Exceedingly Mundane

Let’s see… today is Tuesday August 13. Maybe, just maybe, I might make it through August after all! Seeing light at the end of the tunnel!

* 18 days till kick off at The Rock, which is the beginning of college football season for us! Hoping for a better season than last year (0 wins, truly deplorable, and the worst in 18 seasons).

* Preseason football has started. The Saints won their opener (yes, I know it’s preseason and it doesn’t count). This just means one thing – real football is just around the corner!

* Quiet weekend for me – Tim played in the Whisper Lake club championship this past weekend and was gone almost all day Saturday and Sunday. He was so disappointed – he didn’t putt well and came in fourth in his flight (the top three win prizes!). He was still so upset about it on Monday that he didn’t go to play golf! Bonus for me, he stayed home, grilled out chicken and veggies for me. And then we rented a movie from Amazon Prime, the remake of Red Dawn. Turned out to be a pretty spectacular Monday for me 🙂

* Last Friday, we got to see Tim’s old Air Force friend Beth and her husband. They came through town, driving a US Army 18 wheeler, transporting stuff to Fort Polk. We went to Cock of the Walk to eat and visit, then back here for a bit before they had to get back on the road. I had never met Beth or her husband Mike, so that was great 🙂

* Going to be a busy week this week – haircut for me tomorrow, got some errands to run. Then taking my dad to his retina doctor appointment on Thursday. Friday I’ll probably grocery shop and might go to Sam’s. Saturday we’re tentatively scheduled to go over to my in-laws, for Tim to help more on the kitchen renovation. Depends on what they get done this week. Cabinets should be in, and Tim is needed to help with flooring and mouldings.

* Since Tim was gone most all weekend, I didn’t have to cook a lot. We ordered pizza one night (cashed in my Papa Johns points, so the pizza was free!), and I make homemade ice cream another night:

New recipe for snickerdoodle. We both liked it, very cinnamon-y. Mine, of course, was better with chocolate syrup poured on it. Tim did say that the last new one I tried (hot cocoa ice cream) was better than this one though, so file that away for next summer!

* Current Kindle book I’m reading: Heart of Stone by Jill Marie Landis. Just finished two I really enjoyed – “The Deposit Slip” by Todd M. Johnson (legal thriller, sort of like a Grisham) and “Paid in Blood” by Mel Odom (NCIS book, very similar to the series, but obviously a different team, good characters though). I’m currently ahead of where my goal shows I should be, on track to read at least 100 books this year. I’m hoping to top my all-time record, which was 104 a couple of years back.

* Currently watching: still enjoying summer shows. Looking forward to football and new fall shows. Recording several movies off pay channels. Rented Red Dawn last night from Amazon Video (love the new apps on our Samsung Smart TV!). I’ve been re-watching all the Harry Potters in order. On my third or fourth time through, currently about to start Order of the Phoenix.

* Current weather – finally got hot in August. Did have a nice rain last Friday. Most of my flowers are nearly dead, and I’m good with that 🙂 Hopefully will rain today and/or tomorrow – 60 % chance both days.

* Current want – I still want to get a dog. Tim is not ready. Sigh. I’ve found two on Petfinder and have tried to get him to go to the shelter and check them out. Now, they’ve both been adopted. While I’m glad they’ve found good homes, I want a dog. I miss my Beau, horribly, every day, and want a new puppy to love. Tim doesn’t seem to understand, he’s busy with golf and not really wanting a dog these days. Sniff sniff.

* Current time waster – Pinterest. Man, can I lose a lot of time just going through pins and reading blogs and stuff. Ugh.

Catching up on a few things we’ve been doing lately. It’s gotten HOT, after a fairly mild summer. It’s now hitting the mid 90’s every day with heat indexes in the 100-105 range every day. That does not deter Tim from playing golf, however!

