Exceedingly Mundane

Feast One Hundred & Seventy
November 30, 2007

Appetizer
What is your favorite carnival/amusement park ride? I’m not big on the rides, so it would be a tame one. I like to go around in a big circle, fairly fast and at a bit of an angle or incline… something like the Matterhorn, I think it is called (at our local state fair). When we went to Disney, I loved several of the rides like Big Thunder Mountain. I did NOT like Tower of Terror because of the drop (fear of heights thing).

Soup
How do you react in uncomfortable social situations? Poorly. I don’t like crowds and I don’t like “overly social” settings. I don’t like being uncomfortable either 🙂

Salad
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how much do you enjoy discussing deep, philosophical topics? With Tim, probably a 7 or 8. With other people, probably much lower like a 3 or 4. I don’t like controversy and I don’t like hurting other people’s feelings, so I tend to avoid talking about controversial or deep topics that people often have strong feelings about.

Main Course
Did you get a flu shot this year? If not, do you plan to? Nope. I got one, years ago, and got the flu. I know you’re not supposed to be able to get the flu from it, but I did that year and it was awful. I haven’t had a shot since, nor have I had the flu since! I figure, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it 😀

Dessert
Approximately how many hours per week do you spend watching television? Oh wow, too many. Probably 4 hours or more a day, if you count the Today Show in the AM, occasionally Rachael Ray in the morning and Oprah in the afternoon, and our nighttime shows and football. TV is my main form of entertainment, that, reading and movies 🙂

Today is Tim’s birthday and I can’t let a chance go by to wish my darling husband Happy Birthday at my blog. I wrote a post about him last year (click here for that one) and one the year before that (even shorter, that one is here). Believe it or not, Tim doesn’t read my blog! I usually read the comments to him later, so he does get them. He works on a computer all day and sometimes half the night, and keeps our website and our blogs running, so he doesn’t really spend a lot of his spare time playing on the computer. He likes to play golf in his spare time! Which is what we did yesterday, as part of an early birthday present for him, I went with him to the golf course. We took Beau this time, for his first ever trip (pictures here). Tim also got to use his present I bought him, a Sky Caddie.

I’m going to do my best to see that he has a good day. But then again, I try most every day to see that he has a good day. Tim is the best thing that has ever happened to me and the best part of me. He works really hard to take care of me and Beau, and to make us happy. I could go on and on about him, but suffice it to say, he’s a great guy and I’m so very lucky to have him. 🙂

So, Happy Birthday Sweetheart! I love you 😀

I’m not feeling inspired to come up with some kind of a blog post today, so I thought I’d post a photo of Beau. I took this one a couple of weeks ago and thought it was so cute. Well, I think most every photo of my puppy is cute, but you get the idea 🙂 He likes to roll on his back and pull up his two front paws – this is his sign that he wants his belly rubbed! He does this a lot when Tim or I walk by him in the kitchen. You know, I’m posting this photo here, but I really need to be posting photos over at my Project365 blog. I was about 10 days behind, then posted 5 days worth of photos, but now I’m about a week behind again. Sigh. Maybe I’ll catch up soon!

I am staying pretty busy with catching up on things around here. Any spare time I have, I’m working on rebuilding my iTunes library. I blogged about my disaster here -but basically I deleted my entire iTunes library and am slowly trying to reload all of my music. I had a backup I had made months and months ago (ahem, like 9 or 10 months ago), which was woefully out of date. I’ve probably spent 8 hours so far trying to rebuild my music and playlists, and I still have a ways to go. A long ways 🙁

On the Christmas front, we’re partially decorated, but that’s it. I haven’t bought the first present. I don’t even have any ideas for anyone in our family. I don’t know where to start and I’m slowly starting to panic. I haven’t done Christmas cards and we haven’t done the outdoor decorating. Just my tree and Snow Village are up. I’ll probably post some photos in early December over at my Project365 blog.

Hope you all have a great day!

Time for a silly, easy Question of the Day! What color is the main vehicle you drive? Is it your favorite color? Do you tend to always buy the same color of car? Is there a color of vehicle you would not buy?

