Exceedingly Mundane

I had a random thought earlier today that I was going to blog about. Of course, this was 8 or 10 hours ago and I just now remembered it and was near a computer!

OK, random thought / weird question of the day. For the women only (although I believe that’s about 90-95% of my readership!):

I only paint my toenails in the summer, when I wear sandals. I see no need to do it in the winter, so the nails get a “break” for a few months. They seem really clean and white in the winter and for a little while at the beginning of sandal season. Then, after a few times of cleaning and repainting, they start to get really yellow. Is it the kind of nail remover I am using (yes, I’m cheap, I use the walmart Equate brand)? Is it the type of nail polish I’m using (Avon, I love the color Amanda!)? Is it just my really bad nails? Any ideas why they get so yellowish?

Feast Fifty-One
Friday, June 10, 2005

Appetizer
Name one thing that made you sad this week. Thinking about my mom. I miss her every day, but this time of year, as we get closer to the anniversary of her death, I miss her more, and it makes me really sad.

Soup
What was the last object (not person) you took a picture of? my daylilly blooming out back. I’ve been meaning to post a picture here in my blog. Maybe I can post some this weekend. A lot of my flowers look so good!

Salad
Who do you talk to when you need help in making a decision? Tim

Main Course
If you were a weather event, what would you be, and why? A flash thunderstorm

Dessert
Suggest a website that you think your readers would enjoy visiting. Hambones , of course!

I missed doing this one yesterday, I was so busy working on the main site. Oops!

:: I could really use a shower!::

Onesome: I could really– get into what or who musically this week? Have you run across anything or anyone new to share with the gang? Musically, well, isn’t this timely?! 🙂 I’ve been on a semi-tear this week, looking for and downloading mp3’s and surfing iTunes. In my formative years, I liked pop, soft rock and a bit of heavy rock mixed in (think Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, etc). When I met Tim, he slowly but surely got me to fall in love with country, and I’ve been hanging there pretty solid ever since. The past few days, I’ve been on the hunt for music by Shania Twain, Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Rob Thomas, Kelly Clarkson and the Backstreet Boys (who I watched on the Today Show this morning). Nothing earth-shattering, I’m fairly mainstream pop and country. 😀

Twosome: Use– Hey, what do you use for most of your cooking? The microwave? …or the toaster oven? Regular oven? Weber grill? (…and Mark, opening the bag of chips doesn’t count!) I use the toaster oven the most, I think. I try to use my crockpot a lot. I use the microwave for warming things up and defrosting, some steaming of veggies, not a lot else. I use the stovetop a lot too. Tim does all the outside grilling, which helps out a lot. This time of year, we grill a lot more 😀

Threesome: A shower– …and the softball of the week: shower or bath? What’s your preference. Okay, pool or hot tub (if you had one or both )? I like both showers and baths, but I’d have to pick showers.

I did a lot of work today on Hambones. Lots of photos, a news story, some stuff behind the scenes, setup a new forum (exercise), and some other things. I just finished typing up 3 movie reviews from movies we have seen lately. I’ve gotten rather tardy on getting those typed up and online right after we see a movie. I don’t think anyone really reads them, but on the off chance some of you do, I try to keep current with them and offer our (or in most cases my) opinion. Tim doesn’t usually participate in the review writing exercise!

We just got back from eating Chinese. I had my menu all planned out for the week, had fish thawed out today to cook tonight. Tim got in a little before 6 and asked what we were having. After I told him, he said “do you want to go out and eat?” Which usually pretty much means he has no interest in eating what I had planned to cook! He dangled the ultimate carrot in front of my face next when he said “well, we can stay here and eat fish or we can go out and eat Chinese“. DUH. Dufus Head (as Shanna and I are now calling him), you know I never turn down Chinese. Never. Ever. Tim has come in before with supper about to go on the table and offered to take me to eat Chinese. I promptly dish up the food, stick it in the fridge, wash the dishes, and then hustle double-time to go get ready and go out to eat Chinese. That man – you gotta love him – he knows the way to my heart. Flowers work. Chocolate works wonders. Chinese food is right up there with those 😀 What a guy, my Tim!

