Exceedingly Mundane

Well, Friday turned out too busy to even find time after lunch to do any blogging. I ended up going shopping all afternoon, even though I didn’t feel great. My throat is still a bit scratchy and I just seem generally weary for some reason. Must be our modified sleeping schedule. Anyway, I knew that time was running out to find an Easter dress, so I was on a mission! I had several other stops I wanted to make. I hope Tim got paid yesterday, because I ended up spending a lot of money!

I had to go to the tax assessor’s office first and get the tag renewed on my car. Then I hit Target and bought some more red Kitchenaid silicone bakeware. Tim had given me a set for my birthday and I found more at Target, so I got another piece. I also bought more of their cherry limeade bottled stuff, sugar free, caffeine free, calorie free. 😀 And a few other assorted items. Then, I headed to Bed, Bath and Beyond with a coupon in hand, to get another Yankee candle. I LOVE those things. They smell so good. The scent of the month is Clean Cotton, which I love. They were already on sale there, so with the coupon, I saved almost half off the original price! 🙂

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Well, Tim didn’t do the last set of code changes last night with work. They had some other problems/issues at work, and he said that they postponed it till Tuesday night. He goes on-call today, for two weeks, so he would be doing that call anyway, I guess.

Tim watched some basketball last night, started a new book (The Broker by Grisham), and took a “ranger nap” or two on the couch. I read my book (The Guardian) and napped some, too. We were both really tired. My throat is starting to hurt and feel scratchy, so I didn’t feel all that great. Not much else going on!

Geez, I’m cold this morning. Don’t know what it is. I just went and fixed myself a cappucino to try to warm up. It’s cold and dreary outside, but I’ve got the heat running in the house and I’m still cold.

Not a lot going on yet…. I will post a meme or two later. Jeremy has already left for the studio. We had a great visit with him, and just wished 1) that he could have stayed longer and 2) that Kathryn had been able to come with him. Maybe next time! He played a couple of the tracks from the new CD that they are mixing this week. We really liked the two that he played, and are looking forward to the new CD. Jeremy said the tracks should be up on their website for downloading, so I can’t wait for that! I’ll post the link as soon we get it, so others can go download them too, and enjoy them. 🙂

OK, off to drink the rest of my cappucino and hopefully warm up. Happy St Patricks Day everyone! Hope you all have some green on! That’s the poll on the homepage of Hambones today, are you wearing green?!

Sitting here watching TV with Tim and Jeremy, it don’t get much better than that! 🙂

Let’s see, not a big blogging-event kind of day overall, but what the heck, I don’t usually have much to blog about anyway! 😀

We slept in a little late today, as Tim got up and worked last night starting at 1 AM. Things went well with their code project though, so that was really good. Today was a dreary day, very cloudy and grey and actually pretty cold. Rained and misted a bit too. Not a great day to get out and about, so I stayed home. Got a lot of misc chores and things done around the house. Jeremy got here about 5 PM and had supper with us (pork chops, peas, green beans and roasted potatoes), and then we watched a bunch of TV. Poor Jeremy, they were all shows that he doesn’t normally watch, so he had to suffer through all of them!

Not much else going on, hope everyone out there had a great day! 🙂

Well, today turned out to be a busy day. I had planned to do many things, some of which got done, and others got pushed to the back burner in favor of what Tim wanted to do. 😮

It rained all afternoon and evening, so no walking. Tim surprised me and came home pretty early this afternoon. He has to work tonight starting at 1 AM, although he has already starting moving some files now, at 10 PM, in preparation for the 11 PM project. His main stuff starts at 1 AM. Poor baby, it’s gonna be a long night!

