Exceedingly Mundane

Tim headed back to the office today, and I’m trying to get back into some sort of semblance of a routine. I imagine it will take me a few days to get back into some kind of rhythm. I still have too many mounds of laundry and piles (piles of newspapers, piles of mail, piles of stuff we unloaded from the car that hasn’t been put up yet, etc) around to feel like things are calm, peaceful and back to normal. But that’s ok! We had a great time, and are glad to be home safe and sound.

We watched some of the news this morning about the subway and bus bombings in London today. So sad, especially considering they were jubilantly celebrating yesterday, after having been awarded the 2012 Olympics. I also heard that they have raised the alert level in a lot of our transportation systems here in the U.S., including the Metro in Washington DC that we rode constantly while we were there. I think I’m just a tiny bit glad that we went last week and are not there this week with all of this going on. I didn’t see a single dog or armed security person in any of the subway stations. We saw snipers at the White House and lots of security around The Mall on July 4th, but nothing out of the ordinary. I hope nothing else happens here, or anywhere else for that matter. I imagine it will, one day, somewhere, but I’m still hoping. 🙂

Greetings Mr President:

Happy Birthday! We hope you had a great day today. We heard that you had a slight accident on your mountain bike today in Scotland. Hope you and the guy you collided with are both fine. Hope the G8 summit is going well. 😆

We certainly are sorry that we missed you Sunday afternoon at the White House. We saw Marine One flying back towards the South Lawn, bringing you back from Camp David. We had hoped you might have time to pop down from the residence and see us while we were in the West Wing. But we understand and appreciate how busy you are. Tim is almost over it now, he doesn’t talk and cry about it nearly as much as he did the first couple of days.

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We actually arrived back home last night from our trip to DC, but we still had today off, so we consider this a vacation day too! Tim doesn’t have to go back into the office till Thursday, so we had today to play too. Fun!

We slept late (8 AM), then got up and went walking. After we got back, we started working outside. Our grass is withered and has tons of brown spots. We watered for over 2 1/2 hours and it is still dry and brown in places, but better than it was! We asked one of the neighbors this evening, and he said we didn’t get a single drop of rain the whole week we were gone! Tropical Storm Cindy blew into the coast this morning, but we didn’t get any rain from her, it all went east of us.

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Poor Tim, he’s stuck at the office, working on a problem. Today is supposed to be his last day for a week, while we’re gone on vacation. He’s not on-call, which is good, but they are having a conversion this weekend and I think it’s getting to him that he is going to be gone while a big project is going on. He just called and said he would be a while, they were working on a problem that needed fixing.

We will have to pack and do some other misc things tonight after he gets in. I had originally planned to cook supper, but was thoroughly unmotivated earlier today, so I IM’d with Tim and asked what he might want to pick up for supper on the way home. (think he got the hint?) He took my car today, so he could go and put it through the car wash before we leave. He has a place he likes to use, but oops – now that’s he stuck working late, they will probably be closed by the time he is finished. Oh well, the car will pick up lots of dead bugs between here and Virginia and back, I’m sure. I wonder what we’ll have to eat for supper! 🙂

In case I don’t get a chance to get back on the computer, everyone have a great week and weekend. We hope to be back online at our hotel Thursday night, and can start blogging about our vacation then. Keep your fingers crossed! 😀

OK – UPDATED: Tim just called and is on his way home. The car wash place he likes so much was still open, so he got the car washed. He’s sitting in Sonic, ordering us artery-clogging junk food. Let the vacation feasting, over-eating and indulging begin! 😀

I had hoped that by the time today got here (the day before we leave on vacation), that I would have gotten a lot more done and ready for our trip. WRONG. I am still way behind in everything I need to have done before we leave, and I’m starting to really doubt how much of it I can get completed before we pull out of the driveway tomorrow morning.

Oh well.

Part of the problem is that I’m more interested in playing on Hambones, reading blogs, surfing my favorite sites – and mainly – playing with my new iPod than concentrating on laundry, cleaning, packing, list-making and scratching off, trip planning, etc. Oh well. I’m sure we’ll get there, hopefully have clean clothes, find our way around, see the sights, and get home in one piece.

