Exceedingly Mundane

::Calling in Sick::

Onesome: I can’t come in– Have you ever locked yourself out of the house or the car? How’d it happen, and how did you get back in? I can’t ever remember locking myself out of the house or car. I think I’m too anal about checking, about having my keys in my hand, and then locking the car with my remote on my keyring. If I have ever done it in the past, I have no recollection of it. 🙂

Twosome: to work today– What is your dream job and why? To be a mom. Not gonna happen though.

Threesome: because I…– What’s the worst excuse you’ve ever given or heard of for not going into work/ school? Why did you really call in? Geesh, I was the most conscientious school kid and office worker on the planet. I can remember only cutting a class a few times in college – and that was for a freshman level computer class they added to my computer minor program track, that I had to go back and take when I was a senior. I could have taught the class to the freshman. My teacher (who was also my advisor and the department head) once asked me after class, why are you coming, you don’t have to come to this class. So I finally started cutting one day a week or so and even then I felt guilty. I don’t think I ever called into work sick when I wasn’t and would most often go into work even though I was sick. Must be that work-ethic from Fred and Dodie that was pounded into me growing up.

Well, I don’t like to give up on things, especially books (even though most of you advised me to put it down – read the original post and comments here) . So, I dug in my heels and persevered and finished my latest book, “Sushi for Beginners” by Marian Keyes. You can read my review of it here on Hambones.org.

I did rather enjoy it towards the end and wanted to see how it turned out. It tied things up nicely, which is very important to me. I don’t like books that end badly or leave me hanging.

I have one more checked out from the library, the next one in the numbered Stephanie Plum series – “Hot Six”. I started it last night since Tim was locked up in the computer room till after midnight working on Hambones.

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YEAH! Hambones is back up and running, thanks to all of Tim’s hard work. He worked about 14 hours yesterday and last night, off and on, on upgrading the site. Well, not really an upgrade. He wiped the server clean and started over with a newer version of SUSE, the Linux software we use. He got all of the data back, and still has a few things to work on in the background (email and other components), but for the most part, for what regular users see and use — it is all back and all fine. He has a lot of things he still wants to do, but nothing (hopefully!) that will affect users. We’ve been down quite a bit the last week or so, and we apologize for that. Hopefully it will be a bit before we have to take the site down again. When we get a new hard drive, we’ll take it down again, but maybe we can put that off until we get back from vacation.

It was nice having him home yesterday, even though he was mostly locked away in the computer room day and night. 🙂 He went back to work today, and I imagine it was a nice break for him! He will have to leave on time today, as we have an air conditioning service guy coming out this afternoon. Our AC unit is running constantly, and it is taking several hours to drop the temperature by one degree in the house. Tim and I are both worried that we’ll burn up the compressor at that rate! We hope it’s just low on freon or needs cleaning or maintenance. I don’t even want to think what a new heating/cooling unit is going to cost us if it has to be replaced. Everybody keep their fingers crossed! 😀

I’m trying to be really quiet this morning, as Tim didn’t get to sleep till nearly 4AM. We knew he had to work last night, starting about 11 PM on a project, but we thought he would work from home, as normal. But, as luck would have it, our cable modem service was acting up (I couldn’t get web pages to load), which affected what he needed to be able to do, plus now that we have Vonage, it affected his phone call needs. So, poor thing, about 10:30 he had to drive into the office and work from there.

He had wanted to work on Hambones last night, in between waiting on things to run on his project. So, he took the main site down earlier in the evening, and started doing a full backup. He likes to take it down so that no one will post anything new, and so we can get a full backup and not lose a single bit of data. However, about the time the backup finished, and he was ready to start working on upgrading the site, it was time to go into work, so he didn’t get to work on it. So, we’ll have to do this again, either tonight or tomorrow, or soon. Tim really wants and needs to get this software installed, so look for more down time for Hambones.org. Sorry 🙁

Today is going to be a nice day. Tim told me last night that he will be working from home after he wakes up, so it will be nice to have him around later on today. 🙂 I might not get my workout in, but everything else should fit in nicely with him here.

that is the question of the day. Please read below and cast your vote in the form of a reply (I need to find a poll system for my blog!) 🙂

How many of you have started a book, and not been thrilled with it, and then just abandoned it? I seem to have a completion complex that drives me to complete what I start. I hate to give up on a book and not see it through to the end. I had this dilemma a few weeks ago when I was reading trying to read “Blue Shoe” by Anne Lamott. (You can check out the review here). I really struggled to finish it and was rather disappointed at the end that I “sort of wasted” my time reading it.

