There I go again, using a song title, like my sister Gail does at her blog, called “More than a Song”. Sorry Gail, I just couldn’t resist! I always loved that Kelly Clarkson song 😀
Let’s see, there’s been a few things going on around here, but the computers and our website being down was obviously the big story. Here’s a few other tidbits:
Yep, that’s me, doing the happy dance! I think everything is all fixed now, thanks to Tim’s hard work and staying up until the wee hours of the morning. He’s really put in a ton of extra hours to get the new hard drives installed on our server and get everything loaded back, installed, configured and the data restored. I’m so grateful to him, and so happy that he was able to do it so quickly. I truly thought it was going to take several days. I’m so glad that it all appears to be back and working in good order. Here’s to hoping this new hard drive lasts a lot longer than the old one. Otherwise, in another year or so, we’ll be doing this again!
UPDATE: Tim wanted me to be sure and note that if anyone has any trouble accessing anything here or on our main website (hambones.org), to be sure to let us know. If you get an error or can’t access a page now, we would love to know. We think everything is fixed though, so hopefully that won’t happen 🙂
“I think I can…” “I think I can…” “I think I can…”
That’s what Tim says when I ask him if he can fix everything. I’m not sure how many of you noticed, but this blog, my Project365 blog, my sisters blogs, our main website (hambones.org) and everything associated with it, has been down most of the day. We’ve had a big meltdown here with some very important hard drives.
We’re sort of back up and running, but it’s only temporary. We have a patch in place, but it’s just a short-term fix. We’ve purchased one hard drive and may need another one. We might have to order some updated software. I’m not really sure what all is going to be required. The main thing is that to get things back to the way they were before the meltdown will require quite a bit of work on my hubby’s part. This, in addition to his regular, full-time computer geek job he does. We’ll have some more down time, but I can’t say when, as we don’t know right now. Oh, and most of my email is down too, so if you’ve emailed me and haven’t gotten a reply, that would be why. Sorry, but I can’t get my mail right now either 🙁
So, the moral of the story is, if you try to visit here, one of the other blogs, or our main site and can’t get to it, that’s the reason why. I’m not taking a bloggy break on purpose, but I won’t have much choice when things are down or being worked on! 🙂
Hope everyone else is having a good week. When I can get access to a computer for any length of time, I’ll try to stop by and visit some of your blogs soon 😀
Just a couple of random pictures… I think the folks that peruse my Project365 blog are probably already getting tired of seeing pictures of birds and of my boy Beau 😀
We might have had robins here before, but I honestly don’t remember seeing them. I think they must be here some over the winter, or on their way home. I just noticed them a few weeks ago, since late January, and now I’m seeing them everywhere. I really don’t remember seeing them all over the place last winter or the winter before. They’re really pretty though, their orange breast is very colorful!
One of Beau, resting. He’s really supposed to stay in the kitchen and breakfast room, on the tile floor. He’s not supposed to come “over” in the living room, where the carpet is. But, he cheats whenever he can and inches across (he has his blanket in the doorway, since he cheats a lot!). He wanted over so bad the other day that he was willing to put his head onto my metal magazine rack and rest. Ouch, I bet that hurt! He looks pretty comfy though 😀
Happy Birthday to my sister Gail! Today is Gail’s birthday and we want to wish her Happy Birthday and many, many more happy years to come! We got to see Gail and her husband Don yesterday, for supper, and then they came over to hang out, watch a movie, and when it got to be pretty late, they ended up spending the night with us! 
Today is her birthday, and we got to sing Happy Birthday to her (loudly, badly) this morning when she got up, and then we all had a big birthday breakfast of pancakes, eggs and deer sausage.
Happy Birthday Gail, we hope you have a wonderful day!
P.S. You can go and check out my Project365 blog for a picture of Gail and I last night at my favorite Italian restaurant. 🙂
Time for another Question of the Day! I had a survey up on our main website, but it only got 3 responses, so I thought I would ask the same question here. Do you have any wish lists online? I use Amazon’s wish list system, but I know there are others out there, although I can’t think of any off the top of my head! Do you use Amazon or another site, or do you not have a wish list? What is on your wish list? Mine has books, movies, kitchen items, personal items, etc. In fact, I have several separate lists at Amazon, by category.
