Exceedingly Mundane

I don’t know what it is about this time of year. Something about the proverbial “dog days of summer” I guess. Or the simple fact that when it’s 100 degrees outside, I would just really rather stay inside. You know — in the air conditioning! This time of year, I tend to want to do a lot of “projects”.

Now, mind you, I have a wonderful track record for starting projects. Completing them… not so much!

Here’s some of the “projects” I am currently working on:

– Cleaning out old magazines. This is a blog-post in the making. I have a thing about magazines. More on that coming soon.

– Ripping old home movies from tape to DVD

– Getting all of our Flip videos (digital) copied onto my new Mac. They are languishing away on my old, broken down HP and backed up in various places. Need to get them all uploaded to my new baby, Mr MacBook Pro 😀

– Finding some new software to organize our DVD’s on my new Mac. I’ve done this twice before, but keep repeating this project. The first time was on our website, Hambones. Then again a couple of years ago on my new HP. Now, I have a Mac and I need to start ALL OVER and catalog the 100+ DVD’s that we own (and rarely watch, I might add).

– Once I find said software, then there’s the actual entering of all of the DVD movies we own. I’ll be lucky to get past the letter F 😀

– Scrapbooking. Printing digital photos.

Not really a project, but reading. I’m still struggling with the reading. Some days are better than others and my tinnitus is not as loud. Those are good days to read (usually with soft music playing in the background, classical or contemporary Christian usually work best for me. Although I have a nature thing I play a lot too, surf and ocean waves and rain).

Do you have a certain time of year that you are drawn to projects? I know in the spring and fall, I usually go on a cleaning out / decluttering kick. We live in a small house, so it’s a constant thing with me to clean out closets, drawers, etc. Do you do more projects in the winter when it’s cold out, or in the summer, or does the weather have nothing to do with it?

Let me know if you have any projects you are working on, or hope to get to! 🙂

I don’t know if I just took a long break, or more likely, I had nearly given up on blogging. Either way, it’s been a while since I updated my blog.

The last time I posted was late March, which was when I developed tinnitus. I went to sleep one Friday night and I was fine. When I woke up Saturday morning, I had this loud screeching noise in my head. Well, actually, at first it was a loud pulsating noise, like I could hear my pulse pounding inside my head, very loudly. After several doctors visits, and being treated for what they said was a middle ear infection, it changed over to “traditional” tinnitus, a loud buzzing or screeching sound in my head. I took decongestants, mucus thinners, a Z-pack, a steroid pack, and finally they said the fluid was gone, but the noises remain. And apparently will for the rest of my life. I saw an ENT (who I disliked immensely, she was cold and uncaring and had the worst “bedside” manner I have ever encountered) who told me that I probably had Meniere’s Disease and that is why I have tinnitus. Except that my father-in-law has Meniere’s so I know all about it. I do not have vertigo, which is one of the hallmarks of Meneire’s. I just have tinnitus. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day. I’m getting better. And I’m trying lots of things on my own. The doctor said “learn to live with it”. When I told her I was having trouble sleeping, she said “turn some music on”. That was the extent of her helpful medical knowledge. HA! So, I’m doctoring myself and taking vitamin and herb supplements. It is better, but it has not gone away, and probably never will. I will have to learn to live with it, and I have somewhat, but I still have quite a long ways to go. Luckily, I have an awesome God on my side, who loves me, and the most loving spouse on the planet. So I know I’ll be fine, one way or another 🙂

Hearing the loud noises in my head and trying to cope with it consumes most of my days! I no longer read much, because it’s hard for me to read with the noise. I am getting better, but my reading pace and the number of books I have read is way down. I won’t come anywhere near the number of books I used to read in a year, this year. But I am enjoying most of the ones I do read, so I guess that’s good!

I’m walking 6 days a week. Most mornings, Tim gets up and goes with me, and we take Beau. We walk anywhere from 1 mile to nearly 3 miles. We don’t walk on Sundays, because we go to early church. In April, I got pretty sick and was having so much trouble sleeping and eating, that I lost 6 or 8 pounds in a couple of weeks. While I was ecstatic over the weight loss, I didn’t feel well. So once I got to feeling better, I got back to eating, and I’m happy/sad to report that I’ve gained all of that weight back!

