Exceedingly Mundane

What’s that on the ceiling? A bird, a plane, a UFO? No, it’s the time and temperature displaying constantly.

HUH? Please let me explain. We love gadgets. All kinds of gadgets, but being the geeky techie people that we are, we really love electronic gadgets. For Christmas last year, I bought Tim a new atomic clock, probably this one. It’s made by Lacrosse Technologies and is an atomic clock with time, temperature and humidity displays. There’s a separate piece that goes outdoors to monitor the outdoor temperature. It sets itself automatically by the US atomic clock service, which I think is very cool. He tinkered with it Christmas afternoon and it’s been running fine ever since.

Then, the lights blinked one day last week, and for whatever reason, for the first time ever, this thing lost track of the time. So, as Tim was resetting it, he figured out how to get it to project not only the time, but also the outdoor temperature on our bedroom ceiling.

He’s tickled pink with it. Me, not so much. I am starting to get used to it, but it is a little disconcerting to wander into our bedroom after dark and see these large red numbers displayed on the ceiling. Or say, you’re laying in bed having trouble falling asleep and all you can focus on is these numbers above your head in red.

Needless to say, I tried to take some pictures, but it was hard to get it focused at night without activating my flash. I tried several modes and finally came up with a couple of shots. Of course, these are zoomed in, but you get the picture. Just imagine these numbers are on the ceiling above your bed in your bedroom. 🙄

Well, surprisingly enough, a few of you guys commented that you wanted to see pictures from the training camp practices we attended over the weekend. I was pretty surprised! But, since you asked (and even if you hadn’t, hehehe), I thought I would post some pictures.

Let me just state this for the record – it’s hot here in July and August. I feel for these guys. The sun was broiling, it was humid, those are really big guys, and they are decked out in a lot of black apparel and shoulder pads. I know they are past hot. But, it’s good conditioning for them. Saturday was tolerable (morning, some clouds) and Sunday was downright unbearable (96º, high humidity, not a cloud in the sky). The sun was beating down Sunday afternoon, no clouds to cover the sun and it was beyond humid. We didn’t stay the entire time. That should tell you something. Tim is a die-hard fan and for him to leave before practice is over speaks volumes. It was sooo hot.

OK, recap. We went Saturday to the morning practice on the “upper field”, which is just a practice field at the local college where they are holding training camp. There’s also a small stadium at the college where they hold the other practices (including the one we went to Sunday PM). This practice field doesn’t have bleachers, so they had thrown up some temporary bleachers at the end of the practice area, so we were not on a sideline view. I didn’t get great pictures because there was always players, trainers, assistants, coaches, etc, standing around blocking my view.

If I had been with this official camera guy, I might have gotten good pictures:

Then again, I am scared of heights, so I wouldn’t want to be up there with him:

I got scared just watching them lift him up with that huge hydraulic machine. 😯

Sunday, we went to the afternoon practice at the stadium. I was hoping this was going to be better for taking pictures, since it was a regular field with bleachers, and a sideline view. I could not have been more wrong. It was so hot, I just wanted to drink water and Powerade (2 dollars a bottle, you can’t bring in your own drinks) and fan myself with the program. So, I didn’t get nearly as many pictures. We didn’t stay as long because it was so hot, and the main attraction, number one draft pick Reggie Bush, was not there. Bush was the second overall draft pick, behind Mario Williams, but had held out for a couple of days on his contract negotiations. The local paper had said he was supposed to be there on Sunday, so we were excited. Of course, he didn’t show up, and is supposed to be here today. I don’t think we’ll make it today though. Too hot!

OK, lots more pictures, with explanations, on the extended page. Check them out if you would like!

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Saturday turned out to be a pretty busy day for us. And Sunday looks to be much of the same. Here’s what we’ve been up to:

Stacy is wheedling and coercing Tim into picking up take-out Chinese for supper tonight, after we leave the training camp practice. I am craving Chinese really bad and we haven’t had it in a while (according to Stacy, Tim could go for years and be happy with not eating Chinese food). I can’t wait

Have a great day everyone!

