Exceedingly Mundane

The well is dry, I think. I haven’t been in much of a blogging mood lately. I’ve been more into playing on Facebook, playing the Wii or just plain watching tv. I’ve been recording a lot of stuff on the DVR and we’ve been blowing through some movies lately on Netflix.

I asked Tim if he had any suggestions as to something new or interesting I could blog about. His answer was football and golf. I’m almost positive you guys don’t want to hear about his golf game, and even though we both love football and are excited about tonight’s first preseason game (Go Saints), I know most of you don’t share our love of football.

So, I thought I’d ask you guys what you wanted to hear about next. Here’s some of the choices for the next blog post:

1. New pictures of Beau
2. A couple of new recipes I’ve made
3. Various movie reviews (nothing spectacular here)
4. Book reviews
5. A new Question of the Day

Let me know what you want to hear about next, I can’t decide 🙂

Click here to see one of the best videos I’ve seen in a long time. Of course, I’m a dog lover and I love seeing stories about special dogs. And their owners. I think you’ll like this one!

I thought I’d also throw in a fairly recent picture of my baby. We think he’s as smart as the dog on the video, but we’re very biased. Beau has learned a lot of commands in the last year or two. When we got him, he knew zero commands. Now, he knows about 25!

Have a wonderful day!

This was the devotional I read yesterday, I thought it was really good and worthy of sharing! Excerpt from the “Women of Faith Daily Devotional,” page 217.

Keys to Freedom

Today’s Verse: Do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart. -Proverbs 3:1

Consider these keys for living an effective life, liberated inside and out.

1. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worry.
3. Free your home from clutter.
4. Free your life from hurry.
5. Expect less.
6. Give more.
7. Exercise daily.
8. Laugh out loud.
9. Rest.
10. Pray without ceasing.

And finally, remember whose you are. “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” – Colossians 3:17.

There have been a lot of devotions in this book that I have really liked and really thought hit home for me. This is one that really does and that I wanted to share. I really do work hard at most of these. I need to be working on all of them, more every day. Some are definitely easier for me than others. Say, laugh out loud or rest versus exercise daily and freeing my mind from worry.

Hope you have a wonderful day!

I finally, at long last, found it!

We got up early Saturday morning and made a trip to Walmart to get a bunch of stuff, groceries and other things. We almost needed two buggies, which is very odd for us. As always, every time I go in any Walmart, I scan the electronics section for either a Wii Fit or the Mario Kart racing game. Finally, after much searching, we hit upon a Wii Fit. We’ve looked almost every weekend since we got our Wii in June at Walmart, Sam’s, Best Buy, Circuit City, Toys R Us and Target for these two things. I was stoked that I finally found it! What’s even better is that there was two of them. Our neighbor had asked about where to find one, and I related the whole story about how much we’ve looked and how hard right now they are to find. Her sister had wanted to get one for her daughter (my neighbor’s niece) for her birthday this summer, but was having as much trouble finding them where she lives, as we were here. I told my neighbor that if I found one somewhere, I’d be sure to let her know. So, even though it was early, we called them. We tried to buy the second unit in Walmart for them, but they don’t allow that. Store policy, they said. They can only sell one to us. We even tried the husband and wife, he buys one, I buy one thing, but they were having none of that 🙂 So, our neighbor ran down as fast as she could, and was able to get the last one in the store for her niece (there were only two and we scored them both!).

So far, as expected, I really like it! But no, you won’t be seeing any photos here of me using it 😀 Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Good Monday Morning! I think I’m going to have a hard time getting going today. I guess it’s always like that after a long weekend 🙂

We had a really good, really busy holiday weekend. We went to a family get-together, then got to spend some time with Tim’s brother and his new wife. We played a lot of Tiger Woods on the new Wii (since I cannot find Mario Kart or Wii Fit anywhere, no matter how often or how hard I look, boo-hoo). We went to see “Hancock” at the movie theater. We had a friend over and grilled out a couple of times. We had a great rain yesterday afternoon and I was so glad. It was really dry here and we needed water for our flowers and grass.

I also spent a lot of time on the computer. I have the majority of my applications reloaded, but I still have one or two left to do (most notably, Mastercook, which I use for my recipes). I also haven’t reloaded ANY of my data, except my iTunes library. So, a lot of work left to do on the computer. I also spent a lot of time playing on the computer – thanks Cam for introducing me to yet another really addictive thing online 🙂

I haven’t posted any pictures in ages, because I haven’t reloaded any of my old pictures, or transferred any new pictures since my laptop broke. Maybe I can do that later this week.

