today at GoodReads (when I was updating a book I finished last night). You can now enter where you are on a book, page-wise, which is kinda cool. I probably won’t keep up with it, but it’s kinda neat, especially if you have more than one book in progress at a time. I’m working on two non-fiction books right now (which are soooo hard for me!) in addition to whatever fiction book I’m reading. My progress there is only a page or two a day on the non-fiction ones, yikes

I need to spend some time catching up on magazines. I have piles and piles of them.

Mostly, I’m avoiding the treadmill today. That thing is evil. I get on and never see the scale go lower. Boo-hoo.

What are you doing today?! Have a wonderful day!

I’ve been meaning to post a few pictures of the smallest visitors we have in our backyard - hummingbirds. We’ve had quite a lot here the last few weeks. I need to refill my feeder, as they are busy eating and drinking every day. I took some pictures a couple of weeks ago, but haven’t had a chance to post them.

The first photos, I took from inside my breakfast room, with my telephoto lens. I was able to get really close! The second set of pictures, I took outside on the deck. Beau and I went out one afternoon to enjoy the nice weather. I was reading a book, but had a hard time concentrating, because we kept being dive-bombed and bzzzed by the hummingbirds (we were sitting under their feeder, oops!). I went and got my camera and waited patiently for them to fly up over our head.

Hope you have a wonderful day, and find something today that is beautiful, that brings you peace

Busted!