Exceedingly Mundane

OK, I’m going to piggyback off of yesterday’s random post, the one where I talked about turning off the water when brushing your teeth, and also that I’ve read that you’re supposed to brush for the same amount of time it would take to sing Happy Birthday 4 times through. You guys are really funny – several people left comments about how hard and how messy it is to sing while brushing your teeth! Maybe humming or singing silently to yourself is what I should have written. 😆

Anyway, another quick Question of the Day: Are you brand loyal where toothpaste is concerned? Do you, your spouse, your kids all use the same brand and flavor or type of toothpaste? Have you always used the same kind or did you change brands when you got married, had kids, etc?

My answer: I’m a Crest girl. I grew up using Crest and still do. Thankfully I married a guy who also grew up the same way. We both still use the plain types of Crest (paste, not gel, and none of the flavored stuff). I’ve bought some of the gel and some of the flavored stuff (Cinnamon Burst or something) and Tim never likes it. I am not opposed to trying a new toothpaste or flavor, but I honestly don’t know what to buy and what we would both agree to use. We don’t use the whitening stuff, but we probably should with the amount of coffee and soda we both drink 🙄

How about you? Leave me a comment and let me know what you and your family do on the toothpaste front!

OK, I had one more random thought, but decided to sort of ask it as a quick “Question of the Day”.

I was reading some stuff in the newspaper over the weekend about Earth Day. Now, if you know me in real life, you know that I’m by no means a “tree hugger”, but I do believe in recycling, trying to save energy, taking care of the environment, etc. My sister Gail has already blogged about the CFL light bulbs. I’ve been trying to do that for a while, and we recycle every week (we have curbside where I live, so it makes it easier). And on and on, there’s lots of things you can do to save energy and take care of the planet.

Here’s one thing I read though, that I’m terrible at. The article in the paper talked about not running the water while you’re brushing your teeth. Seems most people do, me included, and if we’d all just shut off the water, we’d save water and energy. I just did a quick Google and found this:

If everyone in your family leaves the water on while brushing their teeth, as much as 600 gallons can be wasted each month (assuming a household of 4 people, brushing twice a day for 1 full minute and a faucet running at 2.5 gpm).

So, that’s today’s burning “Question of the Day“: Do you turn the water off when you brush your teeth, or leave it running? Have you ever thought about it? Do you care? 🙂 And a bonus question, do you brush your teeth for a long time? They say you should sing Happy Birthday all the way through, 4 times, to brush your teeth correctly. Sheesh, I’m probably lucky if I get through 2 verses of Happy Birthday! Leave me a comment and let me know about these 🙂

OK, today’s Question of the Day is short and simple – when you see someone else yawn, do you yawn? I always, always do. I am totally convinced that yawning is contagious. Tim, on the other hand, doesn’t think so and swears up and down that he doesn’t yawn when he sees someone else doing it.

So, how about you? When you see someone else yawn, do you?!

Time for another Question of the Day! Let’s have a little fun today. Who doesn’t like cookies, right?

Well, we don’t! We love cookies 🙂 I’d have to say that it would be hard for me to pick between chocolate chip cookies and Oreo’s as my favorite cookie. Then, there’s Fig Newtons, and I love a good white chocolate macadamia nut cookie. Oh, and a good oatmeal cookie with nuts or raisins. Yeah, baby! Hmmm, I need to bake some cookies soon! In the mean time, we have a bag of Oreo’s around here. Bad news. Tim won’t win the weight loss challenge at work this week, LOL! But, hey, Kroger had them on sale for 1.88, so who am I to turn down a bargain?!

How about you? What’s your favorite cookie? That’s today’s Question of the Day… Leave me a comment and let me know!

Did you realize that today is Friday the 13th? Are you in any way superstitious? Do you have “paraskevidekatriaphobia” – fear of Friday the 13th? Or do you just have “triskaidekaphobia” – fear of the number 13?

