Exceedingly Mundane

I’ve blogged before that I’m really fortunate to live in a city that has curbside recycling, and has for over 15 years. They take newspaper, plastic, glass bottles and aluminum/tin cans. They do NOT take paper other than newspaper, so for years and years, I kept just throwing it in the garbage. And hating myself for doing it, but I didn’t have a choice.

Then, I found out that the next little town over (only a mile or so from my house really, since I live on the edge of town!), had drop-off recycling bins at their city fire stations. And that they took not only what my curbside picked up, but they also accepted paper and cardboard.

So, I’ve been breaking down cardboard boxes and going through old magazines and tossing catalogs that come in the mail. I had a big pile in the garage, that I finally loaded up in the SUV and drove to the bin a week or so ago. It felt really good to put all of this stuff in the overflowing recycling bin!

Another Labor Day has come and gone, and another Labor Day party at our house is in the books! Tim and I have been having an annual Labor Day party since we first got married. We picked Labor Day because it was about the only holiday that wasn’t spoken for on either side of the family. We started having a party every year on this holiday, so we could invite our immediate family on both sides. When Tim and I first got married, our families didn’t know each other much at all, so we started this tradition to give everyone a chance to meet, and spend time together. It’s gone on through the years, as kids have grown older, others have had children, and new members of the family have been introduced.

I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of the food on the grill, which I love to do! It’s always a meat fest around here, since Tim and his brothers (and the rest of us too!) LOVES them some meat! I always take a picture, so I can remember what we have from year to year 🙂 Last year, we had ribs and sausage, but this year, we had a few more little kids than normal, so we went back to hot dogs and hamburgers. We also grilled some chicken breasts and sausage, so we had four sets of meat, people! I made potato salad and my sister Gail brought her crunchy asian slaw (recipe here!). I made some dips, and we had cheese and crackers (again, no pictures!). I also made my brownies, which I love (recipe here). Just wanted to remember what we had, for future party planning 🙂 We also had our live draft for our family fantasy football league, after all of the eating was done. Tim really enjoys doing it with everyone here, but it’s hard for me to concentrate 😀 There was some Wii playing, as well as the kids playing outside in the dirt for a while. Hopefully, fun was had by all!

I did take a few photos, almost all people pictures. Click on the extended link to see a few cute ones! Hope everyone had a great Labor Day 🙂

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Anyone remember that old song, Rubber Band Man? Geesh, I think that’s the title. I can hear the melody in my head, which probably means it will be stuck there all day 🙂

I’ve had a “rubber band ball” for at least twenty years. I kept one in one of my deep drawers at work for years, and I have had one at home for the longest time. Don’t ask me why I keep rubber bands, but I do, and twistie ties too 🙂

I’ve been doing a lot of decluttering lately (more on that in a coming post). One of the things I cleaned out was one of the two junk drawers in my kitchen. I started with the smaller one, naturally! I found this nice Oxo drawer organizer at Marshall’s and bought it. But, my rubber band ball doesn’t fit in the drawer any more, it had gotten too big. So, I had to let go of it (although, currently, it’s in Beau’s toy box!).

Here’s my rubberband ball:

A picture of Beau playing with it, he was really confused by it, it’s heavy and bounces really funny!

And one of the final product of the junk drawer (sorry, didn’t take a “before photo”, but believe me, it was messier than this!):

It’s actually nice to open that drawer and look for something now!

Well, I had decided to give up the ole blog, and stop blogging. I haven’t blogged in over a month and a half, you know. Between Twitter and Facebook, as well as the non-computer things in my life, I just didn’t see a need to keep blogging. After all, I’ve been blogging for about 4 1/2 years, so I really felt like I didn’t have anything else left to say.

Then…

I couldn’t remember when we had done something or bought something, and I went to my blog to look and see if I could find out when. And as I was scrolling through past entries, I realized it’s a great way to keep up with what we’re doing, look back at things, and remember what was going on, both the big things and little things in our life. Plus, Tim did his normal “you shouldn’t give it up, you don’t have to do it all the time, you know”.

So, if I can figure out how to do this again, I might be back with some really mundane blog posts 🙂

To tide you over, here’s what makes me smile the last couple of days. Tim surprised me with some beautiful red roses. Just because 🙂

Still not into blogging much lately. I do believe I prefer the “micro-blogging” of Twitter and Facebook more than this format. Or at least lately. I’m not ready to abandon my blog though.