On the positive side – I read several books while my laptop was broken. I’ve been entering them at GoodReads and trying to write a blurb there about them.

Hope everyone had a great weekend and will have an awesome week! We’re really looking forward to this coming weekend – our niece and her family move back to town from North Carolina and we can’t wait to see them 😀

Just a quick update. I don’t have much time to get on a computer here lately. I am really missing my laptop. It died a week ago, but just now arrived at the service center today. I’ve had no notification from this unknown third-party repair company that has our extended service contract. I certainly hope they realize how much I *need* my computer to be repaired, returned to me safely, and in a timely manner. Somehow, I don’t think they have quite the same sense of urgency and importance attached to it as I do 🙂

Let’s see – we had a really good weekend. We got to hang out with Chris and Elizabeth a lot on Saturday and had a blast playing the Wii. I think we played almost the whole day 🙂 I even played golf, which is hard to believe! The topic for Sunday’s sermon was good too – “How to Handle Adversity”. Good stuff. Tim and I played more on the Wii Sunday afternoon – I had to work hard to keep him away from the “real” golf course, hehehehe!

We have watched a couple of movies lately that we liked. I really liked “27 Dresses” and Tim (though he’d be loathe to admit it) enjoyed it more than he expected. We both liked “The Bucket List” and despite hearing bad stuff about “Fool’s Gold”, it wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be. Not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but we’ve certainly seen worse. We’ve got a lot of stuff on the DVR that we need to go through. I’m looking forward to a new episode of “Jon and Kate Plus 8” tonight 🙂

It’s hot here, and no rain. I’ve been watering and running the sprinklers on the grass, and quite frankly, I’m over summer already. I wish it would go back to being tolerable weather with frequent rain showers. This hot and dry stuff is for the birds!

How much is milk and gas in your area? Our Walmart is up to $4.15 for a gallon of fat-free milk. More than gas, which we paid 3.81 for over the weekend. We used our Kroger card and got 3 cents off their regular price of 3.84. At least it hasn’t hit 4.00 here. Yet.

I’ll try to formulate a better post later in the week. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and you’re off to a great start on your week!

Ugh, I’m having more serious issues with my laptop. The video went out completely in January (less than 9 months after we purchased it), and we had to send it in to the repair center, where they replaced the system board as well as an LCD bezel (whatever that is). Now, yesterday, the video went out again. We spent hours on the phone with both the manufacturer (HP) and the extended warranty company. HP apparently only gives you a 90 day warranty on any repair work. Obviously, they don’t have a lot of faith in either their service people or their parts. Now, less than 5 months later, I’m having the same problem, which HP says is not their problem. Luckily we purchased an extended warranty, but they insist this is HP’s problem. So, we’re going round and round and round. No one wants to take ownership of the issue.

Anyway, I’m fighting computer problems, so I’m not sure how long I’ll be away from the blog and email. If you’ve emailed me in the last day or so, I may not have gotten it, nor have a chance to get to my mail in a timely manner. We do have an older desktop here that I can use, but my time on it is limited because of space issues and Tim working from home. Hope to be back with better news soon!

Ugh – computers and electronics. Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em!

Just a few tidbits from our weekend:

* We got the new Wii on Friday night and I’ve really been enjoying playing the sports games that came on it. So much so that I’ve overdone it and I swear, my right arm and shoulder are incredibly sore! Too much tennis, bowling and baseball. I had no idea I could work up a sweat boxing against a computer, but I did. We went on Saturday evening and got another remote and nunchuk (gosh, they really get you there, the cost is high!), so we could play against each other. Needless to say, Tim is much better at this thing than I am 😀

* Half of the flowers that I bought at Lowe’s and planted a couple of weekends ago are already dead. I’m not a happy camper. I bought some more petunias at Walmart (I know, I should splurge and buy the expensive plants from the nursery, but I just can’t bring myself to do it) and replanted them on Saturday. Let’s hope they last longer than two weeks.

* We have two blooms on the “patio” tomato plant I bought and planted for Tim. I have no idea if we’ll actually get edible tomatoes out of it, but I am trying for him. Me, I won’t touch a tomato with a twenty foot pole.

* We ate out altogether too much over the weekend. We started on Thursday by having a friend over to watch Lost and ordering pizza, then we proceeded to eat out or pick up fast food on Friday, Saturday AND Sunday night. Blech – I feel like I’ve gained 10 pounds. It was all good though, and we went to Chili’s one night and got their chocolate molten lava cake for dessert. We both love those things 😀

* My new favorite thing to do on the grill is sweet potatoes! They are so incredibly good. I hope to go to the farmers market soon and get some, they’ve got to be cheaper than the ones in the grocery.

