Exceedingly Mundane

I’ve been working really hard at getting back into a swing of reading books. I started reading right after the Super Bowl ended, around the first week of February, and I’ve been reading pretty much non-stop since. I have finished 16 books, and have high hopes for reading a lot more this summer, now that all of our TV shows are over till the fall. It’s a goal, but it’s also something I love to do. I have loved reading and books all of my life, it’s something that was instilled in me at a very young age, I think by my mom. I can remember growing up, I either had my nose stuck in a book or in front of the TV.

Anyway, last week I finished two more books (to bring my total to 16) – High Five by Janet Evanovich (still working my way through these numbered books), and a Year in Provence by Peter Mayle. You can read my review of “A Year in Provence” here.

Today, I dropped those two books back at the library, and got 3 more. That should keep me busy till we leave on vacation the last of June. I plan to take the new Nicholas Sparks “True Believer” with me on vacation and hope to read some. I would rather take one that I own rather than a library book out of town… just in case!

I just added the 3 new books to my sidebar. They are:
1) Three Weeks with my Brother – by Nicholas and Micah Sparks
2) Sushi for Beginners – by Marian Keyes
3) Hot Six – by Janet Evanovich (yes, I’m reading them in order, even though you don’t have to, I’m very anal about things like that).

I better get busy with these! 🙂 They are due back in 3 weeks. 🙂

Well, not much going on today to blog about. We had a nice long weekend, and now it’s time to get back into some kind of normal routine. We got up this morning and went walking at 6. Come to find out, Tim had stayed up till about 2:30 or so, working on Hambones, so needless to say, he’s probably pretty tired right about now. I went to bed at about 11:30 and I’m tired, but I’m a wimp, so… 🙂

It’s still very cloudy and grey here and it looks like it could rain at any minute. I’m sure it will wait until I head out to run errands. I’m going to run to the library and grocery shopping here in a bit, so I imagine it will come a flood about the time I wheel my cart out to the car, full of groceries. Murhpy’s Law and all. After that, it’s just a lot of picking up and cleaning. Back to the grind

Another good meme, so I gotta do it too! It’s tough being gone all weekend, lots to catch up on! 🙂

This week I’m asking you to choose a letter of the alphabet. Now list the ten items below that begin with the letter you chose….

OK, I choose the letter “T”

1. a family member – Tim
2. a movie– The Two Towers
3. a game – Trivial Pursuit
4. an automobile – Truck, as in Ford Truck, like Clyde
5. a fictional character – Theoden, King, from Lord of the Rings
6. a famous person – Tom Cruise, or Hanks 🙂
7. a food – Tiramisu
8. a household item – Telephone
9. a book – The Testament, by John Grisham
10. a song – Traveling Solder, by the Dixie Chicks (gee, that one was hard, I had to go look in my Real Player library!)

I say … and you think … ?

Crowd:: lots of people
Hamburger:: and fries
Choker:: necklace
Lights:: switch
Tinsel:: Christmas tree
Testament:: Old and New
Best part of the day:: Tim coming home
Election:: George W Bush
Clarinet:: instrument
Dead Sea:: Scrolls

Well, I’m going to catch up on a couple of memes. I know, I know, a lot of you don’t enjoy these, but I do, and as I’ve said before – it’s MY BLOG and therefore, I do the ones I like! 😀

Dining out
“The murals in restaurants are on par with the food in museums.” -Peter DeVries

1) Do you enjoy eating out and why? Oh. My. Goodness. Yes. We love to eat out, although I actually think Tim likes it more than I do, but we both love to go eat at different places. We have lots of favorites, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, BBQ, etc. Tons of places we like to go, and we like to try new places too.

2) Where is your favorite restaurant? Can’t pick just one. I might be able to narrow it down to one per category, but that would also be difficult. For Mexican, I would probably pick either Cinco de Mayo in Madison or El Torero in Flowood. For Chinese, either King Buffet in Jackson or Hong Kong Buffet in Madison (for convenience). For Japanese, I’d probably pick Little Tokyo. For Italian, it would either be Panino’s or Fratesi’s. And for BBQ, I would pick Haute Pig in Madison, but I think Tim likes the new place Ubon’s better. And the list goes on and on!