Found this while blog-surfing, it was at Cady’s site:

Go plug in your birth date information here and (if you lend any weight to numerology and astrology stuff) you’ll find out a few things that are supposedly tied to your birthday. Some of them were true for me, but the life path of 3 definitely was NOT me!

Updated: I also just found another link at a different blog, back to this guy’s numerology website. This time, you plug in your name on your birth certificate and he tells you some things about your name. 😕 You can check that one out here. Actually, this one had one section that did seem to fit “me”:

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I’m working this afternoon on uploading all the great new photos I have from everyone. I have most of them there, and hopefully, all of the problems are fixed for the time being with the photo system we use on Hambones. I still haven’t reloaded some older photos from 2004, but I’ve been transferring new ones all afternoon.

Remember – you have to be a registered member of Hambones to see the photos. 🙂 Sorry, but we like to keep those reserved for those people we know.

Let’s see, here’s what’s new today: We have a new album off the main gallery for Nathan, Tommy and Wendy’s new baby who was born the end of May. We also have two new albums in the Photos 2005 section – one for a recent trip by Mark, Amanda, Ethan and Abby to the zoo (lots of cute pics of the kids and some great shots of some of the animals), and the second album is one for Ava Clair’s first birthday party. I have also loaded some misc new pictures of all the kids in their own albums. Shanna sent me a couple this morning of Ava Clair in the new dress her Dede (Gail) made for her and those are in Gray and Ava Clair’s personal album. Amanda has sent me a ton of great shots lately of Ethan and Abby, including some really good ones of Abby when she turned 3 months. Those are now loaded in their album, Ethan and Abby. Go check them out!

And be sure to let us know if you have any trouble accessing the photos. I’m not sure why we had these problems, and hopefully the webmaster (Tim) has fixed them all. But, we don’t always see the same things here that others see, so be sure and let us know if you have any trouble.

Tim didn’t have to work too late last night, thank goodness, and got home a little after 6 PM. I had started working yesterday afternoon on some of the photos in the Photos section at Hambones, and got some errors and had some problems. Tim came home last night and worked on the problems for me, and hopefully we now have them all fixed. We lost some photos from early 2004, but those aren’t in high demand, and I have them on my Windows PC, so I will eventually re-load them onto the Hambones site. I want to spend some time today loading all of the new pictures that I have received lately – we have a few from Wendy of their new baby Nathan, some from Trent and Shanna of Ava Clair’s first birthday party, and a bunch from Amanda and Mark of Ethan and Abby’s recent trip to the zoo. I can’t wait to get them all loaded for everyone to see! You know me, I love photos! 😆

After Tim finished fixing Hambones for me, we watched the rest of “I, Robot”. We had watched it this past weekend, and found that our copy had a scratch on it (that we bought from the previously viewed rack at Hollywood Vide0). We had returned that one over the weekend and gotten a different one, and picked up the movie where we left off and finished it. But we wanted to go back on this disc and watch the first parts, to make sure there were no scratches or pops on this disc. I’m happy to report it’s fine. If anyone wants to borrow this one, just let us know. I need to add these new movies we bought to the DVD collection on Hambones. All of the DVD’s we own are listed here, so check them out and if there’s one you’d like to check out from our library, just let us know!

I wish I had one of these right now:

Why do I get chocolate cravings?

Why can’t I eat whatever I want and not gain any weight?

Why do I always get hungry about 3:30 or 4:00 PM?

Why is it always sweets or chocolate I crave?

