Exceedingly Mundane

I have gotten fairly lax about blogging on the weekends; we just have too much going on 🙂 Sorry!

Let’s see, Friday was a busy day for me. I had a bunch of errands to run, then a big grocery shopping trip. Tim took me out for my belated birthday dinner to the restaurant of my choice – a local Italian place that always has excellent food. We both splurged and picked some delicious entrees. Tim had the special of the day, the chicken and artichoke lasagna and I had the seafood lasagna. Complete with a big salad, fresh loaves of bread with garlic herb butter, then we finished the meal with dessert. I don’t usually splurge on dessert, but I always do on my birthday, preferably tiramisu at an Italian place. This restaurant’s tiramisu is delicious. After dinner, we went to Academy and each got some new walking shoes. We’re hoping to walk more once Beau, the wonder dog, gets off his restrictions on activity that the vet placed him on for 2-3 weeks. Then, we came home and watched 2 of our favorite shows – Battlestar Galactica and Numb3rs. Both good episodes!

Saturday was equally busy. We got up and took Beau for a short walk and took him to the lake in our subdivision for the first time. He nearly choked himself on the leash, trying to go after all of the ducks and geese. I should have taken my camera! We took him over to the little island in the middle of the lake and let him run free, and he had a blast. He tried to dive off in the water after the ducks, but Tim called him back. He loved every minute of it 🙂 Tim helped me plant some pansies after that. I’m about 75% through with flowers… I have a few more pansies to get and plant, and I need to do that soon. I always like to have them planted by Halloween.

Tim left after lunch Saturday afternoon to go play golf with Don, and Gail and I did our regular shopping thing while the guys played. We hit Kohl’s, Hobby Lobby and Target. I bought Beau a couple of things, which I will blog about soon. 🙂

We had dinner out again on Saturday night with Don and Gail before they had to leave to drive back. We all went to Logan’s and it was as good as always. Tim, Don and Gail all had steaks and I was trying really hard to be good and got the grilled salmon. I feel like between all of the eating out and all of the candy that Tim bought me for my birthday (fudge and truffles!), that I’ve gained 6 or 8 pounds in the last 10 days. Plus, Gail brought us a bag of this candy corn mix and it’s ohmygosh good 😀 So, between all the sweets, I’m really dreading my doctor’s visit this week. I hate going period, but now I have to step on the scales and hear about how much weight I’ve gained since I was there last year. Oh woe is me 🙁

Today is a quieter day. I was so grateful for the time change and the extra hour of sleep. We’ve been watching some football today, and unfortunately Tim’s beloved Saints lost. On the bright side, he’s doing well in fantasy football (even though my team is tanking, big time). 🙂 It’s going to be weird to have it get dark so early, but I’m kinda looking forward to it. I am probably one of the only people on the planet that likes it getting dark early 🙂

Hope everyone has had a great weekend

We took Beau to the vet this afternoon. We are going to try a different vet than we used for our last dog. I wasn’t totally happy with their care, so we are trying a place called “All Creature Great and Small” – I love that name! There are 4 vets, and we have a very nice female vet for Beau. He did pretty well and got a fairly good report.

It took a while, but they finally tracked down his records from when he was at the shelter (penal farm) and in foster care. It appears that he’s younger than we thought (which explains a lot!). The records said 21 months, but our new vet thought he was even younger than that, maybe a little over a year old. He does have a lot of puppy in him, and he has trouble focusing, so that would help explain that!

They are also a little concerned about his weight. He weighed 45 pounds, and the vet said she expects him to weigh about 60 or 65 when he’s bigger and healthier. As expected, they were not happy with the food we were feeding him. The foster family had warned us he was really picky, and didn’t have much appetite at all. They also said he had been eating Purina dry food mixed with Alpo canned food. The vet’s office, predictably, didn’t want us to feed him Alpo (especially) and Purina (although not as bad as Alpo). They sent us home with some samples of Hill Science Diet dry food. She really thought he would like it, and even opened a pack and tried to get him to eat some from her hand. He wouldn’t touch it! The vet seemed really surprised. I think it’s going to be an uphill struggle to get him to eat. I know I’m in for a battle with Tim over buying him expensive food. Tim is NOT a big believer in the brand names of dog food. We fed our last dog the Walmart brand of Old Roy and he thought that was just fine. He was semi ok with going to Alpo/Purina but he is probably going to fight me on getting Science Diet or Eukanuba as the vet recommended. Anyway, my whole focus right now is to get him to eat. As they said at the vet’s office, we need to find something he likes, a good quality food that has nutrition in it, something with a lot of protein in it and get him fattened up a little.

