Exceedingly Mundane

I’ve had my iPod a little over a year now, and I still love the thing. Tim bought it for me last year (read about it here) before we left on vacation for Washington DC. He got me the red Toughskin that I wanted for my birthday last fall (it was documented here). I wanted the biggest, thickest, toughest casing I could find for it, since I’m very clumsy and seem to drop the thing a lot. Anyway, I’ve been really happy with it, except for one thing – the ear buds.

I am not sure what Apple had in mind when they designed the ear buds that they sell with their regular sized iPods. I mean, they seem really big to me! Maybe it’s just because I’m a girl, but these things are really too big for my ears. They’re uncomfortable and they fall out a lot, especially if I’m walking or really moving around at all with my iPod. So, for a while now, I’ve been looking for an alternative to these ear buds. I found a couple I thought I might like, but they were pricey. The ones that Apple wants to sell you are about $45 bucks and I just couldn’t see paying that, so I kept looking. I finally decided to try these ear bud covers from Griffin Technology. I got them a few days ago and so far I am trying to decide if I like them. I’ve used my iPod twice with them on (although not for walking because of my hurt ankle) and I think they fit my ear a lot better. I am not sure if they are going to stay in my ear any better though, because they stick out quite a bit further. So, on the comfort scale, they are better. On the sound quality front though, I don’t think they are quite as good. They are just snap on covers, but they seem to somehow change the overall sound of the music. The music doesn’t sound as “rich” somehow, it sounds a bit more “tinny” or something. I’m obviously not very musically inclined so I can’t tell exactly what’s changed, but it does sound different. The good thing is that I can snap them on and off, so overall, I think they’ll be ok. Best of all, I only paid 6.99 for them, so maybe it won’t be money wasted. I had bought a pair at Best Buy a couple of weeks ago, but they were 19.99 in there. When I came home and checked on Amazon and found them for 6.99, I returned those to Best Buy and ordered them!

OK, so do me a favor – if you have an iPod, please leave me a comment and let me know if you are still using the ear buds that came with it, if they fit well in your ears, and if not, what you are using instead. Thanks!

Oh, and here’s what they look like:

I have blogged in the past, briefly, how years ago I thought the idea of bagged lettuce was a silly fad that would pass. After all, I’d seen lettuce for sale in the grocery store all my life, and for a lot cheaper, and more of it, than the price that they wanted for bagged lettuce. Then, as I realized that I was willing to pay more for the convenience of it, I started to think it a lot less silly idea. Now, I often buy bagged lettuce, although I still do buy the heads of lettuce (romaine or spinach, I try to stay away from iceberg since it has no nutritional value) and wash them for us to have. But, if I’m pressed for time or feeling particularly lazy, I go for the bagged stuff.

Same explanation applies to the concept of tuna, chicken, and salmon in those round aluminum tin cans vs the ones that are sold now in foil packs. I resisted even buying them for the longest time. After all, tuna is tuna right, and the foil packs cost a lot more. You’re paying for the convenience of not draining them, or whatever, right? Well, I finally caved a couple of years ago, and now I almost always buy the foil pack. Yes, I pay more, I know. But, I honestly think some of it tastes a lot better coming out of the foil pack than that old rusty tin can :mrgreen:, especially the tuna. I really like the new flavored tuna fillets that Starkist sells in the foil packs. I’ve tried the lemon pepper one and teriyaki ones and I like both of those a lot.

I’d love to hear if you still buy the cans exclusively, you now get foil packs exclusively, some of both, or you could basically care less – so be sure to leave me a comment. No, never mind, don’t comment if you could care less 🙄

Here’s a sample of what’s in my pantry today:

What’s that on the ceiling? A bird, a plane, a UFO? No, it’s the time and temperature displaying constantly.

HUH? Please let me explain. We love gadgets. All kinds of gadgets, but being the geeky techie people that we are, we really love electronic gadgets. For Christmas last year, I bought Tim a new atomic clock, probably this one. It’s made by Lacrosse Technologies and is an atomic clock with time, temperature and humidity displays. There’s a separate piece that goes outdoors to monitor the outdoor temperature. It sets itself automatically by the US atomic clock service, which I think is very cool. He tinkered with it Christmas afternoon and it’s been running fine ever since.

Then, the lights blinked one day last week, and for whatever reason, for the first time ever, this thing lost track of the time. So, as Tim was resetting it, he figured out how to get it to project not only the time, but also the outdoor temperature on our bedroom ceiling.

He’s tickled pink with it. Me, not so much. I am starting to get used to it, but it is a little disconcerting to wander into our bedroom after dark and see these large red numbers displayed on the ceiling. Or say, you’re laying in bed having trouble falling asleep and all you can focus on is these numbers above your head in red.