I must admit, I am just the slightest bit superstitious. It comes to me naturally. My dad won’t go down a street if he sees a black cat cross the road. I’ve actually been in the car with him and had him turn around and go another way. And I can remember my grandmother saying things like “don’t open that umbrella inside, it’s bad luck”. And “be careful, don’t break that mirror or you’ll have seven years of bad luck”. So things like that, even though they are silly, I am mildly superstitious of. I don’t walk under ladders either 🙂 I do, however, pick up pennies, no matter if they are heads up or down. And unlike Rachael Ray, I don’t throw salt over my shoulder for luck. 😆

I’ve always been interested in this kind of stuff. I was a mathematics major in college and I did a term paper one time on the number 13 and why people have trouble with it. It’s rooted in paganism and Christianity and numerology and a host of other “isms”. 🙂 Friday, of course, was the day Christ was crucified and the number 13 stems from the number attending the Last Supper (Jesus plus the 12 apostles). I think most American hotels and office buildings don’t have a 13th floor. There’s a lot of these kinds of things, once you start thinking about them. Or looking them up 🙂 You can Google like I often do, or go to Wikipedia and read more about it (click here for Friday the 13th info or click here for info on superstitions in general).

Anyway, there are a lot of things that some people are superstitious about. I thought it would make for a fun and maybe interesting “Question of the Day“. So, how about you? Do you consider yourself superstitious? Do you walk under ladders or open umbrellas indoors? Do you think if you break a mirror it will bring you bad luck? Would you stay in a hotel room on the 13th floor? Or anything else that someone else might consider a little superstitious? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Ahh, cookbooks. I love cookbooks! Cookbooks are another serious obsession for me. I love to look at them, read them like books, look at the pretty pictures, dream about all of the recipes I want to try, etc. I use those little post-it flags sometimes to mark the pages of the recipes I want to make. I always have the best of intentions. And yet, I rarely cook out of them. I do try a few things, but for the most part, I just like to have them to look at and maybe use “one day”.

I also daydream about the day when I get a bigger kitchen and I can put my cookbooks on some shelves in the kitchen, or nearby. Right now, the majority of my cookbooks are in an old bookcase in the hall, nowhere near my kitchen. One day, I hope to have a built-in set of shelves on the side of an island or cabinet, or maybe a built-in desk area with shelves above it, so I can display my favorite cookbooks. I do have a few in the kitchen, in a wooden cookbook stand on top of my refrigerator. But, I have so many that storing them is an issue. Some of them are here:

That’s today’s Question of the Day: Do you like cookbooks? Do you buy many cookbooks? Do you cook out of them much, if you do? And equally important, where do you store yours? If you really want to get all involved with your answer, give me a ballpark estimate on how many cookbooks you have. You can also tell me which one is your favorite, if you can pick just one. I can’t! 🙂

P.S. I’m cheating again, and using this for today’s photo over at my Project 365 blog. Blogger privilege

I have a feeling that I’m going to be popping several Tylenol today. It’s going to be a long day…

I blogged yesterday that I was fretting about our neighbor’s fence. The fence contractor he hired showed up bright and early this morning (and it’s in the 40’s here, hard to believe, since it was 86 on Monday!), and started tearing down his fence. We share one side of our yard with him and so now, I have a gaping hole where there used to be a fence. Which means Beau can’t go out on his own to take care of business, hang out or whatever. He is NOT a happy dog. We’re only a couple of hours into the project and already he’s really upset. He hears them banging and drilling and making noise and he is about to tear down the back door to go out and investigate. He’s a territorial kind of dog and rather protective of me, and our house and yard. So, needless to say, I already have a headache and I will probably have to go get some Tylenol soon.

So, I thought I would do a quick Question of the Day: Can you swallow pills without any kind of liquid? I absolutely cannot, but Tim can. He always amazes me. He doesn’t take Tylenol or Advil very often, but when he does, he takes two in his hand, pops them in his mouth and just swallows them. I absolutely cannot do this. I have to have liquid of some kind and then sometimes I have trouble getting the larger pills down. When I was younger, I couldn’t swallow pills at all, but I did finally learn. How about you – do you have any trouble swallowing pills? Have you always been able to, or did you struggle to learn? Can you swallow them dry, without liquid?