Training Camp started yesterday! Tim’s beloved Saints are holding their training camp for the first time ever, here in our hometown. We’re both pretty excited (although, I think, he’s more excited than I am!) We’re headed out to the early AM practice today, and I’m going to take my camera and practice my sports mode and various photography skills. Maybe the AM practice will be cooler than the PM practice!

Hope everybody has a great day!

I blogged several weeks ago about the free DVD offer from Kellogg’s and how we were collecting coupons from our favorite cereal boxes. I mailed off the first two and then a third request, and yesterday, we got our other two movies. Here’s what we got, totally free, except for the stamp to mail the envelope:

We have 3 coupons toward another movie, but now they are not printing these on the Kellogg’s cereal boxes any more. I haven’t been able to find them for several weeks now, so I guess that’s the end of our free movies! It was nice while it lasted – I so love to get freebies and fun things in the mail!

I’m sorry, but it’s just not right that this thing is labeled “lowfat”! Look at the very bottom, it says, really small “a lowfat creamy blend of Starbucks coffee and milk”. Yeah, lowfat, right. Now, don’t get me wrong – it is really good. The problem is that this bottle is small, and I can drink it in the blink of an eye. It has 200 calories for this one itsy bitsy teenie weenie bottle:

It’s just not right. That’s all I’m saying. 🙄

P.S. This blog entry reminds me of a segment I saw last week on “The View”. They had a nutritionist on, who was talking about how many summer drinks were making women add extra, hidden calories to their diet. I was shocked at how many calories some of these drinks have. Check out the extended page for a section I’ve cut and pasted from their website.

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I’ve tried a couple of times, with little to no success, to get a picture of some of the hummingbirds that are visiting my feeder this summer. Most of the ones I have taken in the past have been blurry, but I finally had a little bit of success Sunday afternoon. I know my camera has a good zoom and I’ve been frustrated that I haven’t been able to get a picture that is clear and zoomed in on the bird itself and not the feeder or the background. I’m seriously considering buying myself a “Photography for Dummies” book so I can learn something. My camera has a lot of nice features and I basically don’t have a clue how to use most of them!

Here’s one, and I’m putting a couple more on the extended entry, so click the link if you’d like to see…

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We went to another family get-together yesterday at Tim’s aunt’s house. We got to see some of his dad’s side of the family (although I didn’t get pictures of everyone) and visit with everyone. We had lots of good food and a good time 🙂

It started raining while we were there, and we drove home in a lot of rain. It continued to rain at our house off and on for a couple of hours and was dreary and gray outside. I was really glad to get home and stay in – days like that are some of my favorites. Tim, unfortunately, got called with a work problem and had to work on that quite a bit after we got home. After he finished, we watched some TV, I read a little, we caught up on the shows we had taped Friday night (Monk and Psych) and Tim did quite a bit of putting on his indoor putting green I got him for Christmas. 🙂

Click on the extended entry to see a few pictures from yesterday’s family get-together…

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Happy Birthday to David, our nephew! Hope you have a great birthday David, and a great year.

David will be entering his final year of college next month, and we hope his last year will be his best yet. I seriously doubt that David has ever looked at my blog (and probably never will), but I thought I would wish him happy birthday here anyway!! Have a great day, David

Friday night is traditionally “date night” in our house, or at least, we’ve been observing it fairly regularly in recent weeks. Last night was no exception 🙂 I went to Walmart for most of Friday afternoon, to grocery shop and get a bunch of household items. After I got back, I started making cookies. We have a family lunch today at Tim’s aunt’s house (this is his dad’s side of the family, which is different from the one we just went to at July 4th, which was his mom’s side of the family – confused yet?!), and I decided to make chocolate chip cookies to bring.

