Exceedingly Mundane

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

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

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

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

How very timely!

::Road Trip With No Stops::

Onesome: Road Trip– How do you feel about road trips? I mean, no planning, no prep, just up, up and away! Have you had any good ones? Lately? Love road trips, except ours are usually well-planned. Tim does a lot better with spontaneous than I do. We took 2 road trips/vacations last year and are leaving in less than a week for our big trip this year. Tim and I prefer to drive on vacation, and spend that time together in the car. We have worked out a really good routine through the years, and travel really well together. 🙂

Twosome: With– Ah! Who do you/would you/could you take a road trip with? …and where would you be off to? We can go anywhere, and plan to one day! We want to visit all 50 states, although we will fly to some! We have found we don’t travel as well with other people, and not very well at all with kids. Slows us down too much 🙁

Threesome: No Stops– Do you drive non-stop when you take your planned trips, stretching your endurance to the limit of your bladder? …or do you have your rest stops pre-programmed into your itinerary? Tim is a very type-A focused kind of person and he gets in the car and wants to go, go, go. That is more apparent on the way home, he is a bit more loose on the trip out, but very focused on getting home on the return trip. We stop for fast food breaks, but go through drive-throughs and keep going. Then we try to combine pit stops with gas fill-ups, although Tim is usually pretty good about stopping for me if I can’t wait! He is like a camel, whereas I think my bladder must be the size of a small pea! 😀

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve been so behind with transferring and uploading pictures, and in this particular case, with blogging too! Not that it’s especially noteworthy, but Tim discovered a turtle in our yard last Thursday morning. He went out, headed to work, and spied him in the yard, by the side of the driveway:

Now, this doesn’t seem particuarly interesting to anyone else, but I’ve lived here twelve years next week and I have never once seen a turtle in our yard. Since we have a fence in the back, I’m assuming he didn’t come from the ditch behind our back fence. He must have come from the lake across the street. I’m not quite sure what he was doing here or how long he stayed. I meant to go back a little while later and check on him, but me being me — I forgot! Here he is up close:

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

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

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

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

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

As previously reported here, I won a free movie ticket on Blingo last week. I had expected it to take 4-6 weeks or maybe more before it showed up in my mailbox.

Well, I was wrong! My free movie ticket came today:

I checked out the info listed on the ticket, and all of the theatres in our area accept this movie pass. Tim and I had already made a date to go see Batman Begins this weekend, before we leave on vacation. Guess who will be a cheap date?! ME!

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

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

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Saturday was a good day.

Tim slept late since he was up till 3:15 AM Friday night working on Hambones. After he got up, we went to the clinic and got my ears “fixed”. I was a little disappointed that they didn’t use a machine to clear the ear canal – the nurse came in with a squirt water bottle with a small attachment at the end of a hose, and used that to irrigate my ears! It worked, thank goodness, but I don’t think it got nearly as much out as the machine would have. Next time, I’ll have to go back to the ENT and get it done with the machine. But — the good news is that my ear opened back up, stopped hurting, and I was back to normal! 😀 Tim, for one, was very glad I’m sure, since the ear ache had made me a bit grouchy!

We did something yesterday that I had never done before – we went to two movies back to back! I’ve never splurged on anything like that in my life, and once I mentioned that to Tim, he seemed to think it was time to experience a full day of movies at the theatre, so off we went! We went to see “Mr & Mrs Smith” first (good, not outstanding, but fun). Then we walked across to the mall (Northpark) to get Tim a watch battery as his watch had died. We tried Penney’s first, but after searching for a while, the watch guy said he didn’t have the right battery and sent us to a jewelers in the mall. They did have the right battery, and offered a lifetime guarantee on the battery, and will replace it free as long as he still has this watch. But, they had to keep it a while longer, so we left it with the jeweler and walked back to the theatre for the second part of our double feature – the movie Tim wanted to see – “The Longest Yard”. It was good too, but did have a lot of rough language, especially at the beginning. Once it got to the football part, we liked it a lot better! We rate them about the same, about a 6 or 7 on our 1-10 scale we use at Hambones.

