Exceedingly Mundane

Happy Birthday to my sister Gail! Today is Gail’s birthday and we want to wish her Happy Birthday and many, many more happy years to come! We got to see Gail and her husband Don yesterday, for supper, and then they came over to hang out, watch a movie, and when it got to be pretty late, they ended up spending the night with us! Today is her birthday, and we got to sing Happy Birthday to her (loudly, badly) this morning when she got up, and then we all had a big birthday breakfast of pancakes, eggs and deer sausage.

Happy Birthday Gail, we hope you have a wonderful day!

P.S. You can go and check out my Project365 blog for a picture of Gail and I last night at my favorite Italian restaurant. 🙂

I’ve finished 2 books in the last several days, 2 of the 6 that I checked out of the library on Monday. That’s pretty good for me, I read a lot, but this may be a new record! 🙂 Tim has been out of town on business, and it’s been really cold, so it seemed like a really good time to curl up by the fireplace with a big quilt, a mug of hot chocolate, and these books.

I thoroughly enjoyed both of these books, although they were very different from one another. First, the book by Debbie Macomber (“Susannah’s Garden”) was not one of my favorites by her, but I still liked it. It was a light, easy read, as most of hers are, and although I liked the characters and plotline, I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as her Blossom Street books or her Cedar Cove books. Still a really good book though (and it ended well, which is always a big thing for me). The Elizabeth Berg book, well, I don’t know where to begin with that one. I just read my first book by her earlier this year, “The Year of Pleasures”. I loved and adored that book. This one (“We Are All Welcome Here”) I loved also, but in a very different way. I could relate to the main character in the “Year of Pleasures” book and I really loved Berg’s flowing writing style. This book had a totally different feel to it, yet, it read like her other one in a way. I don’t quite know how to describe it. Probably because the characters and subject matter were so different, but I was equally engrossed in this book. It takes place in the summer of 1964, in Tupelo, Mississippi (birthplace to Elvis Presley), during the Freedom Summer. This is all very familiar to me, as I live in this part of the world and have heard about these events all my life. Yet, the book was really all about a woman and her daughter. A woman who contracted polio, gave birth in an iron lung, and was a quadriplegic who came home to raise her daughter, with the aid of caregivers. The book was hard to put down, and had a very satisfying ending for me, two hallmarks of a great book in my mind.

For the record, that makes a total of 11 books so far this year, with a total of 3,601 pages read. Up next is the last ‘Miss Julia” book, I think, that I have yet to read – “Miss Julia Stands Her Ground”. Another library book from the stack, and after that one, I’ll start on the “Yukon Quest” series by Tracie Peterson. Peterson is a new author to me, and I’m looking forward to reading these. After, of course, I enjoy Miss Julia, little Lloyd, Hazel Marie, Sam, Lillian and the whole gang. I have to see what light-hearted escapades they will be up to next! 🙂

I haven’t done this one in a couple of weeks, and I keep meaning to. But, I’m definitely going to play along this week.

This week’s question is – If there were no blogs, what would you be doing right now?

Well. Good question! I can barely remember what my daily routine was like before I started blogging, a little over 2 years ago. I used to spend a lot more time running and maintaining our main website, Hambones.org. I used to post some of what I post on my blog on the main site, in the forums. We used to play trivia, but the interest in doing that online at the website has faded. I also used to do a lot more scrapbooking than I do now, and visiting scrapbook message boards. Sadly, I haven’t done much of that lately. Well, not really any, since I started blogging.

Let’s see, if I wasn’t blogging I would probably be:

a) Reading more
b) Maintaining our main website with content that I would put on my blog
c) Scrapbooking
d) Watching more TV and movies

Honestly though, I can’t see me giving up blogging any time soon. I really enjoy it, and I’ve met so many wonderful friends online through blogging. I really think blogging is like a current-day form of being pen pals. Or better really! I have met some of the most wonderful ladies through this, and I have zero plans to give it up!

Great question, Karen! You can click here to go to the BlogTalkers blog. New questions are posted every week 🙂

Time for another Question of the Day! I had a survey up on our main website, but it only got 3 responses, so I thought I would ask the same question here. Do you have any wish lists online? I use Amazon’s wish list system, but I know there are others out there, although I can’t think of any off the top of my head! Do you use Amazon or another site, or do you not have a wish list? What is on your wish list? Mine has books, movies, kitchen items, personal items, etc. In fact, I have several separate lists at Amazon, by category.