3) What are your standards for tipping? We tip 10% if the service is marginal/just ok, 15-20% if it’s good to outstanding.

4) Do you have one entree, appetizer or dessert that you specifically go out to get at a restaurant from time to time? Well, I love desserts, but when I go to an Italian place, I love, love, love to get tiramisu. I love any kind of stuffed or fried mushrooms for appetizers at any place.

5) Describe a horrific experience that you had while dining out. Well, not horrific, but memorable. We went to eat at the Cuco’s on County Line (which is no longer in business), and we sat down, and then got ready to order, and still no chips and salsa. They brought out water, but no chips. So we flagged down our waiter and asked if we could get chips and salsa, and he says “we ran out”. What kind of Mexican place runs out of chips and salsa? We were a little put out, but hey, if they ran out, they ran out. Then, we proceeded to watch other waiters walk by time and time again with chips and salsa on their serving trays, taking them to other tables. We finally flagged down another waiter to bring us chips and salsa. Another person brought out our entrees. Finally, after we had eaten and waited about 10-15 minutes on the check, our waiter finally shows up. He makes a joke about how he was out on break, he had to go take a smoke, and hoped we didn’t have to wait long. Geesh. He lies about the chips, then disappears, then jokes about it. Tim left him one penny on the table. Needless to say, the place closed down months or years later. We didn’t notice. We never went back!

Well, it looks like the remainder of our holiday weekend will be a rain-out. Or so they are saying. We drove most of the way back from New Orleans yesterday in the rain, and pulled up at home to find everything soaked, so we knew we had gotten a good rain.

Dad stopped by on his way home from Indianola to Hattiesburg yesterday afternoon after we got in, and visited with us for a few minutes. Then, after he left, we ran out to Blockbuster to rent a movie (I had one more free rental coupon good for the month of May), and then stopped by Kroger to pick up hotdogs and buns to grill out today. It rained again shortly after we got back home, and then I think it might have rained more during the night. It’s looking like more rain later today, as they are predicting 80% chance of rain for today, tonight and tomorrow. Tim had wanted to get out and work in the yard, cut the grass, and work on my back flower bed. But everything looks like a mud slide out there, so I think that is definitely out.

So far, we’re just hanging out inside, which is ok-fine by me. 🙂 I did the trivia on Hambones.org this morning, and am trying to catch up on some emails and blog surfing. Maybe we’ll watch more movies this afternoon. Tim watched “Blade Trinity” last night, but I finished reading another book and watched “Titanic” on TV, instead of watching the vampire stuff with him. I have several book and movie reviews that I need to add to Hambones later on, hopefully today or tomorrow.

Hope everyone has a great Memorial Day!

We got back from New Orleans today. Nice long weekend, and it was fun. We did basically what I blogged about before we left (you can read all about it here). Except we didn’t make it on the streetcar to tour the Garden District. We ate at Landry’s (stuffed shrimp for me, shrimp fettucine for Tim), and also at House of Blues (shrimp po-boy for me, ribs, sweet potatoes and turnip greens for Tim, then we split the chocolate walnut brownie with ice cream for dessert!). We walked down to the original Cafe Du Monde on Saturday morning and found the line to get in was about a block long, so we went to the Riverwalk and ate at the Cafe du Monde there. Inside a shopping mall, so we didn’t have the ambience, but had the same food/drink and air conditioning and a view of the river to boot! I discovered that even though I can drink our coffee at home, I can still barely get down Cafe du Monde’s original cafe au lait, unless it has a LOT of sugar added to it! Tim drank their regular black coffee, in spite of the guy warning him “our coffee is VERY strong sir”, he got a large and downed every last drop of it. It looked like tar!

We spent all day Saturday at the D-Day museum (well, between 5 and 6 hours), and finished what we had not seen a couple of summers ago. We walked along the Riverwalk towards dusk and watched a bunch of boats coming up the river. All in all, a really nice trip. We had thought we might stick around and do something today (Sunday), but it had rained early that morning and was very grey and overcast, and we were ready to get home. After checking out, we proceeded to wait nearly 1 1/2 hours for our car to be brought around from the valet service. Well, technically, we called ahead from the room about 20-30 minutes before we went down. Then, we sat in the lobby for 55 minutes, waiting on our car. Long story. Otherwise, we really liked the hotel. Great ambience and a terrific room. No view. We were on the first floor and our window view was an alley with cars and lots of dumpsters. But it was right in the middle of things, and still very quiet and peaceful at night and we really enjoyed it.

