Exceedingly Mundane

Tim and I went to Academy Sports a few days ago. He wanted to look at the golf stuff (surprise, surprise) and also look at shoes. We both need new walking/running shoes. Both of ours are about a year and a half old, or older, and we’re trying to walk regularly. He also wanted to get a pair of Timberlands to wear to work. He has an older pair that he loves and wears all the time, but after 6 or 7 years, they are starting to show some wear!

Anyway, while he was looking at golf stuff, I looked at clothes. I have been wanting some new things to walk in. Gail and I picked up a pair of workout capris a few weeks ago in Target and I got a couple of tank tops. I still need more, so I decided to look in Academy. They have a nice selection of workout clothes for women. Nike, Adidas, Russell Athletic, BCGC or some brand, and a couple of others. I ended up getting a few things. I think most of the shorts I walk in during our long, hot summers, I’ve had since the late 90’s (maybe even the mid 90’s). It’s definitely time to start replacing them. So, I scored these:

And no, the hat is not for walking in or working out in. It might, however, come in handy when working in the yard or going fishing with Tim at his parent’s pond. I normally wear a baseball cap but Tim saw this hat and loved it and talked me into buying it. 🙂

P.S. I still need more stuff, so I think a return trip to Academy or Target is in order

OK, I’m itching to change the look of my blog. AGAIN. Happens a lot. But, my knowledge is limited and I can’t change the standard design templates enough to suit me. Sigh. So, I have to just go with the ones that others design. I really like this one though, the colors are clean and fresh and although not overtly spring-y, at least more of what I was looking for than my previous design of my beloved reds and pinks.

Let me know if you like this one, and more importantly, if you see any problems or things that don’t work. I know the “Archived Entry” portion under Comments is not working now, and I’ve been unable to determine why not. But, I’m honestly not that worried about it at the moment. I hope that’s the only thing that is not working 100%. Let me know if you see anything, or just if you like the new look and feel at all.

I’ll try to blog more later today… lots going on yesterday, and I have lots of meaningless pictures to share. Hopefully later today or at least tomorrow, I’ll have them transferred and can get it all posted. In the mean time, have a great day everyone!

and a dollar short. I seem to be blogging consistently a day behind lately. I blog about Thursday on Friday, and now, I’ll blog about Friday on Saturday. Oh well. At least I have something to write about, and not just a meme 🙂 Although I do love memes and questionnaires.

Let’s see… Friday was another busy day (the best kind!). I had a lot to do around the house and then I had to go get my hair cut. Tim also went and got his cut, except when he came home, he looked like he had been scalped by Indians. It’s shaved down to his cue-ball head. No hair basically left on his head. I told him, why don’t you just let me shave it bald? Might as well. And he smiled really big and said OK!

Tim went to the driving range to hit balls while I was gone. He left me a really sweet note that I found when I got in, that said “don’t bother taking out stuff to cook when I got in, that he wanted to take me out to dinner.” 🙂 Anyway, he called around dark on his way home and we were talking. I said “how did it go?” and he said “Great – I hit better than I ever have!”. And I was like, well, that’s good sweetheart. 🙄 And he offers up the explanation – “that’s because I signed up for golf lessons and I had my first one this afternoon!”. So, now Tim is taking golf lessons. He had his first one and has agreed to take 4 more from the teaching guy at the driving range. He was really happy and the guy helped him a lot with his swing and his grip. The best part of it to me – his teacher told him NOT to hit balls until his next lesson. He didn’t want him messing up what they had worked on! So, that was a ray of sunshine for me 🙂

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Look what Tim came home with last night, just for me!

Yes, I know… it’s not that big of a deal. But paying that much for a trashcan is a huge deal to me, and even though I had been wanting one, I didn’t think I’d ever get one because we just couldn’t see spending the money on a trashcan. I mean, it’s a garbage can, people. But it looks sooo much better than the old dirty yellowed plastic Rubbermaid one. (I blogged about it here and showed a picture of it, on an older assignment of Stuff Portrait Fridays).

Click on the extended entry to see a couple more pictures and answer a question for me, I’m not sure I want this shape (semi-round) or a rectangular one. Let me know what you think!