Needless to say, I tried to take some pictures, but it was hard to get it focused at night without activating my flash. I tried several modes and finally came up with a couple of shots. Of course, these are zoomed in, but you get the picture. Just imagine these numbers are on the ceiling above your bed in your bedroom. 🙄

I was doing some blog-surfing on Friday, and stopped by to visit Paperback Writer’s blog, Publish or Perish. Great site, by the way, you should check it out! As I was reading through some posts, I found a reference to a blog by Ken Jennings. You remember him, the biggest champ ever on Jeopardy!. This guy is very smart and won tons of money, and apparently is even coming out with a book this fall, entitled “Brainiac”. Love that title!

Anyway, his blog is here if you’d like to check it out. I signed up for his weekly trivia emails, and am considering restarting trivia on the main Hambones website. Once I get these in my email, I might post them and see if anyone can get them! I bet his are pretty tough, being the world’s biggest trivia buff.

{FYI: For those who don’t frequent our main site, www.hambones.org, we used to play trivia in the forums on a regular basis. Everyone got busy or lost interest though, and we suspended trivia a couple of months ago. Possibly forever, or maybe just for a long break. I’ve been thinking about trying it again, even though I realize everyone stays pretty busy.}

So —- check out Ken Jennings blog if you’d like, and Paperback Writer’s as well. Also, please leave me a comment and let me know if you’re interested in restarting trivia at Hambones, or joining in for anyone new who might be interested.

I grew up in a family where my parents sat at the kitchen table every morning, drinking coffee and reading the morning paper. Well, and my mother smoked her cigarettes, but that’s not something I want to talk about. Nasty things, they will kill you. Anyway, it was a natural for me to subscribe to the daily newspaper once I graduated from college, and I have every day of my adult life. These days, I tend to read the paper at odd times of the day, sometimes in the mornings, sometimes afternoons, and sometimes I just skip it and will pile them up for days, before I finally sit down for one long massive newspaper reading session.

Sunday papers are different though. I love to read them in the mornings and look at all the ads and coupons. That’s my favorite part of the paper, and my favorite paper of the week is the Sunday version. I love me some retail. Target ads are always my favorite, but I love all the electronics stores ones, the craft and chain department store ones, and various and sundry other ad supplements. Now that I’ve learned to drink coffee, I love to get a big mug of coffee and work my way through all the ads and coupons on Sunday morning.

What I do not get, though, are the drug store ads. Every Sunday, my paper comes with an ad for CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens. Every.Single.Week. We have a joke around here that if a new building is going up on a corner, it’s got to either be a drugstore or a bank. They are very prolific where I live, these drugstores. Many of them are open 24×7 and I realize that a lot of people frequent them. Mostly, people who have kids, who are constantly needing medicine, band-aids, benadryl, cough syrup, etc. We’re not “those” kind of people though, and I can honestly say that I rarely, if ever, walk in a chain drugstore. I buy all my drugs, household supplies, etc at either Walmart, Target or the grocery store. I can probably count on one hand how many times I’ve walked into a CVS, Walgreen’s or Rite Aid of my own need in the last 10 years. So, every Sunday, I toss those circulars right out. Never even glance at them.

Just wondering if others are like that, or am I in the small minority?

P.S. I know my sister Suzanne will enjoy this post, her job is newspaper advertising. Blah! Go for it Suzie, comment away!

Happy, Happy, Happy Birthday to Mark!

Hope you have a great day, Mark, and a wonderful weekend. You’re lucky this year, since your birthday falls on a Friday, you get to celebrate all weekend long. Those are the birthday rules, so be sure to have fun all weekend, and celebrate each day like it was your birthday!

Good Monday to everyone! Now, for this week’s questions…. and thanks for playing!

1. What is your favorite framed object in your house? Probably the wedding picture of us, that sits on the corner of my dresser in our bedroom.
2. If you had a choice of being a carnivore or a herbivore, which one would you be, and why? I don’t know if I could pick… I wouldn’t want to eat just meat or just veggies. I’d get too tired of either one without some variety
3. Who do you think should have won the FIFA World Cup? Or, don’t you care? Not into World Cup at all here… we’re impatiently waiting on NFL season to start
4. What’s your feelings on stormy weather? Love it. I love grey days, rainy days, stormy days, bad weather. It doesn’t bother me usually. The only time I’ve ever had problems with weather was during Hurricane Katrina last August. The sound of the wind after several hours really got to me
5. Do you believe in “time out” chairs? We don’t have kids, so we’ve never done “time out”. I believe in firm discipline for kids, but not sure I would have used the time out idea if we had been able to have children
6. Have you ever bought or sold anything on Ebay? Nope, have mightily resisted thus far:lol:

We’ve been so busy with the weekend (and our trip down the Trace), and the holiday yesterday, that I haven’t had a chance to do a whole lot else. Here’s a couple of random thoughts rolling around like marbles in my little brain 🙄

We’re really enjoying our new coffee beans. We’ve about figured out a proportion that works for us, and I’m learning just how fine to grind them in my cheap little grinder. It’s good stuff

I blogged last week in my Thursday Thirteen post, about some movies I wanted to rent and watch over the summer. I had already found one and we watched it (Because of Winn Dixie, great movie), and I went back to the library yesterday to return that one, and look for more movies. I came home with “Finding Neverland” on DVD, and we watched it last night after Tim got in from the golf course. So, that makes 2 out of my list that I’ve seen in less than a week, yeah!!!

