Exceedingly Mundane

Well, I still seem to be in a bit of a slump as far as blogging goes. Both in coming up with something to write about here, as well as visiting other blogs. I’m wondering how long this downslide is going to last. 😥

I’m still posting over at my Project365 blog. Check it out here.

Gosh, is gas way up where you live, or what? It’s gone up at least two times already this week at the gas station closest to our house. Last night, it was up to 2.99 a gallon. Ugh. And of course, we both drive gas guzzling larger vehicles. Tim has a big 4×4 truck and my Explorer doesn’t get the best gas mileage. All of this coming up at the time of year when we drive more than normal, with holidays and hunting season for Tim.

My doctor’s appointment on Tuesday was just ok. Some of the tests were fine, but one was not. I’m having to do additional testing and see how things go. If they don’t go well, I’ll have to go in and have a test run at the hospital. I’m feeling pretty down about that, needless to say. On the one hand, I want everything to be ok, and if it’s not, I do want to have it looked at and hopefully fixed. But, on the other hand, I don’t want anything to be wrong and I really don’t want to go into the hospital 🙂

We’re having wonderful weather here. It’s been in the mid 30’s the last two nights, so really cold in the mornings. I love it. It’s going to warm up starting today, but at least it won’t get any higher than the 70’s. Our days of 90’s are over for the year, thank goodness.

I seem to be in total denial about the upcoming holidays. I haven’t given a single thought to either Thanksgiving or Christmas. Sigh. We have Tim’s birthday coming up, so I have to focus on that too. I’m sure everything will get done and turn out fine, but it does sort of bother me that I haven’t really even thought about anything yet! 😀

OK, one quick question for you guys. I’m trying to eat more fruit. It’s harder this time of year, because I don’t like paying the higher prices for most of the fruit I like (strawberries, grapes, etc). I have been buying bananas and apples. My question is this – do you leave these fruits out on the countertop, at room temperature, or do you refrigerate them? And for bananas, do you have one of those hanging tree things? Do you think it helps keep the bananas from ripening as fast? I try to grocery shop once a week, and if I buy bananas and try to eat one a day, after about 3 days, they are really too ripe to eat. So, leave me a comment and let me know what you buy, and how you store it.

Oh, and if you want to play along, let’s see how much gas is where you live.

Have a great day, everyone! 😀

I was going to post a “Question of the Day“, but thought I’d better post a “Happy Halloween” post instead. Or we could combine them! Yeah, that’s the ticket, let’s do that 😀

Hope everyone has a great Halloween, if you partake of this holiday in your house. Since we don’t have kids, we don’t really go out very much for Halloween. I put fall decorations out front a couple of weeks ago (mums, hay bale, scarecrow and pumpkin, NOT carved!) and a plastic lighted pumpkin and lighted ghost that I’ve had for years (and are quite faded, thank you!). We have a big bowl of candy to give out to the trick-or-treaters that we will get. We don’t get as many in our neighborhood as we have in the past. More and more kids in our neighborhood are getting to be teenagers and don’t go trick or treating. I’ll post a photo over at my Project365 blog of the before and after of the candy bowl, later today and tomorrow. 🙂

In years past, we have dressed up a little on Halloween, but it has been a while. I’m wearing an orange Halloween t-shirt and jeans today, and that will be the extent of it 🙂 Tim won’t wear anything remotely orange though 🙂 I went and got my hair cut this morning and the owner and stylists were all dressed up in full costumes! They were a hoot, and I wish I had taken my camera 🙂

How about you? Are you wearing anything today that is remotely Halloween-themed? Will you go to a Halloween function tonight, or take your kids trick or treating? Will you stay home and give out candy? Will you turn off the lights and pretend that today is not Halloween? Or do you just not recognize this day at all? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Let’s see, I haven’t written much lately about what all has been going on with us. Nothing exciting, but I thought I’d do a quick bulleted update 🙂

Well, I had a great day yesterday. I got to do what I wanted all day (no housework or cooking!), and Tim, of course, went all out for my birthday again this year. He’s such a good guy. He knows that birthdays and holidays mean something to me, even though they don’t really to him. Tim is much better with the “every day is special” kind of mentality than I am. I tend to put stock in birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, things like that.

