Exceedingly Mundane

1. Had a really good, long Labor Day holiday weekend, but now my week is all messed up.

2. Monday felt like Sunday

3. Tuesday felt like Monday

4. I have a sore throat and am so hoping that I am not getting sick

5. I can’t be sick, because we’re having a big garage sale this weekend 🙄

6. We have more junk accumulated than any normal person should have. I have every spare inch of space in our house piled up with junk at the moment, waiting to be put out
for the sale.

7. It’s going to be a bugger to take this junk to Goodwill if it doesn’t sell in the yard sale

8. I have to go to the bank and get lots of change and one’s for the garage sale. Note to self 😆

9. I still haven’t had to report for jury duty yet… thank goodness!

10. BUT – I have to call every day during the month of September. Bummer.

11. We leave on vacation soon and I have lots more trip planning to do

12. I tried the new Peach Smoothie from Sonic and if you like peach, definitely try it. It was good!

13. I love our new digital cable and this OnDemand stuff. We have an exercise channel and I have lots of exercise videos to pick from now. This girl loves her variety when it comes to exercise. I need motivation, lots of motivation!

Currently, I am lugging this big ole thing around:

1. Wallet
2. Checkbook
3. Keys
4. Cellphone
5. Purell
6. Chapstick
7. Writing Pens – blue only please
8. My little PDA (I grab it as I leave the house to go absolutely anywhere… that way, I have all of my info and lists with me!)
9. Hairbrush
10. Tylenol
11. Sunglasses
12. Gum
13. Small tube of hand lotion

I had this cool banner that Caryn made a while back, and I’ve been meaning to use it. Thanks Caryn!

This is one of two junk drawers in my kitchen – the smaller one, and also the one most presentable for a picture on my blog. You ain’t gonna be seeing the other one until I get it cleaned up. It’s a mess 😆

1. Rubberband balls (one large one, and a new one in progress)
2. Candles for birthday cakes
3. Holders for said candles
4. Candles for pumpkins at Halloween – yes, I use them over and over
5. Batteries of all shapes and sizes
6. Packing Tape
7. Scotch tape for wrapping presents (ask a family member about this, I’m famous for it. I tape them up so tight they can barely get in them!)
8. Scraper for removing stickers and things from glass and windshield
9. Eyeglass kit (for tightening those pesky sunglasses that are always getting loose)
10. Tags from most of the shrubs and trees we’ve planted in our yard
11. Old scissors to cut open things that I don’t want to use my “good” scissors on (they’re in the other junk drawer)
12. Sliders for chair bottoms (bent over white thing in the middle) – we put these on all the kitchen table chairs when we laid ceramic tile last fall
13. Last but not least, my ziploc baggie full of bread twistie ties.

As you can tell from the picture, the big excitement in this drawer are the rubberbands, twistie ties, batteries and tape. Everything else is secondary 🙄

I love and adore Chinese food, and blogged yesterday about how excited I was to get to go to a local place and get some Tuesday night. 🙂 My husband is more than a little burned out on it, and if he had his way, we’d probably not eat it but once or twice a year. Me, I could go 3 times a week. But, he’s sweet and takes me fairly often, even when he doesn’t want to go. We always keep the fortunes if they are decent. I come home and enter them on our main website, Hambones.org in our Fortune Cookie section. Yes, we have a whole section for Fortune Cookies, we’re really odd that way. You can check it out here. Just click Open Fortune for the first one, and then “Open Another” to randomly scroll through some of the hundreds we have entered over the last couple of years. 🙂

Have a great day!!

1. As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never point your way.
2. We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them.
3. The truth is always bearable when told with compassion.
4. Many receive advice, only the wise profit by it.
5. Truthful words are not always beautiful; beautiful words are not always truthful.
6. Live each day as if it is your last.
7. The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get less than you settled for.
8. In order to take, one must first give.
9. The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
10. Your smile brings happiness to everyone you meet.
11. Ignorance on fire is better than knowledge on ice.
12. Work is the true elixir of life. The busiest man is the happiest man.
13. Travel to appease your restlessness.