I am going this morning to the salon to get my hair cut. And colored, but shhhh, we’re not going to talk about that very much. Suffice it to say that I had grey hair in high school. They had to airbrush it out of my senior portrait. By the time I got married, I had huge streaks of grey all through my hair. Not long after we were married, Tim told me that he thought I should color it, since he thought I looked a lot older than I really was. Needless to say, I’ve been coloring my hair ever since. I am calmly and patiently waiting for the day when Tim has a head full of grey hair. Then, I’ll stop coloring mine and we’ll be grey together. 🙄

Anyway, I go regularly to get my hair cut. Every 5-6 weeks. I have horrible hair and I have trouble styling it. I wish I had great hair. I wish I had “wash and go” kind of hair, but I don’t. It won’t do what I want it to. It’s incredibly frizzy. It flips one way and then another, never the same thing twice or the same way on that part of my head. It’s a struggle every day between me and my hair. A common phrase in my house is that I’m having a “bad hair day”. 😀

So, that’s today’s Question of the Day – Do you go to the salon to get your hair cut? How often? Do you get your hair highlighted or colored? Would you say you have more “good hair days” or “bad hair days”. 😀 Inquiring minds want to know!

I just posted my entry below for this week’s Blog Talkers, where I refused to talk about what is on the front page of my local newspaper (local politics, the mayor, the city council, the legislature, all politics, ugh), and instead I talked about stamps. I didn’t realize until I saw in the newspaper earlier this week that postage stamps were going up in May.

I actually don’t use a lot of stamps anymore. I pay a lot of our bills electronically, and that has really cut down on the number of bills and letters that I mail every month. Some bills do still get put in the mail, along with birthday cards, rebate forms, and various other forms of communication. But, overall, my stamp usage has gone way down since I started doing so much online. The main time of year I buy stamps is at Christmas, to mail out Christmas cards.

So, that is today’s Question of the Day: Do you use a lot of stamps? How often do you go and buy new stamps? Do you go to the post office to buy them, or another place? Do you get them through your mail carrier? Did you know that postage rates were going up in a month or so?

Leave me a comment and let me know 🙂

I realize my little blog has been more boring than normal lately. I seem to just be posting memes, and of course, I do post a photo every day (usually with a little story or blurb) over at my Project365 blog. Go check it out if you haven’t lately (shameless plug!). 😀

I thought it was time for another Question of the Day… today’s question is all about puzzles. Do you work any kind of puzzle- crossword puzzle, other word puzzles, Sudoku puzzles, or any other kind? If so, what do you do and what do you like? Do you work them online, in the newspaper, in books, or what?

Here’s my answer – puzzles are sort of a happy thing for me. I like them and go through phases of doing them myself. I went through a huge Sudoku phase last year, where I worked a lot of Sudoku puzzles. Mostly online, or ones in the newspaper. I know my sister Gail bought a book, and I think my sister Suzanne bought a book for our dad. We are trying to get him interested in something! Puzzles are a happy reminder to me of my mom. My mother got up every morning and worked the crossword puzzle in the newspaper. She worked the “Jumble” too. She loved puzzles and she was really really good at them. She knew all of those obscure “crossword puzzle words” that they use that the average person doesn’t know. It’s an omnipresent memory I have of her, working the puzzle every morning, drinking her coffee and smoking her cigarette. (I won’t jump on that bandwagon today. Cigarettes are nasty things and they took their toll on my mother before she passed away).

Lately, I’ve been doing these “word-seek” puzzles. You know the kind, where you find them forward, backward, vertical, diagonal, in a block of letters. I used to do those when I was younger, and I’ve been on a little kick with them again lately. I’m sure this too, shall pass 😀

So, how about you? Do puzzles of any kind interest you at all? If so, what kind, where or how do you work them? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Now this is a holiday I can totally and thoroughly embrace – today is National Goof-Off Day! Click here to read a little bit about it. I thought it was sort of interesting that it all sort of stems from Nintendo and a study they did that showed males of a certain age would rather spend their free time playing video games than anything else. Well… DUH!

I’m actually going to do my very best to observe this most wonderful of holidays today. I’m hoping to goof-off and watch some TV, maybe catch up on reading blogs, and read a book. What about you? What would you do if you could goof-off some today? For an hour, for a few hours? What’s your favorite way to goof-off? That’s today’s Question of the Day! Leave me a comment and let me know – and be sure to enjoy today! Have fun goofing off! 😆

Since I blogged below about some songs I like and listen to, I thought I’d ask a Question of the Day about music.