He wanted to get the wallpaper up, since he came home early. He painted on the ShieldZ stuff under where the border will go, then took a nap while it was drying. After a power ranger thingie, he was up and raring to go. I, on the other hand, already had projects and regular chores in mind. I took out all of the cookware from one of my cabinets (the old stuff), ripped up the old contact paper, cleaned everything good, and put down new non-adhesive gripper paper stuff. I washed all my new Calphalon and put it all up, and boxed up the old stuff for a garage sale. Supper was a new recipe, that I need to go type up and add to the recipe database on Hambones. I was ready after supper to wind down and watch my shows (3 tonight), but SuperSlaveDriver Tim was raring to get the wallpaper border up. It’s 10:20 PM and we have just finished. Geez, I had wanted to stop about 3 hours ago! Oh well, it’s up now and looks like this (except no bare spots now!):

Got a ton of stuff to do tomorrow, that didn’t get done today, and we’re looking forward to seeing Jeremy. We’re so glad he’s getting to come, and I just wish he could stay longer.

I hope the rain stops by in the morning. It’s awful soggy in that mud pit of a backyard 😈

Poor Tim has to work again Thursday night, hopefully this is the last one. Then he goes on-call Friday morning! 😀

Well, nothing really blog-worthy today to note. Not every day can be action-packed, you know! 😀

I ran some errands this afternoon. Took one of my library books back, and checked on the one I put on hold, the next in the Stephanie Plum series (called Three to Get Deadly). It won’t be in till 3/23, unless the person brings it back early. Hope they read fast! Then, I dropped off “Shall We Dance” at Blockbuster and made a special trip inside to get my punch card punched, for bringing the movie back before the due date. They are running a promotion right now for March Madness, for free drinks and popcorn, then for a free movie rental after so many punches. I’m all for free stuff, so it was worth my extra couple of minutes to go inside and have it punched. However, either other people don’t know about this (maybe they didn’t offer them a card when they checked out), or else they just don’t want to bother with it. Because there was one person there dropping off movies, outside, when I pulled up, and then another guy in a tie dropping off movies when I was leaving. No one else went inside to get their card punched. Cheapie me did though!

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Pretty spring afternoon translated into a great time to go geocaching, at least for us! The sun was out, the birds were singing, the sky was blue and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. At least until about 5:30. By 6:00 PM or so, it was pouring rain and hailing. We haven’t ventured outside to see if the truck sustained any hail damage yet.

I digress. We went geocaching this afternoon! Great day for it and we had a blast. We did Tim’s kind of geocaches – stomping through woods, underbrush, digging around in the mud and looking for ammo boxes. 🙂 Nah, only one was really like that. We were 3 for 3 today, good afternoon.

Here’s Tim on the way to the first one, near Liberty Park in Madison, and on the back side of where they are building our new Lowes:

This one was very well concealed. Green ammo can sorta spray painted a rust color so it blended right in with its surroundings. One of the more difficult kinds to find!

And its contents (nothing special, we didn’t swap any items out):

After this one, we found two more, and stopped at a couple of different spots at the Rez. One time with food, from Sonic, and the other to check out the fishing at the Spillway:

All in all, a busy and fun afternoon!

We rented another chick flick for me (pooooooor Tim 🙂 ) tonight during the hailstorm. We just finished “Shall We Dance”, which predictably, I enjoyed! You’ll have to ask Tim if he liked it. I think he did, but I don’t think he will admit it in a thousand years! 😀

Here’s what is left from our late lunch this afternoon on the deck….

We had a good day today. Got a lot done around here, including all the border down in the bathroom. We also got several errands run. We went to Kohl’s and got the free Dutch oven that was supposed to come with my set of Calphalon that Tim bought me for our anniversary. It was advertised in the ad from last Sunday’s paper, but nothing in the store, no ad, no sign, nothing. Good thing I had kept the ad! We also dropped off some old computer equipment at Goodwill.

We checked out the Ridgeland Multi-Purpose Trail late this afternoon. Walked at a really good pace for about 40-45 minutes. I logged right at 5000 steps on my pedometer (4990 to be exact). It’s really pretty, the part we walked bordered the Natchez Trace so it was wooded with lots of birds, squirrels and trees to keep us occupied.