13 Questions Rattling around my Brain

1. Why is it so hot?
2. When is fall going to get here?
3. How much is my electric bill going to be with the AC running approximately 23 hours a day?
4. How high is gasoline going to get a gallon?
5. What driving can we cut out (now that our busy time is coming up, football and hunting season, plus all the birthdays and holidays coming up)?
6. What can I get my mother-in-law for her birthday?
7. Are our football teams going to be any good this year?
8. Why does my ankle hurt?
9. When is my ankle going to stop hurting?
10. Which book should I read next?
11. Which movie should we rent next at the video store?
12. Should we get the Netflix free trial?
13. When do all of my fall TV shows start up?

We try to walk on a regular basis, around our neighborhood, which is roughly 2 miles from start to finish. I haven’t been able to walk for the last few days, and I’ve actually been rather missing it. My ankle is hurting and swollen, and I’m trying to stay off it more and elevate it. I don’t miss the heat (98º for a high today!), but we normally walk in the early mornings, and I do miss the exercise and the time with my husband. So, without further adieu…

Thirteen Things about our Morning Walks

1. We hear the alarm clock going off and I hit the snooze, then we proceed to converse about whether we actually want to get up and go walking, or go back to sleep
2. We usually guilt one another into getting up and going – we know the exercise is good for us and we need to go. We would just rather sleep
3. We check the outdoor temperature on the display that Tim now projects on our ceiling. Read this blog entry for more info 🙄
4. We dig out shorts, tshirts, socks and tennis shoes. Usually in the dark
5. I get my pedometer out, so I can log my steps for the day
6. I strap on my new Timex sports watch, so I can set the stopwatch to time our walk
7. We go outside, and I pick up the newspaper so I won’t have to bend over and pick it up after we get back (I’m really stiff at the end of the 2 miles!)
8. We stop and stretch at the curb – my ankle needs lot of stretching and flexing
9. We walk to the end of our street and back. Tim hates this part – he hates going by our house and then having to keep going. Something psychological about passing your own house
10. We head towards the back of the subdivision – we sometimes see bunnies in people’s yards, there are two or three spots where we most always see a bunny. So cute, and they sit perfectly still, thinking they are not being spotted 🙂
11. We head around the outskirts of our subdivision, towards the main road; we usually see several people leaving for work
12. We head towards the back side of the lake in our subdivision. We usually see ducks and geese, and there are always several spots where we have to avoid what we call “goose poop�. Those geese poop A LOT!
13. We head around the lake and back to the house. Reward for getting up out of bed and going walking is coffee and cereal. And a big pat on the back:lol:

This week, I’m posting 13 things that I always have in my refrigerator these days. Some with pictures, some with recipe links. Enjoy!

1. Milk – we drink only fat-free skim, but we drink a lot. For the two of us, we go through 2-3 gallons a week!

2. Orange Juice – my hubby doesn’t drink it, just me. I only drink pulp-free, I’m picky that way 🙂

3. Eggs – thankfully, I’ve never listened to the PTB (powers that be) who said eggs were bad for you. I buy eggs every week, and we eat them a lot. I boil them to add to salads, I make egg salad, chicken salad, tuna salad, salmon salad, etc for lunch often. We eat a lot of breakfast food, even at night. I love to bake, and most of my recipes call for eggs.

4. Yogurt – the hubby won’t touch this with a ten foot pole. Thank goodness, they’re all mine. My yogurt of choice:

5. Creamer – my husband will only drink plain, black coffee. I can’t drink it that way. I have to add Splenda and some kind of flavored creamer. Lately, it’s been fat-free french vanilla and this one, fat free cinnamon vanilla creme:

6. Hoisin Sauce – love this stuff. I use it for this salmon recipe, as well as for this Cooking Light Chicken and Cabbage dish, and these chicken “buns” that my husband says tastes sort of like the “yakimandu” he ate while stationed in Korea. We love hoisin!

7. Hershey’s Chocolate syrup – gotta have chocolate milk sometimes! We also always pour chocolate syrup over homemade vanilla ice cream.

8. Allegro Spicy Marinade – my husband will only grill steaks if we marinate them in this stuff, he adores it:

9. Marinated Mushrooms – I have been buying these things for years from Sam’s Club. We both love them. I keep them on hand to toss into green salads, and we love to just eat them right from the jar!

