Exceedingly Mundane

I’ve been lax lately about transferring and posting photos. Time for a little catch-up!

What’s a boring, old married couple do for Friday night excitement? Why go out on a date to eat at a yummy restaurant, or to a movie, when you can stay home and watch TV shows like Bones, Monk or Psych? Then, instead of actually watching the whole show word for word, you crank up the computer and play Text Twist? We’ve been playing Text Twist online at Yahoo since right before Thanksgiving. Our previous high score (together) was in the 130’s. After several (read: more like 5 or 6) hours of playing, we broke our old record and attained a new record. Unfortunately, I had used Firefox to open Yahoo with and Text Twist won’t save our score. So I had to take a photo for proof. New high score:

202, 040 — in case you can’t read it. Isn’t that awesome?!!!! And who on earth knows the word “fakirs” as the “long word” solution? No wonder we were stumped and couldn’t keep playing! 😀

Well, this weekend marks the third anniversary of my little blog! We’ve had our website for a little over 3 1/2 years. The first few months, I was updating things on the website every day, but it wasn’t in a format I wanted to use. We had our forums, but I wanted a more free-form method of posting things: recipes, book reviews, quotes, funny stories, blurbs about movies and TV shows, photos, etc. Everything on Hambones is compartmentalized; plus, I wanted a space just for me. I did some digging around online and discovered the concept of a “blog” or weblog. I researched software, and after the holidays, got Tim to help me install WordPress and figure things out. I played with it for a few days, then posted my first post on Feb 3, 2005.

I thought it would run its course quickly. After all, growing up, I tried over and over to keep diaries and journals. I have a few left from my childhood and preteen days. They have faithful entries in early January, then they start thinning out. By February or March though, they are few and far between. By May, they are nonexistent. I thought the same would happen with my blog. I made myself a goal in the beginning to blog every day. Even if I just posted something that said, “nothing going on here, I can’t think of anything to blog about.”.

Little did I know how addictive it would become, how much I would enjoy it, or mostly -what a wonderful community I was joining. I’ve made so many blog buddies and gotten to know, in a cyber sort of way, so many wonderful people. I honestly feel like I know so many of you, after reading your blogs, peeking into your lives and families, likes and dislikes, seeing your photos, reading along to the things we have in common, and not. It’s an amazing thing, really.

I certainly never thought it would last this long, but here I am. And at this point, I have no desire to stop blogging. I can’t foresee how long I will do this, but I’m thoroughly enjoying it while it lasts 🙂

Happy Blog-aversary to my little blog. Exceedingly Mundane. You’ve really become a big part of my life 😀

A funny and a serious dog-related blog entry:

The Funny:

The reason this is particularly funny to me is because Beau just did this yesterday! I have several magnets on my fridge, from places we’ve visited on vacation. I accidentally bumped one with my arm and it went sliding down towards the bottom of the fridge. Before I could turn around, Beau had run over to the refrigerator and was licking on the magnet and trying to pull it off the fridge! It made me crack up, because Tim had just sent this to me in an email yesterday morning! 😀

And the serious. My Project365 buddy Sadie sent out an email about clicking on the Animal Rescue site, to donate free dog food every day. I thought it was a great idea. I need to post this more often, or put it on my sidebar, so I remember to click regularly:

Click here, then click the purple button to donate food:

I was going to play along to today’s book-related Meme, “Booking Through Thursday”. But today’s question (found here) is “What is your favorite book that nobody else has heard of?”. Well. I couldn’t come up with an answer for that one! I don’t read obscure or non-mainstream books. I read very common, very average, kind of books! I might could list a Christian fiction book or author that some of you wouldn’t be overly familiar with, but anyone who reads that genre would certainly know. I’m not an “outside the box” kind of reader. I’m very mainstream.

So, I thought instead of playing along to that meme today, I’d do a quick catch-up post on my reading so far this year. I have read four books so far this year, in January, which is below average for me.

The first three books I read were a trilogy I got from my public library, “The Alaskan Quest” series by Tracie Peterson. I’ve read one other set of books by Peterson, the ones that preceded these, the Yukon Quest trilogy. I really enjoyed them, so I was happy to see my library get this other set of her books in. I read them all and enjoyed them. They followed characters from the other books, as well as added a lot of new characters, places, intrigues, and plot lines. These are historical Christian fiction books, set in the Alaskan territory in the early 1900’s. I really enjoy reading about a place and time that I can never visit, especially when it’s well researched and well written.

