Exceedingly Mundane

I made yet another trip to my library today… to return the “Finding Neverland” DVD and “The Preservationist”, both of which I finished this week. I tried to just drop them off and walk out of there, but I have this sort of defective gene when it comes to the library. I feel like I have to at least look around, then after I start looking, I feel compelled to leave with several items in my hand. It’s a sickness, I tell you, a sickness.

I brought home 2 more movies – I have discovered the joy of renting movies for free from the library and I just can’t resist. I got another one on our rental list that we missed earlier when it came out, “Hotel Rwanda” and I also picked up the DVD of “Wuthering Heights”. Sigh.

I got 2 more books, and have just added them to my sidebar in the “up next to read” segment. They are “Vanishing Acts” by Jodi Picoult and “Shem Creek” by Dorothea Benton Frank. I have read one other Picoult book, “Plain Truth” and really enjoyed it, so I looked for another one. I have never read anything by Frank, but she’s a Southern writer and I generally like books like this. I have seen her newest one “Full of Grace” at the bookstore and resisted, so I thought I would start with an older book of hers (aka, free from the library). 🙂 Check back in the next couple of weeks for a review of these… these are both a bit heftier books, weighing in at 400 and 300 pages or so, so it may take me a bit longer with the weekend and holiday to finish them. 🙄

Friday, June 30, 2006
Feast One Hundred!!!

Congratulations to the Friday Feast Meme for hitting that magical 100 mark… time to feast!

Appetizer
On average, approximately how many times per day do you yawn? I have never actually thought about it. I think some days I might yawn a half a dozen times, maybe more. When I see Tim yawning, I always pick at him (he thinks he can get by with very little sleep, but he can’t always) about being sleepy, but Tim always says “I just need oxygen”. So, I guess I need oxygen at least a half a dozen times a day, maybe a dozen on a good day!

Soup
What was your most memorable school field trip? I went with my junior high class (maybe 9th grade, not sure?) on a field trip down to Natchez to tour some of the antebellum homes. I think I had just gotten a camera, so I took it along and took a lot of pictures of my friends on the bus, of the houses, of the insides (china, beds, etc, I have always loved all that big old antebellum stuff). I still have all those pictures to this day, which is why I can remember that trip. I will have to dig them out and look at them 🙂

Salad
Fill in the blank: I was extremely __________________ this week. boring! Or even better – exceedingly mundane

Main Course
Which color do you think of when you hear the word “soothing”? probably a light blue, like the sky or ocean, or maybe a soft mossy green.

Dessert
What is something that, if you had to, you could save up the money to buy within one month? Well, I keep thinking we’re going to need to replace our washer and dryer soon. We have some money in an emergency fund, so hopefully we could cover those with that fund. I don’t want to be without a washer or dryer for very long, I’m very spoiled and I really don’t want to have to go to a laundromat. I guess for the saving, probably a new heating/cooling unit for the house. Again, I have this worry it will go out and we’ll have to replace it. I worry a lot, you know 🙄

I finished another library book last night, “The Preservationist” by David Maine. It’s the fictionalized, sometimes irreverent, account of Noah. It covers fictional accounts the whole Biblical story of Noah and the ark – from his learning of the need to build the ark, his wife and sons and their wives, how they go about collecting the animals, how the people heckle him, what it’s like on the ark during the flood, the conditions, animals crammed in, what it’s like for months afterward, waiting to see land, how they get off and find land and figure out how to start from scratch when there’s not a soul left alive, except for them. It covers alot of things I really never thought about concerning a story I’ve heard of all my life. It’s not quite as good as another fictional based Biblical story I’ve read recently (“The Red Tent” by Anita Diamant), but it was still good and enlightening in its own way. I’m not overly fond of the way the author covered the dialogue and some of the actual dialogue itself (lots of references to “rutting” in this book!). But, with both books, I tend to forget that these characters were in the Old Testament, before the birth of Christ, in a time very unknown to me, and had to deal with hardships that I can’t begin to understand, as well as the fact that idol worship and mention of other gods, were commonplace. Anyway, I digress – I enjoyed it, and even though it wasn’t as good as Red Tent (few books are stacking up to that one for me lately), I’m glad I read it. 😀 If you’ve read any of my book reviews either here or at Hambones.org, you’ll find that I like almost every book I read, for one varied reason or another. I just like to read! To be entertained, to be enlightened, to make me think, or not, to simply read something light and nonsensical, just to read 😀 For a million different reasons, I just plain love books. So many books, so little time!