I just posted a short entry, with photos, of what I got, over at my Project365 blog. (click here) I know a lot of you guys don’t peruse that blog, but I hate to double post, so I’ll just have to ask you very politely to go check it out over there.

We have the “birthday rules” around our house. The birthday boy or girl gets to pick where they want to go eat on their birthday, and what they want to do on their special day. In addition, we also observe extended birthday rules. Which means if your birthday falls on a Thursday through a Monday, you get the whole weekend thrown in, for free. 😀 I’ll try not to be too pushy this weekend, but it’s nice to know I can pick something.

I had asked to go to our new PF Chang’s for my birthday last night. They opened last month, and we’ve heard from lots of people that they have long lines and waits up to two hours, since they’re new. Tim called yesterday for reservations. The lady told him, we’re booked between 5 PM and 8:30 PM, but you can come before 5:00 or make a reservation for after 8:30. Well, I definitely wasn’t hungry at 4:30 and I hate to eat late (yes, 9 PM is late for me!), so I chose to go to my favorite Italian place instead. Besides, when I go there for my birthday, I always order tiramisu! Tim got me an ice cream cake this year, something new, rather than my standard chocolate cake. It’s still in the freezer since we had tiramisu last night. We’ll have to pull it out over the weekend and taste it 🙂 Lucky for me, PF Chang’s is really close to our house and maybe in a couple of months, the crowds will die down and we can go check it out. I really do want to eat there soon, but I just didn’t want to eat at a funky hour on my birthday!

Now, we have to find a way to celebrate Beau’s birthday tomorrow. I got him last year for my birthday. Hard to believe he’s been with us for a whole year. 🙂 I bought him a new Kong toy a week or so ago, and so far, that looks like it’s going to be all he’s going to get. I went to Target yesterday to get him a new bed, but couldn’t find one I liked. I’m sure he won’t mind not getting anything else. I’d like to be able to observe his birthday when he was born, but since we have no idea how old he is or when he was born, we will just have to use the day we brought him home from the rescue as his birthday. I don’t think he’ll notice 😀

Not going to blog much today. I’m going to be lazy some today, go run errands later and hopefully read some on my book. Isn’t that exciting? I won’t be blogging though, or spending much time reading other blogs. I’ll try to catch up tomorrow.

Last year, I posted this bit about “On this day in History”. Apparently, today is a bit of a mundane day in history, as well!

Two years ago, the post was “What does your Birthdate Mean?”

It’s sometimes hard for me to believe that I’ve been blogging over 2 1/2 years. This is post number #1875. Yikes! 😀

Back tomorrow with Friday Feast and maybe something remotely interesting 🙂 Have a great day, everyone!!!

I just posted a couple of photos over on my Project365 blog (here) of the fall decorations I got today. Nothing elaborate. Since we don’t have kids, we don’t really go all out for Halloween. We hand out candy, and we’ve dressed up in the past, but not in the last several years. Last year on Halloween, I was all alone, as Tim had to be out of town on business. We had just gotten Beau less than 2 weeks before, and believe me, all of the excitement, the kids voices, the doorbell ringing, was hard on my new puppy dog. I think he’ll be a lot better this year!

The weather has been so nice the last couple of days. I’ve turned the AC off temporarily and just had the windows open. I think that will come to an end on either Sunday or Monday, as our temperatures will be headed back into the mid to upper 80’s. It’s been nice, and I’m certainly ready for more cool weather.

I picked up some fall decorations today for the front (hay bale, pumpkin, mums, etc), and we drug out our “plastic” decorations. I opened up the big bags of Halloween candy from Sam’s Club (Butterfinger, Baby Ruth, Nestle Crunch, Milky Way, 3 Musketeers, etc) and put it in my big Halloween candy bowl. I bought a few pansies and planted them in some planters. I still have to get a lot more pansies and plant in the front yard, but otherwise, I think I’m ready for fall!

