Exceedingly Mundane

::Painted Garden Gnomes::

Onesome: Painted– Hey! Are you getting all painted up on Monday and going out and about? What are you dressing up as? …or are you staying home and handing out goodies? …or sitting in the dark and wishing they would all just go away? Come on ! Nope, not getting dressed up this year, but we’ll hand out candy (what’s left that we haven’t eaten!). I’m wondering now if the kids are coming Monday night or Saturday night. Read a blurb in the paper yesterday that Jackson is observing trick or treating on Saturday night and not Monday. What’s up with that? Not sure if Madison will follow suit or not.

Twosome: Garden– In the garden of your mind, where do you go to relax for a few moments? Off to the beach? …to the mountains? …to a different world? …or maybe a stroll though an old Victorian landscape? To the mountains. Some of my most wonderful memories are of our wedding, honeymoon and subsequent trips back to Gatlinburg. I love love love the mountains. 😀

Threesome: Gnomes– Okay, we have to know: what do you think about garden gnomes and pink flamingos and such? I mean other than there seems to be a local ordinance that you have to have at least one or the other in your front yard if you live in South Florida? They don’t really bother me. One of our neighbors has a couple of pink flamingos mixed in with all their other garden “art” (or junk, depending on how you view it). But, they’re the only ones. Some people get them placed in their yards by one or more local companies that plant them in the middle of the night for people’s birthdays and stuff. We’ve seen that a few times in our neighborhood, always really funny!

10 Great Things About Autumn:

1. New fall TV shows
2. Cooler weather
3. Football games
4. Opening up the windows to let the fresh, cool air in
5. Wearing long sleeve shirts, sweatshirts and jeans
6. Cooking more soups and stews
7. Mine and Tim’s birthday
8. Candy corn and Halloween candy
9. Buying and burning seasonal Yankee Candles (pumpkin pie, cranberry, toffee, etc), since it gets dark earlier!
10. Halloween and Thanksgiving

How about one more week of ‘this or that?’ Have fun! And thank you for playing!

1. diamonds or pearls? don’t have either, but I’d pick diamonds in a heartbeat! 😀
2. paperback or hardcover books? hardback books
3. carpet or hardwood floors? again, don’t have them YET, but I’d pick hardwood floors
4. dogs or cats?DOGS!
5. fluffy or firm pillow? Fluffy
6. fine point or medium point pens? fine
7. clocks a little fast or on time? on time
8. mahjong or spider solitaire (or other)? mahjong
9. wall calendar or desk calendar? wall calendar
10. ‘Survivor’ or ‘The Amazing Race?’ Both! 😆

I’m a day behind… found this one recently at this site:

Night & Day ~ I Say, You Answer

1. Misty Morn…you answer? dew on the ground, light drizzle

2. Foggy Day…you answer? gotta turn the headlights on in the car

3. Full Moon…you answer? darn, lights up our bedroom like a football stadium when it’s a full moon at night!

4. Quiet Night…you answer? curl up by a fire, with a mug of hot chocolate, and read a good book

This one is from this LiveJournal site. Great autumn questions, so I couldn’t resist!

Don’t Fall For It

1. What do you like or dislike about autumn? I love fall! I love when the weather starts to cool off. Love the brisk, clean, cool air, and I love opening the windows to get that fresh cool air in our house. Love the leaves changing. Love it getting dark earlier, lighting my candles, cooking more soups, stews and chili, and baking more. I love this time of year (winter too though, since our winter is like most people’s autumns!)

2. Have you raked leaves into a pile just to jump in them? We don’t have enough leaves to make a pile big enough to jump in! But I wish we did, I would play in them and jump in them for sure! 🙂

3. Have you ever carved a pumpkin and how did it turn out? I carved some when I was a teenager, and Tim and I have carved them a sum total of ONE time in the decade we’ve been together. I love to carve them though, and beg every year, but we never do. I have only ever carved a very plain one though, jagged smile and triangles for the eyes and nose. Never anything artistic or elaborate in any way. 🙄

4. Have you ever eaten anything made from pumpkins other than pie? Yes, lately I’ve branched out and I’m trying to make more seasonal things. We’ve had pumpkin bars and pumpkin bread and from what I remember, it was all good!

5. Where is a good spot to see the leaves change color where you live? Several hours north of here!

Feast Sixty-Seven
Friday, October 21, 2005

Appetizer
Do you button shirts top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top? You know, I have no earthly idea. I rarely wear shirts that button. But, I imagine, I go from top to bottom. I’m OCD that way. 😀

Soup
What is your favorite sandwich? I’m not much of a sandwich person (comes from 12 years of carrying them to school every day for lunch). I like turkey sandwiches and wraps, hot ham and cheese, things like that.