I really liked it, and I think Tim did also, but he did comment that it was a bit slow in the beginning. We give it a 7 out of 10 stars (and we’ll rate the Winn Dixie one an 8 out of 10). That reminds me, I need to do some book and movie reviews over on our main site, Hambones .

By the way, for those of you who do not know me, I didn’t ever really have a childhood. I didn’t grow up doing normal childhood things, like seeing Disney movies, playing games, singing kids songs, etc. Those things are foreign to me. I’ve never seen The Wizard of Oz, although I wear that like a badge of honor now and refuse to watch it. But, I realized last night while watching “Finding Neverland” that I never saw Peter Pan either. In talking to Tim after the movie, he liked that movie growing up and has happy childhood memories of seeing it and liking it. He said I’d need to look for either Peter Pan or maybe Hook with Robin Williams at the library and try to check that out. He seems to think that I need to see Peter Pan. 😆

I was headed out my back door a little while ago, to water some of my flowers and take a few pictures (I’ll post those later today or tomorrow, lots of pretty flowers blooming here!). I saw this bird fly into my tree in the backyard. I assume he’s a regular ole red cardinal, but he’s either really dirty, crossed with something else, or something. I wish I was smart enough to know what 🙂 He has a lot of black on him!

~Land Lines~

By the way…
Not including cell phones, how many working telephones do you have in your home? We have 4 that are plugged up, they are part of a system. One base unit with answering machine and 3 cordless units scattered in various rooms. We keep one corded phone in a closet to pull out just in case. Although, realisitically, we would probably be using our cell phones if at all possible.
Got any really old phones that you still use? Oops, see above, keep one corded one. No rotary ones!
Are you planning on going completely cellular and ridding yourself of landlines? We’re going to keep a house phone. It’s not technically a land line, we have switched to Vonage and our house line is VOIP (voice over IP). It uses our internet high speed line that comes in through our cable company. We like the feature that if the signal is out at the house, Vonage automatically forwards all of our calls to our cell phone

I went out to get the mail today and was really surprised to see the first of our free DVD’s from Kellogg’s arrive in the mail. I blogged about this originally on 5/31 and had just mailed off for the first two that week. So, in less than 3 weeks, we already got our first totally free movie. Granted, it’s not a blockbuster and probably something we would never buy, but it was free! We buy Kellogg’s cereal anyway, and there were no charges for shipping and handling, so the movie only cost me the stamp to mail off the order form and coupons.

Cool beans, I love getting free stuff! Our first movie to arrive is Jumpin Jack Flash, with Whoopie Goldberg:

My blog and I hit a nice milestone last night – we logged our 10,000th visitor to the site. Fittingly enough, it was my sister Gail. 😆 Thanks Gail, and everyone else, for visiting my blog and reading my entries, answering my questions, and leaving me comments. I really enjoy it, and appreciate it.

Here’s to the next 10,000 visits!

OK, so here’s a question – if I put a facial moisturizer on my face that has SPF 15 in it, then I put on makeup/foundation that has an SPF of 15 – does that mean I have SPF 30 coverage on my face? Or does one cancel out the other and I still just have an SPF of 15 on my face, out in this blazing hot sun? It’s hot here, and supposed to be 96º this weekend. Ick. Gotta get serious about sunblock and sunscreen soon.

For the last several months, we’ve been collecting “coupons” from the back of certain Kellogg’s cereal boxes. They are running a promotion for free DVD’s. Granted, they are not the best DVD’s in the world, but we love movies, and I love anything that is free! Plus, we eat a ton of cereal and the majority of it is made by Kellogg’s. So, collecting the coupons from the boxes is a nobrainer for us.

We have enough collected now to get at least 2 DVD’s, and we’re working on a 3rd one. I noticed in the grocery store last week that there is a new promotion on some of the boxes – they have new movie collections. So yeah, we’ll get even more. 😆 I finally sat down last week and did the paperwork and ordered the first two movies (Jumpin Jack Flash and Dr. Doolittle, unless they’re out of those already. If that’s the case, there’s no telling what we’ll get!) I think we may be one “coupon” short of a third one, not sure. I am ready to start collecting the coupons for the new promotion – they are offering “Romancing the Stone” and I always liked that movie!

Here’s what the cereal box looks like:

And some of our collected coupons (I took this picture a few weeks ago, and we have even more since then, we eat a lot of cereal!):