For the record, that makes #37 so far this year, with a total of 13,104 pages read. Up next is a book I’ve heard about for some time, but I haven’t gotten around to (or any other books by this author, for that matter). 🙂 It’s “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd. I hope it’s good!

These are not all brand new pictures (although most are very recent), but all are of things that I love in my yard. We have a small yard, but we have worked really hard to make it a homey, happy, blooming kind of place in the summer. 😆 I don’t profess to have a green thumb, but I am able to get some things to grow, and I love having other “stuff’ in my yard – bird feeders, bird baths, and what can be nicely called “yard art”. 😀

Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by!

1. I have impatiens every where I have shade, in one flower bed and a couple of pots. Here’s a hanging basket of them in a tree, that I love – it’s blooming nicely this year:

2. A new bird bath that hangs on a hook; we bought it this summer:

3. I really love watching the squirrels eat their corn from their feeder (yep, I’m weird that way!):

4. My pink moss rose is blooming well this summer:

#5 through #13 on the extended page….

Read the rest of this entry »

Coffee is still a relatively new thing for me. Tim has drunk coffee all of his adult life. His parents are big coffee drinkers; they always have a pot going at their house, or if people come over to visit, that’s the first thing they do – go put on a pot of coffee. A very social thing, I think. 😆

For the first 8 years we were married, Tim drank coffee all by himself. Then, two summers ago, I made a herculean effort to learn to drink coffee. I have to add lots of splenda and creamer, but I can drink it now, and I actually enjoy it. Of course, it has tons of calories and is very sweet (think light brown, really light!), but I do like it. I love going to Starbucks or Cups and trying new coffee concoctions in the summer and winter alike. But, not my Tim. He just drinks plain coffee, black. We’ll go to Starbucks and he gets lots of quizzical looks by just ordering plain coffee. But, he goes with me, and that always makes me happy.

We’ve made coffee at the house since we were married, but we have always bought and used ground coffee. Community brand, to be specific. I buy really small sizes of flavored coffees for me, but for Tim, we buy Community ground coffee, dark roast. And he’s been perfectly happy with that. I’ve been trying to talk him into trying whole beans for a while, and finally, on Sunday afternoon while shopping in Sam’s, he agreed. We bought a bag of whole beans:

Now, we’re trying to figure out the proportions of how much whole beans to grind to make a big pot of coffee for us. The first one was a disaster – too watered down. We’re slowly getting there, but I honestly think it takes more whole beans to make coffee like he likes it than it will of ground coffee. Which, in turn, makes me think it will be more expensive to buy whole beans and grind them. But, we’re going to experiment and give it a try. He wanted to try some Hawaiian coffee first. I’m not sure if we’ll stick with this, try another kind of whole bean, or just chuck it and go back to ground. 🙄

Please leave me a comment if you have any sage advice about grinding whole beans, how much to use, what kind to buy, etc. We’d really appreciate it!

I blogged last week in my Thursday Thirteen post, about some movies I wanted to rent and watch over the summer. I had already found one and we watched it (Because of Winn Dixie, great movie), and I went back to the library yesterday to return that one, and look for more movies. I came home with “Finding Neverland” on DVD, and we watched it last night after Tim got in from the golf course. So, that makes 2 out of my list that I’ve seen in less than a week, yeah!!!

I really liked it, and I think Tim did also, but he did comment that it was a bit slow in the beginning. We give it a 7 out of 10 stars (and we’ll rate the Winn Dixie one an 8 out of 10). That reminds me, I need to do some book and movie reviews over on our main site, Hambones .

