Exceedingly Mundane

Dance, Dance, Dance!
Everyone is carried away with the newest craze, Ballroom Dancing.

By the way. . .
Do you like to dance? We never dance, at home or out in public. I’ve been watching Dancing with the Stars though, and trying to get Tim interested in taking ballroom dance lessons with me. Well. You can imagine how far I’ve gotten with that. Zero. Zilch. Tim relented and said he might consider line dancing at a local country place, but that’s the only concession he’s made.

If so, what is your favorite kind of dance? None yet, but I’ve enjoyed watching all of them on the show. I’d love to learn to waltz.

What’s your experience with dance?
Did you take lessons as a child or maybe you were a disco queen? None! No lessons ever. I was on a drill team in high school, but it was more precision moves than dance moves.

Be honest, can you move on the dance floor, or should you just watch? Well, honestly, I’m probably terrible, but I’d like to try 🙂

Another busy day… the last of our party guests just left. The first arrived about 11 AM and we had lots of food and lots of fun. Believe it or not, I didn’t even take a single picture, so I won’t have any pictures to post. And sadly, my team lost, so I’m not too happy at the moment.

Back to your regularly scheduled blog tomorrow. 😀

Been really busy today, getting ready for the Super Bowl Party tomorrow, and catching up on stuff we haven’t had time to do all week. All work and no play makes Tim a dull boy, so we’ve played quite a bit of Sudoku on the computer today, also. We got all of Tim’s hunting clothes washed (special stuff, special circumstances) and put up for the season. Got some things done outside and inside. Went to the new Italian place in Madison that opened yesterday (Alexander’s) and had supper. Lots more, but that’s the high points. 😀

I saw this posted at my favorite scrapbooking board…. Click here to go take a quick spelling quiz. It covers 15 of the most commonly misspelled words in the English language.

Have fun! Be sure to post your results in the form of a comment, if you’d like to play along! 🙂

Happy Anniversary to my little blog “Exceedingly Mundane” – I’m celebrating my one year anniversary today. A year ago, I put my first blog entry online here at Hambones. Previously, I had been using the Journal feature on the main website, but I was very limited in what I could do. So, I looked around, did a lot of research, and settled on WordPress to use for the software. Tim helped me get it all setup, and a year ago today, I typed up my first entry.

And the rest, as they say, is history. 🙄

::A Dangerous Step ::

Onesome: A– whole new year is in progress and we’ve made it just over a month into it. Do you have any new projects started around the place or are you waiting for Spring? …or does it already feel like Spring? We have projects planned, but haven’t started any yet. They’ll probably be popping up soon though! Some inside, some outside, which will have to wait for spring. It’s fairly warm, but I’m not ready for spring. I wish we could have a little bit of winter around here! 😀

Twosome: dangerous– It’s a dangerous world out there on the Net some days! What are you using for Anti-Virus and/or Firewall software? …and is it working well for you? (If not, it may be worth seeing what the gang has to say…) On the Windows side (my regular PC), I use Norton for virus software and Zone Alarm for a firewall. We don’t have to do as much on the server side, since it runs Linux. I have no idea what Tim has going on that side, that’s his area of expertise and not mine.

Threesome: Step– right up and tell us what you have planned for the “Annual Commercial Extravaganza” this Sunday. You know, the one with the football game cut up and slid between the segments. Is it party time? Shopping? What commercials? Well, after a several year lapse, we’re going to have another Super Bowl party. I have to get the rest of the plans together for food, and get busy with all that. I hope to get some time to watch the game. I love football and I do love all the commercials. In years past, I’ve usually been busy with food, cleaning up, or entertaining people and I miss a lot of the game. Hopefully that won’t be the case this year. I just wish my Colts had made it 🙂

I had some bananas that were ripe and needed to be used up. I normally throw them in the freezer, to use for another time, but I was in a baking mood yesterday and wanted to try something new. So, I poked around through the numerous recipes that I have collected (but never tried), and made a new one. They’re called Caribbean Bars and the recipe is now on Hambones (click here).

Here’s the batter, in my new batter bowl that I love and adore 😀

And here’s the finished product, waiting to go to work with Tim (after we had each tasted one, of course!):

Tim pronounced them a keeper, so I guess I can put them in my “tried and true” files 🙂

If you haven’t had a Sweetheart Brownie Blast at Sonic yet, be sure to get one before they’re gone. 🙂 Sonic is really great about offering seasonal or monthly items, new things to try, and this is one of their best, IMHO.

I have a long-standing love affair with Sonic’s February offerings. They used to have a “Sweetheart Shake” in February, and I would always get at least one from my darling husband, as a surprise or happy, in February. He was really good about it, and would always get me one every year, for the first few years we were married. I looked forward to it every February (every day, wondering if today was the day he would bring me one home as a surprise…nothing like a little anticipation :mrgreen:) Then, for some unknown reason, Sonic stopped making them. We probably had a 2 or 3 or maybe 4 year drought where they didn’t have a Sweetheart anything. Then, last year (or maybe the previous year), they started offering this “Sweetheart Brownie Blast”. WELL. You can’t go wrong in my book by combining soft serve ice cream, cherries, brownies and whipped cream. They’re delicious.