Hope everyone else had a great weekend too!

I think one of the best things about going on a vacation, or even a long weekend like we are doing this Memorial Day weekend, is getting to go shopping and buy some new things! 😀 Nothing like an excuse to buy new clothes!

I headed out to Lakeland Drive this afternoon, and stopped first at LinensNThings to get my new Yankee Candle I’ve been wanting so desperately. I had a coupon, so I splurged and got a Juicy Cherry housewarmer candle for my kitchen. It smells soooo good. I almost got a honeydew melon instead, on Gail’s advice. She bought one earlier and it really does smell good, really fresh and clean. That one may be next! I almost caved and bought another one, they were featuring the Lemon Zest ones on special, and I nearly splurged, but was good. Which was a good thing, because I left and drove to Kohl’s. Where I proceeded to buy a whole lot more than the one or two pairs of shorts I went to buy. 😆

Click the -More- link if you want to see some of the stuff I came home with! 🙂

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Well, I have a lot to blog about and not much time to sit down and blog about it. I would like to blab about the TV shows last night – the American Idol finale, the Lost 2 hour season finale and the Alias finale. Maybe later.

We got up early and went walking this morning. Tim is going to take off Friday and wants to go to New Orleans this weekend. So, we spent most of the morning looking online for hotels. We’re going to try a new one this time – the St James down in the Quarter. We’ve not stayed here before, so it will be a learning experience. We’ve stayed at the Wyndham and Hyatt before and had great stays, so hopefully this one will be as nice.

We’re going to go back to the D-Day Museum and finish going through it. We went two summers ago and didn’t see it all, but enjoyed the museum immensely. We’ll probably take in a movie at the IMAX, there is a new African safari one starting this weekend. Also, I’ve been wanting to take the St Charles streetcar down through the Garden District and we’ve not done that yet, so hopefully this trip. I know Tim wants to go back to House of Blues and eat, he loved it there when we went last time (we won’t go for the bands or music, probably go for lunch). I know that eating out in New Orleans won’t be a problem. Plenty of good places to eat. 🙂

Oh, and we’ll definitely hit Cafe du Monde at least one time, maybe more. I have only learned to “tolerate” coffee in the last year or so, since we went on vacation last summer to San Antonio. The last time we went to New Orleans, I didn’t drink coffee, couldn’t stand the taste of it, and although we went to Cafe du Monde, I ended up getting milk or water with my beignet. Not this time! 😀

We are leaving Friday morning and coming back Sunday night. I have to head out this afternoon and run some errands, then get back and do laundry before we go.

Hope you all have a great Memorial Day weekend. I will try to check in Sunday night when we get back. 😀

I always like this one, good questions! From this site:

Questions For May 24th
Fruits And Veggies!

1. What’s Your Favorite Veggie?: Probably broccoli. OOH, or mushrooms! 😀
2. Do You Have A Favorite Salad Dressing?: Honey Mustard
3. Strawberries /or/ Cherries?: Both!
4. Brown Pears /or/ Green Pears?: Green Pears
5. Celery With Cream Cheese /or/ Peanut Butter?: Neither. BLECH. I hate celery. I will eat cream cheese on anything though, and peanut butter on most things, although I love to smear it on a banana! 🙂

Odds and Ends running through my head:

1. We got up and went walking, and then Tim came back and took a nap before going to work! He got called out last night (I will be so glad when he goes off-call on Friday for another two weeks), and had to get up in the wee hours of the morning

2. Guilty indulgence – listening to my MP3 of “Since U Been Gone” over and over 😀

3. Guilty indulgence #2 – I want to go eat either a Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich or a No Pudge Chocolate Swirl cone. But I’m trying to be good and not eat either one

