Exceedingly Mundane

Lookie, lookie at what we bought each other for our anniversary! We shopped around all day on Friday, then went to a new Cingular store near our house on Saturday and got me one of these. And, to match, Tim got one of these. Yippee, these Razr’s are so cool! Then, we went shopping for cases. I was actually wanting something cute and girly, maybe pink or red, but we found this instead, and bought one for each of our phones. Then, we bought Tim a Blue Trek Bluetooth earpiece like this one. He’s going to test it out and see how it works, and I’m also going to give it a go and see if I like it and if it fits my ear. Then, we might splurge and get a second earpiece for me. Right now, I’m just tickled to have a phone with a battery that won’t run out after 10 minutes on the phone. PLUS, I have a camera phone, which I have been coveting for so long. Bluetooth is just icing on the cake!

OK, I couldn’t resist. Here’s a picture of our phones, side by side (Tim’s is on the left, the black one):

Happy Anniversary to us – Tim and I were married 10 years ago today! We started celebrating Thursday night by going out to dinner. Tim took off from work on Friday, and we spent the whole day together, as we are doing today. I’ll try to post more tomorrow or the next day about what all we’ve been doing. 🙂

As a follow-up to this post, I took a couple more pictures of our Bradford Pear tree in the back yard. It’s starting to bloom and hence, it’s starting to smell a bit! When we go walking our subdivision, we really smell the Bradford Pears blooming; they have a very distinct smell.

Anyway, Tim commented recently that the tree was looking kinda white and so I grabbed my camera and took a couple of shots:

{click -more- to see the pics}

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Tim and I went to Tee Time in Clinton late yesterday afternoon, and we stopped at the cemetery on the way. I had been wanting to get out and check on my mom’s grave, and put out some new spring flowers. They aren’t anything fancy, just some plain yellow ones. I have to be really careful and not get any flowers or flower combinations that have pink in them – Dodie hated pink! I love it, so I’m naturally drawn to arrangements that have pink in them, so it’s a struggle for me to get other colors!

I really miss her, even though it will be 4 years later this summer. I don’t think a single day goes by that I don’t think of her. Some days are better than others, of course, and certain times of the year are worse than others (the holidays, her birthday, Mother’s Day, etc). I always get a bit melancholy when we go here, but I’m always glad we go. I like putting new flowers out on her grave. I know she would be really glad to know that Tim and I go together and do that for her.

OK, here’s a picture of the new flowers for spring:

And click -more- for one more:

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or not to blog, that is the question. 🙂 Well, not really. I’m committed to blogging something each day. It may be a quiz or meme, it may just be a quick thought, or it may be one or more long rambling, verbose, boring posts. You never know.

Today, it’s a rambling blurb about what is and is not going on… click more to read on.

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Saturday was originally supposed to be a day to work on the tile project in our master bath, but neither one of us really felt like diving in. Ok, really, to be fair, Tim probably did, but I didn’t! So, I coerced Don and Gail into coming down and hanging out with us.

Tim and Don got an 11 o’clock tee time at the Refuge and went to play golf. They had a great time and played all afternoon, till about 4:00 I think. Tim looks like a very cooked lobster now. He didn’t wear sunscreen or a hat and we will have to remedy that next time. I’m currently on the hunt for a hat or visor that he will like and wear. Otherwise, he’s going to really hurry the onset of skin cancer. 🙄

Gail and I got to hang out, play with our iPods, then go shopping. We hit Kohl’s first, where every piece of clothing I thought was cute and might fit, I tried on – only to find that they didn’t fit or looked like crap on me. I completely struck out in the clothing department all day – it wasn’t my day to buy clothes! Instead, I bought a mini stir-fry pan in my Calphalon and also a pair of winter slippers on 70% clearance. We also walked down to several other stores nearby. Gail bought a thing or two, but I did not. I just don’t like shopping that much any more! Unless Gail comes down to go shopping with me, I never go! No fun by yourself, and both Tim and I hate going shopping, so we just never go. Anyway, we also hit Target and got a snack to tide us over, then did some browsing and shopping in there. I did get several things in here, that I knew they had and I wanted. Some workout clothes that I have tried on before and bought and know fit me. We looked at iPod accessories in Target for Gail’s new iPod she got, but ended up walking next door to price compare at Best Buy, and bought her a combo jacket/armband/clip in there. Cool accessory! 🙂 We also hit Belk for a quick trip to return something for Gail. Lots of shopping and I think we were both tired toward the end.

After the guys finished their golf, we all met up to eat. We were very very very bad and went to the CiCi’s pizza buffet in front of Kohl’s. Ate all-you-can-eat pizza which is a very bad thing for someone like me – who loves pizza and has no self control over when to stop eating something she loves. It was good though!