He has a great coat, and they all said how beautiful he was He had to get a rabies shot. We were told he was “up to date” on all his shots, but apparently the penal farm had given him shots and they can’t give out rabies shots, for whatever reason. So, he’s covered now. They were concerned that he has recently been treated for heart-worms. The foster family never mentioned that, just that he was on heart-worm medicine. She asked how much exercise we were getting him, and after we mentioned he was walking 2 or 4 miles a day, she recommended that we stop that for a while. She wants us to restrict his activity for another 2-3 weeks, in case he has recently been treated for heart-worms. So, we’ll have to ease up on the walking for a while. She said we could take him on shorter walks, but try to limit them to one mile or less. Tim’s not too happy about that either!

I had thought he might have ear mites and so they cleaned his ears out really good. The vet said they were red and infected looking, but after they took a culture and ran a test, we found out it was not ear mites. He apparently has a yeast infection in his ears! She said this, along with his licking and messing with his paws all the time, are both indications of food allergies. Which is very odd to me, but I will be glad to take her word for it. Anyway, they gave us some drops to put in his ears, twice a day, for two weeks to clear that up. Then we bought a bottle of ear rinse to use a few times a month to keep his ears healthy.

We have to go back in a few months for more shots… his records indicated he got his first shots in Jan or Feb of this year, not April as we were led to believe. Hopefully by then, he’ll be looking a lot better and have a little meat on his bones. I just want him to be happy and healthy, and know how much we love him and want to give him a good home. I hope he figures it out soon 😀

Today’s Question of the Day is all about nicknames.

Since we just got Beau a few days ago, we’re trying to teach him his new name. He was referred to as “Sonny Boy” at the foster home where he was living, although he didn’t really respond to it very well. Come to find out, I think our new dog has canine ADD. Do they have that for dogs? 🙂 Maybe he’s still just got a lot of puppy in him, but he doesn’t focus well. He’s all over the place. He has an incredible nose and is always smelling and winding everything. He’s always looking around and he seems to have great senses. But, the downside to that is that he’s not paying that much attention to us. He hasn’t really learned his name yet, but we think he’s starting to get the hang of it. We call him Beau all the time, but we’ve both started to come up with alternate names for him, nicknames really.

Tim’s favorite thing to call him is “Knucklehead”. As in, I’m trying to teach you “sit” or “stay” and you’re not listening, you knucklehead. I have been calling him Bo-Bo, and also sometimes pooper dooper, but we are trying to call him Beau all the time.

Tim has a couple of nicknames for me as well (won’t get into those in this post), and I have a couple that I call him. More terms of endearment than nicknames.

So, that’s today’s “Question of the Day” – do you have nicknames or pet names or terms of endearment for your spouse, your kids, your pets, etc? If so, what are they? How did they come about? I’d love to hear!

OK, in an effort to not talk about food or my new dog, I thought I’d ask another mundane question for today. I was cleaning up in the bathroom and got to thinking about how I store my makeup. Right now, I just have it in a travel bag shoved in one of our bathroom drawers. I guess I got into the habit of doing that years ago, when we traveled more and were often gone on the weekends. It seemed easier to keep it packed up so I could just grab it and go.

So the Question of the Day is – how do you store your make-up? Is it in the bathroom? In a drawer, cabinet, out on the counter? What kind of container(s) do you use to hold things in? Do you keep a separate travel size bag of things ready to go, or do you just pack up your make-up when you leave to go somewhere?

Hope everyone is having a great day… it’s just beautiful here and I’m so loving this weather!