My current vehicle is actually dark red, a sort of maroon. This was a big break from the norm for us – we tend to buy neutral color vehicles. The last 3 vehicles we had were either a tan or a grey color. We both really like black vehicles, but we never buy them. It’s hot here about 9 months out of the year and we hate getting into a really hot vehicle, so we tend to buy “cooler” colors, something that won’t get as hot. Silly, I know, but that’s our way of thinking and the reason we never seem to buy black. I’ve never owned a blue car or a white car, personally. I think one of Tim’s early trucks was white. We have actually both owned red vehicles before, bright red, before we met each other. This maroon SUV is our first “colored” car together 😀

What about you? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Tim and I are both simply stunned, outraged and speechless right now. Our university and alma mater has just fired their football coach. He’s been our coach for 17 years and is one of the longest tenured coaches in the country. He’s ONLY posted 14 consecutive winning seasons. We’re ONLY going to a bowl game right before Christmas – our ninth bowl game in ten years. And they fired him. We’re both just really upset right now. What on earth are they thinking? Bonehead athletic directors and presidents. Utterly idiotic.

Ok, I know most of you are not football fans, but we are in our house. We pull for USM and the New Orleans Saints year in and year out and have for eons. It’s hard to see them lose or not play as we’d like, but we stick with our teams. For them to fire our beloved coach is just unheard of to us right now.

And on top of that, our senior senator from Mississippi, Trent Lott, resigned this morning. What is up today? Ugh.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging. 😀

Well, we survived the eating and cooking free-for-all that was Thanksgiving last week! I think I’ve gained 10 pounds. I’m too afraid to step on the scales and see 🙂 We haven’t been walking as much either, so that is not helping. I’m hoping we can get back on track a little this week. Which won’t be that easy, since Tim’s birthday is this week!

As always, thanks to Laura over at OrgJunkie for organizing and hosting this each week! Go check out her blog and you’ll find tons more recipes and menu plans.

Last week, we had Thanksgiving at our house and the turkey came out pretty good. We had enough left for sandwiches, and I used the carcass to make a new soup recipe over the weekend. I haven’t entered it on our website yet, but I will try to do that later with my notes. The recipe I used was this one at AllRecipes. Tonight, I’m hoping to use up the last of the turkey (gosh, I hope it is all still ok!) to make a quasi-turkey pot pie.

Here’s the general plan for the week:

Monday – Turkey Pot Pie, baked sweet potatoes

Tuesday – Easy Beef Stroganoff, green beans or butterbeans

Wednesday – Light Night before Tim weighs in at work; Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese or something really light

Thursday – Waffles, turkey bacon

Friday – Steaks, Baked Potatoes, Salad

Saturday – Date Night or pizza or homemade soup if I am home long enough to make some

Sunday – TBD

Just a word to the wise… I thought I’d share some tidbits of wisdom here tonight.

Please note – if it’s late at night and you’re tired, and you happen to be plundering around on your Vista laptop, trying to find out why it keeps locking up and giving you a big ole blue screen… Do Not, I repeat, Do Not, go into Explorer and start looking around. If you did, you might mistake two entries for Music as a duplicate of one another. Not one being a folder and one being a Link or some such Vista nonsense. By deleting one, you are not cleaning up disk space. When it says you are deleting nearly 8 Gig worth of music, stop and do not click “OK”. When it then says that this is too much data to be placed in the Recycle Bin, do not click ok, allow, yes, proceed or enter. Because then you will erase every.single.entry in your iTunes library. And be sure to NOT try to hook up your iPod to said Vista laptop afterwards in order to try to sync it back. Because iTunes only works one way and you’ll overwrite your iPod with your newly zapped, empty, nada iTunes library.

Just saying… you might want to take note of this in the future.

Me, of course, I would never do this. I wouldn’t feel like a total eejit if I did do something like this. I would not have to dig out my (hopefully) old backup copy of iTunes and try to restore it. Because you know, I would never go nearly A YEAR without backing up iTunes. Not me.

It’s a good thing I can put my hands on all of the music I have purchased in the last 8-9 months. Of course, any of the free songs that I have downloaded would be gone. Because I wouldn’t think to back up those. Just saying.

OK, that concludes your Public Service Announcement for today.

P.S. Originally I planned to blog a bit about our weekend, but that’s just gonna have to wait. I seem to be really busy with life and not with taking or posting photographs over at my Project365 blog. I’m {gasp} over a week behind over there. At least I’m attempting to get something posted here every few days. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up some soon. Have a great weekend! 😀

Howdy! Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We really did – we ate lots of food, and have lots of yummy leftovers left. I’m going to try a new soup recipe later today using the turkey carcass, hope that works out. We had a blast visiting with everyone yesterday, and most of them are still here today. The guys are going to play golf in this very chilly weather (high in the mid 50’s today). Gail and I are going to run to Target later, no Black Friday shopping for us. Elizabeth has to study 🙁

Hope you all have a good day-after Thanksgiving and weekend. I don’t think we’ll get to any Christmas decorations yet, maybe next weekend. We have a birthday party to go to this weekend, our youngest nephew turned 5 yesterday. Happy Birthday Ethan 😀

OK, I got this email a week or two ago from Tim and really liked it. I thought I’d post it today and let you guys enjoy! I’ve always said that the English language must be so hard for someone else to learn. I know I struggle with it enough, as it is!