I’ve gone back to scrapbooking, at least on a smaller level. I can turn music on when I scrapbook, which helps to mask some of the tinnitus. I’ve finished my Disney album (I won’t even tell you how many years ago we went to Disney World) which is way overdue. I’m working on pages for my Christmas album and also some in my regular chronological albums. I’m way behind, so I won’t ever come close to catching up. In addition to working on pages, I’ve also gone back and gotten a few pictures printed out. I’m about, oh, 6 or 7 years behind on printing pictures. To say I’m totally digital now is an understatement. I didn’t even know where to start at looking for places to print out photos!

I’m trying to stay busy, because when I’m busy or out in noisy places like restaurants, stores, etc, I don’t hear the tinnitus as much. Tim is great about getting me out and keeping me busy. I was always such a homebody, and it’s been so hard, such an adjustment for me, not to be able to enjoy being at home, enjoying the silence, being quiet and content. We’ve been going to a lot of movies this summer (although this is hard on me, the noise bothers my ears badly now, so I try to take ear plugs, which helps, but my tinnitus always spikes after we go to the theater). We go out to eat some, and get out and about whenever we have time.

Tim is still playing a lot of golf. He changed golf clubs a few months back and now has two courses that he can play at. The bad news is that he can no longer take Beau to the new place he joined (it’s a country club, not a golf club any more). When the weather was cooler, I was going with Tim and walking some at the golf course. It’s been really hot lately, though, so I have not been going. Tim still goes when it’s outrageous hot, but not me, I like my air conditioning! We had triple digit weather a week ago, and he was still out, on the days it was 103, with a heat index of 112. Yikes!

Anyway, this is not a very interesting blog post, nor am I promising any interesting ones in the future. Just thought I’d do a long, boring update! 🙂

Saw this at a couple of blogs I peruse, and thought it might be fun to play along. If you do so at your blog, be sure to let me know so I can come by and see your responses!

Name a film that you have seen more than 10 times.
The Sound of Music, You’ve Got Mail, Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, all of the Star Wars movies

Name a film that you’ve seen multiple times in the cinema.
Ooh, tough one. I don’t usually see a movie more than once in the theater. The only one that comes to mind is the original Star Wars. Saw it in 1977 and the 20 year re-issue in 1997.

Name an actor that would make you more inclined to see a film.
I see movies based more on plot and reviews than on a single actor or actress starring in them. That said, I do like Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, etc. For women, I like Meryl Streep, Sandra Bullock, etc.

Name an actor that would make you less likely to see a film.
Will Ferrell. Don’t like him and don’t watch his movies.

Name a film that you can and do quote from.
Ooh, lots of these! You’ve Got Mail, O Brother Where Art Thou, all of the Lord of the Rings, all of the Star Wars movies, etc

Name a film musical that you know all of the lyrics to all of the songs.
The Sound of Music. I know every song, every syllable, every note.

Name a film that you would recommend everyone to see.
Hmm, last year we recommended both Star Trek and Avatar, good movies to see, especially on the big screen. I personally liked The Blind Side a lot, we really love a good football movie. And I always recommend good clean Christian films like Amazing Grace, One Night with the King, The Nativity Story, etc.

Ever walked out of a film?
Dune, back in the 80’s, I think is the only one coming to mind. I fell asleep during one when Tim and I were dating, I think it was called Forget Paris (not sure though, we went to the late movie and I slept through most of it, LOL!)

Name a film that made you cry in the cinema.
Titanic, Marley and Me, many others…

There’s more questions on the following page, click here:
Read the rest of this entry »

Just for the record, the largest container of Shout laundry detergent from Sam’s lasts me approximately 2 1/2 years, LOL!

I posted this entry on my Project 365 blog way back in July 2007.

I got a couple of comments back then about how big the container was. And it was, but I always figure that things like toilet paper, dishwashing detergent, laundry detergent, Shout and things like that don’t go bad or are ever going to stop being used in our house. So those are the kinds of things I buy in large quantities at Sam’s Club. So, for the record, that 128 oz container worked for us for about 2 1/2 years. And today, I threw out that container of Shout and opened a new one (also from Sam’s, but not quite as large).

I thought you might like to know, hardy har har!

P.S. You know, sometimes it is really nice to be able to look back at the REALLY important things in life, like when you bought a giant container of laundry cleaner. You know, the special moments 😀

P.S.S. This blog ain’t named Exceedingly Mundane for nothing!