Tim came home with one for me yesterday…

This was, of course, the same time he came home with some new happies (for himself). He went out and purchased the two items I was planning on buying him for Valentines Day. I keep telling him, trying to get it through his thick skull, that he needs to stop buying himself presents 1-2 weeks before “known holidays” such as his birthday, Christmas, Valentines, and our anniversary. He never remembers. He went and bought himself a big bag of golf balls, and these yesterday:

Well, maybe I need to get him proper golf clothes (which of course, I can’t pick out, since he’d have to try them on). He seems to like playing golf in his vinyl pants:

Sigh. I’m out of ideas on what to get him for Valentines Day. John Grisham has no new book published this year in Jan/Feb, which is what I’ve gotten Tim for the last 7 or 8 years, maybe more. He’s so obsessed about golf, that I was going to get him golf stuff, but now he’s gone out and bought himself what I was planning on getting him. Anyone got any other ideas? Let me know, please, if you have any light bulb moments. 😀

I picked up the January/February copy of Everyday Food (put out by Martha Stewart’s conglomerate) a couple of weeks ago and have finally gone through it completely. This was my first time to ever buy this magazine, and only the second time I had ever noticed it on the newsstand. It’s a small magazine; it sort of reminds me of a Reader’s Digest in size and shape. This issue is a “special light issue”, which is why I picked it up. It has several recipes that sound good to me. Of course, me being me, I find tons of recipes that I want to make, from all kinds of sources. I find them in cookbooks, magazines, the newspaper, online at cooking sites, etc. So I have an obscene amount of recipes “collected” that I might never actually get around to making.

Anyhoo, I will be glad to post any of the ones from this magazine. Here’s the ones that I have marked, that I’m interested in… so if you want to see the recipe, just let me know and I’ll type it up.

{Editorial Note – Gail, I know you will probably want all of these, since you like “collecting” recipes as much as I do. Try to restrain yourself, hehehe :D}

The ones I have marked are:

Turkey Burgers
Quick Vegetable Soup
Chili Roasted Sweet Potato Wedges (only a couple of ingredients, not really a recipe)
Spicy Black Beans
Cornmeal Crusted Tilapia

There are others, I can list those if anyone is interested in recipes from this magazine. Just post a comment and let me know. 🙂

I almost gave up and quit reading my latest book “Talk to the Hand” by Lynne Truss. I have been struggling for the past several days, trying to read this book and not give up and chuck it. I finally persevered, more out of stubbornness than a desire to read the book and get anything out of it.

I tried to branch out of my comfort zone and read a “different” kind of book for me, and in this particular instance, it didn’t really work. Reading this book was a struggle and I didn’t really enjoy the book, and didn’t retain much from it. I’m accustomed to reading fiction, where there are characters I can enjoy and “get into” and there’s a plot and story that I want to learn that happens. This book is more like a textbook, more like being back in college and sitting in a sociology class and hearing the professors drone on and on in a monotone voice.

I agree with what the author is saying – the world has become a more rude place and the advent of technology has really speeded up that progression. Courtesy, respect, manners are quickly becoming harder and harder to find in others. People have their own private space, a bubble, and they don’t interact with others as well as they did in the past. Blame cell phones, blame email, blame text messaging, blame the Internet, blame lots of these things. I agree with all of this, and there were several vignettes in the book where she related personal experiences to attest to this fact. Those were quite enjoyable, as well as a few other passages in the book. However, she would also quote from books such as “The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations” by Norbert Elias (1939). Ack. The bibliography is 3 pages long, she quoted from so many boring textbooks on social behavior. This is just not me anymore, I guess.

I almost quit…. but I didn’t. The OCD part of me did not want to give up and be a quitter, so I did finish it. Barely. That makes 4 for the year so far.

If you’d like an example of how the book reads, you can click on the Read more section and read an excerpt from the book.

Read the rest of this entry »

I should have never blogged yesterday that I was totally caught up on photos. Sigh. I was months behind, and I finally got all of my pictures uploaded to the Hambones website. Then, last night, Trent and Kathryn both emailed me new pictures of their kids, my great nieces and nephews, so now I have a few more to load. They are sooo cute! 😀 I will try to do that later today, and put an update here when they are done. {Kathryn emailed most everyone her pictures, so they won’t be a surprise to most of that side of the family. 🙂 }

UPDATE: Ok, whew, I’m all caught up again! Some new pics of Grayson and Ava Clair are up in their photo album, and pictures of our 3 week old beauty Katelyn Ray are in hers. Go check ’em out 😀