—————–
English 101

If you’ve learned to speak fluent English, you must be a genius!

Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to
present the present..

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail

18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.

19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests

21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor
pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or
French fries in France (Surprise!). Sweetmeats are candies
while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.

Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither
from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers
don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One
goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can
make amends but not one amend. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get
rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats
vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite
at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by
ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a
wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a
language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill
in a form by filling it out, and in which, an alarm goes
off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the
creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That
is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are
out, they are invisible.

P.S. – Why doesn’t “Buick” rhyme with “quick”?

Still busy here, but having a blast. Tim is on vacation all week, and my sister Gail came Monday and stayed 2 days with us. She’ll be back tomorrow (Thurs) with her family, and my dad will drive up, for the big day. Or maybe I should say, the “big meal”. Because after all, Thanksgiving is mostly about the food, isn’t it?!

Here’s what we’re having tomorrow:

Cheese and Crackers for an appetizer
Turkey
Gail’s Squash Dressing
Cranberry Sauce
Broccoli Casserole
Sweet Potato Casserole
Green Bean Bundles
Rolls
Pecan Pie
Creme Brulee Cheesecake

Hopefully, we’ll all get to watch a little football, before or after, and maybe get a little exercise in after eating. I’m hoping to either get out and walk a bit, or get out with the guys and watch them hit golf balls in the backyard. I know the weather should be pretty good tomorrow – we’re expecting a line of thunderstorms to move through later today and drop our temps from the high 70’s to the low 50’s. It should feel more like Thanksgiving tomorrow 😀 Hopefully, the rain will be gone and we can all get out and get a little bit of fresh air and exercise after the feasting 😛

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I’m not posting my regular “Menu Plan Monday” post today. I haven’t really got a menu planned this week, nor do I have a lot of motivation to make one 🙂

We had a really busy but fun weekend. Tim went deer hunting on Saturday, and Beau and I went along for the ride. I spent the day with my mother-in-law and niece, which was fun. We went shopping 🙂 My father-in-law shot a deer and sent my dad home with a lot of deer meat. Tim didn’t shoot one, but he will. He usually waits until December or even January before he shoots us one. He likes to go and see his brothers, dad and friends and hang out. 🙂 Sunday was busy with church, football and running errands. Unfortunately, our Saints did not play well and lost their game. Tim was bummed the rest of the day.

We watched a couple of movies from Netflix. Our viewing time has dropped dramatically lately, and probably won’t pick up this week. We finally saw “Miss Potter” which I really liked and Tim suffered through with quiet grace and dignity. We also watched a really old movie called “The Spitfire Grill” that we liked, but it certainly didn’t end like we wanted.

Tim is on vacation all week. He usually takes either this week off or the one after Thanksgiving (his BIRTHDAY week!) to go deer hunting. It’s so warm that he wants to go play golf some, then maybe hunt later in the week. I’m hoping to get him to help me some around the house. We’re having my side of the family here at our house for Thanksgiving this year. This is the first time we’ve had it here since my mom died over 5 years ago. I hope I remember how to cook a turkey! 🙂

So, I’ll be busy all week, most likely running around “like a chicken with my head cut off”. Cleaning, cooking, shopping and what not. I don’t imagine I’ll have a lot of computer time this week, so if you don’t see me for a few days, don’t worry 🙂

As for the menu, we’re just going to have a couple of easy meals early in the week – things like loaded baked potatoes, waffles and turkey bacon, maybe tomato soup and grilled cheese. I’ll spend a lot of time on Wednesday PM cooking, so supper won’t be much. Thursday evening we will have turkey sandwiches! Friday and the weekend are totally up in the air.

Hope you all have a great week and a very blessed, happy Thanksgiving. I know we both have so much to be thankful for 😀

Lynne, over at Lynne’s Little Corner, tagged me a week or so ago with this fun “5 things” meme. Lynne included pictures with some of hers, but I’m afraid I’m not that industrious! (although I will add a couple of links) I did want to play along though, so thanks for tagging me, Lynne!