Let’s see, last week turned out to be fairly busy. Gail came Tuesday evening, so she could spend the whole day with Katelyn and Sam on Wednesday. Tim and I went over to Elizabeth’s on Wednesday during lunch. We brought her lunch and Tim took the battery charger, since she had called to say her car wouldn’t crank. We thought we had her fixed, and headed back. Gail spent all day with the kids, and decided to stay Wednesday night too. Thursday, we ran some errands, had lunch, and went to visit Fred. We went to Corner Bakery, one of our favorites, to have lunch. I like their trio (you can pick from 3 of their side salad options or soup), and I had spring asparagus soup, caesar salad and mixed fruit. Yummy! We stopped at Freshway Produce on the way back from visiting Fred, and picked up some produce. I also found some metal door hangers like I have been wanting. Instead of opting for the letter ‘H’, I ended up buying a beautiful multi-colored cross.

Gail and I got home and tried to hang the cross, and realized it wouldn’t work on the metal door hanger I had for our front door. So, I realized I needed to go get a big suction hook. So, when Gail left heading home, I went to Walmart (should have gone to Michaels, thought about it, but decided to pick up a few other things at Walmart). I found a set in the crafts section, but when I tried one at home, it wasn’t strong enough to hold the metal cross. So, Tim and I headed out Friday night, and we stopped at Michaels and got a much bigger and stronger one. We also went to Mr. Chens for supper. We splurged and got an appetizer (crab rangoon), then 3 entrees to split (to be fair, I like to get vegetables, so that always adds an additional dish). We got the mixed veggies, sesame chicken for Tim and rice noodles with shrimp to split. We had a lot of leftovers to bring home, which is always nice! We also went to the grocery in the back, since I wanted to get a new wok:

I haven’t even taken it out of the wrapping yet! I like the look and feel of it, but I’m a little hesitant to use it. I’ve always, only, ever had a nonstick wok. This one is going to take some getting used to, I think, especially on my new smooth top stove. I’m still struggling with a few things on the new burners. Anyway, I can always go back and get a nonstick one if I don’t like this one. I hope to try it in the next week or two, so an update soon 🙂

After supper, we walked down to Northern Tool to look for a new grill brush for Tim, but they were closing. So, we got in the car and were heading to Academy to look for the brush, when we came up towards Bops. Tim offered ice cream for dessert, so I was bad and took him up on his offer! We were good and just got frozen yogurt with one topping each (Tim got Snickers, I got butterfinger). Mine was in a waffle bowl, so mine was more better 😀

At Academy, we got the grill brush and also looked at patio furniture on clearance. I found something I liked but I don’t think Tim liked it as much. I guess we’ll wait till next year to spend money on that. Ours is 12 years old and all but one of the chairs has a torn seat (the fabric has just given out and rotted, out in the sun). I think the grill is enough to tide us over and get us through football season. We don’t tend to spend much time on the deck this time of year, or during football season. We just grill out, then hurry back in the AC to eat 🙂

Saturday, Tim had an early tee time, and got home around lunch. I made hummus (still have to work on the recipe, my seasoning needs to be better) and had that with pita bread and fruit for lunch. Tim picked him up Chick-Fil-A on the way in. After we ate, he had a long nap, and we watched a little TV, we decided to go to Ace Hardware and get Fred another grabber stick. He had mentioned to me and Gail on Thursday that he wanted another one for his front door, to get his paper he had just started getting delivered. We got that, then went to visit Fred, who promptly informed me he didn’t want another grabber stick, he already had two! But, he took it, and we visited awhile. We moved furniture twice for him, he is not happy with the way his unit is laid out. I see furniture shopping in his future, from the way he was talking! After we left there, we went to Lowe’s to pick up a few things, then swung through Tony’s Tamales for the first time, for Tim to try their food. I opted to go home and eat more pita bread, hummus and fruit. He got the tamale dinner with chili and cheese and really enjoyed. I tasted it and would be ok with it. Next time he wants to try plain, traditional tamales.

Sunday was busy with church, swinging through Fresh Market, then Tim going to play golf. Elizabeth had more battery trouble, so Tim went to jump her off, then she came over here later Sunday to hang out, eat dinner and spend the night with us. She is busy at school, getting her room ready and getting ready to begin her new teaching career. She’s very excited, and we’re so happy and excited for her 🙂

OK, that mostly wraps up our mundane weekend. 😀

Today is August 1. So, I’m officially in the middle of my yearly summer doldrums. I really, really, *REALLY* struggle through late summer, usually the months of July and August. Both long months, 31 days, usually scorchingly hot down here (although this summer the temps have been refreshingly mild). There’s not much going on in these two months, so not much to look forward to. We do have a couple of birthdays in these months, and this year, I’m staying busy taking my dad to the doctor and doing things for him. Still, I dislike these two months and they go by at a snail’s pace.

