Exceedingly Mundane

You gotta love this time of year! It can sometimes be about flowers and chocolate. 😀

Tim surprised me on Thursday, and said he wanted to take me out for an early Valentine’s dinner at Biaggi’s, which is one of our favorite places. We don’t go out for Valentines Day any more. We did when we were dating and the first few years we were married. Then, one year on Valentines Day, we waited two hours for a table, then had mediocre food and service at a place that normally has wonderful food and excellent service. That did it for us – we decided we’d just as soon stay at home and grill a steak and not feel compelled to go out for a nice dinner on that day, just because someone else says we should. We certainly go out to eat plenty of other times during the year.

It was a nice surprise though, and we had a good dinner. Then, we went to Fresh Market afterwards, another place I love. I told Tim, if we were rich, I’d shop in there every week! But, it’s nice to save it for splurges or special things. I love food and love to shop for food, so that place is heaven for me.

Here’s a few pictures, always more fun than my long boring posts!

Red tulips for me, and a box of truffles Tim bought me at Fresh Market:

And the tulips up close:

You can’t tell what’s in here, but this is our leftovers from Biaggi’s. That’s either today’s lunch or tonight’s supper! Tim had shrimp and crab cannelloni and I had penne sardi. Both delicious!

We picked up some gourmet brownies from the bakery in Fresh Market which will be our Valentines dessert (we’re grilling out ribeyes and will have salad, sweet potatoes and grilled asparagus for dinner):

Lastly, we got a new happy to fill our crystal candy dish in the den… at Christmas, we got soft peppermint sticks from Fresh Market, then after that, we got some organic truffles. Now, we got a big thing of chocolate covered peanuts, one of their “Items of the Month” up front:

Can you tell that I’ve been craving chocolate lately?!

Anyway, we’ve already had one Valentines celebration here, with dinner out and all these goodies. We’ll have another Saturday night. How about you? Do you have plans for Valentines Day? Eating in or out or something special with your spouse and/or kids? Hope you have a wonderful weekend, whatever you do 😀

Or at least, washing dishes is fun for a few days, LOL!

The sprayer on my kitchen sink broke in early December, and I told Tim we should just wait till after Christmas to replace it. That led to early February, but it all worked out really well for me. We looked at Lowe’s and didn’t see just a replacement sprayer (although Tim told me later he did find one), so we decided to get a whole new faucet set. My sink and faucet are original to the house, so they are over 15 years old. One of us said something to the effect of “it sure would be a shame to put a nice, shiny new faucet on that old, scratched up, rusted sink”. I can’t remember who said that at the moment 😀 Anyway, I picked out a new sink too. I really like being able to pick out fixtures and lighting and stuff to replace what we have here. Everything put in by the builder was the lowest level possible, so now I have a nicer sink, two inches deeper, and a nicer faucet that doesn’t leak, with a sprayer that works. Ah, washing dishes is fun again!

Here’s the old one:

And the nice shiny new one:

So, that leads to an unusual Question of the Day: Do you have a good cleaner for stainless steel? Or any tricks to keeping my new sink as clean and shiny and protected for as long as possible? I have always used BarKeeper’s Friend (a powder, sort of like Comet) or SoftScrub on my sink, but I’m wondering if I should be using something else. Something for stainless or something special for sinks. It sure has a lot of water spots all the time!

Leave me a comment and let me know if you have any tips or suggestions on keeping a stainless steel sink clean. And have a great day!

Our website, and therefore my blog, was down during Super Bowl weekend, but I wanted to go back and post a little about it. We had a really good time, as always, and a house full this year. All of Tim’s family and my dad came, which was great. My dad will turn 86 in April, so it’s really good that he’s still able to get out and about, and come visit us a bunch. We also had some friends and extended family here. All in all, I think we had about 20 people or so.

