Exceedingly Mundane

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!

[poll id=”2″]

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!

Spotted on a rain-filled, muddy trip through the woods last Saturday, at my in-laws. It’s dark, but can’t you tell what it is?

We also saw two hawks, several wild turkey, and a whole lot of deer. Beau was out running beside the truck, and he went off in the woods chasing the deer. He was a happy, happy dog when he finally came back. His tongue was hanging out, but he had a huge grin splashed on his face 😀

I’ve blogged about this before, but it is worthy of blogging about again! I’ve been using the MyPoints reward system for a little over five years now (my how time flies when you’re having fun!) and I have nothing but good things to say about them. I started out slow, just reading emails and taking surveys. It’s easy to get points that way, although it does take a while to build the points up in your account. In the last couple of years, I’ve taken advantage of their shopping rewards – you go to the MyPoints site and if there’s a merchant you want to order from online, you simply link to that merchant through MyPoints, then go ahead and place your order. You earn points for your purchase, usually a certain number of points per dollar. I’ve built up a lot of points through the years, and I now average $50 or $75 a year in gift cards. You can redeem your points for gift cards to places like Walmart, Target, BarnesandNoble.com, Amazon.com, Sears, Penney’s, Kohl’s, Lowe’s, Bath and Body Works, restaurants and movies, and a myriad of other choices. I’ve always received my gift cards and have never had any trouble with this program, so it’s one I always recommend.

Why do I blog about this today? Because a couple of days ago I received a letter from MyPoints, with my claim code for Amazon.com. I’ve been saving my points for most of the year, and I finally “cashed” them in on a $50 gift code to Amazon.com. Now, I just have to decide whether I’m going to order more books or maybe a new Wii game! I will have enough points in another month or so to redeem for a $25 gift card, and I’ll have to choose then where to get it from. Probably Target, you can never go wrong with that place!

If you don’t participate and are interested, let me know and I’ll send you a referral link. It helps me out to have others sign up under me, so this is a shameless self-promotion post as well 😀 It really is a good program, and I have never had any problems with them. I don’t mind reading the emails or taking surveys for the points, and I don’t mind linking there first to do online shopping (not every place I order from is linked there obviously, but a fair amount are). Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll send you an invitation 😀

Have a great day!

Hope everyone has a wonderful July 4th holiday and long weekend!

We’ve got a family reunion to attend, and a few other things we hope to get to. I, for one, hope that I have some time at home to work on rebuilding my laptop. It was delivered today from the repair shop. Yippee!! I was so glad to see that brown UPS van in my driveway 🙂 As expected, my hard drive was wiped clean (this happened last time), but hopefully I am better prepared this time to reload all of my programs and data. I just hope they finally fixed my video problem this time. My laptop lasted 9 months after we bought it before the video failed, then 5 months after the first repair. At least 6 months this time would be nice, a year even better, LOL! It looks like the exact same hardware and software to me, so I don’t have a lot of faith that they’ve solved this known problem and it won’t break again. Anyway, I hope to have some time to reload stuff, and maybe catch up on some blogs and email. I’m woefully behind.

Have a great holiday weekend! Do you have any big plans? I hope everyone has a second to stop and celebrate our nation, and to say a prayer for the men and women who serve and protect our country. I know I’m so grateful that they provide us with the liberty and freedom we enjoy today. Have a great 4th of July! 🙂

I’ve got a few new places I’ve been hanging out online lately. I’m still debating on one more new one (thanks, Cam!), but so far, I’ve got two new places/things that I’m really enjoying.

The first one – do you Twitter? If so, leave me a comment or look me up at Twitter – I’m “exmundane”. 😀

I’ve been twittering for a few weeks now and so far I’m really enjoying it. I don’t know why I started it. I really don’t need anything else on the computer that sucks away my time. But so far, I’m having a lot of fun with it. Let me know if you Twitter too! I’ve already hooked up with several of my blog buddies (you know who you are!), but I’d love to follow some more.

I also joined GoodReads, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I had signed up for LibraryThing last year and gotten all of the books that I own catalogued there. I really didn’t see the need for GoodReads, but, boy, was I wrong! Thanks to Dawn for getting me signed up over there. I’m also “exmundane” there. I went back and listed the books I have read so far this year, as well as a few of the ones I want to read. I like being able to keep up with ratings and reviews of books I complete, as well as books I see mentioned on blogs that I might want to check out of the library. I often see books mentioned at other blogs and think that I might want to read them, but I don’t have a great system for keeping up with them. Before, I’ve been trying to add them to my PDA, but that doesn’t always work. I’m going to try to use GoodReads for that. I’ve debated the pros and cons of going back over the last two years and listing the books that I’ve read. I do keep them here at my blog, in my sidebar, but without a rating or idea of when I read them. I haven’t done that yet, so I might not double back. I might just use it from this point forward.

If you use GoodReads, be sure to let me know so we can hook up 🙂 I recommend both of these, if you want to find yet more things to occupy your time online, LOL!