My attempt to try to keep up, at least a bit. Here’s a few bulleted items, things just.right.off the top of my head! 😀

OK, well, that was a whole lotta nothin! I hope you’re having a great day out there in Internet-land! If you’re on Twitter or Facebook and we’re not connected, be sure to leave me a note. I’m definitely spending more time there lately than here 🙂

I’m always on the lookout for good music. Lately, I’ve been listening to music while I’m on the treadmill, or on the computer. On the treadmill, I mostly walk, but lately I’ve been trying to jog a little bit. Of course, a couple of days ago, I must have overdone it, because now my ankles are hurting. Between the Wii Active (that thing is absolutely in love with making me run, do lunges and squats) and the treadmill, my ankles have been sore for several days.

Anyway, back to the music. I mostly listen to country and praise and worship music. My favorites of the moment are the new Dierks Bentley CD, “Feel that Fire”, the new Keith Urban CD, “Defying Gravity”, and one by Casting Crowns called “The Altar and the Door.”. There’s several songs on each disc that I really love. Here’s the one that I love off the Casting Crowns CD, in addition to Slow Fade and the title track. This one is called “What This World Needs”. It works really well for the short amount of time I am trying to run!

How about you? What have you been listening to? And if you walk or run, let me know what music pumps you up, I’m always on the lookout for good music to walk or jog to.

Have a great day!

I totally and shamelessly stole this from Dawn, when she posted hers here. Thanks Dawn, for letting me hijack your post and steal the idea to use here!

I have several things I’m “into” right now. One of my old faithfuls is Life is Good products. I just ordered some more of their t-shirts, and I would wear nothing but those every day, if I could. They are so soft and so comfortable. I’ve nearly cleaned my closet out of other t-shirts, other than my beloved Life is Good ones. And I have quite the collection now! 😀

Recently, at TJ Maxx, a store I have “turned” Tim onto, he found me these over in the men’s section. Of course, they’re unisex and are for women as much as men 🙂 They’re quite comfy, and my favorite socks at the moment:

So, how about you… do you have a favorite clothing item or product or brand that you are totally loyal too? Let’s limit it to something you’d be wearing right now. I have a sweatshirt that I could do a whole blog post about, but we’ll save that for colder days 😀

Well, hooray for the little guy! We called out the big, ugly, corporate company that had come earlier in the week to service our air conditioning unit. The same one who said it was beyond repair, and wanted to sell us a big, expensive new unit. I had gotten the name of a local guy who has his own small business from a good friend of mine. He had replaced my friend’s upstairs unit last summer. He came out yesterday, after the big company’s guy had left, and after we told him what it was and wasn’t doing, immediately said “let me get my gauges and tools and see what we can do.”. He found the leak and fixed it. Something the big company didn’t offer and never brought up. It’s a temporary fix, but a very acceptable one to us. This guy was treating us like he would his own home, let’s get these people some air, and then we can look and see if they want to replace their unit. Let’s not make them suffer in this heat and make them think they have no options except to buy an expensive new unit from us. In fact, he gave us a ballpark estimate on a new unit, and he was more than a thousand dollars under the “big company” quote.

So, our air was fixed yesterday in about two hours, even though it took 9 hours to cool the house back down. We were able to sleep in cool comfort last night, and got a great night’s sleep compared to the night before. The man who helped us out said, let’s see how it goes, if it is cooling for the next couple of days. We’ll touch base on Monday, he said, and see what you guys would like to do. We’re probably still going to get a new unit, which will mean another long hot day with no AC, but after that, we’ll have a brand new unit. Right now, though, my A/C is running and blowing cool air. It certainly feels better in here than it did at this time yesterday!

Hoorah for small business owners with brains, heart and compassion!

Well, we knew it was going to happen sooner or later. Our air conditioning is out. The unit is old, and we’ve been having to add freon for the last couple of years. We had a technician out earlier in the week and they filled it up on freon and did a maintenance check. They told us again “it’s on its last leg”, which is the exact same thing they told us last year 🙄 However, air conditioning is very necessary in our part of the country. Today’s high is supposed to be 97 or 98, with heat indexes of 105-110. Not going to be fun here with the windows open and fans on 🙁

We have two people coming out this morning to look at our unit and give us an estimate. Keep your fingers crossed that we have cool air again soon. Last night was a really long, hot night. Not much sleep here!

and In with the new!