The other book I read is the first one for the reading challenge I’m participating in, Annie’s “What’s in a Name” challenge. I chose to start with the color option, which is “Windy City Blues” by Sara Paretsky. I picked up this paperback at a recent library sale, along with one other by Paretsky. I had not read anything by her, but she came recommended to me by a fellow book-loving blogger. I was vaguely familiar with her main character, V.I. Warshawski and knew they were detective type novels. What I didn’t realize was that the book I chose for the challenge was a set of short stories, not one long novel. Which is fine, but normally I don’t read short stories, so this was really a stretch for me outside my normal comfort zone.

I did enjoy the book, but I have to say – what I liked about the book was also the one thing I didn’t like about the book. HUH? Does that make sense? I liked that they were short stories and that they were quick to read and easy to complete. But that was also what I didn’t like about reading a set of short stories. I have sort of a “completion complex” when it comes to reading. It seems that with a short story, once I finished one, I was hard pressed to start another one. I did like reading one and having a quick resolution to the mystery and finding out “whodunit”, but then it was sometimes hard to pick up the book and start a completely new story with different characters and plots. That said, I did enjoy it and I do plan to read a traditional Paretsky book about her heroine, Warshawski.

So, I’ve completed 1 of the 6 books for the challenge. Look out for more reviews in the future 🙂 For the record, I’ve read 4 books so far in 2008, for a total of 1,475 pages read. Up next is the first book in the new Father Tim series by Jan Karon, “Home to Holly Springs”. This book is also on my reading challenge, and I’m looking forward to reading about my old friends, Father Tim, Cynthia and the gang. 🙂

Happy Reading!

Today’s “Question of the Day” is all about your favorite Christmas movie or TV show that you look forward to seeing every year. What movie or TV special do you like, or what’s your kids’ favorite? Do you have any traditions associated with this movie or TV show? Do you own any Christmas movies on DVD?

Here’s my answers – I love Christmas movies and I have several that I really like. I tend to like the older movies, the classics. My favorite is probably “It’s a Wonderful Life” and I own a copy on DVD. I also love the old Cary Grant movie called “The Bishop’s Wife” and own it on DVD also. I tend to pull those two movies out and put them on while I’m wrapping Christmas presents. I try to put something Christmas-y on the TV while decorating the tree, but that never goes over very well. This year, when I was decorating the tree, Tim was either watching golf, football or basketball on TV. I clearly remember our first Christmas together. I was so excited about decorating the tree together. Tim’s idea of “together” is to put up the tree, put on the lights, then turn the TV to basketball and watch TV while I do my part, hanging the ornaments. Not much togetherness, we each have our own part to play and there’s no Christmas music or shows on the TV that even remotely resemble the holiday spirit! Are you starting to see that Tim, while a wonderful guy, is not a huge fan of the whole Christmas thing. In fact, he loves to say “Bah Humbug” and I love to call him a Scrooge this time of year! Anyway, back to the movies. “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Bishop’s Wife” are my favorites, but I also like “Holiday Inn”, “Christmas in Connecticut” and to a small degree, “White Christmas”. I also have a really worn out VCR tape of a movie I taped off TV years and years ago, called “I’ll be Home for Christmas”. It starred a very young Courtney Cox, Nancy Travis, Peter Gallagher, Eva Marie Saint and Hal Holbrook (ok, found it here on IMDB). It’s a nostalgic look at a family during WWII who loses a loved one, good movie. Anyway, I don’t tend to like the newer stuff like the Griswold movies, Elf and movies like that. They’re ok, but at Christmas, I love my black and white classics!

How about you? What movies or TV shows do you look forward to watching at Christmas? Do you have any rituals or traditions about watching them? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Howdy! Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We really did – we ate lots of food, and have lots of yummy leftovers left. I’m going to try a new soup recipe later today using the turkey carcass, hope that works out. We had a blast visiting with everyone yesterday, and most of them are still here today. The guys are going to play golf in this very chilly weather (high in the mid 50’s today). Gail and I are going to run to Target later, no Black Friday shopping for us. Elizabeth has to study 🙁

Hope you all have a good day-after Thanksgiving and weekend. I don’t think we’ll get to any Christmas decorations yet, maybe next weekend. We have a birthday party to go to this weekend, our youngest nephew turned 5 yesterday. Happy Birthday Ethan 😀

OK, I got this email a week or two ago from Tim and really liked it. I thought I’d post it today and let you guys enjoy! I’ve always said that the English language must be so hard for someone else to learn. I know I struggle with it enough, as it is!