5 Things found in my room (I’ll use our living room, since I’m usually in here with my laptop):

Our Samsung big plasma TV 😀
These candles on my coffee table
Bookcases with so many of my lovely books
Big comfy chair with ottoman next to my fireplace (where I’m sitting now, with my laptop)
Seymour, perched on top of the entertainment center, since it’s football season 🙄

5 things I’ve always wanted to do:

Travel to England and Scotland
Visit all 50 US States
Go to a bed and breakfast in Vermont or somewhere in the NE during the fall, for “leaf peeping” 🙂
Learn to play some kind of musical instrument (but not enough to take lessons!)
More traveling I guess – all over Europe, Australia, etc

5 things found in my bag

(My purse is here)
Wallet
Palm and Cellphone
Sunglasses
Hand Sanitizer
Chapstick

5 things in my wallet

Driver’s license
Credit cards
Insurance Card
Library Card
small amount of cash

5 things I’m currently “in to”

Reading
Watching a ton of TV shows
Watching movies from Netflix
Blogging
Taking photos with my new camera

I won’t tag anyone specifically, but please feel free to play along if you’d like. Be sure to leave me a message if you do decide to play, so I can come check out your answers!

Have a great day 😀

Feast One Hundred & Sixty Nine
November 16, 2007

Appetizer
What was your first “realâ€? job? I got a job when I was about 13, working as a receptionist at a photography studio. I filed stuff, made appointments, showed people into the photography rooms (this guy mostly did people portraits and school portraits). I was ecstatic to be making “my own” money at that age!

Soup
Where would you go if you wanted to spark your creativity? I’m not very creative, but I do love to take photographs. So anywhere that is very picturesque, with lots of interesting things to snap, good colors, fun stuff.

Salad
Complete this sentence: I am embarrassed when… I am embarrassed when I trip and fall or do something klutzy and someone sees me being clumsy.

Main Course
What values did your parents instill in you? My parents instilled a lot of wonderful things in me – the value of a good education, that you should work hard, take care of the things you have, and be frugal. I try to be a good steward of all that I have been blessed with.

Dessert
Name 3 fads from your teenage years. Typical 80’s stuff -big hair, lovely clothes, big shoulder pads, etc 😀

I thought I’d pose another book-related question today, in addition to playing along to the “Booking Through Thursday” meme (see below).

Today’s Question of the Day actually comes from Lauren over at Baseballs and Bows — thanks Lauren!

Lauren wants to know (and I do too!) – When you finish a book, do you dwell on it for a little while, or do you immediately pick up another book and start reading?

My answer would be a mixture of both. If it’s a light and fluffy book, then I’ll just put it aside, pick up another one and get going. If it is more of a moving or “deep” type of book, then I might dwell on it a little bit. But, overall, I mostly just get another book and start reading. I love to read, all kinds of different stuff, so I love to get started on a new book.

How about you? Leave us a comment and let us know!

This week’s topic: Preservatives

Today’s question comes from Conspiracy-Girl:
I’m still relatively new to this meme so I’m not sure if this has been asked yet, but I’m curious how many of us write notes in our books. Are you a Footprint Leaver or a Preservationist?

Well, another really easy question for me. I don’t write in my books at all. I *might* neatly print my name in the front, if it was a book I thought I might loan to someone and I wanted to make sure I got it back. I never underline in my books, make notes in the margins, or even turn down the corners. I think it’s something that was ingrained in me growing up. I never mar my books in any way. 🙂 So, yes, I’m a total Preservationist!

We’re about through painting here. I forgot how much I dislike painting, especially the tedious detail stuff. I don’t mind just rolling a large surface with paint – it’s all the nooks and crannies, crevices, corners, moldings and stuff I don’t particularly like… Well – on second thought, I just don’t like any of it really! The prep work, the actual painting, the clean-up, ugh.

Some of you sweet people left comments and were under the impression that we were undertaking a large scale outdoor painting project. Not so. We have a brick house, and have some external surfaces that did need painting every year or two. Tim was always responsible for that, so about 3 or 4 years ago, he decided we needed to put vinyl siding on our house. Which alleviates almost all of the painting (for him!). We have vinyl everywhere except some trim and the outside doors. So, that’s what we were painting.

Our exterior doors are French paned doors – 15 lovely squares of glass with small panes in between. Well, it’s one large sheet of glass, but you get the idea. Lots of detail and small spots to paint. We had all white doors, trim and “sidelights” as I call them. Now, the door is a dark brown and the trim is still white. I’ll post photos later today or tomorrow over at my Project365 blog. UPDATE , they are up now (here and here). 😛

Here’s the color we painted the doors – a dark brown. It looks more chocolate in this photo, but you know how paint is – it gets darker when it dries. I told Tim when we opened the can – now I know why I picked this color – it looks like liquid chocolate! Being the chocoholic that I am, that must be why I went for this color! It looks good enough to eat, hehehe! Oh, and it’s called “Boston Legacy” and we got it at Lowe’s.

I’m tired of painting and ready to do something else! 🙂