Great day, we were so glad Don and Gail were able to make the trip down. Tim is now even more enamored of golf than before, if that’s humanly possible. Playing an actual 18 holes for the first time just fueled the fires to play more. He even said today, “I’d like to play a new course every weekend!” 🙄

Tim and I wanted to have dinner out last night (Friday night), at a new place that has just opened near our house – the Alumni House. We went and found the parking lot packed, and a line just to go put your name on the list. It’s a sports bar kind of place, but it seemed unusually smoky to us, just walking in the front door. We’ve gotten sort of spoiled with all of the smoke-free restaurants (that’s the policy for Madison) and really don’t enjoy dining in places that are smoky.

Anyway, we decided to go up to Madison and either try the new Nagoya Japanese place or the new Mexican place next door, Papito’s. Obviously (based on the name of this entry!), we tried Papitos. We had to wait about 20 minutes for a table, but it was well worth the wait. 🙂 We realized after looking at the menu in the waiting area that the menu seemed identical to a great Mexican restaurant we like called Margaritas. Then, a waiter walked by with a Margaritas apron on, so we assume this new place is owned by the same people. The food was delicious and the guacamole was great. The portions were huge, so we ended up both bringing food home in a to-go box.

There have been 4 Mexican restaurants open in Madison in the past couple of years. We can now say that we have tried them all, and that Papitos’ ranks #1 on our list. In case anyone cares!

I went outside a few minutes ago to try to get some pictures of the birds that are at my bird feeder. Lots of them! I can see them from inside the house, and have tried to take pictures before from inside, but we have mesh screens on our windows, so those are messing up the pictures. Anyway, wouldn’t you know it – as soon as I go sit quietly outside, the birds all leave and won’t come back. Not a single one flew anywhere near our backyard while I was outside.

So, I took a couple of different pictures instead. Pretty spring day today, in the low 70’s, a nice breeze blowing, and pretty blue skies:

And, I noticed that even though it’s not yet March 1, my Bradford pear tree is starting to bloom and one flower bud had even popped out. Soon, it will be a riot of white blooms:

Not too much going on around here to blog about. Watching a lot of TV though! I worked on some of my pages yesterday for this blog (check out the sidebar, the “100 things” and “Lately” ones are the ones I spent time on yesterday). Tim is also doing some work on Hambones, in his “spare” time (aka, late at night). He’s really busy at work too. He finds time to go out back and hit golf balls every day after work, though, until dark. 😛

I meant to blog yesterday about the Dancing with the Stars finale. Click the -more- button if you want to get my TV and food wrap-up! 🙂

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Casa de Hammons is now officially closed for renovations and will not be accepting Bed & Breakfast customers for a couple of weeks. Sorry, no room at the inn 😀

Translation = we’re starting today on the last of the ceramic tile project. If you recall, we began late last fall, by ripping up the vinyl in the guest bathroom, breakfast room, kitchen and laundry room, and putting down ceramic tile. We finished just before Thanksgiving, and I insisted we take off through the holidays (which extend through the Super Bowl around here!). So, now it’s time to get back on the wagon and do our master bath. Which means… we have had to move into the guest bathroom. Therefore, we won’t be able to have any overnight company (unless it’s an emergency, obviously) until we finish our bathroom and move back in.

Hope you’re all ready for more tile project reports and pictures! Let the project commence

Friday night turned out to be date night – dinner and a movie!

I had supper planned, but at about 4 PM, Tim popped up and said “let’s go out to eat and to a movie”… so, we did! I have been hungry for shrimp lately, specifically a shrimp po-boy, so I lobbied for that. I suggested we go to Captain’s Catch in Madison, near our new theater, but Tim didn’t want to go there. We settled on Fat Tuesday’s. I have never been, but Tim goes often at lunch (although he hasn’t been at night). We went early, and ordered fried mushrooms for an appetizer, then po-boys and fries (shrimp for me, catfish for Tim). It was really good, and after the mushrooms, we were nearly full, so we were good and brought half of our sandwiches home for leftovers. Lunch today! 🙂

After dinner, we headed to the new Malco Grandview theater and got tickets for “Firewall” with Harrison Ford. We went last weekend to a matinee, which was crowded, but it was even more packed – a typical Friday night, I guess. We waited in line for a few minutes for cappuccinos at the coffee bar, but they weren’t moving fast and we didn’t want to get bad seats, so we abandoned plans for coffee and went on into the theater. We got good seats, on the aisle about half way up, and then watched previews and the place fill up, it was at least 3/4 full or more. They showed previews for several good movies coming up, including the remake of Poseidon Adventure. “Firewall” was good and we enjoyed it, but it was not great (I like big-screen epic type of movies at the theater). It would be a really good rental though 🙂 I’ll try to do a review of it later on Hambones.org

Well, I’ve been posting in the Exercise Forum on Hambones about my daily workouts. I think I did something to my left ankle last Thursday. It started feeling tender when I was working out. I rested on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, thinking it would be better if I laid off of it for a while. I worked out on Monday and again today. Yesterday, it felt really tender when I put any weight on it, but it was fine when I was not exercising. It didn’t hurt at all if I was just walking around.