Here’s my weathered, battered, quite old scarecrow out front. Be sure to check out my Project365 blog for a couple of cute photos of Beau out front. 🙂

Happy Fall, Ya’ll!

Is there any chance that I could convince all of you out there to slow down and stop posting to your blogs? Please, pretty please?! I’m so far behind reading my favorite blogs. It used to be that I couldn’t keep up and my feed reader usually said I had over 100 new posts to check out. Now, for the last 5 or 6 days, that number has increased to over 200 new posts. Yikes. Talk about feeling overwhelmed!

Life is just a little busier lately and I am spending less time on the computer. So, I’m really far behind. I’m going to try to get around to reading all of my favorite blogs later in the week. I have so many! So many family and friends blogs, so many great blog friends, a lot of book and foodie blogs that I enjoy reading. I just can’t keep up 🙁

That brings me to a “Question of the Day” – how do you keep up with the blogs that you like to read? Do you use Bloglines or Google Reader or another feed reader? Do you just have a list of blogs you liked bookmarked on your computer? Or maybe a listing on the side of your own blog that you use to check on your favorites? And about how many blogs do you read on average? Just a ballpark figure, you don’t have to count or go check… would you guesstimate that you read 10, 50, 100 or 300 blogs regularly?

As for me, I used to just keep a bookmarked list on my computer or blog, but I outgrew that rather quickly. Then I switched to Blogrolling, but later tried Google Reader, which I like a lot. I’ve been using Google Reader for a while now to check on all of my favorite blogs. I have over 150 in my list, so I get lots of new posts all the time! How about you – leave me a comment and let me know! 🙂

Hope everyone has a super-duper Tuesday!!!

I updated my Project365 blog last night, and it seems that I’m doing more blogging over there than here. Go figure. I assume that once this project is over, I’ll go back to more “normal” blogging here, whatever that means. I’ll go back to posting photos here, and talking about what we are doing or did. I just don’t seem to have an interesting enough life to maintain entries on two blogs 🙄

Let’s see… I blogged here and here about what all we did over the weekend. This past weekend had a lot of golf! I went with Tim on Friday afternoon to the golf course, to hang out with him. It’s Tim’s most ardent desire in life that I learn to love golf, want to play, and that we can go together to play golf 5 or 6 days a week. Sadly, this is not my goal in life! I really don’t like golf that much. The idea of taking that piece of metal and swinging at that little ball holds absolutely no appeal to me at the moment 🙂 Saturday was also a day of golf – for Tim. He went to the PGA tournament that took place near our house. Sunday, my dad drove up and we all went to the German Fest near our house.

We’re back into a decent slate of watching TV most every night. We’re trying a couple of new shows – Chuck on Mondays, Bionic Woman on Wednesdays and Tim started watching and liked “Life” on NBC on Wednesday night (right after Bionic Woman). We’ve cut way down on our movie watching from Netflix, now that all of the fall shows have started. We have, however, picked up a new TV show, via Netflix. Tim watched several episodes of “Heroes” last year and was always trying to get me to watch. This year, as last year, I felt like I had enough shows that I watched and hated to start anymore, so I resisted. Now, we are renting Season 1 of Heroes via Netflix and I’m already hooked. He was right – this is my kind of show. Sigh. We’re also still watching, slowly, the Gilmore Girls on DVD. We’ve made it through 3 seasons and have ordered the next two on DVD. And, of course, there’s LOTS of football on TV! 😀

