Exceedingly Mundane

Wow, today was soooo busy! Had the birthday party for my dad, lots of family here to visit, lots of food here to eat, lots of good times (hopefully) had by all. Will try to blog tomorrow about it, and catch up!

Well, today was as busy as I thought it would be. Suzie slept late this morning, so I had some quiet time on the computer to blog here and also do some blog-surfing. 🙂 We thought Dad would be here in time for lunch, but he didn’t make it so we ate without him (Suzie likes my Friday lunch splurge – veggie corn dogs) 😀 Dad got here a little before 2:00 and we visited, then headed out on errands. Suzie needed to stop and pick up something she forgot to pack at McRae’s, then we all headed to Sam’s. We had originally planned on having steaks for the birthday bbq tomorrow, but those plans changed. We checked on getting a whole ribeye in Sam’s, but they were $125.00 for the whole thing and I just couldn’t see paying that. So we opted for ribs and chicken instead. We also got some salad mix, a vegetable tray, 2 big tubs of potato salad, some french bread, a big container of M&M cookies and a huge Happy Birthday cake. I hope it’s all good and everyone enjoys it!

After the shopping spree, we hung out till Tim got home. Dad decided to run get some crawfish and got back a few minutes before Tim got in. We had crawfish as an appetizer before going out to eat supper. Suzie wanted to eat some Chinese, so we all went to King Buffet and promptly pigged out way too much. Now, we’re all sitting in the den feeling stuffed and full of MSG. 🙂 I think we’re going to watch Numbers on tv then probably head off and get some sleep. Have quite a few things to do in the morning before the rest of the troops arrive for the bbq. We’re really looking forward to seeing everyone, especially Liz, Chris and David. 😛

Friday Fun meme, from this site:

1. Do have bird feeders at your home? Yes, two, which I very much enjoy watching of late! 🙂

2. What kinds of birds live in your area? Sparrows, finches, chickadees, cardinals, black birds, blue jays, doves

3. Have you ever had a close encounter with a bird (been dive-bombed, etc.!)? Not really, but we have scared a many of them by opening the back door!

4. If you had to pick a favorite bird, what would it be? Cardinals

Appetizer
Which keys do you have on your key chain? House, car, Tim’s truck

Soup
What is the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done? I don’t do anything spontaneously, unless Tim forces me to!

Salad
Who is the best cook in your family? Me, I think, but then I’m a bit conceited about it, I think I cook pretty well 🙂

Main Course
If you were to write a “how-to” book, what would the title be? Hmm, tough one, I’m not creative at all and I have no idea.

Dessert
Name a recent fad you’ve tried. Blogging. Loving it so far! 🙂

Name your favorite brands for the following products:

1. Cola: Dr Pepper or Vanilla Coke

2. Sneakers: Asics

3. Hair care: Pantene

4. Small electronics: hmm, we have all kinds of brands, all sizes. Mitsubishi for TV’s, Motorola for cell phones, I like Sony products

5. Automobile: Ford

Just a quick update… Suzie’s flight was right on time and we picked her up last night at the airport. We all watched Survivor when we got back and settled. Sorry to see Stephanie go. We have two other shows we taped (CSI and Without a Trace) that we’ll have to watch Sunday or next week. Too much else going on!

Today is going to be busy. Dad should be here soon, and we need to go get all of the food for the cookout tomorrow. We won’t be taking my car though. 🙁 Please note – never buy a Pontiac. Another window “went out” on us last night. The driver’s window was rolled down over a year ago and the whole mechanism broke and had to be replaced. The part alone is like $350 bucks (something about a regulator, Tim says). Luckily, Tim is a great mechanic and can do the work himself, so that saves us another 3-400 on labor. He took the door panel off last night and we just have to get the part and find time for him to install it. In the mean time, I don’t want to drive around with the window down, and especially if it looks like rain. So, when Fred gets here, I’m going to ask if we can use his car for all of our errands today.