* They’ve started a new series at church, but I’m not looking forward to this one as much as the last ones. For one, they’re going to have several associate ministers on staff do the sermons on Sundays throughout the summer. I understand our preacher needs and deserves a break, but I don’t enjoy these other guys nearly as much as our pastor. That’s the main reason we’re going to this church, and I’m not getting as much out of these other guys. Sigh. Maybe I need to find a new devotional for the summer.

* Tim and I watched “To Kill a Mockingbird” over the weekend. We were both really surprised to find out neither of us had ever seen it. Good movie, and thank goodness for Netflix. Now that summer is here, there’s basically nothing on TV.

* I’ve started a new book I’m really enjoying. Will be back later in the week with a quote that I marked from it, and hopefully some quick blurbs on other books I’ve read in the last several weeks.

Have a great day! 😀

Guess what we got!

We got it hooked up and started playing the sports game that came with it late last night. We couldn’t find the Wii Fit game anywhere, so I’ll have to keep looking for that. I know that Tim wants to get the Tiger Woods golf game, but I’m looking for suggestions of other fun games. Are any of the Mario ones fun? Remember, it’s just adults here, with the occasional visit from the kiddie brigade. Yes, we needed a video game console just for us adults, LOL!

Leave me a comment and let me know your game recommendations!

I’m not a rabid environmentalist, but I’ve always been interested in recycling, in cutting out clutter (I’m a HUGE believer in the whole ‘clutter causes stress’ theory), in re-purposing items if possible, and basically trying to treat our planet with respect. I feel that God intends us to be good stewards of all He has given us, whether that’s our health, our family, our possessions or our planet. I’ve felt for a long time that we’re depleting our planet and harming our atmosphere. I don’t think this is something that I will necessarily have to deal with on a large-scale basis in my lifetime, but I think it’s something that might affect our young nieces and nephews in their lifetime, or in their kids lifetime. I don’t want to leave them with a huge problem with pollution, no resources, and an earth full of landfills and not beautiful forests and oceans.

Having said that, I know there’s only so much I can do as one person, but I do try. I’ve always tried to recycle. I’ve lived in my house almost 15 years (12 here with Tim) and we’ve had curbside recycling from the beginning. I recycled even before that, when I lived in an apartment. I would load up my recyclables and drive them to a drop-off spot. Curbside, even though we pay a lot for it, is much more convenient. We recycle newspaper, plastic, aluminum, and glass. Our recycle bin is overflowing every week and we have less garbage than most of our neighbors. I’ve been taking my plastic bags to drop-off boxes at our Super Walmart or Kroger for years.

I was so glad this past Earth Day to see a big push towards reusable shopping bags. Even in the backwoods area I live in (believe me, we are about the last ones to get or do anything here), they starting having reusable bags in the store for purchase. I saw them at Target, but gasped audibly when I saw they wanted 8 or 10 bucks for them. Same at Fresh Market, where theirs are a whopping 9.99 a bag. I looked online and found several cute options. They have the cutest “market totes” at Sur La Table. If I lived in a totally urban area, or France or something, I might see myself with these, but face it – these are not practical where I live. Plus, they don’t hold that much. I also found some cute canvas bags with a lot of great designs on them at Cafe Press (link here), but again, I just couldn’t see myself paying 28 bucks for them.

So, what’s a girl like me to do? Well, since I do the majority of my shopping at our local Super Walmart, I decided to buy the 99 cent black totes at Walmart:

I got three and so far they have worked out pretty well. They’re bigger than I thought they would be, and they hold quite a lot of groceries and stuff. I’ve taken them the last couple of weeks and handed them to the check-out lady to use instead of plastic bags. I’ve sort of made a game out of it, LOL!! 😀 I’m trying to spend less money and just buy what we need, nothing extra, and I’m trying to just fill up those bags. Now, to be fair, I’ve also bought some bedding plants and some cases of Coke Zero that didn’t fit in the bag, but otherwise, I’ve been good. I’ve gotten all of my groceries in those three bags for the last couple of weeks. And I’ve cleaned out a huge stash of plastic bags here and taken them to the drop-off box at Walmart. I’ve also been spending less money every week. So, a win-win for me!