I’ve still been reading a fair amount. I’ve recently finished “1st to Die” by James Patterson – the first in the Women’s Murder Club series books. I had wanted to read one of these to see how gory or descriptive of violence they were. Nothing I can’t handle, so I’ve got another new series to read. I wanted to read one of these before the new TV show started, based on these books. I think it starts in mid-October and stars Angie Harmon. I hope it will be a good show! Let’s see, I’ve read another couple of books that were just so-so for me. I read “The Tavern on Maple Street” by Sharon Owens. I’ve read one other by Owens before, she’s very similar to Maeve Binchy, a good Irish writer. It was good, just so-so for me. As was “Underdog” by Laurien Berenson. She apparently writes cozy type mysteries with dog titles, so I had hoped I would love these. This one I read was just okay for me too. The dog is a Standard Poodle and there was a lot in this book about dog shows, and grooming dogs for showing, which doesn’t interest me at all. I might give one more of her books a chance, someday. I also finished “The Redemption of Sarah Cain” by Beverly Lewis, another good Amish book. Up next, I have another cozy mystery by Laura Levine. I read one by her recently entitled “This Pen for Hire” and enjoyed it. Hopefully I will like this new one “The PMS Murder” also. Then, after that, I have the last book in the Firstborn series by Karen Kingsbury (“Forever“) and the most recent one by Janet Evanovich “Lean Mean Thirteen“. I have been on the wait list for a long time for the latest Stephanie Plum book. I started out as number 16 on the wait list at the library, and now my time has come! 🙂 Oh, and for the record, I’ve completed 87 books so far this year, with a total of 25,855 pages read. 🙂

I have also checked out a couple of cookbooks from the library, and have been busy going through those. I’ve gone through one completely – Taste of Home Everyday Light Meals. I’ve copied out over 20 recipes that interested me. It looks like a good cookbook, but since I’ve gone through and “got what I wanted”, I won’t be buying this one for my shelves. I’ll post a listing on the extended page of the recipes I copied out. If anyone would like to see a copy of the recipe, I can email it to you. I haven’t made any of these recipes yet, so I can’t vouch for how they taste!

I’ve still be in a bit of a fall cleaning mode around here. Heaven help me, but I’ve even started cleaning windows! Gasp. That doesn’t happen very often. I wonder if the earth stopped rotating on its axis for a bit 😀

Hope everyone has a great day!

Click for recipe listing… Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I’m still in somewhat of a blogging rut. Can’t seem to think of anything very interesting to blog about. I’ve finished a couple of books but haven’t felt “moved” to write any kind of book review or blurb about them. I’m enjoying all of the TV shows this week, but I’ve already touched on that. I’m trying to go through some cookbooks that I checked out from the library, and enter any recipes in my recipe software that look good. That’s ending up taking a TON of time. So, that leaves less time for reading, less time for blogging, and less time for reading my favorite blogs. My Google Reader hovers around the 100 mark all the time. It’s very disheartening 🙁

So, as a variation of the “Question of the Day”, I thought I’d ask what you’re going to have, or have already had, for lunch today. I normally eat leftovers, but I don’t have any right now, so other than a sandwich or a Hot Pocket, I’ll be scrounging for lunch. Give me some ideas – what are you eating today?

As a bonus, you can tell me what you had for breakfast also. I had a bowl of Raisin Bran Crunch and a big mug of fat free cappuccino (from a dry mix, just add hot water. What a cop-out, huh?!) 😀

Have a great day!

I have a quick question and wanted to get a little feedback. I’m starting to enter our books into LibraryThing. A dear, sweet friend sent me a one-year gift subscription she had won (but she is already a lifetime member), so I am going to get busy and start cataloging our books. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, so this is just what I needed to get me jump-started on another project.

I had looked quite a bit into downloading a stand-alone program to my computer, and using that to catalog our books. I did that with our DVD’s (although it’s not totally up to date, boo-hoo). But then I thought — what’s the fun in that? Half of the fun of programs like LibraryThing, Shelfari and others is that you can share, see what others are reading, and it’s so cute with the covers added. I don’t think the standalone program I was looking at had cover art. 🙂

Anyway, I’ve started with one of our bookcases, and I have more to go. My question is – if you were entering your collection of books (or if you already have), would you enter your cookbooks? I have a LOT of cookbooks, a couple of shelves worth. I love cookbooks. I check some out of the library (see yesterday’s photo post here), to see if I like them and would buy them. I want a lot more than I buy. I mean, seriously, as much as I love them, I am realistic. I don’t use them as much as I should. I tend to find recipes online these days, either via Menu Plan Monday or sites like AllRecipes.com. But, back to my question, if you were entering your books in an online system, would you enter cookbooks too, or just fiction/non-fiction books?