Not sure if I’ll have time to blog any more today, but I might do a meme or two really quick. 😀 We’ll be gone most of the afternoon, then probably all go out to eat supper tonight. I have been hungry for crawfish and I think Suzie would like some shrimp, so I’m thinking we may head to Sal and Phil’s for dinner tonight. Yum-ola!!!

I’ve gotten this before, but thought it was worth posting when I got it again, so here we go:

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930’s 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and didn’t get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

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I’ll be spending a bit more time today getting things ready – ready for Suzie who flies in tonight, ready for Dad who will drive up tomorrow – and whose birthday is actually today – Happy Birthday Daddy! 🙂 I will be trying to finish getting the house marginally clean for everyone to be here, and for the cookout on Saturday. I struggle every single time that we have anyone over – the dichotomy of wanting my house to be sparkling clean, but the realization that it will probably be dirtier and more “tracked up” (as my mom would have said) after everyone leaves, and then it will require even more cleaning than it did beforehand. It’s just so hard for someone like me (Mrs Monk as Tim likes to call me) to not have everything “just so” before people come over. Even family and close friends. I’m just that way. Anal. OCD. Whatever you want to call it. 🙂 I’ve been working on it through the years, since we got married and started having more “family get-togethers” and although I think I’ve made some decent strides, I imagine most people would not agree with me. 🙂

I will also be finishing my list of things to pick up tomorrow. After quite a bit of debate and thought, we’ve decided to just go with the “pick it up and grill it” route of party planning. I’m going to go tomorrow and just buy a bunch of food, most of it already made and ready, and a whole ribeye and a cake (I know, GASP, it should be homemade, but we ain’t going there this time) for the party on Saturday. Tim will grill the steaks, and I can easily fix baked potatoes, salad, rolls and maybe a veggie or veggie tray for everyone. We’re shooting for tastes good, but really casual. I hope we hit our mark 🙂

I’m starting to see some really good previews for summer movies. I’ve been anxiously awaiting (as evidenced by the counter on the side of my blog) the last Star Wars movie, of course, but it looks like some other good ones are going to be coming out.

We saw a preview the other night for Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and that one, for whatever reason, didn’t appeal to me. Mr and Mrs Smith looks pretty good to me, but a big part of that could be because both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are such eye candy! You can check out a trailer for that one here. We saw a blurb about War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise, and that one looked pretty good to me. I just went and looked, and found several trailers here. Looks pretty good! We love movies like this, end of the world, fighting aliens a la Independence Day 🙂

I was just blog-surfing, and found a preview for the new Batman movie, “Batman Begins”, and after seeing this trailer, I have to say that one looks pretty good too!

So, all in all, it might be a good summer for movies. Tim loves to go to the movies. Year round, but especially in the summer when it’s hot and he can sit inside full blast AC and watch a good movie! 🙂 And I, of course, love to go with him – because he’s a great date, he will hold my hand, buy me a coke and a huge tub of popcorn. What more could a girl ask for?! 😀

A Little Background:

We live in what we consider a really nice little subdivision of smaller homes. The “front” part of the subdivision has homes in the 1800-2100 square foot range. The “back” part of the subdivision (where we live) has smaller, starter-type homes, in the 1500-1800 square foot range. When I looked here at houses 12 years ago, they were billed by my real estate agent as “patio homes”. One of the things I liked best about this subdivision was 1) easy access to the highway and all the amenties close by and 2) that there were woods and a creek behind my house and that the middle of the subdivision was divided by a lake.

The lake. It’s just a couple of big ponds really, but we call it a lake. At our little lake live any number of ducks and geese, pretty much year round. The numbers and varieties change, but on any given day, you can see a lot of Canadian geese, mallard ducks, white ducks and what I call “ugly ducks”. The mallards and geese are my favorites. We have fed them many times across the years, on our own and with our nieces and nephews, as well as neighborhood children we have “borrowed”. 🙂 The ducks and geese are very used to humans and have no qualms about coming right up to you if they think you might have bread.