10. On the Border Salsa – another item I’ve been buying for years from Sam’s Club. We really like this jarred salsa. We use it for chips, obviously, but mostly I use it to cook with. I make this shredded chicken to use in a chicken version of taco salad, in enchiladas, or just rolled up in tortillas for a quick wrap. I also use salsa for this recipe for Crockpot Chicken Santa Fe. This is one of my favorite things to make; not surpisingly, I just made it a few days ago!

11. Maple Syrup – I buy this at Sam’s Club too…. We both love pancakes, and I love to make this Maple BBQ pulled chicken to have on sandwiches. We both really prefer it to bbq or sloppy joes.

12. Lipton Diet Green Tea – I’ve been on a kick with these this summer. I love these things:

13. Sourdough Bread Starter This is the sourdough bread starter that my sister graciously shared with me several months ago. (hard to see in the picture, I took this picture on Wednesday, the day I “feed” it and it sort of bubbles at the top). I love to bake and love to make bread. I have a bread machine that I’ve used for years and years, but we love this stuff too… nothing like homemade bread hot out of the oven, even in the summer!

Well, this is the 6th week I have played the Thursday Thirteen, and I’ve not done one about me, which is the suggested theme. I’m not feeling especially creative this week (or timely either!), so I’m going to take most of these from my “100 Things about Me” I have at the top of my blog. Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater

1. I am happily married to the love of my life
2. I am very clumsy
3. I am terrified of snakes
4. I am a total and complete chocoholic, I’ll eat anything chocolate, anytime
5. My lifelong dream is to visit England and Scotland
6. I love my digital camera and will not ever consider going back to film
7. I cannot eat Oreos without milk
8. I can’t drive a stick shift
9. I love to read, and when I was little, I would sneak a flashlight into bed with me so I could read under the covers
10. I am a Libra, and it totally fits me – very balanced, very symmetrical
11. I am terrible about procrastinating on things
12. I’m a total packrat
13. I have watched the same soap opera (All My Children) for over 25 years!

I have that Julie Andrews song from “The Sound of Musicâ€? stuck in my head. You know, “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittensâ€?. 🙂

Here’s some of my favorite things, with no particular rhyme, reason, order or theme!

1. Chinese food
2. Having coffee at my favorite coffee shop
3. Towels, fresh from the dryer
4. Chocolate anything
5. Bookstores
6. Curled up by the fireplace in winter, reading a good book
7. Chick Flicks
8. Going to football games with Tim
9. Yankee Candles
10. Puppies
11. Seeing a falling star
12. Popcorn at the movies
13. Blogging!

Explanation: I’ve been mostly getting books from the library lately, although I have bought several at Barnes and Noble and Target with gift cards. I seem to be the world’s worst about buying a book, then putting it on my nightstand or bookshelf and letting it sit there. I admire it, I dream about reading it, I’m proud to have it there, BUT – I check books out of the library and read them, and get them back by their due date. It’s something about having them available and not on a deadline to return. Something about a goal or completion complex, I’m not sure!

Anyhoo, several of these are listed on the sidebar of my blog. If you’ve ever seen them listed, now you know what they are — books I own but have not read! 🙂

If you’ve read any of these, be sure to leave me a comment and let me know if you liked it or not!

1. “At First Sight” by Nicholas Sparks
2. “Twelve Extraordinary Women” by John MacArthur
3. “The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren (yes, everyone in America has read this but me!)
4. “Memoirs of a Geisha” by Arthur Golden
5. “The Broker” by John Grisham
6. “A Time to Dance” by Karen Kingsbury
7. “A Good Yarn” by Debbie Macomber (have read the first one, Shop on Blossom Street)
8. “Sigma Protocol” by Robert Ludlum
9. “Nights of Rain and Stars” by Maeve Binchy
10. “To the Nines” by Janet Evanovich (LOVE these Stephanie Plum books!)
11. “1776” by David McCullough
12. “The Last Juror” by John Grisham
13. “Light on Snow” by Anita Shreve