Once I can make it through August, it turns into my favorite time of the year. Once football season starts, and Labor Day kicks off a series of my favorite holidays, I’m much better. September through the Super Bowl in early February is my most favorite time of the year. Football, both of our birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc, just make it a lot better. We should establish a major holiday in either July or August (and yes, I know there’s July 4th, but that’s early and we only ever go to Tim’s mom’s family reunion every year, so same thing every year).

This July has been fairly typical for me. I don’t really want to do a lot of cooking. I am tired of watering the flowers and grass and stuff in our yard. I want to stay inside and read (in the AC), but I’m tired of reading and want to find something to grab my attention. So, I just sit in front of the tv and mindlessly watch tv and movies. Typical for me 🙂

Come on September, hurry up! I want August to go by quickly. Please. Pretty please 😀

Well, since we no longer have my sweet baby Beau, I find that lately about the only thing I have to take photos of, is food. If you look through my phone’s camera roll or my Instagram, it’s mostly food related photos these days. So very boring 🙂

Believe it or not, I tried two new recipes yesterday, but didn’t take a single photo of either one! I also made another recipe that I’d tried once before, and failed to take a photo of it. I’ll have to make them again, because I like to include photos when I post recipes that I make over at our website (recipes on Hambones here).

Yesterday at lunch, I decided to make a smoothie (very out of the ordinary for me!) I got industrious last week and froze some fresh fruit (blueberries, strawberries and chunks of banana). I also bought two bags of frozen fruit at Kroger. So, yesterday I did a quick one with blueberries, mango, greek yogurt and almond milk. My almond milk is unsweetened, so I had to add some agave. I halved the recipe, thinking Tim wouldn’t want any, but then he wanted to try it. Note to self, next time, make the whole thing! Need to experiment with more flavors and combinations. Anyone got a favorite they make?

Yesterday afternoon, I was watching one of my favorite shows, The Chew. They had on guest host Curtis Stone, who made a nectarine chutney (but his used mustard seed, which I don’t have on hand). So, since I had some overripe nectarines, I got online and found a similar recipe. I’ve never tried to make a chutney before, but it was easy, and quite good! 🙂 Tim grilled himself some pork chops on his new grill, and I made this fruit chutney to go along with the pork. I didn’t eat any meat, tried to be good and ate a spinach salad, some of the chutney and some of this couscous. I also *might* have had a bite of his mashed potatoes, but no meat!

So, I’m not really back into much of a cooking groove, but I am trying to try a few new things here and there. I keep pinning things to Pinterest and never trying them, so it’s good to finally move a couple of pins to the Success or Fail board 😀

*Disclaimer: Another catch-up post from over on Tumblr, getting it migrated to the blog now that we are back up and running*

Made a big grocery run this past Friday (July 26). Tim had gotten the grill put together and wanted to try out his new searing burner on a steak. So I pushed up my normal grocery shopping till Friday afternoon, so I could get him a ribeye and me a large salmon filet from the seafood department.

Also in this trip, along with some prices:

* Cherries! On sale this week for 1.99 a pound. I only splurge a few times a year, this is my second batch of cherries. (Pictured, from my Instagram feed)

* Found a gallon of milk marked down on manager’s special for 2.00. Bought it instead of the regular 3.69 a gallon price. Got my beloved store brand juice (Kroger lite) for 2.89

* Bought yet another one of these:

Had an e-coupon loaded on my Kroger card for 55 cents off. Normally, I buy the light mocha one, but they were completely out of the light one. Ugh. More calories, which is why I have gained all the weight back that I lost earlier in the year.