What kind of music do you listen to? What genre, how current or how old? How varied are your musical tastes? My answers are obvious from the musical meme I did below – I listen mostly to country. I do listen to some pop stuff, like Josh Groban, John Mayer, Rob Thomas, Kelly Clarkson, stuff like that. I also like a lot of 80’s music. The music I grew up with 🙂 Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and all of the good 80’s rock.

Also, how do you get your music? Do you mostly listen to music on the radio, on an mp3 player/iPod, on CD’s in your car or home stereo, or what? Me, I love my iPod but I don’t really listen to it all that much anymore while it’s on my person, with ear plugs. Ever since I got a base system for it (a clock radio in my bedroom), I mostly listen to it through the speakers. Oh, and on my new laptop, I listen to music all the time. I either play music from my iTunes library through the speakers or use the earplugs that came with the laptop, or I stream radio from an Internet site.

How about you? Leave me a comment and let me know all about your musical preferences!

Yep, that’s me, a weather nut! I am the kind of person who really needs to know what the weather is going to be like. I watch the Weather Channel a lot, and I load weather information on my computer. I watch the local weather forecasts and I even glance at it in the newspaper, even though I can get more up to date weather from the TV or Internet. I just like to know what the temperature and forecast is going to be – which is in diametric opposition to Tim. Tim could care less and never has a clue what the weather is going to be. He will make plans to play golf on a day when there’s a 90% chance of rain. He never knows. If it wasn’t for me incessantly informing him of the weather, he would never know. Truth be told, I think he likes it that way 🙂

Believe it or not, it was Tim that suggested that I ask this as a Question of the Day; he thinks there are two kinds of people. Those who follow the weather, very faithfully, and those who could care less. Plain and simple.

So – which one are you? Do you care about the weather and watch the forecast or not? Leave me a comment and let me know!

We woke up this morning to find that our new cable provider, Comcast, has shuffled our channel line-up. And I’m not talking about a couple of random changes, or removing one channel to add another. I’m talking about a whole change up in our channel listing.

Let me tell you, for a TV-aholic like myself, this is not a good thing. We had upgraded to digital cable last year when we got our new hi-def plasma television, and it’s taken me a while to learn a lot of the new channels. There’s so many channels on here, that I don’t like just scrolling up and down through them — it takes too long. I like to memorize the channels that I watch often, and just punch in the number and flip right to them. WELL. Today, they are all different. They’ve totally moved such channels as our hi-def ABC, NBC, Fox, as well as channels like Discovery, TLC, History Channel, all of the sports channels, all of the news channels, Spike, Family Channel, Hallmark Channel, etc. It’s enough to make me not a happy camper for today.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg though, and I know the worst is coming. We also get our Internet service through our cable company. Soon, I’ll have to change over my email address and go through all of those hoops to get it all changed. I have SO many things tied to my email address, and its going to be a pain in the patoot to get it all switched over. I just hope that we don’t lose our Internet access for any length of time. I hate being without my Internet!

So, that’s my gripe for today. And it’s also a segue into today’s Question of the Day: Do you have cable or satellite TV? Do you have memorized the channel numbers of your favorite channels, or do you just surf through the channels? Also, do you get your internet service through your cable company, your phone company, or another way? We are going to look at changing to satellite later this year, so inquiring minds want to know!

Today’s question is short and sweet – when you eat spaghetti, do you twirl it or cut it?

Here’s why I ask – tonight, we’re having a new recipe for a crockpot chicken spaghetti. I make regular spaghetti a lot (red meat or ground turkey or prebought meatballs), and I’ve made chicken spaghetti (baked in the oven) before. This is a new recipe and I’m looking forward to trying it. I’ll report back on it next Monday, via the Menu Plan Monday, with my thoughts on the recipe. Anyway, every time we have spaghetti I notice that Tim and I are different. He’s a twirler, and I’m a cutter. I like to chop my spaghetti up into short strands with my fork, then scoop it up. Tim twirls and twirls and then jams a huge wad of noodles in his mouth. 🙂

So, that’s today’s Question of the Day – do you cut or twirl your spaghetti? Leave me a comment and let me know. You know, since this is such an earth-shattering topic and all. 😀