Have a great day!

Happy Father’s Day to all of the dads out there. Another bittersweet holiday for us here at the Exceedingly Mundane house. Much like Mother’s Day where I lament that I won’t ever be a mom, Father’s Day is equally hard for my husband. Thankfully, we both still have our dads with us, so we’ll get to spend the day with them, and enjoy that time together.

Have a great day 🙂

Did you see this massive giveaway over at Shannon’s place, Rocks in my Dryer? Awesome – I’d love to win one of these sets! 🙂

Go check it out and have a wonderful day!

I’m not a rabid environmentalist, but I’ve always been interested in recycling, in cutting out clutter (I’m a HUGE believer in the whole ‘clutter causes stress’ theory), in re-purposing items if possible, and basically trying to treat our planet with respect. I feel that God intends us to be good stewards of all He has given us, whether that’s our health, our family, our possessions or our planet. I’ve felt for a long time that we’re depleting our planet and harming our atmosphere. I don’t think this is something that I will necessarily have to deal with on a large-scale basis in my lifetime, but I think it’s something that might affect our young nieces and nephews in their lifetime, or in their kids lifetime. I don’t want to leave them with a huge problem with pollution, no resources, and an earth full of landfills and not beautiful forests and oceans.

Having said that, I know there’s only so much I can do as one person, but I do try. I’ve always tried to recycle. I’ve lived in my house almost 15 years (12 here with Tim) and we’ve had curbside recycling from the beginning. I recycled even before that, when I lived in an apartment. I would load up my recyclables and drive them to a drop-off spot. Curbside, even though we pay a lot for it, is much more convenient. We recycle newspaper, plastic, aluminum, and glass. Our recycle bin is overflowing every week and we have less garbage than most of our neighbors. I’ve been taking my plastic bags to drop-off boxes at our Super Walmart or Kroger for years.

I was so glad this past Earth Day to see a big push towards reusable shopping bags. Even in the backwoods area I live in (believe me, we are about the last ones to get or do anything here), they starting having reusable bags in the store for purchase. I saw them at Target, but gasped audibly when I saw they wanted 8 or 10 bucks for them. Same at Fresh Market, where theirs are a whopping 9.99 a bag. I looked online and found several cute options. They have the cutest “market totes” at Sur La Table. If I lived in a totally urban area, or France or something, I might see myself with these, but face it – these are not practical where I live. Plus, they don’t hold that much. I also found some cute canvas bags with a lot of great designs on them at Cafe Press (link here), but again, I just couldn’t see myself paying 28 bucks for them.

So, what’s a girl like me to do? Well, since I do the majority of my shopping at our local Super Walmart, I decided to buy the 99 cent black totes at Walmart:

I got three and so far they have worked out pretty well. They’re bigger than I thought they would be, and they hold quite a lot of groceries and stuff. I’ve taken them the last couple of weeks and handed them to the check-out lady to use instead of plastic bags. I’ve sort of made a game out of it, LOL!! 😀 I’m trying to spend less money and just buy what we need, nothing extra, and I’m trying to just fill up those bags. Now, to be fair, I’ve also bought some bedding plants and some cases of Coke Zero that didn’t fit in the bag, but otherwise, I’ve been good. I’ve gotten all of my groceries in those three bags for the last couple of weeks. And I’ve cleaned out a huge stash of plastic bags here and taken them to the drop-off box at Walmart. I’ve also been spending less money every week. So, a win-win for me!

Now, a question for you guys out there in blog-land — do you recycle? Do you use reusable shopping bags? Have you seen them in the store and have you bought any? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Today’s “Question of the Day” is short and sweet – how many DVD players do you have in your house? The reason that I ask is that mine just broke. Wah! We actually have two in our den, one is a multi-disc player and the other is a combo that includes a DVD recorder. But, we did have a small, cheap one in our bedroom. That way, if I wanted to watch a “girl movie” and Tim was watching something in the den, I could just go in our room. Also, when we have football parties and stuff, it lets us put the kiddos in our room with a Disney movie. That doesn’t happen very often though, so we are considering not replacing the one in our room.

How many DVD players do you have, and in which rooms? How often are they used? We use our den one a lot, because we rent movies from Netflix, so we watch a lot of movies in the den.

Leave me a comment and let me know! And have a wonderful day 🙂

Just a quick, albeit late, recap of our Easter weekend. We had thought my Dad would come visit and go with us to church, then to Tim’s family get-together, but he ended up staying at home. Tim and I spent Saturday doing chores. Something we’ve been putting off for a while finally got done – we cleaned the grout in our kitchen and breakfast room, and then reapplied the sealant:

It looks all nice and new again!

Sunday was busy, with an early church service, then driving nearly an hour and a half to visit with Tim’s extended family. His mom’s family has a get-together every holiday and we try to go at least a couple times a year, so Tim can visit with all of his aunts, uncles and cousins. There’s always a lot of people there, and tons of good food. We took a few pictures after church:

Hope you’re all having a great day!