I know, I’ll be good. I don’t even have ice cream in the house and I won’t go to the trouble of making brownies. I would eat this in a New York second though, if you put the thing anywhere within my grasp though. 😆

There’s not a lot of exciting stuff going on around here, as per usual. 🙂 I worked quite a bit yesterday on this blog. We lost all of the images and pictures when Hambones went down on Sunday. So I spent several hours, slowly but surely, working on piecing all of them back together. I didn’t have everything in one place on my regular Windows pc (I had them all together on the server, but we lost that entire directory structure). I’m having to find the files and images, resize them, transfer them back over and set the links back up. Slow work, but I want to do it. I want my blog back the way it was! I have several more hours left to go, then hopefully “Humpty Dumpty will be put back together again”. 😀

Tim had to work late last night, and didn’t get home till after 7 PM. We ate supper and made a couple of phone calls, then we settled in to watch King Arthur. Good movie, and I really enjoyed the theatrical version, but the one we bought at the video store is the director’s cut, and it’s a lot more graphic, bloodier and more violent. Lucky for me, it’s one of those movies where you can see the battle scenes and head chopping coming, so I can just throw my hand up and not watch! 😆

We slept late this morning, then got up and went walking. We are having so much trouble getting up early in the mornings to go walk. I think both of us would rather sleep! I did – however- finally get back to a little bit of stretching and exercise. I’ve been wanting to start back on my exercise DVD’s, but I just don’t have the willpower or discipline to do it. (I know, ducking head in shame). Today, I at least made a stab at it. I did one short segment, walking and arm weights, and at least got some good stretches and weights in, as well as a little cardio (it didn’t take long to get my old heart pumping and me sweating!). Shanna really encouraged me yesterday, so thanks Shanna! 😀

I have a long list of household and computer chores to do today, plus I’m still in an MP3 mood, so I’m ripping some old CD’s to my hard drive, and surfing iTunes. iTunes added some new country music artists to their site, including Tim McGraw, and I’m sorely tempted to do some downloading. Resisting so far, but sorely tempted!

From this site:

Tuesday, June 07, 2005
On a daily average…

1. How many hours of sleep do you get and is it enough? I try to get 8-9 hours a night, because I need that much. Normally, I get about 7-8 on most days. I love to sleep! 🙂

2. How many times do you get angry/upset and is it too much? Oh, I get upset a lot, but I get over it quick. I get stressed out about things way too easily and too often. A nasty habit I’ve tried to break, but it’s instinctual with me and hard to cure.

3. How often do you drink caffeine and is it too much? WELL. I would prefer to have tea or a soft drink at both lunch and dinner, but I’ve found that if I cut it out at night, I sleep a whole lot better. So, now I limit myself to a drink with caffeine at lunch, and water with dinner. I have coffee with Tim on the weekends, in the morning.

4. How often do you use your cell phone and does it distract from your responsibilities? I don’t use it that much. I used to use it more for long distance, but we just got the Vonage hooked up, so now I have free long distance!

5. How much time do you spend on the internet and is it too much? Oh my. Way too much time. I know it. I know I should cut back. I just can’t seem to do it. Oh well. I could have worse vices. 😀

I’ve been terribly remiss the last several days at checking some of the meme sites I like to visit. A couple of them had memes that I liked, so I’m going to do a big huge catch-up meme blog post here. I know a lot of you don’t like these, so I’ll put them on the extended page. Just click the -More- link if you want to go check them out. And, as always, please play along and put your answers in a comment if you want! I love reading all of your answers, and seeing what we have in common and where we differ! 🙂

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Well, we’re still trying to recover from Hambones dying yesterday. Tim was able to get a lot of the data back from the backup system, but we lost a lot of stuff from my blogs, some pictures, and a few various and assorted other things. The GUI interface is not working, and several other components are either barely dragging along or not functioning at all. We ordered a newer version of SUSE today, and Tim is going to completely wipe the server and start over on Hambones once the software is delivered. Not upgrade as I had previously thought (or hoped). He wants to do a clean install. I hope we get all of the data backed up now! We are also going to need to get another hard drive soon. If it ain’t one thing, it’s another. Always something that costs mucho $$$. 😥