—————–
English 101

If you’ve learned to speak fluent English, you must be a genius!

Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to
present the present..

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail

18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.

19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests

21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor
pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or
French fries in France (Surprise!). Sweetmeats are candies
while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.

Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither
from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers
don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One
goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can
make amends but not one amend. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get
rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats
vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite
at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by
ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a
wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a
language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill
in a form by filling it out, and in which, an alarm goes
off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the
creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That
is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are
out, they are invisible.

P.S. – Why doesn’t “Buick” rhyme with “quick”?

I thought I’d pose another book-related question today, in addition to playing along to the “Booking Through Thursday” meme (see below).

Today’s Question of the Day actually comes from Lauren over at Baseballs and Bows — thanks Lauren!

Lauren wants to know (and I do too!) – When you finish a book, do you dwell on it for a little while, or do you immediately pick up another book and start reading?

My answer would be a mixture of both. If it’s a light and fluffy book, then I’ll just put it aside, pick up another one and get going. If it is more of a moving or “deep” type of book, then I might dwell on it a little bit. But, overall, I mostly just get another book and start reading. I love to read, all kinds of different stuff, so I love to get started on a new book.

How about you? Leave us a comment and let us know!

Wow, I am always so humbled and appreciative when you lovely people stop by, read my boring posts and leave me such sweet comments. Then, when someone goes out of their way to give me an award, I’m even more amazed! 🙂

Theresa, over at Theresa’s Life, awarded me with this “You Lift Me Up” award recently. Thank you so much, Theresa! I am so glad to have found your blog, and that you found mine 🙂

Shawna, over at Scamp’s Place, awarded me with this “Fabulous Award” – and believe me, she will beat me in any kind of contest as to who’s more fabulous. Shawna rocks! Thank you so much Shawna, for thinking of me, and believing that anything about me or my blog is fabulous 🙂

You ladies are all awesome. All of the wonderful friends and family who stop by here, all of my old and new blogger buddies, and everyone who comes by to visit. I pass both of these awards on to all of you – as an open kind of tag. I think you’re all great 🙂

Wow, I’m so behind on my blog reading. As I was reading some of my favorite blogs, I found that two of my blogger buddies have nominated moi for this award, aren’t they just the sweetest thing? Both Amy and Sandra nominated me for the “You Make Me Smile” award – and they definitely both make me smile 🙂

The sentiment behind this award:
the thing that I love most about blogging is that I learn so much about a person just by reading their blog. I have met MANY wonderful people with wonderful stories to tell,and I am grateful every day for each person that I have the pleasure of crossing paths in life with.I wanted to create something special for people who have inspired me through their blogging; the stories they tell, and the lives that they lead with grace and dignity. I visit their blogs for inspiration and encouragement.Although there are MANY people I want to give this award to at this very moment, I am going to choose ten bloggers:Please grab your badge and wear it(with a smile) proudly, and pass it on because you inspire and encourage me, thank you.So, now it is my turn to pass it on

Well, I’m not going to choose ten bloggers, but I will pass this along to some other bloggers who make me smile. All of these ladies are sweet, kind, generous souls, and their happiness and joy shows through in their blogs. They always make me smile 🙂

Susie – at her new spot Georgia Bloom

Kim – at Mom Musings

Heidi – at God’s Grace in Practice

Momma – at Momma’s Mind

Karen – at Over the Backyard Fence

Stacy – at Vader’s Mom

Back during the Dog Dogs of Summer bloggy giveaway, I won a “good things book kit” from the incredibly sweet Barb, over at A Chelsea Morning. It came in the mail earlier this week, and I haven’t had the chance to blog about it yet. Thank you so much Barb, I just love it!

I think this generous gift is just the impetus I need to get some things organized around here. I have recipes and cooking ideas, travel destination blurbs, decorating ideas and all kinds of stuff torn out of magazines and newspapers, just sitting in piles. This is going to be perfect for organizing them in. I’ve already got it started a little bit, and I also decided to bite the bullet and get another binder, just to put recipes in. I collect recipes. By the thousands, it seems like 🙂 Anyway, here’s a few shots of the project that I hope to work on a lot over the next few weeks.