Well, that’s changed as of today. I guess I hurt it a little more when I was working out today. NOW, it’s aching most of the time, and it hurts to put any weight on it. So, Tim, my sweet pea, offered to tape it for me. Nice to have a trainer on staff, huh?! 🙂 I guess I won’t be working out for a couple of days. I wonder if I can get out of any of the rest of my daily chores?

I think I covered most of Saturday in my previous blog post here. It’s been so cold this weekend that I really haven’t wanted to get out. I would have really preferred to curl up by the fire with my book all weekend, but we had too much going on, and company to boot.

My dad went to Gail’s house on Saturday and spent the night, then came to our house after lunch on Sunday to do the same. Tim went out and hit some balls in the 30-something-degree weather. Daddy and I hung out inside. I made some banana bread and also some white chicken chili for supper. We watched some of the Olympics, worked some Sudoku’s, then settled in to watch a movie. Part of Tim’s Valentines gift was 2 movies, one of which is a really old movie that I have always loved called “The Man from Snowy River”. I don’t think Tim had ever seen it all the way through. So, we put the movie in, popped some popcorn and had hot chocolate last night. Good night! Daddy left for home not too long after Tim left for work today. I had hoped he would stay and visit a bit, but I think he was ready to get home.

I’ve been playing catch-up all day today (laundry and chores). It’s still really cold, in the upper 30’s all day, so I haven’t gone outside a bit. When the weather is like this, I like being a hermit! It’s supposed to start warming up later this week though. 🙂

We’ve seen three movies today, back to back to back. Fun, huh? 😀

Daddy stopped by on his way up to Gail’s house, and we got to visit with him, and also go out to eat lunch at Pigskin (one of the new BBQ restaurants that opened last year). He’s going to come back tomorrow afternoon, and spend the night and then go home Monday.

We went to our new Grandview theater that opened yesterday in Madison – all 17 glorious screens. The place was pretty impressive – fountain in the lobby, couches and chairs, and Internet cafe with laptops and free Internet access. Another cafe with a fireplace, couch and tables. A Cafe serving Seattle Drip coffees, cappuccinos, mochas, lattes and a pastry case with cheesecakes, baklava, tiramisu, muffins, cookies and lots of other good looking fattening stuff 😀 Another food area with pizza, chicken tenders, mozzarella sticks and pronto pups. Three party rooms, a big arcade, and 17 screens. We were very happy to have it open just a couple of miles from our house!

I thought Tim would want to go see “Firewall”, but he wanted to see what was on the big screen (“The Grand”) – their biggest theater room was showing “Eight Below” and the screen is a lot bigger and the sound a lot better, plus it’s all digital. So, we went and saw that. Great movie, and a packed house. Then we came home and watched the ones we had rented, “Flightplan” and “Just Like Heaven”. I will have to work on movie reviews on Hambones soon. We enjoyed them all

I haven’t had much time lately to blog about what’s going on around here. I’ve been at the driving range for the past two afternoons. 🙄 Tim has been having to work at night all week, including one night that he pulled an all-nighter (till 7:10 AM) and another night where he didn’t finish till about 3:45 AM. So, we’ve gone to the driving range for a couple of sunny afternoons, so he could practice his swing and hit balls to his heart’s content.

Don was in Jackson on Wednesday, visiting a friend who was having surgery at a local hospital, and we talked him into coming over to the driving range (in Clinton, called Tee Time, I think), so he could hit balls with Tim. We both enjoyed getting to see Don. I took pictures of both of them hitting the balls, a few scenic shots (which I have uploaded to my Flickr account, see the sidebar), and also some video so that they could see their golf swing. Thankfully, this place has Adirondack chairs behind the hitting area, so I have been taking my iPod and my book and reading and listening to music. It’s great to spend the time with Tim, plus — he’s doing something he loves and I get to skip all my chores and do something I love (read and listen to my IPod), but it does make for more work later on. I’m behind in my uploading of pictures, behind in my blogging, behind in paying bills, behind in the laundry and other household chores. But, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, Tim was swinging his golf clubs, and I got to read for several hours each afternoon… so, all was right with the world. Hard to beat, huh?!