So, that’s today’s Question of the Day: Do you have a wish list at Amazon? What kind of items are on it? Do you ever order for yourself from your wish list, or do others order things for you from your list? Leave me a comment and let me know!
It’s time for another “Question of the Day”. Today, I’d like to talk about milk. I know a lot of people don’t drink milk, and that’s cool, but we are definitely milk drinkers in our house. There’s just two of us, and we usually go through about 2 gallons a week. We have milk every morning on our cereal, and we usually have milk at night. Sometimes with cookies or something sweet, and sometimes it’s just milk. If we have breakfast food for dinner, we often stir Hershey’s syrup into milk and have chocolate milk with dinner. We love milk. But, here’s the thing, we drink only skim milk. We can’t afford the calories of the higher-fat content milks. Love them, but we’re perfectly happy with skim milk. I went through a phase where I drank soy milk, but I haven’t done that in a while. I mostly stick to skim.
On a related note, our milk has gotten really high here. I always buy the store brand, and at my Walmart last week, one gallon of skim milk was $3.36. I was shocked! Of course, it could be worse. A small, half gallon carton of organic milk is that much, but still. Thankfully, our Kroger runs a sale fairly often, and sells their store brand of milk 2 gallons for $5.00.
So, that’s today’s Question of the Day: Do you drink milk? If so, what kind (whole, 1%, 2%, skim, organic, soy, etc) and how much do you usually drink in a week’s time? If you remember, how much do you pay for milk where you live? Inquiring minds want to know!
Just got back from a quick trip to the library. I had wanted to get a couple of books in different series I am reading, but the ones I wanted were checked out. I was looking for the fourth book in the Cedar Cove series by Debbie Macomber (44 Cranberry Point) and the third book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Series by Alexander McCall Smith (Morality for Beautiful Girls). I’ll have to get those on another trip.
So, to compensate, I got an armload of books that I won’t finish in my 3 weeks time, but that’s ok. I would have just gotten 3 or 4, but one of the books is the first in a trilogy and they had all three on the shelves, so I went ahead and grabbed them while I could. I can call on the phone in a couple weeks time and renew any of these for another 3 week block.
Oh, and yes, I have tons of books here to read. I have at least 35 or 40 in my TBR (“to be read”) pile. No, I didn’t want to read any of those next. I wanted something else. Doesn’t that make perfect sense? 🙄
Here’s what I got, and they are also on my sidebar now:
Susannah’s Garden by Debbie Macomber
We are All Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg
Miss Julia Stands her Ground by Ann B. Ross
Treasures of the North (Yukon Quest, book 1) by Tracie Peterson
Ashes and Ice (Yukon Quest, book 2) by Tracie Peterson
Rivers of Gold (Yukon Quest, book 3) by Tracie Peterson
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s a quick pic:
I just posted my photo for today over on my Project365 blog – my favorite picture I took of Beau today. It was really pretty here today, and we had Beau out on the deck for a while, to brush him off good and have a little play time. Then, Tim and I headed out for a while and left Beau outside to enjoy the warm weather and the sunshine. He did really good today, he didn’t dig any holes while we were gone! YEAH, that’s progress folks, real progress 😀
I had several pictures I thought were cute, but then again, I’m really biased when it comes to our dog. I’ll post the others on the extended page, but the cutest one is over on my Project365 blog. Check em out if you like cute dogs, LOL!