Tim and I went on Saturday to Sam’s Club and bought food for the party. Note to self – if you take Tim, expect to load up on meat. It was definitely a male-oriented, cholesterol laden, meat festival at our house on Sunday. 😀 We had hamburgers, hot dogs, smoked sausage, 3 flavors of wings (thanks Terry!), a sausage stuffed/bacon wrapped concoction (thanks Mark!) that I dubbed the Bacon-ator. We had Lil’ Smokies, a meat and cheese platter, a vegetable tray, several kinds of dips and chips, Chex Mix, potato salad, fruit, and a double decker cookie cake for dessert. I had three things that I had planned for later in the day (game time or half time), but everyone filled up at lunchtime on the food we had, then nibbled throughout the afternoon and early evening. So, I put those into the freezer and we’ll have to plan another party so we can eat that food up 🙂 As it is, Tim and I have been eating leftovers all week, which has been wonderful. I got out of cooking for many days! Since we purchased everything and Tim did the grilling, I was home free for this year’s party. I think that’s definitely the way to go, at least for me! Isn’t that terrible. You’d think I’d want to cook for 20 or more people, huh?! 😀

I took a few videos of the guys playing Madden 09 on the Wii, but I’m not going to post those. They’re funny though 🙂 Here’s a couple of still photos that I took. We had enough 3-D glasses for everyone, and big kids and little kids alike had a good time playing with them and waiting for the 3D commercial 🙂

Here’s the first round of meat on the grill…. 22 burgers, some of the sausage and hot dogs. Tim filled it up a second time!

Lots of Electronic toys here: Wii playing, iPod Touch, iPhones, Nintendo DS’s…

Having fun with 3D glasses:

I’ve lost count on what consecutive party this is that we’ve had. Tim and I have been married almost 13 years, so I’d say we have had a party at least 10 of those 12 years, and maybe 11 of those. We plan to have one next year. Unless the Saints go to the Super Bowl. If Tim’s beloved Saints ever make it, we have already told everyone we will not be having a party. We’ll lock every door in the house and tell people to go away, so we won’t miss a second of the game! As it is, I don’t get to watch a lot of the pregame or game (I did finally sit down and watch some of the second half this year though, it was a really good game). I didn’t get to see Faith Hill or Jennifer Hudson sing beforehand, and I missed the halftime show, which was fine because I’m not a Springsteen fan. I did watch the 3D commercial though. Gotta have your priorities straight. Anyway, we’re already missing football season around here. Training camp can’t come soon enough!

Well, hello to all my fellow bloggers! We’ve been offline for about 2 1/2 weeks here. We went out of town one weekend, only to return and find that our website (hambones.org) was down and we were having hardware issues. We have a couple of computers that run our website, but the primary one (which is 4 1/2 years old, btw) was not booting up. We tried buying various parts locally, then had to order stuff online. Several times. One thing turned into another, and before you know it, we basically had to start over from scratch, on both hardware and software. I say “we”, but really I mean Tim. He’s worked night and day for weeks to get things back online. We still have a long way to go, there’s still a lot of problems and things that don’t work, things that used to work before. We were several versions behind on different components, things I don’t really even understand, but Tim does. Thank goodness! Our blogs are now back up, but we aren’t able to load pictures and images for a while, nor is the email working. And a few other things that hopefully are behind the scenes and no one will notice! LOL 🙂

So — you’d think with all that time while our website and my blog was down that I would have been uber-productive, huh? Well, you’d be wrong! I enjoyed the break immensely and had considered more than once not even blogging when we did get things back up. I’m still on the fence about that. However, yesterday, Feb 3, was the four year anniversary of my blog, and I sort of hate to just “give up”. So, we’ll see. I still have a few things to say, but not nearly as many these days 🙂 In the beginning, I blogged every day. About anything and everything. I talked about my day, all the little things going on, I did every meme that came along, etc. Those days are gone. Tim doesn’t like me to blog about where we go or what we do, at least for the most part, for security reasons. I’ve lost my mojo where memes and tags are concerned. And the days of blogging daily are long gone. We’ll see how long I do keep going though.