After we finished walking, we stopped by Tim’s office to pick up his coffee cup. It hasn’t been run through the dishwasher in a couple of weeks, ick-o! I had also been wanting to go for several months, since Tim had moved into a new office with Michael. They share a really nice office! 🙂

We just got back from Blockbuster. I got some free rental coupons in the mail, to use over the next 3 months. Those are in addition to the ones I earned at erewards.com. I got 6 there after answering numerous surveys over the last few months. It’s so nice to get something free once in a while. Tonight we rented Manchurian Candidate, based on Gail’s recommendation. Will post a review after we watch it, or rather, add our comments to the review that Gail already entered on Hambones.

I have a new friend. It used to be a not-so-welcome friend. Read this blog entry to see how I felt about it before. Then, the rat made its presence known. This rat.

So, now a cat is definitely higher on the list than a rat. My new friend. Please, continue to come every day to my backyard, lounge in my flower beds, relax under my glider, preen on the deck stairs, even sit in the patio chair like you did the other morning. Just, PLEASE, catch that rat, or rats. Please.

Just a quick note about our day. We met Tim’s parents, brother Terry and my dad this morning at Harbor Freight. Tim, Terry and Linda and Mitchell bought a bunch of toys there. We all went to eat (and ate WAY too much food) at Ryan’s for lunch. Note to self – Stay away from all-you-can-eat buffets. ACK! Daddy left going to Indianola, and we went shopping for the rest of the afternoon at Lowe’s and Walmart with Tim’s folks and brother. Stopped for gas (going up, up, up here) and then a movie on the way home. By the time we got in, Tim was completely wiped out. Has taken some Tylenol, as he says his fever is back, and has been laying on the couch since we got home.

We had a message on the answering machine from Kathryn, saying that they were on their way to MS from Charlotte, for David’s baptism tomorrow. We had already wanted to go, as Dad went up, and David and Eliz were home from MC, but Tim is feeling so bad, he had already said he would not be able to make the trip. With Kathryn and Jeremy coming home, it makes it so much harder not to be able to go. We hate not being able to see everyone and being there for David. I hope everyone understands that we’d come if we could. But with the way Tim is feeling, and that this is his one chance to get a bit of rest before his week from you-know-where starts at work (well, 2-3 weeks he says this project is going to take), we just can’t make it. Tim is not getting better, and if he doesn’t get some rest soon, he’s going to get a lot worse. He hides it well, some people might not even realize he’s sick, because he’s tough, but I know better and I see a lot more than other people do. Anyway, I digress. We hate not being able to go, but we’re not going to be able to make it. I hate not being able to see everyone, and not seeing David be baptized.

Well, we went shopping and out to eat dinner tonight. Tim is still not feeling well (and voluntarily taking Tylenol, so I know he feels bad), and was pretty wiped out by the time we finally got home. I, however, had a really good time!

We went to the new Lowe’s out on Lakeland. Very nice store. Big, too. I think it’s bigger than the one in Hattiesburg, and I can only hope that ours here in Madison that they are building will be that big, or bigger. We found lots of things in there we liked! Including a wallpaper border for our bathroom. We both liked it a lot better than the one we had bought at Home Depot a couple of weekends ago. We shopped at Lowe’s a little while, and then we went to eat Mexican at El Torero at Parkway. Very good place, we used to eat there a lot more before we got our 2 Mexican places in Madison. Tim had his usual (carne asada) and I tried the shrimp quesadillas, which were delicious. After we ate, we went to the new Kohl’s. I like this store! I had never been in one and wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I can see myself spending a lot of money in there! I didn’t get a chance to look through the clothes much, so I’m planning on going back next week or the next and doing more shopping. We mostly concentrated on the home interior stuff, and bought a new shower curtain and towels to go with the new border. Between what we bought tonight, and what I had bought a week or so ago at Linens N Things, I think we have what we want now for our bathroom. We still have to take down the old border and put up this new border, and of course, I have things to return to 3 or 4 stores, but I think we’re “good to go” now. 🙂

Poor Tim, he is still not feeling well and is really wiped out. I hope he gets to feeling better soon. No rest for the weary though. Both his parents (Linda and Mitchell) and my dad (Fred) are all coming tomorrow. We’re going to meet them early, out at Harbor Freight, in Pearl. Like I told Tim, going to Harbor Freight ranks right up there with a trip to the dentist for a root canal, or a trip to the gynecologist, for me. Oh joy, I can hardly wait! 🙂

Goodnight computer. Goodnight Internet. Goodnight Hambones.