* Bought some fresh veggies – asparagus to grill Friday night, some spinach (going to TRY and be good and eat some spinach salads), onions, sweet potatoes, broccoli, green onions, and fruit (cherries and grapes)

* Bought my first container of tofu. Got the organic store brand in firm. No idea what I’m going to do with it, but I want to try. Had some recipes pinned or ideas saved, I think, now I have to go find them and get motivated to try them. Will have to work that into the menu when there’s leftovers for Tim, as I doubt he’ll touch a stir fry or soup with tofu in it 🙂

* Got two items for free, Colgate toothpaste and Orville popcrunch, as part of Kroger’s Free Friday Download. Had downloaded a coupon to my shopper card to get them free. I love free 😀

Gas is going up around here, I think it’s around 3.39 at my Kroger. We’ll get some off that, since we use the Kroger card to earn fuel points. I think I have 40 or 50 cents built up on the card, which will help a lot when it comes to filling up the gas-guzzling vehicles we own!

We were WAY overdue for a new grill!

I think the last one we bought, a Char Broil commercial grill from Lowe’s, was purchased in either 2006 or 2007. Tim had already replaced parts on it twice, I think. He’s had to replace burners and grates, and this one was on its last leg. The igniter was not working, and the bottom part had rusted out. I had ordered myself a Cuisinart griddler last fall, and was doing some grilling inside on it, mostly because he wouldn’t use the outdoor grill any more. So, we were way overdue.

We had been looking around, and Tim decided to take a chance on getting one at Sam’s Club. It’s their “Members Mark” brand, but he seems to think it’s going to hold up as well or better than the ones we can get at Lowe’s or Home Depot. I hope so! It cost a bit more, but it’s bigger and hopefully will last as long or longer. We did buy an extended warranty from Sam’s, which is supposed to cover parts, so if these rust or have problems in the next couple of years, we should be covered. I hated to lose our old grill cover – I had gotten Tim a nice Saints one for the old grill. But we woke up one winter morning a few years back and a squirrel was chewing away on it, so it had a bunch of holes on the top. So, since the new grill came with its own cover, Tim tossed the old beloved Saints one. I see a birthday present in his future 🙂

*Disclaimer: Another catchup post from when Hambones was down. Hambones went down last Tuesday during the day, and we went Tuesday after work to help Fred with his new pacemaker machine, to Sam’s to buy a grill, and stopped at McAlisters on the way home for a quick supper. Lots to catch up on 🙂

Tuesday afternoon, since Hambones was down, I tried to get a few odds and ends done. I was catching up on some stuff on the DVR and was watching an episode of Rachael Ray. She said, as she has said before, that the best way to clean a wooden cutting board is with fresh lemon juice and kosher salt. So, I decided there was no time like the present.

I squeezed a whole lemon, one half at a time, and then spread sea salt on one side of my Boos board. It made a bit of a mess, but it seemed to do a pretty good job of cleaning and deoderizing it. I need to do the other side soon. I let it dry good and then wiped it down well with board oil. I’ve done the oil several times before, but had never cleaned it with lemon and salt.

I should have blogged about my board before. I have a set of plastic color-coded cutting boards that I use (actually, it’s my second set, I wore the first one out), and also a smaller wooden cutting board that I like. But for a while now, I had been wanting a nice board. All of the cooking shows that I watch, they seem to all use the Boos brand of cutting board. So, since Tim is always wonderful to me, he surprised me this past Christmas with one. I love the thing, I know it was a splurge but I plan to use it for a very long time to come. And after all, he had given me my Wusthof santoku knife for my birthday last October, so getting the board for Christmas seemed rather logical 🙂

Just when I had gotten back into the swing of blogging, our website died! One of the many hard drives Tim uses to run Hambones died, so he ordered another one. It came in late yesterday and he worked most all night to get it back up and running. That man is something else 🙂

In the mean time, I setup a quick site at Tumblr and was putting some quick posts and photos out there. I’m going to try to recreate them over here, just for posterity’s sake, LOL!