Tim very kindly agreed to help with the clean-up after I had made the cookies:

That’s his idea of helping – licking the beaters. He didn’t actually wash dishes or even put anything in the sink for me. He also “helped out” by testing the cookies when they came out of the oven! Such a great guy, hehehe. Here’s the platter of cookies:

After I made the cookies and cleaned up the kitchen, we got ready and went to eat. We went to Logan’s out on Lakeland and had a really good dinner. Logan’s is one of the chain restaurants we like best – we’ve always had good food and good service there. Last night was no exception. When we got there, there were tons of people waiting, so we put our names on the list and the hostess said it was about a 20-25 minute wait. We grabbed a bucket of peanuts to nibble on, and less than 10 minutes later, we were seated. Tim got a prime rib and I got a combo of grilled salmon with 2 shrimp skewers. Mine was delicious, but I got one bite of Tim’s steak, and of course, it was much better! But, I was trying to eat healthy and my grilled salmon, grilled shrimp, grilled zucchini and red onion were delicious. After dinner, I talked Tim into taking me back to Borders. Since I had gotten my Borders Rewards card last weekend, I have been wanting to go back and buy some books. Tim read football magazines and let me browse to my heart’s content. I had a coupon that Borders had emailed me (smart marketing!) and I ended up buying 4 more books. I will try to load them on my sidebar later this weekend.

We’re headed out for the family lunch in a bit. Tim is going to play golf tomorrow afternoon with a buddy from work, so maybe I’ll have time to blog more then!

My kitchen window faces my next door neighbor’s kitchen window. Our houses are fairly close together, and we know our neighbors pretty well around here; we live in a nice little neighborhood. Anyway, for years, my neighbor and I have been putting flowers in our kitchen window sill. That way, I get to enjoy not only the flowers I plant, but the ones she plants as well. I usually plant moss rose or petunias in the summer, and pansies or johnny jump-up’s (violas) in the winter. My petunias this year are a bit scraggly, but at least they haven’t died in this window. My neighbor’s flowers, on the other hand, are doing great and are just gorgeous! She’s growing Gerber daisies in there this summer – a flower I have never been able to get to grow. Every time I plant them, they die. But hers look great. I get to enjoy them every day, out the view from my kitchen window.

Here’s the view from inside my kitchen:

And here’s her flowers up close (taken from inside my house, on full zoom):

Funny story – I took a couple of pictures from inside my kitchen to post, and then realized that they didn’t show up that well, because of the screen on the window. I thought to myself, I should call her and ask if it’s ok if I take a quick picture of her flowers to post on my blog. Then I thought, nah, I’ll just sneak over there really quick and snap a couple. So, I did, and I got caught! 😀 She was going to close her blind and saw me out her window taking pictures of her flowers! She came outside and I told her what I was doing, and thankfully – I think she was ok with it! We talked for a while (she’s the sweetest person) and caught up on all the things going on with us. Anyway, Sharon, if you’re reading this, your flowers look great and I so enjoy looking at them every day. I hope you don’t mind that I posted these here on my blog!

Here’s her flowers, up close and personal, when she saw me outside taking pictures!!

Wow, it’s so hot and dry here. My air conditioner is running night and day, trying to keep up. And — I’m doing my best to stay inside when the mean temperatures are hitting 99 and 100, and the heat index is 105-107. I have to go out every day though and water all my flowers, plants and grass. Everything is withering and dying here. I’ve lost several flowers in the last week or so.

OK, on to the main topic – moisturizer. I am almost out of the moisturizer I use at night on my face. It’s different from the regular one I use during the day, and I’m wanting to know – do you use a different moisturizer on your face at night? Or do you use the regular one you use for daytime, or before you put on your make-up? What brand and kind is it, and do you like it? Would you recommend it? Post a comment and let me know, I’m going to need to buy some new nighttime stuff soon 😀

Our niece Elizabeth has been staying with us some for the last couple of weeks, before she leaves for graduate school in the fall. We’ve really been glad to see her, and Chris too, before she has to leave. Last night, they came over for pizza and to hang out. We all had a lot of fun, and as it turns out, they turned into first-time geocachers!