Anyone have any last minute advice before we leave on our weeklong summer vacation to Washington DC? Any travel pointers? Any tips on what “not to miss” in DC? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

I just posted a news story on the home page of Hambones – that we hope the site stays up and running while we are gone (it should, unless we have a power outage), and that our internet access is working in the hotel we are staying at. If all goes as planned, then check back here in a couple of days as I plan to blog from the hotel about our vacation. Hopefully on a daily basis. So check back later on this week and over the 4th of July weekend. Hopefully we will have lots to report! I plan to use this blog like an electronic travel journal. Keep your fingers crossed!

Today was a really good day! We got a lot done, played with our new toys, saw a great movie and spent a lot of wonderful time together. Here’s the high points:

1. Went walking and jogging this morning, ate a small breakfast
2. Tim worked on Hambones while I worked on my iPod playlists
3. Went to see Batman Begins at the theatre. A really great movie. I used my free Blingo ticket I had won!
4. Went out to supper – went to Applebee’s and had salads (Tim had fried chicken one and I had mandarin oriental one). Good, but notable because we did well eating out (plus we had sandwiches and baked chips for lunch, so we did good on the food thing today)
5. Went walking for a second time tonight before dark
6. We got the iTrip FM transmitter working, both in the house (using the stereo in the living room which is hooked to our Bose surround sound speakers, sounds really good!!) We also got it working in the car, so we will be jamming all the way to Washington and back.

Good day, don’t you think?! 😀

I’m telling you people, you need to be signed up for Blingo and using it to search instead of Google. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Google, but Blingo uses the same Google search engine, but with Blingo, you can win prizes.

TIM WON TODAY!!!!

He is working on the laptop on Hambones, while I’m making playlists to transfer to my new iPod. He was searching for something, and boom – he won a movie ticket too! Look:

And an up-close version:

HOWEVER – we just realized that Tim was not logged in under his id, and so he just won, like any user could. If he had been signed in, then he and I both would have won a movie ticket. So the moral of the story is – sign up under someone, use Blingo to search — but be sure you are logged in, so you and your friend can both win!! 🙂

Look what my wonderful sweet husband surprised me with last night!

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Whew, I think I finally have most of my research done on our upcoming Washington DC trip. Or at least I hope so! I still have to hammer out a better schedule of what to try to see what days, and what times, but a lot of that will have to be “play it by ear” because of getting tickets and things. All in all, I feel a lot better about having my ducks in a row now, than I did a week ago!

OH – and I don’t know if I had written this in my blog yet, but Kirk (my nephew) got us setup for a private tour of the White House, including the West Wing. He and Nichole are going to go with us, on Sunday afternoon. We’re really pumped! We will have to go back to the hotel and clean up, and dress in nicer clothes than what we will be normally wearing to do our sightseeing in July temps, but I think it will be worth it. So cool! ❗

We picked up the car this afternoon and the sound is still there, when you shift into overdrive, around 50 mph. It’s not as pronounced as it was before they flushed out the transmission fluid and replaced it, but it is still there. I’m not overly confident but Tim seems to think we will get to Virginia and back with no problems, so I’ll defer to his judgement. I don’t know nothing about cars! 😀

I think I’ll call it a day. Got a long day tomorrow, lots of shopping and errands!

Had to take the car into the shop today and it seems to be the transmission going out. Tim is having them flush the transmission fluid and pump new back in, in hopes that will hold us over for a few months or maybe a year. He thinks it’s some kind of bearing going out and it will be several thousand dollars to get a new transmission. So, even though the plan was to get another vehicle for me in 3 years (we’re on an 8 year rotation plan, and Tim got his truck one year early), it looks like it will be a lot sooner. Blech. I hate being off track with the savings and vehicle plans.

Let’s see, a short update. Tim worked Tuesday night/Wed AM till about 3:30 or 4 AM, then slept late and went into work before lunch. He was working on a problem and didn’t get in till about 6:45 PM, then we went walking and had a late supper. We pulled one of our movies out of our DVD library and watched last night. I was tired by about 10:30, and poor Tim’s sleeping patterns are all out of whack.