I went to the dentist this morning for a scheduled checkup and cleaning. All good on that front. We didn’t get up and go walking because it was raining. We had a nice set of thunderstorms move through last night – had lots of thunder, lightening and rain. We were still getting residual rain this morning, but it stopped by lunch and was mostly sunny and hot all afternoon. I did the grocery shopping this afternoon, and some chores. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I had wanted, but hey – there’s always tomorrow! I bought Tim some happies today while I was out, since he worked so hard on Hambones all weekend and was able to restore most of the data. He’s enjoying them right now (some new football mags and a new handheld game). I think I’ll head back in there and play the game some more with him!

Well, I haven’t really had (or taken) the time to blog about the last couple of days. We’ve been fairly busy, although most of it is pretty mundane and I imagine pretty boring to most people. However, if you like to live dangerously, then read on! WARNING: Extremely long post ahead! 😀

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Well, I haven’t blogged about what we did yesterday, and now I haven’t blogged about what we did today (Saturday). I’d like to say that I will get on Sunday afternoon and catch up, but I’m not so sure about that. Tim has been working some on Hambones and it may not be available tomorrow. We just got back from CompUSA where we purchased the full version of SUSE 9.3, so he can reload Hambones. So, I don’t know when it’s going to be down, or for how long. Might be a long week! I will have to try to remember everything to blog about later on. 😀

I have decided that I don’t like my 40’s. Granted, I’m just a few months into them, but they are not going to be that great, at least in the weight department. I don’t seem to be able to lose a pound to save my life.

When I was growing up, I was rail thin. I could eat whatever I wanted, in whatever quantity I wanted, whatever time of day, and I would never gain a pound. All through my teens, and through most of my 20’s. The 30’s got a little harder. It wasn’t as easy to lose weight, and it got easier and easier to gain it. Now that I’ve turned the corner on my 40’s, I think it’s going to be a lot harder. I have cut back, cut out soft drinks and sweet tea, cut out most sweets, use reduced fat or low-fat products, and still I’m gaining weight left and right. I don’t think it’s my meds. I get my thyroid checked every year, and it’s supposedly in range. If it’s out of whack, I will gain more weight. But, it’s supposed to be in check. Anyway, I guess it’s just age and metabolism. It sucks. It really does. I want to eat a big bag of M&M’s if I want and not gain an ounce. I want to have a huge piece of chocolate cake with chocolate icing and not see it on my thighs two days later. HAH. I wish.

So, in our ongoing effort, I thought that getting a better pair of scales to weigh on might help. Ours were the old kind and not very accurate. I knew this because when I went to the doctor, they weighed me a LOT heavier. But, I forged ahead anyway (like the blooming idiot that I am!), and bought us a new set of scales, one that keeps track of our weight, as well as measuring our BMI.

Be Careful What You Wish For.

I got these scales, and I wish I had never brought them home. Not only do they weigh me about 4-5 pounds more than our previous ones (a sudden and immediate blow to my ego), it rated my BMI much higher than I thought it would be. Therefore, it proves that I’m a lot heavier and in worse shape than I should be. Which I had a sneaking suspicion of all along, but now I have proof, glaring back at me every time I go near the darn thing.

It saves my previous weights, and mine are going up, up, up, .5 or 1.0 pounds at a time. Geesh. Can’t we just roll the clock back and let me have my thighs that didn’t touch and flat stomach from my 20’s? Please. Someone invent a magic pill for this, please.

P.S. For all of you wiseguys out there, I know what the real problem is, it’s my portion control and my lack of more exercise. We walk, but we don’t jog, and I stretch but I don’t do aerobic stretching and exercises. I know I should. I just can’t bring myself to do it. I know I should eat less, and leave more on my plate, but I just can’t bring myself to do that either. Please don’t lecture me. Please. And if you do, the mean nasty fat fairy might come visit you.