Well, Tim is home sick today. That happens even less frequently than a blue moon. I can remember maybe one other time in the last 8 years or so that Tim has stayed home from work sick. Poor baby. He says he feels better now (3:30 PM) than he did this morning, so that’s a good sign. I hope he doesn’t have or get this crud that is going around. Gail and Don have had it, and Tim says just about everybody at work has had it. I don’t want it. Please, go away and do not visit our home.

Been busy today. Went and got my hair cut, then ran some errands. I went to Michaels with my obligatory coupon but couldn’t find a single thing that I wanted to spend money on. Gee, I sure wish we would get another craft chain store (oh, Hobby Lobby, oh Joann’s, oh AC Moore, where are you??). It would be so great if one would open up somewhere, like maybe out Lakeland Drive, where everything else is opening up. I saw in the paper yesterday that the new Kohl’s had opened early. Gotta go check that store and the new Lowe’s, which also opened yesterday, out this weekend. Maybe Friday night, if not then, then either Saturday or Sunday.

I digress. I do that a lot!

I also made a big run to Sam’s. Spent tons of money. Got large copious amounts of just a few things. Renewed our membership for another year. 35 bucks, cha-ching. Stopped and picked up Sonic for Tim on the way home for lunch. I was trying so hard to be good. I wanted a burger or chicken sandwich. With Fries. Or Tots. Or Onion Rings. And a cherry limeade. I was good and got a salad. That’s it. Argh, it was just OKAY.

Need to run more errands, but decided to save them for another day. So, I’m catching up on the trivia on hambones, emails, blog surfing, point earning, and various household chores (laundry, dishwasher, cleaning up), etc, for the remainder of the afternoon. We will have a nice dinner and then settle in to watch Lost and Alias. I can’t wait! We’ll have to tape the Idol results show. It always comes in second to Lost.

Yesterday was another productive day. In addition to regular chores around here, we also got a lot of things marked off the to-do list. I also took some time and worked with this blogging software and some of the templates and things. Added some new counters to my sidebar, things like that.

We defrosted the outside freezer. Tim changed the oil in Clyde, rotated the tires, and also cleaned out the inside (washed mats and vacuumed carpet). Clyde needed a good cleaning and getting rid of the mud leftover from deer and duck hunting seasons. I did some more pruning and pulling of weeds in some of the flower beds. Did regular laundry as well as the special laundry of washing his hunting clothes and putting them up for the season (he has special “stuff” to wash all of that with). We also caught up on all of our TV shows that we had taped from the week before. Tim ended up having to work late 3 nights, so that cut into our time to watch stuff that we taped (often times, we have two shows on at the same time, different channels, so we watch one and tape one). Got all caught up on those. And, Tim was sweet and didn’t make me cook him anything to eat – he ran to Sonic and got us some junk food! 🙂

Well, last night was a long night, as expected. I made a severe error in judgement earlier in the night, that I failed to mention on my previous blog posting. Dork. I had a cup of coffee with our dessert (almond cookies) at Golden Dragon. One small cup. That was enough to keep me awake for another 6 or 7 hours. ARGH. I know better. I made the mistake last fall of having a capuccino at Cups one night around suppertime and was still up at 2 or 3 AM. I swore I would never do that again, and what did I do last night? Did it again.

Anyway, Tim worked till about 1:30 or 2:00 AM, and I stayed up reading my book the whole time. We slept late, needless to say, and got up and had breakfast (and coffee!!). I just finished my book (The Mulberry Tree), and Tim finished his last night (The Tristan Betrayal), so it will be time for new book selections soon. YEAH!