So, that’s today’s Question of the Day: Do you have a wish list at Amazon? What kind of items are on it? Do you ever order for yourself from your wish list, or do others order things for you from your list? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Romance

So, in honor of Valentine’s Day . . .

Love stories? Yes or No? Yes, I love a good romance or love story, or even a good fiction book about relationships. I seem to read a lot of what I term “women’s fiction”, where there’s some kind of conflict, often between the man and woman, and of course, they end up together and in love. As long as it’s got a happy ending, I’m good with it!

If yes, “romances” as a genre? Or just, well, stories that have love stories? (Nobody’s going to call “Pride & Prejudice” a “romance,” right?) I like “romance” as a genre, but don’t misunderstand, it’s not a Harlequin type thing I like. I like stories that have a love element to them, but it’s not always the main plot. An exception might be a book like “The Princess” by Lori Wick, which is mostly about love and falling in love, but it does have the Christian theme to it. OK, I’m just rambling here, I do like stories that contain love, not just a plain love story.

I’ve seen this great meme at several places (Laura, Susie and Cam, among others) and thought I would “save” it for around Valentines Day. Since Tim is my sweetheart and my forever Valentine, I thought this would be an appropriate time of year to do this one 🙂

Here’s Tim, doing his favorite thing, playing golf:

His age: 37

How tall is he: 5′ 11″

How long have you been together: together almost 12, married almost 11

How long did you know each other before you got together? about 2 months

What physical features attracted you to him first?: his eyes and his smile

Eye color: sort of hazel, depends on the light if they look more green or brown

Hair color: brown

Hair style: short!

Normal Outfit: jeans and a polo (winter) or shorts and a polo (summer)

How did you meet: at work

How serious is it: lifetime serious

Are you “in love�: Most definitely

Do your parents like him: Yes, my mom always loved him and even though my dad wasn’t thrilled with him at first, he loves him to pieces now. I joke now that my dad would rather call or see Tim than me, his baby daughter!

Do his parents like you: I think so, I adore them 🙂

Do you trust him: Implicitly

Would you share a toothbrush with him: Only if I had to, but yes, I would

Would he let you wear his pants: Yes, and I’ve worn some of his old sweat pants before when I was sick!

Do you have a shirt of his that you sleep in? I used to, but not any more. I used to have some of his t-shirts from his military days

Do you like the way he smells: Yes, especially right after he gets out of the shower!

Can you picture having kids with him: Yes, I would have given anything to have kids with Tim

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It’s time for another “Question of the Day”. Today, I’d like to talk about milk. I know a lot of people don’t drink milk, and that’s cool, but we are definitely milk drinkers in our house. There’s just two of us, and we usually go through about 2 gallons a week. We have milk every morning on our cereal, and we usually have milk at night. Sometimes with cookies or something sweet, and sometimes it’s just milk. If we have breakfast food for dinner, we often stir Hershey’s syrup into milk and have chocolate milk with dinner. We love milk. But, here’s the thing, we drink only skim milk. We can’t afford the calories of the higher-fat content milks. Love them, but we’re perfectly happy with skim milk. I went through a phase where I drank soy milk, but I haven’t done that in a while. I mostly stick to skim.

On a related note, our milk has gotten really high here. I always buy the store brand, and at my Walmart last week, one gallon of skim milk was $3.36. I was shocked! Of course, it could be worse. A small, half gallon carton of organic milk is that much, but still. Thankfully, our Kroger runs a sale fairly often, and sells their store brand of milk 2 gallons for $5.00.

So, that’s today’s Question of the Day: Do you drink milk? If so, what kind (whole, 1%, 2%, skim, organic, soy, etc) and how much do you usually drink in a week’s time? If you remember, how much do you pay for milk where you live? Inquiring minds want to know!

Swiped from Dawn… thanks Dawn!

Pick one!

1. peanut butter or jelly? Both, silly! Can’t have one without the other 🙂
2. hiking or swimming? Hiking
3. football or baseball? FOOTBALL!!!!
4. christmas or thanksgiving? Both, but if pushed, Christmas
5. grade school or high school? High School
6. summer or winter? Winter
7. romance novel or mystery novel? Both!
8. mickey mouse or barney? Mickey, please make Barney go away!
9. road trip or airplane? Road trip

Just got back from a quick trip to the library. I had wanted to get a couple of books in different series I am reading, but the ones I wanted were checked out. I was looking for the fourth book in the Cedar Cove series by Debbie Macomber (44 Cranberry Point) and the third book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Series by Alexander McCall Smith (Morality for Beautiful Girls). I’ll have to get those on another trip.