I’ve blogged before that we make a lot of coffee at our house. Tim has been drinking coffee (black, thank you), since long before I met him. I resisted for a very long time, but a few years ago, learned to drink it, if it is somewhere in the khaki shade 🙂 Lots of Splenda and creamer for me. Anyway, since he started working part-time, and then later, full-time from home, our coffee maker gets quite a workout. We make 12 cups a day, 7 days a week, on average. Some days, I make a second pot, although not as much lately since it’s hotter. And speaking of that, highs every day this week are 97 and 98. UGH!

Anyway, our reliable old Cuisinart, pictured below from a previous post, finally bit the dust:

Actually, it started smoking! Tim said it had a short in it, and the carafe starting boiling, in addition to smoke coming out the back. So, we went that very afternoon to get a new one. We thought we would go to Sam’s Club and buy another one like this, as I always see them in there. However, they didn’t have this one. They had a different Cuisinart, an On Demand one, that doesn’t have an external glass carafe. Tim liked that idea, and so we are giving this one a try. I’ve read some of the reviews on Amazon, and it appears that this new one may not last as long as our old one (3 1/2 or 4 1/2 years), but we’ll give it a go. Tim likes that the coffee stays hotter inside the internal carafe. It’s easy to clean up, and it doesn’t splash at all when you hit the pushbutton to stream the coffee into your cup. The only kicker for me is that it is harder to fill up an internal reservoir/carafe. It was easier to take the glass 12 cup one over to the sink and fill it up 🙂 But, I’ve adapted. You can teach an old dog new tricks!

Here’s the new one:

Which reminds me, I blogged last year about hoping to get new dishes, and I finally did! I have four colors of Fiestaware, that’s the scarlet red one. Maybe I should post about my new dishes. Love having color! 🙂

Have a wonderful day, one and all! 😀

Been awhile since my last post. Lots of topics I could post about. I’m going to *try* to be better about blogging, but we’ll see. I seem to be enjoying the “micro-blogging” of Twitter and Facebook status updates better lately. Easier to be brief and just as mundane 😀

Anyway, thought I’d jump back in the fray with a post about our credit card woes. Like most of America, we have a couple of cards that we use regularly. We don’t carry credit card debt, so we’re very lucky in that respect. I monitor and pay our credit cards online and it’s usually a very seamless process.

About 3 or 4 weeks ago, I noticed a charge on our account that did not belong to us. Just one, for about $120 dollars. No others before or since. I called the credit card company then to dispute it, and they issued me a temporary credit while they investigated the matter. I noticed today that the charge was back with a note of “reversal of credit” beside the line item. Sigh. So, after a lengthy call, they have closed our account due to “fraud”. What I want to know is how or why someone in a totally different state is charging their electric utility bill to my credit card? Or why they can’t just stop it without closing my account and issuing me a new account number and cards? I know it’s a small price to pay, but it is inconvenient to have to wait on a new card to arrive in the mail and be without it for a week or two. It’s also going to be inconvenient to notify every company and account that I have tied to this card, online and brick and mortar and get a new number established. Oh well, it could be much worse. Our card was not stolen and there was only the one charge. 🙂

So, how about you? Have you ever had trouble with your credit cards? Vote in the poll or leave me a comment. Oh, and have a great day!!!!

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Just some random thoughts…

Life is busy, but life is good! I just need to blog more often, LOL!

I seem to have lost most of the month of April. My father-in-law went into the hospital on Wednesday, April 8 for surgery and was just released yesterday, Wed 4/22. We’re very grateful that he was able to go home and is doing good. After surgery (he had a hernia on his esophagus), he developed a blood clot that moved to his lungs, called a pulmonary embolism. He spent his birthday and Easter Sunday in ICU. After coming out of ICU, he spent over a week, trying to get his meds regulated. They could never get it all right, so they finally discharged him with shots and pills. He’s taking Lovenox shots twice a day (heparin shots) and is on Coumadin as an anti-coagulant to prevent more clots. Apparently, Coumadin is a “finicky” drug and is hard to regulate, as each person is different. Anyway, we’re just glad he’s doing well and is at home now.

It’s warmed up here in the last few weeks. It’s nice outside, the breeze is blowing and it smells so… fresh! After spending so many days in the hospital, breathing antiseptic laden recycled air, it’s so nice to smell fresh spring air! I’m also amazed at how things are growing. And how much I’m looking forward to getting some flowers to plant. And how many weeds have sprung up in my flower beds. I mean, really, why do those things have to pop up where they don’t belong?! 😀

Today it’s supposed to hit 88 degrees here. Which makes me sad, because I’ll have to break down and turn our A/C on in the house. I just hope it works!