Tim has been watching an old movie on AMC for the last hour and a half and I’ve been making more changes to my blog. I added some new counters at the bottom of the sidebar, and also changed the default template (look) to the blog. I love the pink lillies, don’t get me wrong, but was ready for something new. I am going to scour the Internet for more (free!) pre-defined templates today, or next week, so look for more choices soon. One day, I might get brave and try to write my own CSS, but not any time soon. It’s enough for me to keep the template file modified. I can just use what’s there and change (cut and paste), without having to learn CSS code. Anyway, maybe one day. For now, I’m happy to download free ones that other people have designed. They’re not unique, but heck, they are free and painless!!!

In the mean time, I better get outside. It’s a work day around here! 🙂 No rest for the weary. Tim is going to change the oil in Clyde and he’s agreed (reluctantly) to help me defrost the outside freezer. I hate doing that. When he came home with that freezer on the back of the Splash, with Fred as his co-pilot, I told them to turn around and take it back to Sears. It was the right height, the right size, but it was not frost-free. I told him I did not want one that had to be manually defrosted. Tim was like, it’s no big deal, I will help you with it. So, to this day, years later, I am still holding him to his word. I think he loathes doing it as much as I do. 😈 But, when it gets a couple of inches of ice on the shelves, we finally have to break down and defrost the darn thing. Oh, Joy.

Today I’ve been a busy bee. Really too busy to blog about what I did and how busy I was, and how much I had on my “to-do” list, and how much of it I didn’t get done (argh, irritates me) and how much of it I did get done. 🙂 The day sure goes by a lot faster though!!

We got up early and went walking this morning. Then, got ready and I followed Tim to the dealership where we dropped off the car for some work. We had gotten two recall type notices in the mail, probably before Christmas, of parts that needed to be replaced that were safety or hazard issues. One was some kind of engine coolant leak and I think the other was a fuel pressure regulator that had to be replaced. I took Tim to work, even though I kept insisting to him that I wasn’t going anywhere and didn’t need a vehicle. I guess he thought I might want to get out later, unplanned. 😛 Anyway, then I got home and had some chores to do. Talked to parental unit on phone, sibling unit on phone. Worked on some stuff on the website, although I didn’t get to but one or two items on my list (I have at least 4 other things I want or need to do on here, as well as other computer work to do). Worked on taxes more, and got things filed and printed and saved. Working on mailing the state return. Not enough refund there to worry about paying the e-file fee! Put some chicken in the crockpot for one of our favorites – garlic and brown sugar chicken. More cleaning, laundry, mopping, etc. Tim called before 4 PM for me to come pick him up and take him back to the dealership. Car was fine, but of course, they “found” several other things that needed to be fixed. No way, not there. We will take the car soon, maybe tomorrow, to have the tires rotated and balanced. Tim purchased some kind of extended plan when we got new tires on the Bonneville last year, where we get free rotation, and maybe free balancing too. Not sure about the balance though, they may try to stick us for that!!

We walked again tonight after we got back from the car stuff. Oh, my aching legs! After the work in the yard on Saturday afternoon, I was already really stiff and sore. Now, we’ve walked 6 miles in 24 hours, so they are feeling it.

We just had supper and I’m about to go and iron his clothes for work (on the list, but didn’t get done earlier, along with approximately 9 other items that will have to wait till tomorrow). Hopefully, I can finish before our round of shows starts at 7 PM. We’ll watch Idol and House tonight, and tape NCIS. We still haven’t watched our tape of 7th Heaven from last night. I voted several times last night for my Idol guy though. We won’t get the results till tomorrow night, which I will have to tape, since I AIN’T missing Lost and Alias 🙂

More later, tonight or tomorrow… hopefully! Still trying to blog some every day, or most every day. Will skip the weekends sooner or later, I’m sure. Anyone out there actually reading these? Yoo-hooooooo, anybody home?!!! 🙄