We have had ducks in our front yard twice this spring, so far. Tim and I go out and feed them bread and take pictures. We have had a goose one time in 12 years venture to our front yard. We named him Chester.

About 2 or 3 years ago, something happened to one of the Canadian geese. We’re not sure what, but he has a broken wing now and can’t fly. Therefore, he’s here all the time. Sometimes he has a lot of company and sometimes he is out there all by himself. When I first began to notice him all alone, it just broke my heart. We soon realized that his wing was broken and he was stuck here. He seems to be a bit ostracized by the other geese, I guess because he can’t fly. He pretty much lives in the back yard (right on the lake) of one of our neighbors, right around the corner from us. He has a lot more ducks to keep him company than he does geese. He will venture across the road to the other side of the lake, and sometimes down around half of the lake, but he never goes very far from the yard that he “lives” at. I call him my “broken winged baby”. We see him almost every day, and on the days that I don’t see him, I worry about him. When we first noticed his wing, Tim didn’t think he would make it very long. But, here he is, at least 2 or 3 years later, maybe more, and he’s still going strong.

Click on the -More- link for a couple more pictures of him and his buddies 😀

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From this site:

Would You Rather…

1. Have J-Lo’s Bod or Nicole Kidmans?: Nichole Kidman
2. Brad Pitt or Colin Farrel?: no contest – Brad Pitt
3. Amazingly Beautiful Children or Super Smart Children?: super smart 🙂
4. A New Car or A New House?: New House
5. A Million Dollars or Your Dream Job?: Million Dollars 😀

Ooops, a couple of days late on this puppy… oh well, here we go:

I say … and you think … ?

Detachment:: detached retina
Regard:: give my regards to Broadway
Community:: neighborhood
Strike three:: you’re out
Congregation:: church
Generous:: giving
Pretention:: stuck up
Pregnant:: lucky duck
Drinking:: intoxicated
Brilliance:: shining

Take the quiz and post your results in a comment! 🙂 Shanna, maybe we should move to Texas?! 😀

I just posted the cookie recipe that I tried for the first time yesterday on Hambones. You can check it out
here

Just in case you didn’t know, you do not have to be a member or logged into Hambones to access the recipes. So if you know of someone who would like to peruse our recipe section, feel free to let them know. You don’t have to be a registered member to read recipes (but you do to submit them), to read book and movie reviews and read news. You have to be a registered user to vote in polls, submit news, see photos, post in the forums, etc. 🙂

I tried a new recipe for some cookies tonight. Tim ate one hot out of the oven and when I prompted him to rate them on a scale of 1-10, he gave them an 8.5. I give them about a 7. I’ll post them on the Hambones site tomorrow. I was able to share them with a couple of neighbors, which was nice. I’ll send the rest to work with Tim tomorrow, so that I won’t have any (well, many, I might have to keep a couple for me!) around the house for me to pig out on. If there’s anything chocolate here, I WILL eat it! 😀

We’ve had a good day. Tim is still out doing woodworking. He’s gotten a lot done today, and thankfully, even though he’s still on call, hasn’t really had to do a lot of work. He’s checked his email a couple of times and did a little IM’ing, but that’s about it. It’s been pretty today, although the wind is still a bit chilly. Odd for so late in the spring, but we’re really enjoying it.

I put out the old bird feeder, around the corner of the house in a side flower bed. I’m hoping the cardinals and red birds find it and have something to eat. The new feeder is nice, but those kinds of birds are too big to fit on it. I have had lots of finches, chickadees, sparrows and other small birds though! 🙂 Thanks to Gail, I have a nice little chart of common birds on bird feeders, and I am starting to learn which ones are which. I saw a mockingbird on the old, small feeder late today, so maybe they’ll spread the word around and the “bigger birds” can come feed on it some soon.

Better run, it will be time to watch 24 soon! 🙂