I am starting to feel that way, a bit, about the one I’m currently reading – “Sushi for Beginners” by Marian Keyes. I like the premise (remember, I read “chic lit”) – career girl working at a London magazine, thinks she is on the fast track to a glamorous promotion to New York, only to find she’s been shunted off to the hinterlands (Ireland) to helm a new start-up magazine there. She’s learning the ropes, the different culture, the people, the new city, etc. I like it, per se, but it is soooo slow. It’s dragging along like a dental appointment. I’m only 1/3 of the way through it (and it’s about 425 pages long). I just can’t decide whether to keep plugging along (maybe it will get better?), or just chuck it and read the next one on my list. Mind you, I check these out of the library, so I’m not out any money. But still. I hate to give up on anything.

Can anyone out there help me solve my dilemma?

Well, I’ve been signed up for Blingo for a couple of months now and had finally decided that I wasn’t going to win anything. But I just did! I’m so excited! I was hoping for an iPod mini or a year’s worth of movie rentals, but hey, I’m still excited to have won a free movie ticket!

And a closeup 😆

Please go sign up under me if you’re interested, I have a Blingo button on the side of this blog. 😀

Since I seem to be on a flower kick, here’s two photos to show how much our lantana that we planted in the new planter has grown.

When we planted it back in April, it looked like this:

And now, it’s a lot bigger!

I’ve been taking a lot of photos lately of all of my flowers outside. They are all blooming so well and look so good. I lament (well, fuss!) to Tim nearly every day that I hate that they are all going to die while we are gone on vacation. Unless it rains every day or two, they won’t make it. Most of them are in pots and in this heat and humidity, they need water every 24-36 hours or they shrivel and start to die. Oh well, they’ve looked good for nearly two months now!

I learned a new trick. I took several pictures and merged them into a little photo collage using one of my photo editing software’s functions. Learn something new every day!

I do quite a bit of blog-surfing, and I frequently run across memes, quizzes and questionnaires that I like, and want to do in my blog. I found this one a few weeks ago, and filed it away “for a rainy day”. 😀 I really like this one, although for most of you, it’s a little on the long side. I have seen it several places, but I believe the first place was at Denise Pauley’s blog (she’s a scrapbooker). 🙂

It counts down, so click on the -More- link if you want to see the whole thing. 😀

Ten things I do everyday:

1. Eat breakfast
2. Watch TV
3. Check my email and check on Hambones
4. Tell Tim “I love you”
5. Worry about something
6. Read something (newspaper, magazine, book, mail)
7. Brush my teeth
8. Take a shower or bath
9. Take all my meds
10. Sleep

Nine favorite shows of all time:
{in no particular order}

1. Mad About You
2. The Cosby Show
3. Bonanza
4. Little House on the Prairie
5. Happy Days
6. Sisters
7. Survivor
8. Amazing Race
9. 7th Heaven

Eight junk food favorites:

1. Soft Drinks (Dr Pepper, IBC root beer, Cherry Coke, Vanilla Coke, etc)
2. Pizza (pepperoni & mushroom or All the Meats)
3. Chili Cheese Fritos
4. Chili Cheese Fries (maybe some ranch dressing in there too!)
5. Funyuns
6. Banana Splits or Hot Fudge Sundaes
7. M&M’s
8. Anything chocolate!

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We’ve had a really nice, quiet laid-back kind of day today. The kind that normally drives poor Tim nuts. Poor baby. I love them though. I love quiet restful Sundays, where we can watch tv, play games, play on the computer, read, etc. When I was working, I craved them – a chance to recharge my batteries. Still love them.

We had a tv movie-watching marathon all afternoon (Monte Walsh, Crossfire Trail and Gladiator), and now Tim is checking out “Into the West”, waiting on the NBA game to come on. I think I’ll go read my book while he’s watching basketball. I got my menu all planned out and posted for the week, so I feel like I’m ahead of the game on some things. 🙂

Sunday, June 12

Are you game?
“Computer games don’t affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.” -Marcus Brigstocke

1) What is your favorite board game? Trivial Pursuit! I also like the new Scene It we got at Christmas, same type game but with a DVD in addition to the board.

2) What type of games are your favorite? (ie, board, card, participatory, dice, word games) Some of each – I like Trivial Pursuit, Mexican train dominoes and Tim’s card game of Liverpool rummy

3) How many games do you own, and if possible, list them. We own quite a few but rarely play them. Some of them, Tim won’t play with me (like Boggle, Upwords, any kind of word games). We have 2-3 Trivial Pursuits, Scene It, Uno Attack, Parcheesi, and a couple of others.