Read the rest of this entry »
I spent pretty much the entire day Friday laying on the couch. I felt like a big pile of dog poop. I don’t know why, maybe it is a seasonal thing or maybe the start of a sinus thing. All I know is that my head hurt, my shoulders hurt and I was just really tired. I took several naps throughout the day and a bunch of Tylenol and thankfully, I am feeling better today. It’s a good thing, because Tim has cabin fever and wanted to get out. We went out to lunch at a new-for-us place, Taco Del Mar, and then hit a few stores. You can check over on my photoblog for today’s photo of some of the stuff we picked up. In addition to the stuff posted there, we also got a new Cuisinart coffee grinder and a decorative plate for our entertainment center. The coffee grinder is below, ain’t it purty?! It matches my Cuisinart coffee pot, which I love. We don’t have a stand yet for the plate, so I didn’t take a picture of it 🙁
Also, as a sort of recap for other stuff I’ve been working on the last few days and not blogged about…
I’ve posted some misc photos over on my Project365 blog about a couple of projects I’ve been working on this week. This time of year, I’m always overcome with the need to declutter and reorganize and just basically pare some stuff down. I’m glad to say that I have made a big stab at this in the last week. I had bought a 3 drawer storage cart at Target in January, and I finally got it into one of our junk closets and organized. I took everything out of that closet, vacuumed it out and then went through it all. When I was done, I had 7 Walmart/grocery bags full of stuff for the trash. Everything else went back in, and I was even able to put my vacuum cleaner in that closet (it used to sit out in that spare bedroom, in a corner). That felt really good, to throw stuff out and get the rest of it organized. Then, we tackled the taxes. I hate doing them, so I begged Tim to work on them this year. He threw himself into it with regular “Tim gusto” and got them done. They’re efiled and we’re all set, so that’s another wonderful feeling. Lastly, I had posted here about annuals and yearbooks. I had a shelf of them in one of our old bookcases in the hall. I gathered them all together in one of those ZipLoc big bags and shoved them up under the guest bed. I used that bookshelf to organize a bunch of my cookbooks (look for a post soon on cookbooks, riveting stuff, I tell ya!) Yippee! I love and adore cookbooks, although I don’t splurge on them too often. I love to get them for gifts though, and I got several new ones this past Christmas. I love going through them, I read cookbooks like regular books! I don’t cook from them as often as I should (I seem to get so many great recipes from the Internet), but I do love having them. One day, I hope to have a really big kitchen with some built in shelves for all of my cookbooks.
Anyway, that’s about it, not that much exciting going on around here. We’ve been watching a lot of TV and are so glad all of our shows are back and not in reruns. We’ve got 24, American Idol, NCIS, The Unit, Lost and Survivor all with new shows. Not to mention, on Friday nights, we’ve been watching Monk and Psych, and on Sunday night, my beloved Battlestar Galactica. Good stuff, good stuff! Barely leaves a bookworm like myself time to read 😀
Today’s exhilarating post is all about soap. Yes, the difference between using bar soap and body wash. It’s always a thrill a minute here at “Exceedingly Mundane” folks! 😀
I’ve discovered yet another generational thing, at least in our family. When we have house guests of a certain age, they don’t understand why we have this bottle of stuff in the shower/tub called “Body Wash”. They are always like “where is the soap?”, which to them, means a bar of soap. Now, most everyone under the age of 50 understands the concept of a liquid body wash, but some don’t. So, I’ve learned to keep a bar or two of soap on hand for certain overnight guests to our home.
But for us, we like and use body wash. Tim, thankfully, was willing to try switching years ago (even though I was worried he would think it was girly and not try it!) and decided he likes it. He likes the Lever 2000 brand, so I keep us stockpiled with that body wash. Me, I love the ones from Bath and Body Works, but I also buy some cheaper stuff (Suave, store brand) to use from time to time. My current body wash favorite is B&BW Cherry Blossom. Love the stuff.
So, how about you? What do you use? I’d love for you to leave me a comment and answer today’s “Question of the Day“. What kind of soap do you use at your house, bar soap or body wash? Do you have a brand preference? Do you use the smelly, girly stuff or just something utilitarian, just to get you clean and half-way fresh smelling?!
Have a great day, everyone!
This is a dual purpose blog post. It’s something I’ve been wanting to blog about since it turned colder, and it’s also my photo of the day for my Project365:
Yup, it’s socks! Snuggle-up, cozy-up, lounge around kind of socks. I love these things! I wear them all the time in the winter. My hands and feet seem to stay cold this time of year, and I usually wear two pair of socks when I’m around the house for any length of time. I wear a pair of white athletic socks, then one of my snuggle socks. It helps keep my feet warm!
You see, I have self-diagnosed myself with something my grandmother had, and I think my mother had also. It’s called Raynaud’s and in its milder forms, it really just means poor circulation to the extremities, resulting in cold hands and cold feet. As it worsens, your extremities become increasingly colder and start turning white, blue and red. Now, no doctor has ever told me I have this, but I think I do. My hands and feet are cold year round, but its much worse in winter. I have often been known to wear gloves inside in the winter, and usually 2 pair of socks and even shoes or slippers. Once my feet or hands get cold, I get cold all over and it takes quite a bit to warm me up.