Back to the break – I should have gotten a lot of stuff done. But, I didn’t do hardly any of the “projects” that I should have done. I haven’t worked on the piles of paper and receipts and magazines that are overflowing around here. I watched a lot of TV, played a lot of Wii, read a fair amount (7 for the year, so far), and generally enjoyed the break. I did have my computer, so I was able to keep up with other blogs and Facebook. But I didn’t miss blogging here, so that leads me to believe that it may be time…

Ok, so, we’re back, but hobbling and limping along. If you have an error or notice something that is not working, please let me know. We still have a long way to go, but right now, Tim needs a break. He’s worked nonstop on this thing, night and day, and until the wee hours of the morning, for too long now. He’s a keeper though, don’t you think?! 🙂

Do any of you keep an inventory of certain items in your home? Do you have some type of inventory system, or a video recording, of your possessions in case of theft or fire? We did this years ago, but really need to update it.

I also want to do an updated inventory of some of the things we own, like books, movies and games. Years ago, I downloaded a free movie inventory system, since we had started buying quite a few VHS and then DVD movies. When I got my laptop a couple of years ago with Vista on it, I never could get that old program to run on it. So, me being the procrastinator that I am, I never got it updated and never got it running on my new computer. I decided this week that I would work on rectifying that. I found a free program online to download, and I downloaded it last night to my laptop. I don’t know if I will like it or if it will work for us, but so far it looks pretty good. It can keep track of books, movies, games and cd’s. I am keeping an inventory of the books we own at GoodReads.com, but I am going to try to get this program updated with our movies and games (since we got the Wii last year, we’ve bought a few games). It’s that time of year, you know. I always get a bit of the organizing, cleaning up, throwing out, decluttering vibe going this time of year, in January 😀

How about you? Do you have a listing of any of these at your house? Whether in a Quicken inventory type system, on a video recording for insurance purposes, or just a list in Word or Excel? Or are you not like us, and you don’t have a lot of books, movies, games, and music CD’s peeking out of every corner of your house?! Leave me a comment and let me know. I’ll be busy entering books, movies and games into my new inventory system 🙄

Have a great day 🙂

On my way to the grocery store today (you remember me, I’m the weirdo who actually loves to go grocery shopping!), I had to cross the railroad tracks. I always, always, slow down and look both ways before I go over these tracks. It’s in a fairly high traffic area, and I’ve always noticed that most people don’t stop. There are bars that come down and bells that ring when the bars lower, but I never like to trust my safety to that mechanism. So, I slow down and look. I think there’s probably 15 or 20 trains that come flying through here on a daily basis.

I actually had the person behind me blow at me today! I guess they were in a big hurry, and I, of course, was not. I looked in my rearview mirror and the guy had thrown up his hands, I guess to say, hurry up lady, you’re slowing me down. I got a little aggravated. I mean, after all, isn’t it the law to slow down at railroad crossings? I know I see school buses do it. I always do it. But apparently most people do not.

I have tons of pet peeves about driving and other drivers (tailgating, people texting or talking on their cell phone, women applying makeup while driving, people pulling out slowly and making me slam on my brakes, etc. The list goes on and on!) Normally this is not one of them, railroad crossings, but today it got on my nerves. Or at least that other driver got on my nerves with his reaction.

So, let me know if you fly over railroad crossings, trusting that the bars and bells will come down to stop you if a train is coming. Or let me know if you’re like me and slow down before you go over them. I guess I really am turning out to be a little ole grandma kind of driver!

I really like doing jigsaw puzzles around the holidays. They’re cheap, they’re fun, and they are really good for someone like my darling husband (who is very driven, and likes to work on things until they are completed. In other words, type A) 🙂

Here’s the one we did this year. It’s a 1000 piece puzzle, and I must admit that Tim did way more than half of it. It took us a little longer than normal to finish, since we were gone a couple of days over the long holiday weekend. It felt like a big achievement when we finally put in the last piece yesterday!

Isn't it pretty?!

So, how about you? Do you enjoy puzzles of any kind? Jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, Sudoku, or any other kind of puzzle game? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Happy New Year! Hope everyone had a great New Years Eve celebrating, and hopefully it was a safe one. We stay home on New Years Eve. I don’t like to be out with the crazies 🙂 I grew up working a jigsaw puzzle with my sister Suzanne during the holidays, and have carried that tradition over to me and Tim. We pull out a jigsaw puzzle on New Years Eve (or sometimes the day before, but this year, it was NY Eve evening before we opened it) and then work on it until it’s complete. This year it’s a 1000 piece so it will take a few days.