So, to compensate, I got an armload of books that I won’t finish in my 3 weeks time, but that’s ok. I would have just gotten 3 or 4, but one of the books is the first in a trilogy and they had all three on the shelves, so I went ahead and grabbed them while I could. I can call on the phone in a couple weeks time and renew any of these for another 3 week block.

Oh, and yes, I have tons of books here to read. I have at least 35 or 40 in my TBR (“to be read”) pile. No, I didn’t want to read any of those next. I wanted something else. Doesn’t that make perfect sense? 🙄

Here’s what I got, and they are also on my sidebar now:

Susannah’s Garden by Debbie Macomber
We are All Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg
Miss Julia Stands her Ground by Ann B. Ross
Treasures of the North (Yukon Quest, book 1) by Tracie Peterson
Ashes and Ice (Yukon Quest, book 2) by Tracie Peterson
Rivers of Gold (Yukon Quest, book 3) by Tracie Peterson

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s a quick pic:

I don’t have much of a menu to post this week. Tim is going to be out of town some on business, and so I won’t be cooking a lot. He doesn’t really want me to advertise when he’s going to be gone, so I won’t do it by day, but here’s the general idea for the week:

Grilled Salmon (me)/Grilled Chicken (Tim), steamed green beans, rice or potato
Leftover take-out Chinese food
Ribeye Steaks, Baked Potatoes, salad
Spaghetti

I will probably also have one night where I’ll just have something easy like a bowl of cereal or oatmeal and some cinnamon toast.

Be sure to hop on over to Laura’s site and check out the rest of the menus. There are tons of links to some really good-sounding menus, a lot of them with recipes or links to recipes. I’m sure everyone’s menu looks a lot better than mine this week! 🙂

Hope everyone has a great week!

I just posted my photo for today over on my Project365 blog – my favorite picture I took of Beau today. It was really pretty here today, and we had Beau out on the deck for a while, to brush him off good and have a little play time. Then, Tim and I headed out for a while and left Beau outside to enjoy the warm weather and the sunshine. He did really good today, he didn’t dig any holes while we were gone! YEAH, that’s progress folks, real progress 😀

I had several pictures I thought were cute, but then again, I’m really biased when it comes to our dog. I’ll post the others on the extended page, but the cutest one is over on my Project365 blog. Check em out if you like cute dogs, LOL!
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I spent pretty much the entire day Friday laying on the couch. I felt like a big pile of dog poop. I don’t know why, maybe it is a seasonal thing or maybe the start of a sinus thing. All I know is that my head hurt, my shoulders hurt and I was just really tired. I took several naps throughout the day and a bunch of Tylenol and thankfully, I am feeling better today. It’s a good thing, because Tim has cabin fever and wanted to get out. We went out to lunch at a new-for-us place, Taco Del Mar, and then hit a few stores. You can check over on my photoblog for today’s photo of some of the stuff we picked up. In addition to the stuff posted there, we also got a new Cuisinart coffee grinder and a decorative plate for our entertainment center. The coffee grinder is below, ain’t it purty?! It matches my Cuisinart coffee pot, which I love. We don’t have a stand yet for the plate, so I didn’t take a picture of it 🙁

Also, as a sort of recap for other stuff I’ve been working on the last few days and not blogged about…

I’ve posted some misc photos over on my Project365 blog about a couple of projects I’ve been working on this week. This time of year, I’m always overcome with the need to declutter and reorganize and just basically pare some stuff down. I’m glad to say that I have made a big stab at this in the last week. I had bought a 3 drawer storage cart at Target in January, and I finally got it into one of our junk closets and organized. I took everything out of that closet, vacuumed it out and then went through it all. When I was done, I had 7 Walmart/grocery bags full of stuff for the trash. Everything else went back in, and I was even able to put my vacuum cleaner in that closet (it used to sit out in that spare bedroom, in a corner). That felt really good, to throw stuff out and get the rest of it organized. Then, we tackled the taxes. I hate doing them, so I begged Tim to work on them this year. He threw himself into it with regular “Tim gusto” and got them done. They’re efiled and we’re all set, so that’s another wonderful feeling. Lastly, I had posted here about annuals and yearbooks. I had a shelf of them in one of our old bookcases in the hall. I gathered them all together in one of those ZipLoc big bags and shoved them up under the guest bed. I used that bookshelf to organize a bunch of my cookbooks (look for a post soon on cookbooks, riveting stuff, I tell ya!) Yippee! I love and adore cookbooks, although I don’t splurge on them too often. I love to get them for gifts though, and I got several new ones this past Christmas. I love going through them, I read cookbooks like regular books! I don’t cook from them as often as I should (I seem to get so many great recipes from the Internet), but I do love having them. One day, I hope to have a really big kitchen with some built in shelves for all of my cookbooks.