How about you? Anything exciting going on in your neck of the woods? What’s the weather like where you are, and if you live in the South, do you have your A/C running yet?

Have a great day! 😀

We had a really nice weekend. Nothing special, but it was a beautiful spring weekend, and we spent a lot of time outside. Saturday, we stayed busy outside in the yard and on the deck. Tim did a lot more work than I did (I still haven’t totally shaken this sickness thing and I don’t feel 100% yet).

We live near a small airport, and apparently some WW II planes were practicing for an upcoming airshow, or just having fun. They flew over several times during the afternoon and I had a good time trying to run inside and grab my camera when I heard them flying over. I missed them mostly, but got a couple of almost decent shots:

For lunch, we drove to our favorite crawfish place and picked up a big bag of hot goodies: crawfish, sausage, corn and potatoes. We came home and had a picnic on our deck – it was the perfect weather for it and we had both really been looking forward to our first crawfish of the season. Here’s the before and after shots – in case you can’t tell, the before shot is pretty steamy, because of all the steam coming up from the paper bag!

While Tim was cutting the grass, I noticed a butterfly flitting around my verbena, which has one patch that has come back and is blooming beautifully. Even though verbena should attract butterflies and hummingbirds, mine only seems to attract bees. My backyard is full of bumblebees, flying around the flowers and wanting to sting me and Beau 🙂 Finally though, I have spotted a butterfly. And I had my camera out, waiting on the airplanes to fly over, so I was able to snag a decent shot:

Last but not least, Tim picked up a new hummingbird feeder for me at Lowe’s. I had pulled out my old one to fill up and hang up and he looked at it and said, I’m throwing this away. I was like, oh no you don’t, there’s nothing wrong with it and I want my hummingbird feeder. It did leak a little and was looking a little ragged, so he tossed it in the garbage. He was very thoughtful though, and bought me this beautiful new one:

Hope you had a good weekend, too!

Where does one begin a blog post, when you have gone so long without posting? New territory for me. I’ve taken short breaks before, and longer breaks when we’ve had computer or Internet issues, but never a break this long.

For starters, I wasn’t sure I was going to post again. I’m still on the fence but willing to keep trying. Mostly, I don’t like to be a quitter 🙂 I have four years of blogging going on here that a part of me hates to just… abandon.

I haven’t felt the need to blog lately. One reason is that for the last 9 or 10 days, I’ve been sick. I haven’t been this sick in a while. I lost two days from running a fever, sleeping most of the time, and laying in a dark and quiet room for nearly 48 hours. Sinus migraine type headaches are no fun. When my head feels like the size of Jupiter and it’s trying to all fit inside my small cranium, then stuff hurts.

I didn’t turn my computer on at all for a week. That’s another first for me. You know what – I didn’t miss it at all! Not only was I not blogging, I wasn’t checking email, I wasn’t reading blogs, I wasn’t checking Facebook, I wasn’t reading tweets on Twitter, I wasn’t surfing online to read about stuff, look stuff up or even play games. I haven’t really wanted to get back to it, but I feel like I have to. Isn’t that sad?!

Anyway, I’ll try to think of something to blog about. I’ll have to go back to extremely mundane thoughts. A book, a song, a reality tv show, a picture of my puppy. Something inane, I guess. 🙂

How about this for starters – I actually watched Dancing with the Stars this week. I used to love that show. I don’t get to watch it much any more because, we also DVR Chuck, Heroes, and 24 on Mondays. The DVR can only handle so much, unfortunately. However, I was impressed with a couple of dancers, including whoever the Melissa girl is from the Bachelor (never watched that one). I also called and lodged my first votes for American Idol this year. I was a Danny/Anoop fan, and still am, but my new favorite contestant, hands down, is Kris Allen. I think he’s awesome, and I’m going to vote for him as long as he continues to impress me every week 😀

Hope all is well out there in blogland!

P.S. I’m trying out a new template for spring and summer. I’ve had another one on here that I liked better (red), but in IE, the comments are HUGE. I hope this one is alright in whatever browser you use. Please let me know if you have any problems or complaints about it 🙂 I like the ocean side of it, the “earth” side is a little dark for me, but still nice. The “ocean” part of it looks like summer to me 😀