I haven’t had much blogging mojo lately with the holidays. I hope that disappears soon. I realized a few days ago that I’m coming up on my four year blogging anniversary. I really and truly often feel that I have run out of things to say! 😀 Hopefully I can think of something soon to blog about 🙂

I hope to be back after the long NY holiday weekend and talk books a little. I completed 88 books in 08. Love the alliteration! I am contemplating joining two reading challenges for 09, but I have to check to see if I can even still sign up now. I had it all in the back of my head, but with the holidays, I haven’t done a thing about signing up, or picking books.

Hope you’re all having a great holiday and are off to a fantastic start to 2009! Take care and have a great holiday weekend!

P.S. If you’re not seeing the new blue theme, with a snowy cabin at the top, please look on the top right side of my blog. There’s two “skins” to this theme, and the summer one is green. Click on the winter one to see what I wished it looked like here! 🙂

It’s always just the slightest bit of a letdown to me after Christmas is over. We had three nice celebrations this year, and a wonderful Christmas. We went to my in-laws, to my sister’s and were actually able to stay home on Christmas Eve this year, which is a rare treat. Normally we travel on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but we had a great day to ourselves on Christmas Eve. I made my traditional sticky buns for breakfast, then a ham and several side dishes for our big Christmas meal at home.

After it’s all over though, I always have mixed emotions. For one thing, the tree always looks so lonely and sad with no presents under it. I still love seeing the tree and all the decorations and lights, but some part of me always wants to go ahead and get things taken down and put up for the year. My mom always took down the tree before the New Year, so we never left ours up for Epiphany. I am that same way, so I’m trying to decide when to take it all down. I started this morning, picking up a few things, but I still have a ton left to do. Just taking apart and packing up my Snow Village is a job 🙂

So, how about you… did you have a wonderful Christmas at your house? When does your tree and decorations come down? Soon after Christmas, by New Years, by Epiphany, or sometime after that? Vote and let me know!

[poll id=”8″]

Oh, and by the way, I’m trying out a new winter look on the blog – what do you think? Let me know if you have problems viewing anything 🙂 It’s sort of odd for me to be putting up this new look, considering it’s 76 degrees here right now. We spent most of our Christmas in short sleeves, as it’s been really warm here lately. Doesn’t feel like winter at all!

Have a great day!

I haven’t had much time to blog lately, and I don’t see that changing until after the holidays. How about you, are you crazy busy too? I’ve got a couple of Question of the Day’s coming up, and maybe a poll, but that’s the extent of it 🙂

We’re staying busy with the holiday season and birthdays. We went Saturday to my in-laws for our niece’s fifteenth birthday. When on earth did that child get to be 15? Seems like yesterday she was just 3 or 4, and climbing on my back all the time 🙂 Brittany got a digital camera and was so excited about it – me, too! I love having another budding photographer in the family!

I’ve thought for years that Brittany needs to go to vet school when she is older. The girl loves animals and they love her. Every animal I’ve ever seen around her just flocks to her 🙂

Brittany with Beau and Roscoe

Tim got a chance to test out the gun he got for his birthday, and then take Beau squirrel hunting. The dog was in sheer heaven. No squirrels, but they had a blast together in the woods!

Tim sighting his new gun

I took a couple of scenic shots that I really liked:

I love being out in the country at sunset and after dark. We just don’t see sunsets in the suburbs like this, nor do we see as many stars in a pitch black sky 🙂

Hope you all had a great weekend, and will have a wonderful week coming up. Enjoy the Christmas season!

If you visit here much, you’ve probably read a reference or two to the fact that Tim is working from home full-time. We both love it, especially me! It’s been such a blessing to have him here, and for us to be able to spend so much time together. We converted one of our spare bedrooms years ago into a computer room/scrapbook room. Since we run our own website (Hambones.org), we have several computers back there already. When he started working from home part-time, he worked some in the den and kitchen, but that is hard on your back to sit for long periods of time at a non-computer chair/desk. Then, he moved to the computer room/office and we got me a laptop to use in the den and kitchen (where I spend most of my time anyway!). We have a computer desk and chair, but the chair is probably 11 or 12 years old and not ergonomic in any way.