Many posts forthcoming 🙂

No, I couldn’t think of a good title for a blog post. I’m so not creative and not good with witty titles, witty retorts, or witty anything 🙂

* Had a fun night Friday night. Went out to eat at Krilakis with Tim and Elizabeth. Yes, the same Krilakis we went to the previous Friday night. We appear to be on a roll lately with Greek. In honor of Elizabeth and celebrating her new job, we got double appetizers – pita mozz and hummus. Lamb gyros and fries for Tim, lamb gyro with Greek salad for me. I leave so stuffed, I’m nearly miserable. Came home and watched the Avengers on the new big screen. 🙂

* Busy Saturday. Up early, loaded up food and tools and headed over to my in-laws. Quick stop at Pilot/Flying J for breakfast (souped up decaf coffee for me, Krispy Kreme and scone, Coke and 2 sausage/biscuits for Tim). When I met Tim, I had never been indoctrinated into the world of gas station food. Now, I’m a bit picky about it, but Flying J is one of my favorites. They have good stuff!

* Tim spent all day Saturday working extremely hard at his parents house. They tore out kitchen cabinets, counters, flooring, paneling in the kitchen and dining room. He was tired, but Terry and Mitchell were completely worn out. I visited with Linda, Emi and Brittany. We went to Walmart for totes to finish packing up the dining room, and did a lot of sweeping and toting. We also played on our ipads, so not too tough of a day for the girls 🙂

* We left in time Saturday night to swing by the FedEx place and pick up the delivery we had diverted from our door. Our Onyko receiver has come home! Yippee!

* Sunday, Tim is still worn out. You know he’s tired if the sun is shining and he doesn’t go to play golf! He hooked up the receiver, and… it works! Yippee. So much better with the surround sound and the new TV. He’s happily watching the British Open on his big 5 foot tv 🙂

* Went to the grocery store and got some good deals. Lots of good prices on seasonal fruit and veggies. Had some coupons from Kroger and got good prices on frozen chicken breasts (saved 1.50 on a 3.00 bag), and a prepared baked chicken (saved another 1.50, so instant lunch!). Grapes are 99 cents a pound this week, so I bought a big bag of white grapes. Got them home and washed them. Tasted one, and … ICK! Soft squishy grapes. I do NOT like soft squishy grapes. I like firm grapes. These are almost sour, they are so icky. I’m so disappointed 🙁 On the bright side, I have lots of good sweet strawberries from Sam’s, and we had 2 ears of bicolor corn on the cob with the baked chicken, and that corn was delicious 🙂

Another good weekend in the books!

A busy weekend at Casa Hammons! Going back to last Wednesday…

Wednesday was the day my dad needed to do his pacemaker check. He has had a pacemaker for about 8 years or more, and does a quarterly check where he hooks a machine up to his chest and it transmits info on the pacemaker to his doctor’s office. He never had any problems (that I know of!) when he lived in his house in Hattiesburg. However, he doesn’t have a dedicated phone line in his apartment at the assisted living place here, and so he never could get it to work. He said he tried 3 places, different things, and finally called the doctor and setup an appointment. He called me Wednesday to “inform” me that he would need me to pick him up Thursday afternoon and take him to the heart clinic at 3 PM. They checked him out, and the machine and said nothing was wrong except maybe user error, and to try it again. So, he’s going to try again this week. Fingers crossed that he figures it out… else, I’ll be driving him to the heart doctor every 3 months!

Thursday was also a fun day, in that Grayson, Ava Clair and Sam came with Gail and met us all for lunch at Newk’s! Elizabeth had gone to Texas the week before and brought Grayson and Ava Clair back with her last weekend. They went to Gail’s for a few days, and then she brought them back on Thursday (plus Sam!), and they got on a plane going home to Texas Thursday night. We were so glad we got to see them. They’ve grown up so much and are so much more mature than in visits past. We had a great time seeing them, we just wished we had been able to spend more time with them 🙂

Friday, my dad was having issues with a prescription, so he wanted me to take him to the doctor’s office to get it fixed. He likes to do things face to face, as opposed to me, who likes to do things over the phone, on the fax, by email, internet, etc. Such polar opposites! So, we went to the doctor, then to Walmart to drop off his new prescription, then over to see Elizabeth and her new house. We visited a while there, then went back and picked up his medicine.