OK, I’m off to fix me some lunch. I have some leftover brown rice, so I’m going to make myself some fried rice and fix an eggroll (some in the freezer, don’t think for a minute that I make my own!) 😀

Have a great day!

P.S. When I get most of my books entered, I’ll put my LibraryThing widget on my sidebar. I currently have a list on my sidebar that contains books I have yet to read. Under my sidebar, in my TBR List. I am trying to decide whether to keep that page or just use LibraryThing. Decisions, decisions 🙄

**UPDATE**: Ok, well I decided to go ahead and enter my cookbooks. I think I have most of my books entered now. I’ve placed the widget on my sidebar 🙂

Today has been a good day 🙂

We got up and went walking this morning with Beau. We have been walking 5-6 times a week for the last week or so and I am hoping it will eventually help. I got on the scales when I got up though, before we left, and I have not lost a single pound (or even a half pound) since the last time I weighed. Boo-hoo. Must be something I am eating! Anyway, it’s so nice these days in the morning. It’s so much cooler than it was a month ago, and it’s just beautiful in the early morning when we go walking.

I tackled a project today that I’ve been putting off for a while. I cleaned my stove. I have an old coil-style electric stove and my burners were dirty and gross. I also cleaned and scrubbed some other stuff in the kitchen, so that feels really good. I think I have a fall-cleaning thing going on. Nothing major, but I’ve been doing more cleaning, purging, organizing, scrubbing and stuff lately.

I cashed in some of our points on a hotel program that we belong to, and I’m going to get a small gift card to Amazon.com. Yeah! I will also cash in some points to MyPoints.com soon and also get an Amazon card. I’ll put those together and be able to get books. Glorious books 😀

I ran to the library and checked out more books. Now, I went to the library over the weekend and checked out 4 books. But I’ve read one of those, so I stopped by on my way to the grocery to return it. You know, I just can’t usually bring myself to drop the book in the drop-box and keep on driving. No. I have to park and go in, which assures me that I’ll check out more books. I have added them to my sidebar, and I also blogged over at my Project365 blog about the cookbooks I checked out. Post here.

I also blogged about Beau and put up a photo of him for yesterday’s Project365 post (here). I just love the way Beau is with his “stuff” and how far he’s come since we got him last fall. He really and truly is a wonderful dog now. We talk about it all the time. Beau is a testament to what a dog can be if you love him, discipline him, train him and watch him blossom into a loving, devoted companion.

I caught the last 20 minutes of Oprah and got to see Kelly Clarkson sing with Reba McEntire. I like both of those, so I will have to check out the album (“Reba Duets”) on iTunes. Might need to download that one soon!

Tim went after work to play golf, and I’m having some quiet time and trying to catch up on blogging, emails and computer stuff. Then I might read some. That’s sheer bliss to me.

After he gets in, we’ll have an easy and light supper. He weighs in tomorrow at work. We might watch a movie. We’ve rented a couple of good ones lately (“The Last Sin Eater” and “I Am David”) and we got in “The Ultimate Gift” yesterday. I’ve heard that’s a really good movie and I’m looking forward to seeing it.

Hope everyone else is having a red-letter day!

Random thoughts in my head…

Hope everyone has a great day!

Hope everyone is having a great Labor Day weekend!

We’re having a good one, but a quiet laid back holiday. I haven’t felt well (sinus headache and sore throat), so I am not sure what we’ll do today. We were really busy on Saturday, working out in the yard, giving Beau a bath and doing some stuff outside. We watched a bunch of college football, then went out shopping and to a new restaurant for supper. Sunday afternoon, Tim went to play golf and I spent the whole afternoon cleaning out our master closet (or at least, my side of it!). I think that is what got me feeling worse, all of those inches and inches of dust bunnies. Our closet was long overdue for a cleaning out and serious purging. I bought a couple of closet organizers the other day, and got those all setup in the closet. I’ll post a couple of photos later today over on my Project365 blog (ok, there’s a couple of photos here).