Tim has been having problems with his upper back and shoulders for nearly two weeks now. Yesterday, he got up and decided to go to the doctor to get it x-rayed and checked out. But, by lunchtime, he talked himself out of going, saying it was starting to feel better. He’s been using a heating pad, and we have been applying those heat patches to his back a couple of times a day. FYI – Tim is not a guy who gets sick or has physical problems. He’s as healthy as an ox. When he gets a headache, he doesn’t even like to take a Tylenol. He prefers to just “tough it out”. 🙂

Anyway, I suggested that maybe it was time to look at getting a) a new computer chair for him to sit in all day and maybe b) a new mattress for our bed. Our mattress is 9 or 10 years old – does anyone know if that’s about the lifespan of a mattress/box springs?

So, last night, we went and got Tim a new chair. He picked it out, and then when we got it home, I was told that I was going to be putting it together!

Tada - instead of Tim "Tool Time", we have Stacy Tool Time...

Concentrating (I normally stick my tongue in the side of my mouth when I concentrate!)

Posing

So, now Tim has a nice new chair to sit in all day. And at night, he works nights sometimes too, like last night. Poor thing. I’m so proud of him, he works so hard to support us and give us a comfortable, happy life 🙂

P.S. Tim said to add that he “loves a woman who can build a chair!!” 🙄

I’m sure everyone is going to be busy this week. I know we are. We had a jam packed weekend and look to have a busy week and weekend coming up. This past weekend, we were only home at night to lay our head down on our pillow and sleep – we were gone most of the rest of the waking hours 🙂 We had a good time though, and are looking forward to a great Thanksgiving with family, and then Tim’s birthday next weekend.

I won’t be blogging much this week, or getting a chance to stop by and visit. I’m going to do a couple of things though:

1. Post a quick poll today about your Thanksgiving plans
2. Post a poll later in the week about Thanksgiving food
3. Try out a new theme for Christmas. Yes, I know I’m mixing holidays. Normally I don’t do that, but it seems that Thanksgiving is so late this year, that we won’t have a long time to enjoy the Christmas season. I may put up two themes. Let me know what you think (one will be blue and the other red).

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday!

At least down here in the South, it finally looks and feels like fall. Friday’s high was around 47 degrees, and Friday night was 25. That’s pretty chilly for us, more like winter! The trees in our yard are finally starting to shed a few of their leaves. Not all, mind you. We’ll have leaves falling for the next couple of months around here. And one of our trees in the front yard has this habit of hanging on to her leaves all winter. Next March or April, when it gets windy, they will all finally blow off. I sort of like it that way 🙂

Anyway, Friday around lunchtime, Tim and I raked some of the leaves up in the front and back yard. Beau, the wonder dog, had a blast! He’s still got some puppy in him. We have no idea how old he is, but I’d guess around four. We’ve had him two years now, but we have no idea how old he was when we adopted him. He had a blast playing in the leaves though! See…

Another long, rambling, assorted post 🙂

Our new great-nephew that was born yesterday now has a name – Max Colton. We got an email with a photo of the new family and they looked tired, but very happy. This makes our sixth great niece or nephew. We have another one on the “other side” of my family who we haven’t met – Henry was born in April but we have yet to see him. He and his big brother and sister are coming on Thanksgiving though, so we’ll get to meet him next week!

I did my weekly grocery shopping yesterday. I’m so happy to be finding two of my favorite seasonal things at the store right now – the Coffeemate flavored creamers (got Gingerbread this week) and the Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash. I can drink my body weight in that stuff, I love it. And I have to stock up, by the week of Christmas or the week after, it will be gone in our stores here.

I also went clothes shopping yesterday. I wish I were one of those kind of women who actually loved shopping for clothes, but I’m not. It’s a tedious chore for me. I do a lot better when I have someone go with me, but alas, no takers. I concentrated on sweaters and tops yesterday. I didn’t even try any pants, jeans or skirts on. This time of year, I mostly wear pants to church (rebel that I am), since I’m so cold. I think it probably looks odd to wear my three pair of black pants over and over, but hey, that’s what I am doing. I did buy some new sweaters and tops though. I tried on a dozen or more pairs of flats and boots and came away empty handed. I’ll have to go again and look for those.