I spent quite a bit of time yesterday on the computer – I worked on adding photos all morning, and spent a big chunk of the afternoon working on research for our upcoming DC trip. Got a lot more I want to do before we go though!

We didn’t go walking this morning, just took the car to the shop, then I got Tim to drop me at the house and take his truck. I spent a while in the yard all morning, putting out Miracle Gro on some of the flowers and shrubs and watering everything. Not really anything exciting going on. Obviously! 😀

UGH. I had so many photos to work on, and I finally got them done (still have some older ones to restore, but I’m up to date with new ones). I “promised” myself that I would do the photos first, then do all the housework. See, I played hooky yesterday and went to the museum and shopping with Linda and the kids. So, I am really behind on housework. But, I mean – yuck. I do not want to clean house. At all. Nothing. Normally I like to have things clean and orderly, but it is just not working for me today.

So – I officially declare that housework is a nasty, shouldn’t say it, four letter word. 😛

I feel like I have pictures coming out of my ears! I am soooo behind on uploading and transferring digital pictures to my PC and the Hambones Photos section. I have a few from Shanna of the kids (already loaded this AM, in their own album), and a ton from Father’s Day (working on those now – two albums, one of misc Father’s Day pics and a separate sub-album of all the pics I took of the kids playing on the water slide). I also have a whole photo CD that Jeremy sent from his recent mission trip to the Philippines. And, then yesterday, I took a bunch of Brittany and Zack at the Natural Science Museum. I’m going to try to focus on these today and see how many I can get done.

Of course, this is just transferring and loading. Printing is a whole other story. I am 2 or 2 1/2 years behind on printing out digital pictures. Good thing I like to look at them on my computer!

Here’s one of me and my dad on Father’s Day:

OK, edited to update – I think I am now caught up on all the photos! Whew, only took about 6-7 hours (some last night and most all morning!) 😀

Well, phooey. Yesterday was such a good mail day. I got a new magazine and my free Blingo movie ticket that I had won. No such luck today – I got a U.S. District Court Jury Questionnaire to fill out. BLECH. Not this again.

Just got back from my outing with Linda, Brittany and Zack. We went to the museum, then met Tim for lunch at King Buffet (Chinese). Then, I took Linda and the kids to Michaels to shop, then back to swap out cars and they headed to the Walmart in Brandon on their way home. Everyone had a good time and I took pictures, which I’ll try to upload soon. My list of photos to work on for Hambones keeps growing and growing!

I’m headed out in a short while to meet Linda, Brittany and Zack at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science here in Jackson. Tim and I went once before, a couple of years ago, with Mark, Amanda and Ethan. They have a new exhibit up, a full size replica of “A T Rex Named Sue” – so that should be pretty cool.

Tim slept a little late this morning, as he has to work tonight. I just talked to Amanda and she is home with Ethan and Abby today. They called from the daycare yesterday that Ethan was running 103 or 104 fever. They took him to the doctor and it’s not his ears this time, but just some kind of infection. I hope he gets to feeling better soon and that Mark, Amanda and sweet baby Abby don’t get it!

I still have lots of pictures to post on Hambones, and will have more today after going to the museum with the kids. I have a photo CD that Jeremy sent of pictures from their mission trip to the Phillipines, some new photos from Shanna of Grayson and Ava Clair, and all of the pics that I took on Sunday for Father’s Day. So, once I get those posted, I’ll let everyone know. 🙂

We got to see both of our dads yesterday for Father’s Day, which was great. And all of Tim’s family too, so that made the day even better.

We started out early – we left here in time to stop by the house and drop off food before going to church. My dad met us at Tim’s parents house and we all went to church together with Tim’s family. Afterwards, we went back to the house and Mark, Amanda, Ethan and Abby had arrived. The guys grilled out (steaks, sausage, chicken, hamburgers), Linda had fixed potato salad and lots of veggies and I brought Gail’s crunchy slaw. We had tons of food and it was all great!

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