Well, I had planned to blog today and post more pictures of our new dog Beau. But, life gets in the way of blogging sometimes 🙂 We’ve been staying really busy and I’m fairly tired 😥

My dad came up today, to go to lunch and Sam’s with us, as well as to meet Beau. Beau, predictably, didn’t like him. We think we’ve narrowed it down to men with glasses. Beau has barked at every middle aged or older white male with glasses that he has encountered. We told my dad not to take it personally 😆

We’ve been trying to spend a lot of time with Beau these first couple of days. We’ve played a lot, and taken him walking a whole lot (6 miles so far), and he even got his first bath yesterday. I have a bunch more pictures to post, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.

I’ll post my menu for the week tomorrow and some cute pictures of Beau

Meet the newest member of our family – Beau!

We went to the foster home yesterday afternoon where Beau (formerly Sonny Boy) has been living for the last several months. The couple there obviously loved Beau, but I think they could tell how much we loved him right away, and that we’d give him a good home. So, we loaded Beau up in the kennel and brought him home!

Beau is about 2 years old and was found at a penal farm in a nearby town. The foster family that rescued him has had him for six months and Beau was used to being with a lot of other dogs, so that may be a bit of an adjustment for him, as he’ll be an only dog and an only child here. But, we think he’s going to enjoy it quite a bit!

Beau is very skinny and seems to not be very hungry. We’re going to definitely work on that. 🙂 He’s a little hyper, but he’s already calming down and is settling in very well to his new surroundings. Beau has already learned about the leash and is not jumping as much as he was when we first met him. He’s very lovable, and loves for us to pet him and play with him. Beau doesn’t seem to be very used to staying in a house, so we think he’s probably been an outside dog most of his life. He will have the kitchen, laundry room and breakfast room for his inside space (areas where there is tile, not carpet). He’s already learning his boundaries and that he’s not supposed to come into the rest of the house, even though we go there. He’s crate trained and pretty much house trained from what we can tell. We keep offering for him to go outside and he’s been going to the bathroom outside so far, and we’ve had no accidents, which is good! He went to the door last night one time to let me know he needed to go out, so I hope that’s going to work well. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

Beau seems to have a lot of natural instincts and Tim thinks he would make a great hunting dog. He has the natural retrieving instinct, as we had hoped. We were tossing a toy to him last night and he got it and bounded back with it to start it all over again. 🙂

Beau did really well his first night. He whimpered once or twice then we didn’t hear a peep out of him the rest of the night. We are going to keep chairs up in the doorway so he learns to stay in the kitchen at night and not roam around the house. He did great last night, and was so excited to see us get up this morning! We took him for a long walk (our regular 2 mile walk we do in our subdivision) and he, of course, LOVED that! He’s going to have a great time going on walks, which will be good for him and good for us.

We have a lot of work to do with Beau, but I think he’s going to make a wonderful addition to our little family. He seems to be a good dog and very smart, so I think we will have him trained in no time. He is already responding to his new name, as well as the other things we are teaching him.

Oh, and we’ve learned a couple of other things about Beau. #1, he doesn’t like cats. At all! He barks and growls and wants to tear them apart. We had a cat on our back deck this morning and Beau starting barking like an intruder was in the house. He should make a great watchdog! #2, Beau doesn’t seem to like males, either canine or human! He loves Tim, but we’ve introduced him to two of our neighbors and while he loves the women and goes right to them, he’s barked or growled at the men. Same for male dogs. He encountered a female dog on our walk and he was fine, just attentive. A male dog made him bark though.

OK, click the extended entry to see a few more pictures. Warning, there will be plenty of pictures of Beau posted on this blog in the future!!!
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I wasn’t going to blog today, but then decided I would look and see what happened on this day in history. I looked at a couple of websites, and you know what? This is not a very exciting day in history! Not much happened, and not very many famous people were born today Oh well, you win some and you lose some!!