Anyway, that’s about it, not that much exciting going on around here. We’ve been watching a lot of TV and are so glad all of our shows are back and not in reruns. We’ve got 24, American Idol, NCIS, The Unit, Lost and Survivor all with new shows. Not to mention, on Friday nights, we’ve been watching Monk and Psych, and on Sunday night, my beloved Battlestar Galactica. Good stuff, good stuff! Barely leaves a bookworm like myself time to read 😀

Friday, February 09, 2007
Feast One Hundred & Thirty

Appetizer – Have you been sick yet this winter? If so, what did you come down with? Not really sick, but a minor sinus thing here and there. I got really run down around Christmas and it took me a few days to feel better and get my strength back. Thankfully, nothing very serious (knock on wood, I don’t feel that great today!)

Soup – What colors dominate your closet? Black and khaki mostly, with some white, red, pink and blue thrown in for good measure.

Salad – How would you describe your personal “comfort zone”? OK, maybe it’s because I have a headache, but I’m confused by this question. Does comfort zone mean where I’m most comfortable? If so, then at home or around family and friends. I’m not fond of big crowds and I have this thing about my “personal space” when I’m in a crowd with strangers. If comfort zone means what is a place where I’m comfortable or what does it look like…. again, home. Big comfy chair, wrapped up in a quilt, with some hot chocolate and a book, that’s comfort for me

Main Course – On which reality show would you really like to be a contestant? None of them, but if I had the guts and the abilities to do it, I’d like to do Amazing Race with Tim. Thankfully, I’m smart enough to realize my limitations and know that I would NOT do well in a stressful situation like that 🙂

Dessert – Which holiday would you consider to be your favorite? Probably Christmas, although I like them all!

I finished another book last night, “Blue Smoke” by Nora Roberts. This is a paperback I picked up at the library sale last weekend for a whopping 50 cents. I got it because I knew that this was the next movie coming up on Lifetime TV (Nora Roberts, 4 movies, 4 consecutive Mondays). I have been enjoying the movies and wanting to read more Nora Roberts anyway.

This book was really good! I read it fairly quickly and had a hard time putting it down, which is always the sign of a good book for me. It wasn’t hard to figure out, no big twist, but I did love the characters and the story (and the ending!). Good book, and I’m looking forward to reading more Nora Roberts in the future.

For the record, that makes 8 books so far this year, with a total of 2,724 pages read. Up next is the 4th book in the Abram’s Daughters series by Beverly Lewis. I really love these books too, but am spacing them out, and mixing in other books and types of reads in the middle. I tend to get burned out when I try to read series books back to back to back. Weird, I know, but that’s me and I usually do better not to read them all at one time. One reason is that I really enjoy these books and sort of don’t want to see them end!

Today’s exhilarating post is all about soap. Yes, the difference between using bar soap and body wash. It’s always a thrill a minute here at “Exceedingly Mundane” folks! 😀

I’ve discovered yet another generational thing, at least in our family. When we have house guests of a certain age, they don’t understand why we have this bottle of stuff in the shower/tub called “Body Wash”. They are always like “where is the soap?”, which to them, means a bar of soap. Now, most everyone under the age of 50 understands the concept of a liquid body wash, but some don’t. So, I’ve learned to keep a bar or two of soap on hand for certain overnight guests to our home.

But for us, we like and use body wash. Tim, thankfully, was willing to try switching years ago (even though I was worried he would think it was girly and not try it!) and decided he likes it. He likes the Lever 2000 brand, so I keep us stockpiled with that body wash. Me, I love the ones from Bath and Body Works, but I also buy some cheaper stuff (Suave, store brand) to use from time to time. My current body wash favorite is B&BW Cherry Blossom. Love the stuff.

So, how about you? What do you use? I’d love for you to leave me a comment and answer today’s “Question of the Day“. What kind of soap do you use at your house, bar soap or body wash? Do you have a brand preference? Do you use the smelly, girly stuff or just something utilitarian, just to get you clean and half-way fresh smelling?!

Have a great day, everyone!