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Well, this week is wrapping up all of our shows. A lot of them had their season finales last week, and the rest of them are this week. We watched the 2 hour finale of ’24’ on Monday night, and I’m left bitter, wondering why we have to wait till Jan 2006 to find out what happens to Jack, and if he’s coming back. We taped the season finale of 7th Heaven, but haven’t had time to watch it yet. Last night, it was the season finale of NCIS, and it was a jaw-dropper. They had previewed that one of the NCIS agents “would not survive”, but usually it’s just to lure you in, and we hoped it was a secondary character, and not one of the main agents. Nuh-huh, no way. They had a sniper shoot Kate between the eyes in the last couple of seconds of the show. I was rather upset. Then, we watched House, and while it was good, it wasn’t earth-shattering. I do love Sela Ward though, goes back to my days when I loved the show “Sisters”, and I’m happy to see that it looks like she will be back for at least a couple of episodes next season. Then, we watched our tape of American Idol, and both agreed that while we like both Bo and Carrie and would be happy for either of them to win, that a) neither one of them sang really well, nothing outstanding and b) the judges and probably America are predisposed to Bo to win, which is ok with us. However, being the “root for the underdog” kind of people we are, I felt compelled to vote for Carrie. I got in a few times, mostly after 10 PM.

Anyway, tonight is the last big hoorah. It’s the show I’ve been waiting for weeks for. The two hour finale of Lost. I absolutely cannot wait. I hope it’s all that they have built it up to be, and better, but I am afraid with all the hype, they can’t live up to it. Then, I think the Alias finale is on, and we will probably watch that. We’ll have to tape Idol and basically just watch the last 5 minutes to find out who won!

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I saw this at Big Orange Michael’s blog last week sometime. Since I’ve been in such a revved-up, high-level Star Wars mood since last week, I thought it was a good time to do this one! 😀

The movie meme game

1) Total number of films I own on DVD/video: Well, the DVD collection on Hambones shows 92 DVD’s. We also own some on video, although we’ve been slowly trying to dub those to DVD. That number reflects each of my trilogies as one (each of the 3 extended editions of Lord of the Rings, plus my original Star Wars trilogy).

2) The last film I bought: National Treasure

3) The last film I watched: The last one we watched at home was Taxi (rental) this past weekend, plus 2 Star Wars movies. The last movie we saw at the theatre was this past weekend, my beloved Star Wars episode 3 – Revenge of the Sith.

4) Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me (in no particular order):

All of the Lord of the Rings trilogies
All of my Star Wars movies
You’ve Got Mail
Notting Hill
Princess Bride

Let’s see… catching up from Monday late. Tim got home and we went walking and got our two miles in. We had supper and then watched the season finale of ’24’. I couldn’t believe it – now they have Jack in hiding, and we have to wait to see if they figure out a way to bring him back. And we don’t have to wait till September, darn, the preview says we have to wait till January. What’s up with that? We taped the season finale of 7th Heaven, but didn’t watch it. We worked on the PC and phones for a couple of hours after ’24’ went off.

Tim had stopped at CompUSA on the way home and got us a Vonage phone adaptor. We installed it last night and got our new service activated. We did the transfer paperwork to have our phone number transferred from BellSouth, but that’s going to take a while. Their website says a “minimum of 20 working days”, but I think it will be more like a month or two. We’ll see. We realized we didn’t have a free port on the router for the vonage adaptor, so Tim had to “rig” it temporarily, and will have to daisy chain our old router together with the current one, or else we’ll have to buy a bigger router. It’s always something! 🙂

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A day late… but still going to do it! 😀

The following all begin with ‘In your lifetime, have you….’

1. …ridden on a rollercoaster? Unfortunately, yes. Not willingly.
2. …performed (in any area of the arts) onstage? Nope
3. …planted a garden? Flowers, not a vegetable garden
4. …ever had to reformat your hard drive due to a virus/spyware? Nope
5. …written a book? A poem? A song? Nope
6. …sang karaoke? Not in front of anyone. I did lots of singing into an air microphone as a pre-teen though 😀
7. …been interviewed by a local tv station/newspaper? We were interviewed by the Hattiesburg American after Tim’s graduation, and had a one-line quote put on the front page the next day. We have that framed, in the study! 🙂
8. …witnessed a tornado/earthquake/hurricane first-hand? No, thank goodness
9. …participated in a photo scavenger hunt? No, have done other scavenger hunts, but never one with just photos
10. …traveled to another country? Not yet, but I will. It’s my lifelong dream to go to England, Scotland and Wales. France too, but not before the others.