By the way, for those of you who do not know me, I didn’t ever really have a childhood. I didn’t grow up doing normal childhood things, like seeing Disney movies, playing games, singing kids songs, etc. Those things are foreign to me. I’ve never seen The Wizard of Oz, although I wear that like a badge of honor now and refuse to watch it. But, I realized last night while watching “Finding Neverland” that I never saw Peter Pan either. In talking to Tim after the movie, he liked that movie growing up and has happy childhood memories of seeing it and liking it. He said I’d need to look for either Peter Pan or maybe Hook with Robin Williams at the library and try to check that out. He seems to think that I need to see Peter Pan. 😆

I blogged in May of last year (2005) about a cutting we received from a neighbor of a pass-along plant called a Confederate Rose. It was just a little thing when we got it, and I kept it in a pail of water to get the roots going:

Then, Tim planted it in the yard a couple of weeks later (in May):

I watched it, and watered it, and cared for it all summer, and then finally – in late October, it bloomed:

Now, this year, it has really taken off. It’s taller than our 6 foot wooden fence, and still growing. I hope it really blooms this year, lots of blooms. It should be gorgeous if it does. I need to do some more research and find out just how big this thing is going to get, if it needs to be pruned, when, etc.

Here’s what it looks like today:

I finished another library book last night – finally! I’ve been plodding through this one for the last couple of weeks and I finally finished it. I think I’m still in a bit of the summer doldrums as far as reading and books go. I really love to read, but I can’t seem to find what I want to read right now, if that makes any sense. This was a good book, not fantastic, but your good basic murder mystery. Not too deep, not too technical, not too far-out-there, just a good basic plot that weaves in and out a little. I enjoyed it, and will probably read more of these in the future. Margaret Truman has a lot of these, part of the “Capital Crimes” murder mystery novels. I think she’s written anywhere from 12 to 15 of these, all based in the D.C. area, and all entitled “Murder At…”.

For the record, that makes #36 for the year, with a total of 12,874 pages read. Up next is a fictional account of Noah building the Ark, called “The Preservationist” by David Maine. I hope it is half as good as the book on Dinah I recently read called “The Red Tent”. That was a terrific book, and these that I’ve read since pale in comparison. 🙂

Tim calls on his way home from work every day, and we talk the whole way home. It’s something I look forward to every day, and a ritual that I’m so glad we have.

Today, I heard him go through Sonic and order a Hot Fudge Brownie Blast while we were talking, and I got excited, knowing he was bringing me home “a happy”. Which he did. Those things are really good! But, when he got home, he had not only the Blast, but 2 bunches of beautiful irises as well!!! Isn’t he sweet?! I told him I had to take pictures and put on my blog, and he was like, “you don’t have to do that, people will think I’m a wimp”. WRONG. Mostly women read my blog and I think everyone else will think it was as sweet as I did. 😆

Anyway, he changed clothes and went in the backyard to hit golf balls for a while. He called me to come out with my camera (I was taking flower pics inside). He wanted to show me a bunny, who was hiding in some brush behind our fence. He said when he opened the gate, he was out in plain sight, but had hopped to some bushes for cover. We walked up ever so slowly (you know, hunting rabbits), and I got a picture of him:

So, even though they are totally unrelated, I thought it would make a cute blog title. You know, some bunny loves me:

I was headed out my back door a little while ago, to water some of my flowers and take a few pictures (I’ll post those later today or tomorrow, lots of pretty flowers blooming here!). I saw this bird fly into my tree in the backyard. I assume he’s a regular ole red cardinal, but he’s either really dirty, crossed with something else, or something. I wish I was smart enough to know what 🙂 He has a lot of black on him!

This week’s questions are all about photography! Have fun and thanks for playing! =)

1. Do you own a digital camera? Yes!
2. What is your camera of choice? I’ve had only Kodak digital cameras and I’ve been very pleased with them
3. If you’re a digital camera fan, do you print your own photos, or do you send them in to be printed? If you send them in, do you have a favorite place? If they get printed at all – they get sent in. This happens very rarely though 🙂 I have only printed them at Sam’s and Walmart, and sent some off to online places. I think I’ve tried Snapfish (happy) and Picturebug (ok, but happier with Snapfish).
4. How many pictures do you take a month? Oh my, lots. Some months I just take “nothing” pictures, but I still take at least 75-100. On months where there’s a holiday or event, I might easily take several hundred.
5. How many of those pictures actually get printed? Lately, zero. I’m probably 3 years behind on printing pictures 😳
6. Are you planning on purchasing a new camera in the near future? No, Tim just got me a new one this past Christmas. It’s a Kodak P850 and I love it!
7. CHALLENGE: Go check out Favorite Five Photos and Foto Pherrets and choose just ONE photo to share. Hmm, will try to do this later. Instead, I’ll post one I took of some of my flowers a couple of weeks ago (you can also check out my Flickr stream on the sidebar for more scenic pics):

I blogged just a couple of days ago in my Thursday Thirteen post, about some movies I wanted to rent and watch over the summer. I found one of them at the library on Friday, “Because of Winn Dixie”, and checked it out on DVD. We watched it tonight, and I’m happy to say it is a really good movie – very clean, very charming, very heartwarming, very sweet and not at all sad (as I was afraid it might be). What a wonderful movie 🙂 I’m so glad I got it and that we were able to watch it. I’ll have to return it to the library soon and see what else I can find!