Tim decided not to play golf Friday night, so we had date night! We went to one of our favorites, Krilakis. We splurged and had an appetizer of pita mozz, then each had a gyro. Tim gets his with fries, I get mine with a Greek salad and then we share with each other 🙂 We were so stuffed that we didn’t have baklava for dessert, or go anywhere for sweets afterward. After dinner, we went to Best Buy and Sam’s to price tv’s. I finally gave Tim the go-ahead to get a bigger tv. Our 42″ plasma was fine with me, but he has been wanting a bigger tv for a while now. Our receiver is still being repaired, and we hope it is fixed and sent back soon… definitely need all this stuff in time for football season!

Saturday was golf day for Tim. He played twice, once at 7:30 in the morning and again at 3:30 in the afternoon. I made a big trip to Kroger Saturday morning, and got home around lunch. Not long after, in between his two golf sessions, Tim managed to swing thru Chick-Fil-A and pick us up lunch, which we wolfed down before heading to Sam’s to buy this:

I helped him get it inside, he took the old plasma off the mounting bracket, hung the new Samsung 60″ LED SmartTV one up, and then took off for the golf course 🙂 Leaving me to do the setup on the tv and start to learn how to use it. He still hasn’t gotten all the peripherals hooked up (receiver is in shop, blu-ray not hooked up, dvd burner not hooked up, Apple TV not hooked up, Wii not hooked up), but he will hopefully get to them soon. It’s big and it has a great picture! Saturday night, we watched an old movie I had recorded on the DVR, Mr and Mrs. Smith. Good action one 🙂

Sunday was church (current series: Recreate, our pastor still on sabbatical till mid August) and then brunch at Corner Bakery. I had the trio with soup (asparagus soup, caesar salad and fruit) and Tim had the BBLT (double bacon on a BLT). We went to Lowe’s after that to buy a new weed eater. This seems to be the season of buying! First my stove, then his tv, now the needed weed eater. He was cutting the grass and weed eating a few days ago and said his weed eater was not working right. He’s fixed it before, replacing hoses and different stuff, but it was time for a new one. I think the old one was 8 or more years old, so time for a replacement. He played golf again Sunday afternoon. I made homemade pizza and a new recipe for hot cocoa ice cream for supper:

Sunday night, Gail flew in late from Texas and stayed with us. Luckily, Tim was up since he had to work Sunday night. I tried to stay up, was reading, and got so sleepy, I didn’t make it. Sorry I missed seeing Gail in and seeing her reaction to the new tv 🙂 Monday morning (today), we got up and got dressed and picked up Fred mid morning for two doctor appointment. He went to see his retina doctor in the AM and the pulmonology doctor at 1 PM. We picked up Chick Fil A and ate lunch at his assisted living place after we had finished. He has to go back to the retina doctor in another month, for another shot in his eye. :shiver: I can never watch!

Ok, I think that catches me up. Going to try to catch up on cleaning, laundry and stuff in the next couple of days, and hope I don’t have to take my dad to the doctor again. Four appointments in three days, I’m ready for a break!

My first cucumber!

We planted a cucumber vine last year, but Beau peed on it and half dug it up, so it never grew and never produced anything. Last year, we had one tomato plant that Tim got several tomatoes off of, one jalapeno plant and my herbs. This year, we have one tomato plant (he has two so far), this cucumber vine, a banana pepper plant (2 or 3 and counting) and he just discovered last year’s jalapeno plant behind the fence, growing in an old pot! I have now officially killed my dill plant and my basil plant is on its last legs. The oregano, rosemary, thyme, and chives are doing well, and the parsley is trying to hang on. We don’t do much, but it’s always nice to get a little something out of the edible things we plant!

I think I’ve been blogging for about eight years, give or take. Granted, lately blogging has been sporadic at best. When I first started, I blogged every day. Then when I backed off that, I blogged regularly, capturing most of what was going on in our daily lives. These days, I do good to not go more than 3 months without a post. I’ve gone nearly a year or so, I think, before I picked it back up. However, I do seem to pick it back up.