Salad
What was a family project you helped work on as a child? I doubt we ever had any family projects. I certainly don’t remember any.

Main Course
When have you acted phony? Well, I plead the fifth on this one. I know, but I’m not telling. 😆

Dessert
Do you write letters or postcards? If so, to whom? Rarely any more. Sometimes we send postcards when we go on vacation, but this last trip, I blogged every day, so we decided to forgo the postcards. Everyone knew where we were and what we were doing a lot faster with the daily blogging! 😀

::Butterflies are Free::

Onesome: Butterflies– ‘Tis the end of butterfly season, at least here in the Northern Hemisphere (hey, we have readers and respondents in the Southern); what are looking forward to seeing around the yards and neighborhoods in the next few months. (…besides snow, unless that’s all you have staring back at you during the Winter months!) Well, I haven’t seen a lot of butterflies since our rudbeckia stopped blooming and we cut them back. We don’t see much around here in the way of color in the fall, or any snow in the winter. Fall and winter around here just means everything is brown and dead. Not beautiful, but I’m used to it! 🙂

Twosome: are– Are your sports teams doing okay this Fall? Baseball is down to the final stretch and it’s time to chose up sides! …and football is darned interesting at the six-week mark? No interest? How about curling ? Sigh, our football teams are not doing great. USM is doing ok, but Tim’s beloved Saints are another story. USM is not as good as we had hoped, they have had a rough game or two, but they are doing good overall and we’re looking forward to watching them on TV tomorrow night. We will watch the Saints every week, but they disappoint us a lot. We don’t really get into baseball, but we’re glad for the Astros because of Trent and Shanna. Sorry, curling is not in our vocabulary! 🙄

Free– What is your favorite “freebie”? That ‘buy one, get one free’ sale? …the ice cream cone from your local shop on your birthday? The samples at Starbucks? Inquiring minds and all that… Gosh, I love any freebie! I love sales, I love coupons, I love samples, I love signing up for programs for coupons, points, saving us money, any and all of that. Can’t go wrong with any of this stuff in my mind! I signed up for the Sonic Cruisers club and get coupons every month. This month, for my birthday month, they sent me a coupon for a free creamslush, which I have yet to use… need to do that soon! I signed up for Club Olay online and get free samples in the mail of Olay products. Signed up for myPoints online and I get $10 gift cards every couple of months to spend. I love all of this stuff!!

I was tagged by Shanna for this 5 things quiz… not going to tag anyone else, but any and all are welcome to play… just cut and paste and put in your own blog, if you’d like 🙂

5 Things I plan to do before I die:

1. Go to England and Scotland with Tim
2. Visit all 50 states (with Tim)
3. Eat dim sum in Chinatown in SF
4. Learn to ride a horse
5. Go whale-watching

5 Things I can do:

1. Organize/Plan/Make lists
2. Remember song lyrics from most songs
3. Bake a good chocolate cake
4. Give a good massage
5. Get things to grow

5 Things I cannot do:

1. Swim well
2. Watch scary or gory stuff on TV/movies
3. Donate blood
4. Sleep in a room with lots of light or noise
5. Decorate or put color combinations together

5 Things that attract me to members of the opposite sex:

1. Great Eyes
2. Integrity
3. Sense of Humor
4. Thick hair
5. Broad shoulders

5 Things I say most often:

1. I love you (to Tim, every day)
2. Dookey
3. Whatever
4. I’m sorry
5. Do you want to go eat Chinese?

5 Celebrity Crushes:

1. Orlando Bloom
2. Clive Owen
3. Matthew McConaughey
4. Tim McGraw
5. Viggo Mortensen (but only as Aragorn)

I thought we’d do a little ‘this or that’ this week! Enjoy!

Which one?
1. Lemonade or Iced Tea? both!
2. DVD or VHS? DVD
3. Gold or Silver? silver
4. Baseball or Tennis? tennis
5. Spring or Autumn? Autumn
6. Diet or Regular? I drink Diet, but I’d rather have regular, but can’t afford the calories!!
7. Hearts or Stars? hearts
8. Snail Mail or Email? email
9. Shop: Online or In-Store? both!
10. Credit Card or Check? credit card

I say … and you think … ?