Here’s what I did find (Via the History Channel website):

1867 — U.S. takes possession of Alaska. On this day in 1867, the U.S. formally takes posession of Alaska after purchasing the territory from Russia for $7.2 million, or less than 2 cents an acre. The Alaska purchase comprised 586,412 square miles, about twice the size of Texas, and was championed by William Henry Seward, the enthusiastically expansionist secretary of state under President Andrew Johnson

1767 — Mason-Dixon line drawn. On this day in 1767, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon complete their survey of the boundary between the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland as well as areas that would eventually become the states of Delaware and West Virginia. The Penn and Calvert families had hired Mason and Dixon, English surveyors, to settle their dispute over the boundary between their two proprietary colonies, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

1469 — Ferdinand and Isabella marry. Ferdinand of Aragon marries Isabella of Castile in Valladolid, thus beginning a cooperative reign that would unite all the dominions of Spain and elevate the nation to a dominant world power. Ferdinand and Isabella incorporated a number of independent Spanish dominions into their kingdom and in 1478 introduced the Spanish Inquisition, a powerful and brutal force of homogenization in Spanish society. In 1492, the reconquest of Granada from the Moors was completed, and the crown ordered all Spanish Jews to convert to Christianity or face expulsion from Spain. Four years later, Spanish Muslims were handed a similar order.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer sponsored by Isabella and Ferdinand, discovered the New World for Europe and claimed the rich, unspoiled territory for Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella’s subsequent decision to encourage vigorous colonial activity in the Americas led to a period of great prosperity and imperial supremacy for Spain.

And notable people sharing my birthday include:

1961 Wynton Marsalis – trumpeter, bandleader
1960 Jean Claude Van Damme – actor
1951 Pam Dawber – actress (Mork & Mindy)
1939 Mike Ditka – football player, coach, sportscaster
1928 Keith Jackson – sportscaster
1927 George C. Scott – actor (Oscar® winner, 1970)
1926 Chuck Berry – singer, guitarist
1919 Pierre Trudeau – Canadian Prime Minister (1968-79)

Tim came in from work and said he’d been shopping. He wanted to give me one of my birthday presents early, so he made me pick a hand (he always does that, hides both hands behind his back and makes me pick the right one :D).

He found the new candy shop that I posted about last week (#4 in this list) and brought me some chocolate fudge!

Does the man know the way to my heart, or what?! 😆

Ok, first, let’s pretend you all like flavored coffee drinks. {I know, a lot of you don’t and I didn’t drink them until just recently.} Then, let’s pretend that we can all afford to splurge on donuts. I have donuts like once or twice a year, and I immediately regret it after I see them going directly to my thighs.

I digress.

If you were going to have a flavored coffee, what would you have? I had a Maple Macchiato the other day at Starbucks and it was good. Should I get another one tomorrow to celebrate? Or, should I swing by Seattle Drip and try one of theirs? Do you have another coffee drink to recommend?

And I probably won’t splurge on the donuts, but I do like thinking about it! I love and adore Krispy Kreme donuts. And I’m trying to decide between my normal favorite (blueberry cake) and their featured donut of the moment – pumpkin spice.

So, please pick for me. I have to leave early in the morning to get my hair cut, but I might swing by and get a celebratory donut and coffee. What would you get?

Who would have thought that the gentleman’s game of golf could be considered a contact sport? Football, yes. Hockey, yes. But golf? It’s not supposed to be!!!

But leave it to my Tim to make it a contact sport. He was hitting balls late Friday evening and one popped back out from his net in our backyard and smacked him in the eye. He now has a really pretty purple eye to show for it. I wanted to take pictures to post, and I got him to let me take just two, and they both came out blurry. But, since he wouldn’t let me take anymore, I decided to post them anyway!

Golf can be dangerous. Very, very dangerous:

Busy, busy around here. Haven’t had a moment to blog

I was gone all day Friday. Had lunch and went shopping with a friend of mine (thanks Wendy, we’ll have to do it again soon!), went grocery shopping, then Tim and I went to a movie with Don and Gail last night. We went to see “Facing the Giants” and it was a very good movie. Not top rate acting, but a good story and a good message. This morning, Tim and I went and got mums and pumpkins for the front yard and got all of that setup. Then, he left to go play golf out of town with Don, so I went back shopping again 🙂 Had to return a couple of things I bought yesterday, then I picked up a couple more things while I was out. Also bought some pansies, but just for a couple of pots on my deck. The big planting of all the outside flower beds will have to wait another week or two.