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Ouch, my ear is worse today. I’m going to go to the MEA Clinic near my house in a little while, once Tim is up and I see if I can persuade him to go with me. If not, then I’ll go on up by myself. We tried to put more drops in the left ear last night and that apparently was a big mistake. It’s much worse now, totally clogged up and I can’t hear a thing out of it now.

We went out last night (as previously reported at the end of this post) and got Tim’s dad a gift card and also went to eat at the Mexican place we like out on Lakeland, called El Torero. We ate an entire basket of chips, but only ate half of our entree and brought the rest home for lunch today. I had my favorite there, a shrimp quesadilla, and Tim had the fajita quesadilla (chicken).

After we got in, I was flipping TV channels and found “Four Weddings and a Funeral” on Lifetime.

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From this site:

1. What do you wear to bed? Pink pajamas

2. What side of the bed do you sleep on? Left

3. Do you sleep with a stuffed animal? No, not unless you count Tim!

4. Blanket/bed hog? No, Tim is the hog, he pulls them away from me, and I only get about 1/8 of the bed 🙂 He thinks I’m his body pillow too. I learned long ago to sleep with arms and legs thrown over on me 😀

5. Do you make your bed everyday? Yes, absolutely. Even when I’m sick. Even when we get up in the AM to leave for vacation. Something my momma taught me to do! 😆

Feast Fifty-Two
Friday, June 17, 2005

Appetizer
What’s one word or phrase that you use a lot? Hmm… Whatever… Yeah Right… stuff like that! I also try to say “I love you” to Tim as many times during the day as possible. Unless I’m totally mad at him 😛

Soup
Name something you always seem to put off until the last minute. Making a doctor’s appointment for the dreaded female doctor. Mopping the kitchen floor (I will never have white vinyl floors ever again).

Salad
What was the last great bumper sticker you saw? I can’t remember.

Main Course
If you could be invisible for one day, how would you spend your time? Hmmm, I’m pretty invisible as it is most days. Let’s see, I’d like to follow our president GW Bush around for a day and see what he does.

Dessert
Describe your hair. Well, as of late morning, it’s shorter, shinier and very brown! 🙂 Got it cut and my roots done today

I woke up this morning with a bit of an earache. I have been noticing for the past several days (or maybe a week or more) that my ear was starting to feel stopped up. I have had this most all of my life. As gross as it is, here’s the plain truth – I’m a “high wax” producer, as my ENT says. I produce more ear wax than normal people and my body doesn’t “dispose” of it like regular people do. Mine builds up and has to be periodically cleaned out. I try the drops at home from time to time, and they help some, but it usually builds to a point where I have to go to the doctor and have them clean them out.

I called my ENT here in Ridgeland this morning and was promptly informed that my doctor “doesn’t do that irrigation method” any more. Apparently it’s “out of date”. Well. Hmmph. Whatever. Plus, he’s booked up for 3 weeks and I don’t want to wait that long. I guess he’s not my ENT any more! 🙂 Anyway, I called the MEA clinic here and they have the equipment (or so the receptionist said when she came back from hold, she SAID she checked) to flush out my ears and irrigate the ear canal and clean out the built up wax. I am going to give the drops another day or two, but then I think I’m going to have to go to the clinic and get them cleaned out properly. It’s not an earache per se, in that it’s not throbbing or painful. It’s just that it’s stopped up, I can’t hear out of it well, it sort of rings like a vacuum in there, or the sound you hear when you stick a big seashell up to your ear. 🙂 It’s just really annoying and I don’t want to leave on vacation with it like this.

Ok, on to more topics. I’m sure that was gross and boring and tedious. If you want more tedium, click the -More- link to hear about what the Air Conditioning repair guy said and did last night to our AC unit, and also to hear about my day. Consider yourself warned!

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