On the verge:: just about
Tempestuous:: stormy
Coherent:: clear
Near death:: almost dead (huh??!)
Illiterate:: can’t read
Why not?:: Why?
Period:: final. That’s it.
Long lost:: love
Torrid:: love affair
Nail:: polish

and a dollar short. But, in my defense, I had not seen this meme before, but ran across it a few minutes ago while surfing. So, drumroll please, for the first time ever… the Saturday Special Meme:

Autumn Favorites

1. Favorite Autumn Activity? Well, since we don’t have much fall here, my choices are limited. Here, it’s probably planting pansies and decorating some for fall or Halloween/Thanksgiving. If we’re in the mountains, then the answer is easy – hiking on a crisp fall day. 🙂

2. Favorite Autumn Meal? Any kind of soup, stew or chili, or else brats on the grill. Probably a toss-up between brats with sauerkraut, or taco soup.

3. Favorite Autumn Drink? Hot chocolate or apple cider with some red hots thrown in.

4. Favorite Autumn Weather? Geesh, anything cooler than here. A perfect fall day for me would be 60’s and 40’s at night. We rarely get those here though, we’re lucky to get that in the winter this far south! 😀

You know me, when in doubt about something to blog about, do a meme. Actually, I enjoy them, and Friday seems to be a good day, there are usually several I like. Here’s one:

1. What’s your favorite animated characters? Hmm, don’t do much animation. I think I only saw one Disney movie growing up, and with my nieces and nephews, I’ve probably watched another 5 or 6. That said, I do like Finding Nemo and actually bought that one for myself a year or so ago. So, I guess I’d say Nemo and Dory, I like them

2. Violence in cartoons – funny or harmful? Not necessarily harmful, but I don’t think it helps. Goodness knows kids are going to get enough of that later in life. All they have to do is play video games, watch TV or movies, or even watch the nightly news. Leave it out of cartoons and give them a break for a few years. Geesh.

3. Can you do any impressions? Sigh. No. I’m not very talented.

4. Would you consider yourself artistic? Sigh. No, not one bit. Most people have more in their pinky finger than I have in my entire body.

5. What’s your favorite type of cheese? I love that babybell soft cheese I buy in the little rounds, a good Gouda or even some Monterey Jack. I probably never met a cheese I didn’t like 😆

::County Library System::

Onesome: County– The wild card for today: Do you know approximately how many people live in your county? It used to be that information was only available at the library; I’m betting most of us will be looking it up on the net! I don’t have a clue, and I did Blingo it to see. I know that we have one of the fastest growing populations in the state (in the county I live in). The 2004 estimate was listed at about 82,000 at the site I hit first. Whoddathunkit? 🙂

Twosome: Library– Do you use the library system where you live? …or are you one of those who has to own the book (and can afford to)? Students: how good is your school library? …and do use it or the net for most things? Well, if you’ve visited my blog before, you probably already know the answer to this. I write every week or so about my trips to the library and what books I have checked out and read. I keep a book counter and a picture on my sidebar listing the books I’m currently reading. 🙂 I have used our county library system off and on in the last 5 years, but I have really gone all out this year, since February. I have checked out nearly 30 books, and enjoyed them all. I will keep on utilizing the library, and buying less books. We’ve run out of places to put books, and there are only a few that I want to own in hardback. The rest, I’m happy to check out from the library.

Threesome: System– Hey, what system do you use to store/keep track of your books and music and whatever it is that tends to outgrow its living area? Do you alphabetize? …sort by color? …genre? For our DVD’s, I use a computer program called Movie Organizer, and we also have a module on Hambones for listing our movies. That’s the electronic portion – the physical part is that they are all in a cedar DVD cabinet that Tim built for us. And yes, they are all in alphabetical order! 🙄 I haven’t gotten industrious enough to do this with our book or CD collection. The CD’s that I care about have been ripped to my iPod, and the books are in a certain order in our bookcases. Not alphabetical, like the DVD’s, but by author and also by whether they are Tim’s books or mine or both.

I say … and you think … ?

Quirk:: idiosynchrosy (sp??)
Crystal:: Light
Pet Peeve:: annoying
Cuban:: Cigar
Breasts:: mammogram
Whispers:: secrets
Complicated:: Difficult
Promise me:: swear
Murder:: Jail
Filament:: Light

Found this at Big Orange Michael‘s blog:

A New Game

I’ve seen a number of people doing this all across the Blog-sphere. In fact, I think I’ve been tagged by at least one person to do it. So, where goes…

The Rules:

1. Go into your archive.

2. Find your 23rd post.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

5. Tag 7 other people to do the same.

OK, so here’ s mine… my 23rd post was entitled “More Rainy Day Gratitudes” and the 5th sentence was “I’m still grateful for all of those, and more. “

I won’t be tagging anyone specifically, but feel free to play along and reminisce a little about the early days of your blog! 🙂