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Thursday turned out to be a really busy day. Originally, I was just going to get my hair cut, and do some laundry. I know, really exciting. But, plans change, and so Thursday turned out completely different than I had thought it would. The girl who does my hair has the flu and so she couldn’t do it on Thursday (although she’s going to come in some on Friday and I hope to go today). Daddy told us last minute about an appointment at the VA, so he drove up, and Gail drove down. They both came to my house, where we visited for a while, then went to Chili’s for lunch. I meant to take a picture of our food in Chili’s (now that I have my nifty new camera phone and I can take stupid, meaningless pictures of things like food), but I forgot. I was hungry and just started eating! We got….

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You know that old line from the movie “Field of Dreams” – “if you build it, he will come”. Well, that’s what I’ve been saying about the squirrel feeder I bought the first week of January. We have a squirrel that likes to come eat out of my bird feeders, so I thought to myself … self – buy the squirrel his own feeder. So, I got one after the holidays at Walmart, a plain little thing that you mount to the fence and put a corn cob on. It looks like this (and note the date, that’s the day I got it, January 6, 2006):

And so, day after day, I watched for my squirrel, or any squirrel for that matter, to come eat from it. Days passed and turned into weeks, and weeks into months. Still, it sat there untouched. I had even gotten desperate and started pulling off the ears of corn on the corn cobs (I bought a big bag at Walmart), and laying out corn kernels on my deck railing for my birds. After all, I hated for them to go to waste and I had seen a bird or two trying to nibble on the corn on the squirrel feeder. The cardinals loved them, and would clean off my deck railing of a dozen or more kernels in under an hour. At least someone was eating them!

And then… finally — my patience was rewarded. Wednesday, we saw a squirrel on the fence, and he went straight to the feeder and started eating corn. Hooray!

Click on the extended entries to check out some pictures I took from inside the house… I knew if I opened the back door to go out and take pictures of the little scaredy-cat, he would run off. So the pictures are a bit blurry (full zoom, no tripod and looking through some slightly dirty windows!)

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What a relief…. my dreaded first quarter chore of doing the taxes is over. I did the federal and state and Tim checked them today and we e-filed tonight. What a relief… I’m so glad to have that weight off my shoulders. Now, to wait on our refund! Yippee!

I just spent a happy hour or so browsing my local library, and checking on some books I wanted to check out. I have started reading the same series that Gail just finished, the “Redemption” series by Karen Kingsbury. I got the first two books with no problem, but have had trouble getting the third. First off, they seem to be very popular books and have trouble keeping the copy/copies they have on the shelf. Mostly, for this third book, there is only one copy left for all branches, so it stays checked out. I got on the waiting list though (there’s one or two people ahead of me), so hopefully I will get it in a month or so.

In the mean time, I had no problem finding other books to check out! On the contrary – I spend time finding tons of books, then have to sit down and narrow down which ones I want to get today. I try to limit myself to 3, and that is usually plenty for me. We can check them out for three weeks, so that’s an average of one per week. Sometimes do-able, and sometimes that is pushing it. 🙂

OK, I’ve updated my sidebar, but in case you’re interested in the books I got, click on the extended entry to read more about them.

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Tim and I finally got to meet our great niece Katelyn Ray on Sunday afternoon. Her parents, Kathryn and Jeremy, brought her from their home in North Carolina back down south to meet all of her family on both sides. We were so glad to finally meet her, and see in person what a beautiful, sweet baby she is!

I took quite a few pictures, and they are all loaded on the main Hambones site. So, for family members who are registered at the site, you can go check them out on there. For everyone else, I’ve included a couple of pictures on the extended entry here.

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No blogging today… it’s been too busy of a weekend, and I’m too tired. 🙄 Back to your regularly scheduled programming tomorrow (hopefully, with baby pictures of Miss Katelyn!)

Very busy weekend… Tim’s parents came over Friday afternoon after his mom’s doctor’s appointment and stayed with us. We went out to eat Friday night, then shopping at Lowe’s and Home Depot. After that, we took them to one of our favorite local spots, Cups. We had coffee and the guys played checkers till it was time for them to close and they ran us out! We showed them one of our new favorite games (Sudoku) and had a great visit. Today, we all did more shopping and out to eat a late lunch before they needed to leave to head back home. We really enjoyed their visit!