Not sure what today will hold. I know I won’t be making up my menu for the week yet, or posting it for “Menu Plan Monday”. Maybe tomorrow. We grilled a bunch of stuff yesterday, so we’ll have leftovers today.

Hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend 🙂

Very few things can make me want to jump out of bed early on a Saturday morning. A sale at my local library is one of them though! 😀

The library system in my county has 4 or 5 branches, but two of them are close to my house (a couple miles in either direction). They each have 2 book sales a year, so I end up being able to go 4 times a year. I went in February and again in May, and now this morning. I love going to the book sales, it’s always a blast to me to search through the books and see what I can find. You can’t beat the prices in my book, plus it benefits the library that I patronize on a regular basis. Today, the place was packed – more so than I have ever seen it before. I got the last parking spot in the parking lot, and everyone else was parking off in the grass or on the edge of the street. When I tried to go in the room, it was so packed I could not maneuver around. Unfortunately, the sections I wanted to get to were in the back, so by the time I could push my way over there, a lot of books I would have gotten were gone. How do I know this, you ask? Because I saw TONS of books I would have liked to have gotten in other people’s hands, and bags and boxes. Argh. Oh well, I had a good time and got 10 books for $7.00. You can’t beat that!

Here’s my haul for the day:

I don’t know about where you live, but it’s still hotter than hot here. It’s supposed to be 100º again here today. I’m really sorta tired of this heat, humidity, lack of rain, constant watering of flowers, grass and shrubs, etc. I’m over it, really I am, and I’m ready for some kind of fall. Or at least a rain shower. Or 80’s. I know, I know. I’ve blogged (and complained about this before), and I really shouldn’t go there. But it seems like its never ending. These “dog days of summer” are getting old. 🙂

Let’s see, I’ve made a couple of new recipes lately that we liked. Nothing fancy, but they were good, and I’m going to try to get the recipes posted at our main site. One was for pork chops, one was for potatoes and another was from Jenna, for teriyaki chicken. I’ll try to post an update later and post the links, whenever I finally get around to getting them entered and on the main website. 🙂

I’ve also got a small update to the cleaning post I made a couple of weeks ago. I got a lot of wonderful feedback on how you guys clean your floors and such. After thinking about it and pricing some things, I’ve decided to jump OFF the Swiffer band wagon. I have a big box of Swiffer mop wet refills that I plan on using in our bathrooms until they are gone. I don’t like to waste stuff and just throw it out. But, I also don’t feel that these Swiffer things are getting my floors very clean. I’ve pulled my old sponge/squeeze mop back out, and unearthed a bottle of “Armstrong Floor Cleaner” that says directly on the bottle that it is safe for ceramic tile floors. So, for the last two weeks, I’ve been mopping my kitchen, breakfast room and laundry room with that, and I think it’s a lot cleaner. It looks and feels a lot cleaner, and even Tim has noticed. So, I won’t be buying any more Swiffer wet mop refills. After I finish that bottle of Armstrong floor cleaner, I’m going to either try Mr. Clean or Lysol all-purpose cleaner, diluted for floors. I keep meaning to look for “Simple Green” to try, but I haven’t gotten any yet. Can you use that on ceramic tile floors?

Along the same lines, I have an old microfiber dust cloth that I use a lot to dust. For quick dustings, I also have a Swiffer Duster. I needed some refills, and on my last trip to Walmart, I had them on my list (on my PDA, where I also track prices) to buy. Well, a box was like 7.86. For disposable, throw-away duster refills. I just couldn’t do it. I looked around, and found a handheld duster that has a microfiber, washable cover on it, that will basically do the same thing. Except I won’t have to buy refills for it, I can toss it in the washing machine, and the whole thing was under 3.00. I have been using it for quick touch-ups and I’m very happy with that. So, in summary, I’m no longer going to use Swiffer products. They’re convenient, but they’re also expensive, they’re disposable and add a lot of trash to our already overflowing landfills. I’m really glad to have found alternatives that work for me.

Lastly, here’s two foodie things I’ve bought lately that make me REALLY happy!