So, up until an hour or so ago, I’ve been gone almost round the clock, and no time to blog, nor respond to all the nice comments I’ve had over the last couple of days. I hope to make the rounds later today or tomorrow, and visit some of my favorite blogs, and answer some emails as well. Funny how it piles up sometimes!

I also went to the library Friday and have new books up on my sidebar. I’m still working on my Fall Challenge reading list. I’ve now read 5 of 11, and have 3 more from the library to read next. Also, I seem to be in a book-buying mood, and with my birthday coming up, I hope to have a little money to go buy some new books at the bookstore with. Yippee!

Hope everyone is having a nice weekend…

No big news from this little corner of the blogosphere, just a few odds n ends 🙂

FREE BOOK: I received my free book from Karen yesterday, via Amazon. Wow, how I love to get presents in the mail, especially right before my birthday. For those of you who were asking, I asked for and received the second book in the Abram’s Daughters series by Beverly Lewis. It’s called The Betrayal, and I’m so looking forward to reading these books. Once I complete my Fall Challenge reading list, I hope to get started on these books. I can’t wait! Thanks again Karen 😀

Have a great day everyone!

Oops, I missed a day blogging again! It’s getting to where that is happening more on the weekends, sorry about that. I had a goal of blogging every day, as long as we had Internet access. We didn’t while we were gone on most of our vacation a couple of weeks ago, and I guess I sort of got out of the habit. Plus, we stay really busy on the weekends this time of year, and I just haven’t had much time to blog on Saturday or Sunday.

We had intended to be home on Saturday (there was a festival I wanted to go to near our house, and we wanted to work in the yard), but we ended up being gone all day. My dad was having trouble with his computer, so we drove down to help him out. And it turns out that it’s really good we went, he had the power supply go out in his new computer, so it was “dead as a doorknob”, as they say 🙂

I had a couple of other random things I had wanted to blog about, mostly TV and books. I’ll save the books for tomorrow, but go ahead and babble a bit about TV.

The last two of “my shows” premiered this week – Lost on Wednesday and Battlestar Galactica on Friday night. I must say, I was mildly disappointed in both. I really like Lost, and I like that they keep you jumping and guessing, but come on people – you have to give us something. We just keep getting new characters, new scenarios, new dilemmas. Ack, it bugs me some. Battlestar was just ok, it didn’t go in the direction I wanted, or maybe they are just going to be slow about it. Tim was really disappointed in it, and I’m worried I may lose him as a viewing partner. I may have to start taping it and watching it on my own, which I don’t want to do. Boo-hoo. 🙁

I won, I won! Karen, over at Write from Karen was having a drawing for a free book. Why, you ask??? Because she’s a wonderful person, a gifted writer, and an avid reader. Oh, and it’s all a part of the Buy a Friend a Book program. I had never heard of this before, but it’s a great idea. I’m all about books, reading, and the love of reading being passed on to everyone, especially kids. Karen drew my name this morning in her drawing, and is sending me a book from my Amazon wish list. Isn’t that sweet?!

Be sure to go check out Karen’s blog, it’s one of my favorites, and also the BAFAB program

I’ve been neglecting my poor little blog the last few days. We’ve been really busy and I just haven’t had any time to blog.

Our niece came to stay with us all weekend, which was great. We love getting to see her! But the big news of the weekend is…. the PGA golf classic (SFBC) is just a few miles from our house and Tim has been like a kid at Christmas! He and our brother-in-law Don played golf on Saturday morning, then spent several hours watching the pros. Gail and I got to go shopping and I picked up several things for the house, but no clothes. Yuk, the clothes out now are just awful! I didn’t like a lot of that stuff in the 80’s and I’m sure not going to wear it now! 🙂 Today, we went to the golf classic for a while and are watching football now (Stacy) and hitting golf balls (Tim). I still say, there’s something wrong with the natural order of things when I am more interested in football than Tim

I’ll try to blog more this week, and also post the last of the pictures from Savannah. My month-long tour of jury duty is now over (had to call daily, but never had to report, YEAH!), so I won’t have that hanging over my head. Things are looking up! 😆