Aside from that medical oddity, I just love these big comfy socks. So, that’s today’s Question of the Day: Do you have any of these cuddle socks that you wear? Or do you have a big pair of comfy slippers or something else to keep your feet warm when it’s cold outside? Or are you so hot-natured that you don’t need these kinds of things? Inquiring minds want to know 🙂
I got so busy over the weekend, getting ready for our Super Bowl party, that I let a very important date slip by me. I actually had it on my calendar, and a reminder popped up to remind me, and yet I still never had a chance to sit down and blog about it. So, even though I’m a couple of days late, I wanted to celebrate my blog’s two year anniversary! Or is it birthday? What does a blog have, LOL!
I started this blog mostly on a whim. I started out with the intent of learning something new, doing something to entertain my two sisters, and as a way to try to keep up with our family members who live far away from us, and might be remotely interested in what was going on in our house. I have learned a lot of new things since I started, I think I keep my sisters mildly entertained (and I’m happy to say, both of them have started blogging since I started), but as far as the family keep-in-touch project goes, I struck out miserably on that. All of my grown nieces and nephews that live out of state could care less about my blog. They don’t check it and they don’t try to keep up with us, which is fine, but on that point, I definitely struck out. What I didn’t envision, though, was something far greater. I’ve made new friends online, fellow bloggers, wonderful ladies who are sweet, funny, encouraging, supportive, generous and just downright lovely human beings. I never thought that would happen, and for that extra benefit, I am profoundly grateful. I have found so many blogs that I love to read. So many new friends. So many people whose lives I love to read about, whose opinions and values I share, whose recipes I have tried and loved, whose books they read I have read and loved, who watch the same TV shows, who listen to the same music, and the list goes on and on. It’s a funny thing, this Internet and blogging, but it can be a wonderful thing when you find people that you can make a connection with. Funny, and wonderful, and totally heart-warming. I never could have pictured that happening, and I am so happy it has. And I hope it goes on for a long, long time!
Along the same lines, be sure to go over and vote in the “Share the Love” blog awards. So many of my favorite blogs are nominated in the different categories. I’ve already gone and voted, so be sure to head over and vote soon, I think the ballots close tomorrow sometime.
It’s late, the party is over, the game is over, and I’m a tired but happy camper since the Colts won. 😀 If our beloved Saints couldn’t go (thanks to dem Bears), then I wanted Peyton and the Colts to go, and to win.
Our party got cranked up about 12:30 when my dad arrived. Everyone else dribbled in for the next few hours, but several people were not able to make it, due to sickness. We hated that we didn’t get to see them, but were really happy that everyone else was able to stop by. We had a lot of food, and we have a lot left, so I won’t need to worry about much of a menu for the next day or two, LOL! Poor Beau was relegated outside most of the day and hated to miss out on all of the fun. I think he was glad when it got dark and his momma (me) insisted that he be able to come back inside.
Hope everyone had a great weekend!!!
This morning, I got up early and went to the book sale at my local library. I wish I had gotten there just a tad earlier…as I saw 2 or 3 books I would have wanted in other people’s arms! hehehe 🙂 As it was, I got more than I could carry. One of the older lady volunteers came up to me and said “Honey, let me go get you a bag!” I had more books picked out that I was thinking of getting, but I sat myself down in a corner and went through them several times. I was trying to be good, and a bit realistic about just how many more books do I need to have at home on my bookshelves, so I ended up putting several of them back. As it was, I ended up bringing home 11 books. One is more for Tim (Hades Factor by Robert Ludlum), and one is the only John Grisham we don’t own (Bleachers). But, the rest are all for me!!
I posted a picture of the ones I bought over at my Project365 blog – click here to go check them out. Books, glorious books!
The rest of the day is going to be really busy. We have some errands to run, then a lot of cleaning up and cooking to do before the big Super Bowl party tomorrow. Feel free to stop by, we’re going to have plenty of food and hopefully a great time watching the game 😀