I am starting to get a little panicked about Christmas. Thanksgiving is so late this year, and then Tim’s birthday is two days after Thanksgiving, so I won’t have a chance to start until after then. But, we are having our Christmas with my in-laws the weekend before Christmas, so that only leaves me a couple of weeks to get things and get them wrapped. I’m getting zero ideas from people (HINT HINT), and I really need some help and suggestions. HINT HINT.

I’m enjoying the heck out of my new iPhone. It’s so nice to be able to take it with me places and still be in touch. Tim and I both have downloaded a ton of free apps for the thing and it’s so easy and so fun. I have only downloaded one pay app – the shopping app that I have used for years on my Palm Pilot (SplashShopper). It’s not as user friendly as it was on the Palm, but at least I have all of my info. If you have an iPhone (or I guess a Blackberry, not sure they work the same where applications are concerned), which applications do you have and which ones do you really like?

Finally, Beau is the constant joy in my life. Tim and I talk about it all the time. The dog has such personality and so much energy. And he’s very vocal. He’s gotten to where he growls and barks a lot to communicate with us, in different ways. It’s very cute! And I’m also happy to say that this dip in cool weather has perked up his appetite! When we got him, he was skin and bones and it’s been my mission ever since to put some weight on him. Some days, he won’t eat much at all. Lately, he’s eating really well and that makes me happy. I took some photos of him in the past few days that I wanted to share:

1. Can you see him?

2. Maybe a close up will help – I had to part the shrub and zoom in, he was wedged inside this big shrub we have, hunting for lizards:

3. Beau takes every step that Tim takes, he loves and adores him. I’m constantly singing the Aerosmith song “I don’t want to miss a thing”, because he doesn’t want to miss anything Tim does, says or anywhere he goes. He rarely feels that way about me, but this morning, he was quite interested in the laundry. I did two loads and I bet I have 8 pictures of him doing this:

That’s my Beau baby!

Obviously I couldn’t think of a good title. I’ve used “Odds and Ends”, “Catching Up” and “This and That” so much that I probably have double digit posts under each of blog post names 🙂 But that’s what this is, a various and assorted post.

It’s cold here this morning and was pretty chilly all weekend. I feel the need to go buy warm sweaters and sweatshirts! We’ve done really good though, and have not turned on our heat yet. It’s cold at night, but we sleep under a big quilt, and we’ve just been sucking it up in the AM until the house warms up in the middle part of the day.

We went to see Quantum of Solace over the weekend. I had read a review that probably pre-disposed me to it before we went. The review said this was more “Bourne than Bond”, and I have to agree, although I love all three of the Bourne movies. But this one had a fair amount of hand-held camera work in parts of it and that bothers me sometimes. It was a good movie though, typical Bond, high-action, and we did enjoy it.

We’ve also rented a couple of new movies lately from Netflix. We really liked “Get Smart” quite a bit, didn’t enjoy “What Happens in Vegas” all that much, and Tim watched the newest version of “The Incredible Hulk.”. We also just finished Season 5 of The Gilmore Girls, and will start Season 6 soon.

We got a new window, courtesy of Tim and his brother Terry, a couple of weeks ago:

I spent a gift card I got for my birthday (thanks Mark and Amanda!) at Target, and got a small rice cooker to try out. I fixed some Chinese food over the weekend, and white rice, and it was good. I’m going to look for some new stir fry recipes to try. If you have one, let me know! Also, I think I may try to make some red beans and rice this winter and use it for that also. Here’s my little cooker with rice:

I’ve read several books lately, and have been entering them over at GoodReads. If you’re not hooked up with me there, and want to know more about what I’ve read, just leave me a comment and let me know. I’m currently reading the first book I chose for the Winter Holiday Reading Challenge, “Until Morning is Nigh” by Leisha Kelly. This book is part of a series I’m reading and that I’m really enjoying 🙂

And I hate to end on a sad note, but today is not the most joyous of days for me. Today would have been my mom’s birthday, so I’m a bit sad today. It’s always hard this time of year, through the holidays, and around Mother’s Day. I wonder if there will ever come a time when I don’t miss her…

Well. I hope you’re all having a good day! 🙂