The other side of that coin is all of the blogs out there that I have been reading, some of them for 8 years. When Google Reader first came out, I jumped on it and really loved it. When they announced earlier this year that Google was discontinuing its Reader service, I was sorta bummed. I *thought* I researched it well and found a couple of good replacements. One was a Mac App called Cappuccino. It worked great and I loved it – until Google discontinued Reader on June 30. Then, Cappuccino stopped working completely. I was devastated. Luckily, I had a backup in an app called Feedly. I had set it up on both my Mac and my iPad. I mostly read blogs from my laptop, but I thought it was setup. And it was, but I was not good about updating it or using it very often. I still had Cappuccino which I much preferred. But I didn’t research that app enough and they had no path to migration once Google Reader was gone. I messed up, big time. And when I started using Feedly, I got errors. I contacted their support and expected to get a canned response or not a response for a while, since they were probably migrating millions of users from Google Reader.

However – I was totally surprised! Feedly answered me almost immediately, and I traded emails with a couple of people who were professional, helpful, responsive and overall, truly fantastic. They told me that I fell into a small window of people who had set it up, but then not checked or updated, and they were working on a fix. I didn’t have a lot of hope for that happening for a while. They also said they were updating their app, and waiting on Apple to approve it. To my surprise, the fix was rolled out the next morning (after I had contacted them at 7 PM one night). It worked flawlessly, and I was up and running on my laptop. The app took a few more days (which I am sure is on Apple’s side) and when it was rolled out, the errors disappeared and it worked perfect as well. It syncs to the Feedly cloud and when I read a blog post on one platform, it knows on the other. Needless to say, I’m very happy. Feedly seems to be a great app and very responsive to its customers. I’m a happy camper now that I’ve switched! I’ve adapted to their format and actually really like it now.

😀

Yesterday was a good day in the kitchen. I got two items checked off of my culinary bucket list. “Culinary bucket list”, what is she talking about? I know, probably no one else on the planet has that type of nerdy, foodie bucket list but me! But, I’ve discovered as I’ve gotten older that there are a lot of things I want to try to do or make in the kitchen, and so I’m trying to make a practice of doing some from time to time. And yes, I’m OCD enough that I actually have a list. I have one in my head, and I have another in a text document, where I actually write them down, and then a date by them when I finally knock one off my list. Last year, a couple of the ones that got marked off the list were make hummus and make tortillas from scratch.

Yesterday, I got two more accomplished – cut a fresh pineapple and make a 2 layer cake from scratch (with frosting from scratch). Now, granted, these are probably nothing to most people. But they are both something I’ve never done and was rather proud of myself for doing 😀

The pineapple should have been one I did years ago. I *love* pineapple but Tim doesn’t like it (although to be fair, he’s gotten better the longer we’re married. He doesn’t like CANNED pineapple, but he will now eat a bit of the fresh). I always thought they were hard to cut, but it totally was not. I do have to get better at cutting and coring, but I am still happy that I now have a delicious sweet pineapple cut up in the fridge to snack on. I found pineapples on sale this week at Kroger for 99 cents, so I grabbed one. I hope they are on sale again soon, I think most of the time the darn things are more like 3.00 or 3.50.

Second, I have made lots of cakes from scratch. But they are always sheet cakes, and they are often what I call “poke” cakes. You poke holes and pour something on top (I’ve done lemonade cakes, honey bun cakes, strawberry cakes, etc that fit this category). But, whenever I’ve made a layer cake, I always used a box mix. I found a recipe online and made a yellow cake. I got out my layer pans, which I have rarely, if ever, used and discovered this:

Can you see what I never noticed? I bought these pans at either Marshalls or TJ Maxx, and probably at separate times. I’m all about saving a buck, you know. And apparently, I didn’t realize they were a tad different, one is darker than the other one. So, the cake layers were not quite even.

Anyhoo…. It was good, but a little dry. I think I’m still having trouble adapting to the new oven – this one cooks hotter, better, faster and so I’m going to have to start adjusting my recipes to cook at either a lower temperature, a less time, or maybe even both. The cake was still good, don’t get me wrong, but I think it was a little overdone. The frosting was good, but I didn’t have the right kind of chocolate, so I used what I had on hand. So it wasn’t quite as dark and chocolate-y as I would have liked. All of that said, I’m still shoving this cake into my mouth!