I know not everyone has an iPhone, but I do, and I LOVE mine! Tim and I got ours over a year ago, for each of our birthdays, so we’ve had them about a year and a half now. 🙂

I download free apps all the time, but only a very few pay ones. I go through phases of my favorite apps on the iPhone, but here’s what I am really liking lately:

Grocery IQ – my new grocery shopping app. I downloaded Splash Shopper when I first got my iPhone, because I had used it for several years on my Palm Pilot. And I really liked it on the Palm. On the iPhone, I don’t like it so much. It’s slow, its cumbersome, and you can really tell that it wasn’t designed from the ground up to use the iPhones many features, as Grocery IQ is. Grocery IQ is now one of my most used apps, and at 99 cents, was a steal 🙂

Bejeweled for the iPhone – I have loved this game for years! I played it on my desktop for years, then when I joined Facebook, I found it on there and played. I must say though, that the iPhone version for me is the most fun! It has 3 modes, and I like being able to play in timed or untimed mode, as well as being able to save my game and come back to it later. Plus, they have it connected to Facebook now, the Blitz version, so I can play there and have it post my score at Facebook (of course, it seems harder to score big on the phone version!) It was a little pricey, 2.99 when I bought it, but hey, I had credit in the iTunes store so it was a great buy for me!

One of the first apps I downloaded is still my most used – the Facebook app and the iTV app. Both have recently had big upgrades, and they are much improved. I really enjoy both, and love what they allow me to do from my phone. The iTV app not only shows me tv listings, movie listings, let us watch clips and even full length shows (although I haven’t done that), but most important to me – it lets me handle my Netflix queue from within iTV. I had another Netflix app, to manage my queue, but I don’t need it since iTV lets me do that, and more. The Facebook app is really nice, and much improved. I like that you can take photos from your phone and easily upload them.

There’s more, but those are a few of my favorites. I like the Weather Channel app too, especially to see the radar for my area. I twitter from my phone alot, and I personally like Tweetdeck, although I have 2 other free apps loaded on my phone. I go through phases with games, but have recently liked both Toobz (like the old game Pipe I used to play on my desktop computer) and Boxed In. I like playing Scramble on my phone too, because it interfaces with my Scramble on Facebook. However, my scores are really low from the phone.. for some reason, it’s harder to type in words quickly with your fingertip as opposed to using a keyboard on the computer, hahaha!
.
My walking buddy and I are attempting to transition to jogging. She wants to do the C25K program, which takes you from the couch to running a 5K in 9 weeks (or in our case, probably a lot longer, LOL!) She has an iPhone too, so we both downloaded the C25K app, which tells us when to walk, when to jog, warm up, cool down, etc. I like using the app (2.99) versus the free podcasts, because the app lets you play your own music on your phone, rather than using the canned music that comes with the podcast. I have a walking playlist, of music that I like, so that makes it a lot nicer.

OK, I will end with a picture that proves that we are not the only ones who are addicted to our iPhones! Chris and Liz come over to hang out sometimes, and Chris has an iPhone. Usually one of them is playing on his, and sometimes, one of them will borrow one of ours, and it looks like this in the living room:

If you have a smartphone, whether its an iPhone, Blackberry or other, what apps or programs do you use the most? Some for fun, some for productivity? Leave me a comment and let me know! Oh, and …Have a great day!

P.S. I’ve had this post in my drafts for a while, but had never gotten around to posting it! With Apple’s announcement yesterday about the new iPad, it made me think about it. I think I want one of the new iPads, but we’ll have to give it some thought and see how it does. And try to justify the cost.
How about you, are you interested in getting an iPad?

OK, so I totally and completely hijacked Karen’s post here, and stole all of her cute ideas 🙂 I have a lot of these same pet peeves, and I scored exactly the same on the cute little quizzes.

I don’t cuss in real life, so it is definitely not something I do on my blog or on Twitter or Facebook. See how you do:

Created by Oatmeal

I have a lot of the same issues with words and spelling. Although, I do think I use “alot” for “a lot” occasionally here on the ole blog. Sort of, I am not thinking of it as two words, since I tend to use “a lot” as one slurred together word. The others, I think I’m better at. It certainly helped having an English teacher (substitute) / crossword puzzle fanatic for a mom, it helped me a lot growing up with spelling and grammar!

Created by Oatmeal

Thanks again to Karen, and to theoatmeal.com website (new one for me!) for sharing these! If you play along on your blog, or take the quiz to get your score, be sure to let me know 🙂

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!

[poll id=”9″]

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!