In honor of Barb, I’ve also named my “Good Things”! (I haven’t decided what to put in the middle square – I’m open to suggestions!!! 😀 )

I couldn’t think of a better thing for an opening page, than the page from Petfinder.com last year, describing the doggie that would become our beloved Beau:

Christmas candle idea, using a glass mason jar, cranberries and a floating candle:

Cooking and description chart for apples:

Travel ideas!

As Barb and her hero would say, “It’s a good thing!” 😀 Thank you again, Barb!!!

I briefly mentioned in a recent “update post” about some movies we’ve watched lately. I blogged about how my favorite of these was “Akeelah and the Bee”. I thought that was a great movie and I highly recommend it. I love words and spelling. That goes hand in hand with my avid love of reading and all things related to books.

So, it came as no surprise when Tim walked in the den one morning this week (he works in our spare bedroom, the “office” and I hang out in the den and kitchen with my laptop) and said “did you know you could do a spelling bee online?” Huh? How can you do it online, you will see the word? No, he says, it does a spoken thing and then you spell the word. Now, this is a game or feature I could spend a lot of time doing!

It’s at our favorite dictionary site – www.thefreedictionary.com. I like using this site versus dictionary.com because it has a spoken feature that is free, that you don’t have to be a paying member to get to. I like to hear a word pronounced, in addition to seeing it written out with a definition. This site also has a thesaurus, as well as specialized sections on computing terms, medical, legal and financial terms. We really like it. I had noticed a while back that they added a Hangman game on the main page, and I have played it some. But — I had not seen the Spelling Bee portion! Oh my, have I been having fun with that! Tim and I played for a while, then his break was over and he had to go back to work. Me, I am playing whenever I have any free time. Check it out if you like words, spelling and things like that 😀

P.S. I told Tim I was going to blog about this site and what fun I was having doing the spelling bee. He said “be sure to tell them it’s addictive”

Get a load of this thing!

{As seen on the Sur La Table website, here} It’s called the “SmartShopper Grocery List Organizer”. It …

Alphabetizes and groups items by where they’re found in the store. 7½” x 4″ x 1¼”.
Recognizes nearly 2,500 grocery items, or add your own to the database.
Coupon flag feature.
Add simple errands like bank or dry cleaning.
Built-in printer requires no ink cartridges
Uses four standard AA batteries.

Now, I love electronics and I actually really like grocery shopping. Heck, this time last year I bought myself the bottom level Palm PDA with an application called SplashShopper already loaded, just so I could keep my shopping, library, Walmart and Sam’s lists with me, electronically. But, this thing, geesh, I had no idea they made something like this! I think it’s pretty pricey at $150, but that’s just me. For years and years, I just kept a running tab of my grocery list on a magnetic pad of paper that was attached to the side of my refrigerator. The one thing that bothered me about that list was that it was inefficient. I added things to it as I thought of them, or if I used up one can of something from my pantry, I’d add another one. So, my list was not in order. Does that make sense? What would always happen would be that I’d get to the bottom of my list, or flip to the backside, and find something that I had missed several aisles over. An aisle I had already been down. Very inefficient, and that kind of stuff bothers me 🙂

Anyway! So, if you had the money, would you buy it? I am very happy with my Palm, but of course it doesn’t print anything out. Not a biggie for me. I like going totally digital 🙂

That’s today’s Question of the Day: How do you keep lists of things you want or need to buy? Electronically or on a piece of paper? Do you even go to the grocery store or Walmart or Target with a list? Is it organized, or do you find yourself circling back to get something you missed on a previous aisle or section of the store? How often do you go to the store to get groceries or household items? Do you sit down with the sales circulars and plan out your shopping trip, or do you keep a running list? Or no list at all! Leave me a comment and let me know!

I’ve been so behind lately, with anything relating to the computer. I’m having trouble keeping up with both of my blogs (this regular one and my Project365 blog), as well as emails, reading my favorite blogs, surfing my favorite sites, etc. I realized that I had received a couple of bloggy recognition awards, which always makes my day 🙂

First, my sister Gail nominated me for this Thoughtful Blogger award recently. Isn’t she sweet and thoughtful! I wonder if it runs in the family? Nah, I think she got a lot more than I did, since she was born first! 🙂

And then both Dawn and Jennifer nominated me for the Creative Blogger award! Gosh, you ladies are so sweet and incredible to think me creative in any way, especially in my ole mundane blogging! Thanks to all of these ladies for thinking of me.