The long holiday weekend is history, and it’s back to a normal schedule. Although our holiday wasn’t all that spectacular. In fact, it was very normal and uneventful. We went on Thursday (July 4th) to Tim’s Aunt Becky’s house, as we always do. She is setup great for a big get-together (probably 70 people or more), and we always have a great time. We took my dad and he had fun. He enjoys getting out and seeing people. I tried to get us out in a timely manner, but Tim was visiting with cousins and other family members, so we didn’t leave until after 3. That put us back a little late for him going to the golf course. So, he hit balls behind the fence for a while and we watched tv. He made up for missing playing on Thursday by playing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

He had to work on Friday, but they cut them loose a little early (4 PM, which we found hilarious, since Tim works 7-4 this time of year anyway), so he went to play. I cooked fish and roasted veggies, and we tried to eat healthy. Which was a good plan, since we ate out, and badly, the rest of the weekend. Saturday morning, we ran errands, to Lowes and Academy, then stopped and picked up burgers at Dairy Queen on the way home (Tim’s choice, obviously). He played golf till dark and ate chicken santa fe when he got home (one of my oldest and most favorite recipes to throw together). Sunday, we went to church. Our pastor is on a 6 week sabbatical, but they did start a new series in his absence, Recreate. Yesterday’s sermon was about the Sabbath and keeping it holy, a very good message. We went to brunch at Waffle House (again, Tim’s choice, obviously) and then to look at a few houses close to Tim’s golf course. We couldn’t find any in our price range that we liked. No surprise there. After that, Tim left to play golf at The Refuge and I went to Kroger for groceries. I keep meaning to go over to FreshWay produce or maybe the farmer’s market, but keep just hitting the grocery store instead. I did buy two new things, new to me, a fresh pineapple and an eggplant. I’ve never cut a whole pineapple, I always wimp out and buy one already cut up. And I’ve had eggplant out (parmesan, in Italian restaurants), but never bought one and tried to cook it before. I need to get busy Googling ideas for how to cut and cook the darn thing! 🙂

I’ve been a TV-aholic most of my life. Lately is no exception. We keep our DVR humming most all year long, recording shows and movies. We’re still watching old favorites like Survivor and NCIS, and we’ve picked up new shows along the way, like Person of Interest and Elementary.

There are actually a fair amount of shows we watch in the summer now, since USA, TNT and other networks are coming out with off-season type shows. Some of the ones we are watching this summer include:

Falling Skies (icky aliens)
Major Crimes (I LOVE Mary McDonnell)
Continuum (a new favorite on SyFy)
Under the Dome (trying it out, not sure at this point)
Rizzoli & Isles (I like both of the lead characters and actresses)
Burn Notice (final season, thank goodness)
Motive (still not sure of this one either)
Crossing Lines (Tim likes this more than me)
Covert Affairs (when it comes back in a couple of weeks)
and our new favorite, King and Maxwell

Tim has some he watches (Suits, Graceland, etc) and I have some I watch (Masterchef, which I love! and other cooking and daytime shows).

We’ve seen 3 movies in the theater so far this summer: Ironman 3, Star Trek into Darkness and Man of Steel. I’ve liked all 3, but of course, my favorite by far was Trek into Darkness. There’s a few more coming out that I’d be ok with seeing, but I’m more likely to want to wait and get them on DVD or a pay channel. We’ve got a lot of premium channels right now, since Tim changed our bundle with the cable company. I’m recording a lot on the DVR for us to watch the rest of the summer. Which is a good thing, since…

Our receiver went out and Tim had to mail it in to be repaired. Boo. Hiss. It’s the new fancy Internet Onkyo receiver Tim bought a couple of years ago. It’s at the end of the warranty, but the good news is that a) it was still under warranty and b) even if it wasn’t, Tim had bought an extended warranty! We FedEx’d it last weekend and it’s been received at the repair place in Minnesota or somewhere up north. Not sure how long it will take to be repaired or replaced. In the mean time, we can’t watch DVD’s or Blu-Rays without him rewiring everything, so we’re just not going to pop in discs for the time being. The only downside to that – all of my Harry Potter movies are on Blu-Ray. So sad 🙁

Luckily, we have plenty of TV watching to keep us busy. And with Tim playing golf most every day until nearly 9 PM, we don’t have a lot of time in the evenings to catch up on the DVR. So, it’s pretty full these days 🙂