We were telling them about geocaching, and trying to explain it, then Tim suggested that we all go do one close by, so we could let them try their hand at it. They’re good sports, so they agreed to give it a try 🙂 We went to a “micro” cache very close to our house that Tim and I had found before, and let Elizabeth and Chris practice with the GPS and information. They found it pretty quickly and seemed to enjoy it, so we all went back to the house and printed out 3 more caches close by, and downloaded the info into our GPS. Off we go, but it was getting close to dark and we were not able to find them all. Chris and Elizabeth did really good though, and found 3 out of 4. Of the two new ones that Tim and I had not tried to locate before, we found 1 of 2. Not too shabby for a couple of hours of fun and hanging out!

Check out the extended page for a couple of pictures of Elizabeth and Chris on their very first geocache 🙂

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Well, I blogged a bit more this weekend than I normally do, but there was a lot on my mind, and we were fairly busy 🙂 Thought I would jot the rest of it down… Saturday, I already blogged about (twice), and then Sunday afternoon, Tim went to play golf. He had gone to the driving range late Friday, but he just couldn’t stand not playing on the weekend. He wanted me to go with him, but it was just too hot for me in the middle of the day. So, he had to go by himself, poor thing. After he got home, we decided to go see “The Devil Wears Prada” at the theater. It was good, not excellent, but good. I probably could have waited and rented it, but it was nice that Tim offered to go see a girl movie with me. I have not read the book yet, so I didn’t know the whole plot and I must admit it was more drama than comedy, which surprised me a little. I enjoyed it though, and was glad that Tim agreed to go.

For a splurge, I made us some homemade ice cream Sunday night in my little Cuisinart ice cream maker that I got two summers ago and just love. It makes just the right amount for the two of us. We still have a big one that is up in the attic somewhere, for when we have a big group over. You know, the old kind where you have to add ice and rock salt. I love this one because I can just freeze the container, pop it out and have ice cream in under 30 minutes. Believe it or not, I’ve only ever made one kind of ice cream – plain jane vanilla. That would be because of Tim, when it comes to homemade ice cream, he’s a total purist and only EVER wants vanilla. I added crushed Butterfingers and chocolate coating to mine, so it was much better. Click on the extended page for a couple of ice cream pictures, if you want 🙂

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I grew up in a family where my parents sat at the kitchen table every morning, drinking coffee and reading the morning paper. Well, and my mother smoked her cigarettes, but that’s not something I want to talk about. Nasty things, they will kill you. Anyway, it was a natural for me to subscribe to the daily newspaper once I graduated from college, and I have every day of my adult life. These days, I tend to read the paper at odd times of the day, sometimes in the mornings, sometimes afternoons, and sometimes I just skip it and will pile them up for days, before I finally sit down for one long massive newspaper reading session.

Sunday papers are different though. I love to read them in the mornings and look at all the ads and coupons. That’s my favorite part of the paper, and my favorite paper of the week is the Sunday version. I love me some retail. Target ads are always my favorite, but I love all the electronics stores ones, the craft and chain department store ones, and various and sundry other ad supplements. Now that I’ve learned to drink coffee, I love to get a big mug of coffee and work my way through all the ads and coupons on Sunday morning.

What I do not get, though, are the drug store ads. Every Sunday, my paper comes with an ad for CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens. Every.Single.Week. We have a joke around here that if a new building is going up on a corner, it’s got to either be a drugstore or a bank. They are very prolific where I live, these drugstores. Many of them are open 24×7 and I realize that a lot of people frequent them. Mostly, people who have kids, who are constantly needing medicine, band-aids, benadryl, cough syrup, etc. We’re not “those” kind of people though, and I can honestly say that I rarely, if ever, walk in a chain drugstore. I buy all my drugs, household supplies, etc at either Walmart, Target or the grocery store. I can probably count on one hand how many times I’ve walked into a CVS, Walgreen’s or Rite Aid of my own need in the last 10 years. So, every Sunday, I toss those circulars right out. Never even glance at them.

Just wondering if others are like that, or am I in the small minority?

P.S. I know my sister Suzanne will enjoy this post, her job is newspaper advertising. Blah! Go for it Suzie, comment away!