4) Do you enjoy computer or video games? Which one is your favorite? Yes, but I don’t play them as much as I could. I went through a Zuma phase (online) and then a Text Twist one. I haven’t played much lately, except the odd game of Mah Johngg now and then.

5) Describe a great childhood memory of an outside game. Well. I don’t have a lot of childhood memories, certainly not of playing games with other people. I have a vague memory of playing crochet, but I think I mostly played alone.

P.S. I can’t wait to see Gail’s answers, I know that Scrabble is going to be in there somewhere!! 🙂

I blogged yesterday about what we planned to do, and for the most part, it was pretty accurate. Well, except for the weathermen, who we all know are never accurate. We didn’t get one drop of rain, nary a sprinkle. Everyone south and east of us did, but we didn’t get a thing from Tropical Storm Arlene. Time to drag back out the hoses and sprinklers and start watering flowers and things! 🙂

Yesterday, as previously reported, Tim went outside to work in the yard, and then came in a bit later to say “I’m going to the parts store, the weedeater isn’t working”. Then a little while later, he says “I don’t think I can fix it, I’m going to go buy a new one, do you want to go with me?”. So, off we go in the truck to Home Depot. After what seemed like a really long time, he finally decided on this one (if the link doesn’t work, it’s a Ryobi string trimmer/brush cutter). Click the -More- link if you want to see a picture of Tim using it later on in the yard! 🙂

After he finished everything outside, he came in and later tried to work on Hambones. He took the main site down for a while, so no one would write anything new to the forums, recipes or reviews systems or their blogs. He got a full backup then started to install his new software on his “development” box. Well, apparently that didn’t work. He emerged a few hours later rubbing his eyes and saying “let’s watch a movie, I’m tired of fiddling with that”. So we watched Oceans Twelve! 🙂

The moral of the story – we got a new weedeater, and Hambones will be down again, more, in the future, as he continues to work on it. Sorry guys!

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We woke up to some wind outside, but the sun is shining and so far we don’t have the slightest hint of rain. I hope that Tropical Storm Arlene doesn’t go completely east of us and we don’t get any rain at all. I love rain this time of year – I consider it free water for the grass and flowers! It keeps me from spending an hour outside in the yard, dragging the hose and my watering wand around, watering everything!

Today is going to be a busy day. Tim is out mowing the grass and doing the yardwork, since we still think (or hope) that it will rain later. He wanted to get that out of the way first. Then, he plans to come inside and work on Hambones, so the server may be down for a while today (and this blog). I just hope all goes well and we don’t lose anything!

I have a long list of chores to do while he’s working inside and out. Among them, cleaning up the house, laundry, making my chocolate-eclair icebox dessert, cooking, working on some things on the laptop, doing research for our upcoming D.C. vacation, working out, and some other things. Going to be a good day, I think! 🙂

I just scanned in the baby photo and announcement from my friend Wendy, of her new baby Nathan. I added them to his photo album here at Hambones. I realized as I was scanning it, that I never did scan Miss Abby’s in, and I feel terrible! Mark and Amanda – please forgive me! I thought I did, but I just poked around my hard drive and couldn’t find the scan for it, so I pulled it back out and scanned it in also. It’s in Ethan and Abby’s album, although I put it on the last page, since it’s the oldest and very first photo we have of Miss Abigail! 🙂

Go check them out, lots of great new pictures of all the wonderful babies and toddlers we have in our extended family.

Well, it’s pretty late on a Friday night. It hasn’t started to rain here yet (tropical storm Arlene is supposed to hit the Gulf Coast sometime late tomorrow), and I’m starting to have my doubts as to whether we will get much rain at all. These things usually go east of us.

Tim got home at a fairly decent time tonight, about 6:00 PM. They had some of the big bosses in from Dallas today and had meetings all afternoon. More changes coming, or so it appears. Tim, as always, is not worried. I wish I was such an incurable optimist! 😀 He came in the door saying “where can we go out to eat?”. Ummmm, dear, I still have that fish left from last night, that I didn’t cook because you wanted to take me out to eat. Which I thorougly enjoyed and appreciated, don’t get me wrong. But I do so hate to waste anything, especially food. Therefore, after careful consideration, I have very smartly deduced that either a) Tim doesn’t want to eat fish or b) whenever I get in a “we need to stop eating out so much” mood, it only tends to make Tim want to eat out more and more. Sigh. We’ll see.

Ah, I digress, as always. Not only do I write about “exceedingly mundane” things, but I’m incredibly long-winded and verbose. My apologies.

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