My dad stopped by on the way home from Indianola, where we are headed tomorrow. Kathryn, Jeremy and Katelyn are here visiting from North Carolina and we’re anxious to see them and meet Miss Katelyn. Fred got his visit in today, and stopped by for just a minute on his way home. We’ll be on the road tomorrow afternoon (Sun), to see everyone. I hope to get some pictures, and will try to post them soon.

St. Patrick’s is not a big holiday in our house. Years ago, I used to occasionally go with friends to the Mal’s St. Paddy’s Day Parade downtown. I even went to one when it was held at George St Grocery, before Hal and Mal’s got really involved and it got to be as big as it is now (I read in the paper yesterday that it’s now the 4th largest in the country!). Before the emergence of Jill Connor Browne and the Sweet Potato Queens, that is. I have only seen them a couple of times, and not since they’ve gotten so popular. Anyway, I haven’t been in years, and we won’t go this year. One year, when Tim and I were first married, I wanted to go to Fenian’s pub around St. Patrick’s Day and eat something Irish. We went, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what we ate or even if we enjoyed it! I just know we haven’t been since.

So… it’s not a big deal for us. The main thing I do is wear green – a throwback to my childhood, where you didn’t want to show up at school without green on – because you were sure to get pinched! So, a green shirt with my jeans will be the wardrobe choice du jour.

Happy St Paddy’s Day to all!

To anyone that knows me, it comes as no surprise that I will take a picture of just about anything. That has totally been the case since I got my first digital camera. Once I realized I could take a picture of absolutely anything and not have to pay for the instant gratification of seeing it and sharing it, I went absolutely stark raving nuts. I take pictures of anything – food we eat, birds outside, bugs, flowers, the sky, the moon, old buildings, shoes, trees, anything.

Enter my new Motorola Razr. Heaven help me, now I have a slim camera with me at all times. I Love, Love, Love my new P850 Tim got me for Christmas, but the only downside is that it’s a little big to carry around everywhere (think Walmart, out to eat fast food, etc). Voila, now we have a camera phone for that. Furthering my love of taking pictures of anything and everything.

Right now, I’m emailing the pictures to myself. Very soon, I am going to order a Bluetooth adapter so I can just wirelessly transfer them from my phone to my computer’s hard drive, and not incur charges emailing them through my cell phone carrier’s pay service. Look for the onslaught then. Or then again, maybe – just maybe- the newness of it might have worn off by then, and I’ll be tired of it.

You think? 🙂

Click on the extended entry to see a couple of the pictures I’ve taken with my new cameraphone:

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Yesterday, I blogged about some of my purple flowers that are blooming in the yard, and that they make me happy. The simple things make me happy, they really do. I have really made an effort in the last several years to slow down and enjoy the small, simple things in life. Sometimes, a blast from Sonic or watching the birds at my birdfeeder is the most exciting thing in my day, and yet, those sweet simple things make me the happiest. I could name lots of simple things that make me happy, but today, on the Ides of March, I’m going to blog about just one.

My wind chimes make me happy:

Now, don’t get me wrong, this simple thing hanging out back, outside my breakfast room window, make me happy all year round. I love them. I love to hear them singing in the breeze. Sometimes I hear them at night before I go to sleep and sometimes I hear them and the birds singing in the mornings when I wake up. I get great joy from them. I get joy from knowing that both of my sisters have the exact same one, we all got ours (at different times) from a nursery a block from my house called “Gardenworks”. I love the tone that they have and how they sound. I love to sit out on my deck this time of year, and read a book, and feel the sun on my face, and hear my wind chimes tickling the wind.

So, today, in the middle of the month that comes “in like a lion and goes out like a lamb”, I pay homage to one of my most favorite things. My wind chimes.

(And yes, they’ve been getting a workout lately. This March seems extra windy to me!)

Here’s a couple of things that make me happy today… my purple verbena and purple irises are starting to bloom in the back yard! I’m not in a big hurry for spring and summer to arrive, but I do love it when all of my perennial flowers start coming back out and growing and blooming. Makes me happy 🙂

My verbena is just starting to bloom, within the last few days or week:

And I just saw the first bloom on my Louisiana irises open yesterday (it was a lot warmer yesterday and I was outside some before it rained, and spied this bloom):