Now, a question for you guys out there in blog-land — do you recycle? Do you use reusable shopping bags? Have you seen them in the store and have you bought any? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Click here for today’s Video of the Day. I wouldn’t want to visit this place around the holidays!

I’ll try to be back later today or tomorrow with a “real” post!

P.S. Tim gets these daily emails from computer guru-ess on high, Kim Komando. She often has some really interesting stuff for us geeks 🙂

Did everyone have a good Memorial Day weekend? We did. We were busy, but we accomplished a lot. Nothing like a sense of accomplishment, that you really set a goal and met it 😀

We could have played all weekend, or gone somewhere fun. We talked about it, but in the end, we both decided we’d rather stay home and get something done. We picked a project we were both interested in. Our garage had gotten really messy and dirty and needed to be cleaned out. So, I talked Tim into working on that this long holiday weekend. We emptied the garage out completely, and had stuff everywhere – in the house, on the deck, along the side of the house in the grass, and we filled up the back of our SUV. We took a lot of stuff to Goodwill, and we took a huge amount of motor oil (Tim changes the oil in our vehicles, and saves us a lot of money!) to a local garage place to recycle it. (See, we do a lot to help our planet!)

Then, we cleaned the floor and walls and Tim pressure washed the floor in the garage and our front door entryway. We went to Lowe’s and bought some concrete paint, and we went to Sam’s and bought me some shelving. Tim painted the front entryway the same grey concrete paint, and he painted the garage flooring in two phases.

We got it all back in last night, except for the vehicles. The floor needs to set for 72 hours before you put a hot vehicle on it. We’ve painted our garage floor in the past, and it does come off over time with the heat from the treads of the car. So, this won’t last forever, but gosh, it looks so nice and clean and organized right now!

Plus, I have some more storage out in the garage that I didn’t have before. Like I told Tim, Sam’s Club, here I come, LOL!

*Click on the extended entry to see a few pictures*
Read the rest of this entry »

Well, once again I seem to be in a rut. I think it’s the time of year. I’ve blogged in the past about how much I dislike the time of year around Mother’s Day and also late June, which was when my mom passed away. I hate being reminded every year that I am not a mother and never will be 🙁

Anyway, I actually have several things to blog about. And pictures to go along with them 🙂

* There’s some foodie stuff and new recipes I’ve tried.
* There’s some flowers blooming in my yard.
* There’s a happy we got in the mail
* There’s a dead rodent that has been terrorizing our yard (complete with gross picture)
* There’s reusable shopping bags
* There’s some books I have read and enjoyed, although that’s a common theme with me; I like most every book I read!

However, I don’t seem to have the time, patience or inclination to sit down and blog about them. It just ain’t happening lately. Maybe if I get out of my blogging rut, I will get them down. Or I may just take a break for a while. Who knows!

Hope you’re all having a good day, take care 😀

Yesterday, my sister Gail was here, and we went shopping all day. We had a great time, and I got a lot of new clothes for spring and summer, a new pair of shoes, a new yellow purse and even some new sunglasses. Woo-hoo, I really racked up! We were both wiped out though, at the end of the day, and so when we came home, we were looking forward to having a bite of something sweet. Especially since I had made a pan of Butterscotch Bars for Gail the night before.

However. When you leave your husband at home alone, unsupervised, this could happen to you:

Yep, he ate them all. Every last one, every last crumb. He said they went really well with coffee. 😀

{In case you can’t read the paper or tell from the picture, there was a sheet of paper in my empty Tupperware container that said “You can’t be looking for cookies… Sincerely, Cookie Monster}

We had a good time over the weekend, getting to visit with my sister Gail, her husband and their youngest son who leaves soon on a long summer adventure. My dad drove up for the day on Saturday, so we could celebrate his birthday with him. Today is his actual birthday, and he turns 85 years old! Happy Birthday Dad!

We asked my dad what he wanted to eat for his birthday, and he said it didn’t matter to him. I suggested crawfish, and he jumped on that! So, we went and got 15 pounds of crawfish from a place we really like, and the corn and potatoes that usually come with them. Crawfish is an “outdoor” food to me. We had to dodge the raindrops since it rained on and off all day Saturday, but the weather cooperated brilliantly, and we were able to eat out on the deck for lunch. I don’t ever like to have crawfish inside, at the kitchen table, because they are just so messy!

They were really good – here’s a picture of our crawfish in the bag before we all dived in. I should have taken a photo of them after we were through!

And the crew getting ready, that’s Gail pointing her camera at me!

Hope you all had a great weekend, too! 😀