Now, it’s time to share the love with more of my favorite bloggers! I could easily pass this along to a couple dozen of my favorite bloggers, but I’ll narrow it down to these:

For the Thoughtful Blogger Award, I nominate: Lauren at Baseballs and Bows, Amy at Laughing Through the Tears, Carrie at My Lil’ Corner of the World, Karen at Over the Backyard Fence, and Dawn at Thoughts From Along the Broken Road

For the Creative Blogger Award, I nominate: Stacy at Vader’s Mom, Sonya at Mo Mhile Gra, Karen at Mommy of Three, MaMichelle at Shell’s Life, and Karen at Write from Karen.

Have a wonderful day everyone 🙂

If you’re like me, then you often get stories, jokes, chain type stuff, and various and assorted other items showing up unannounced in your email inbox. I must admit, most of the time my spam filter works pretty well, and we’ve actually had a general “cutting back” philosophy lately from most of our friends and family, on the types of “forwards” they will send us. Most of the ones we do get, are pretty good. Most people know us, know what we like, what we don’t like (bad language, crass humor, etc), and they don’t send us that type of email. Thank goodness 🙂

Every once in a while, Tim gets jokes and things from an old military buddy of his. He recently sent him an email of funnies, jokes. For whatever reason, Tim and I both thought a bunch of them were funny!

Anyway, in case someone is in need of a laugh or smile of any kind, off-color or relatively clean, I’m going to post some of them here. Please don’t take offence, there’s a blonde joke in here and some on marriage, but I still thought they were funny! Smile, and have a wonderful day!

And lastly, Tim (my obsessed golf guy) said this was his favorite one:

I’m so behind on reading my favorite blogs. I’ve been trying to catch up some today, but still have a ways to go. I was so thrilled to find that I had won not one but two giveaways during the Bloggy Days of Summer Giveaways!!! Thanks bunches to Barb (at A New Chelsea Morning) for my Good Things book kit and to Karen (at Mommy of Three) for my homemade apple pie a la mode candle. I am so excited about both, and these ladies, and so many others, are so sweet to do these giveaways. 🙂

I also discovered that both Lynne (Lynne’s Little Corner) and Karen (at Over the Backyard Fence) nominated for the “Blogging Community Involvement Award – the Power of Schmooze”. You know, I think it’s sort of cool that you ladies think of me as a “schmoozer”! 🙂 As Lynne and Karen both wrote (and I am plagiarizing here):

Schmoozing as defined by Dictionary.com is the ability “to converse casually, especially in order to gain an advantage or make a social connection.� When it comes to blogging, schmoozing is your ticket to making new friends, getting yourself noticed and building a reputation.

Now, I’m supposed to nominate some other wonderful, oozy schmoozy bloggers for this award. This is the hard part! There are so many wonderful ladies who come here and read my nonsensical posts and leave me lovely comments, as well as those who respond to the comments that I leave on their blogs. It’s so hard to pick, and I really could easily pick a couple of dozen of my favorite bloggers. So, consider yourself all tagged, but especially these ladies:

Cam at Ms Understood – Cam is one of the first friends I made in the blogosphere. She is wonderful about stopping by, leaving me comments, and answering all of my silly questions on her blog and via email. She’s a schmoozer in the very best sense of the word!

Debi at Nothing of Importance – Debi is another longtime cross-visitor and schmoozing bloggy buddy – she regularly visits here and I love stopping by her blog. She’s so full of energy – she homeschools her kids, she cooks, she crafts, she reads, she joins lots of great challenges and she is just the sweetest person.

Kim at Mom-Musings – Kim is a new blogging buddy, but we share so many of the same loves (books, cooking, family) and she’s just the sweetest blogger. She always stops by to visit, always leaves me wonderful comments and she’s just a great schmoozer. She also “introduced” me to my last nominee!

Sarah at His Little Wife – Sarah is my newest blogging buddy and fellow schmoozer. Sarah is Kim’s daughter and they are both great – fun, interesting, sweet, great bloggers, and great commenters.