~Land Lines~

By the way…
Not including cell phones, how many working telephones do you have in your home? We have 4 that are plugged up, they are part of a system. One base unit with answering machine and 3 cordless units scattered in various rooms. We keep one corded phone in a closet to pull out just in case. Although, realisitically, we would probably be using our cell phones if at all possible.
Got any really old phones that you still use? Oops, see above, keep one corded one. No rotary ones!
Are you planning on going completely cellular and ridding yourself of landlines? We’re going to keep a house phone. It’s not technically a land line, we have switched to Vonage and our house line is VOIP (voice over IP). It uses our internet high speed line that comes in through our cable company. We like the feature that if the signal is out at the house, Vonage automatically forwards all of our calls to our cell phone

I haven’t done much “personal” blogging lately, because, frankly, there just hasn’t been a lot going on that is even remotely “blog-worthy”. 🙂 Tim has been working and playing golf non-stop, and I’ve been hanging out and keeping busy with chores, TV, computer time and reading. Hardly exciting stuff. So, to fill the space, I’ve been doing some memes lately, and really enjoying them. I love when new people come to visit my site and leave comments. Way cool

Anyway, we finally had a night out, and while it’s not very exciting, I thought I would blog about it! Tim had to work a bit late yesterday (Friday), but after he finished, we left and went to Red Lobster. I’ve been really hungry for seafood, and so Tim took me to eat to my heart’s desire. 🙂 I tried to be good and semi-health conscious; so I got the broiled seafood platter. It was really yummy – broiled scallops, shrimp scampi and stuffed broiled flounder. Good stuff and I really enjoyed it. After dinner, we had a couple of extra minutes, so we stopped by Barnes and Noble on the way home. Tim gets the football magazines every summer, in preparation for the upcoming season. I hadn’t been able to find his favorite at Walmart, so we went to B&N to look for it. We found it, and also bought a couple of books from the bargain table (see my sidebar for the latest one for me by Anita Shreve). We got Tim a Robert Ludlum book, but I’m not going to hold my breath about when he might actually sit down to read. The current obsession with golf is still very strong. He plays or hits balls about 7 days a week lately, if the sun is shining. Since it doesn’t get dark till about 8:30 around here, he’s out till pretty late every night.

Anyway, we came home to watch the last” Love Comes Softly” movie on the Hallmark channel. We watched all 3 movies back to back this week, and I really, really enjoyed them. I am looking forward to reading the books one day. The one last night was “Love’s Long Journey” and it was as good as the others. I’m so glad I found them on the TV lineup and we were able to watch them.

Saturday is more of the same – golf for Tim and Don, and probably shopping or hanging out for me and Gail. Maybe we’ll have something else to report other than the guy’s golf scores later today or tomorrow. 🙂

I *heart* the library! I just love being able to go and get books and bring them home to read and never have to pay a penny. I think libraries are very cool institutions

I had to recheck the book I was reading “Murder at Union Station” by Margaret Truman, as I was not quite finished with it. Here’s a neat factoid: I was reading the book the other night and Tim saw her name and said “is she related to President Harry Truman?” I had no idea, so I do what I always do. I went to the computer and got on Blingo, and come to find it, she is his daughter! How cool is that.

Anyway, I checked out 2 more books, you can see them on the sidebar. They are “The Preservationist” by David Maine, a book I had seen on Susie‘s blog, which is about Noah and building the ark. The other is a book that I think was on the bestseller list for a while, a few years ago – “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd. Tune in over the next couple of weeks for book reviews.

Also, in my Thursday Thirteen post below, I listed 13 movies I wanted to see this summer. I found one at the library that seems to be a favorite, so I rented it for a week. For free. 😆 I got “Because of Winn Dixie”. I hope I don’t cry for days afterward, I’m a total sap when it comes to dog movies.