Exceedingly Mundane

I do love to read, but I’ve been resisting joining all of the great reading challenges out there. I’ve decided to make an exception to that, and participate in Annie’s “What’s In a Name” reading challenge for 2008. I decided to go through my ever-growing TBR pile and find books that I have bought and want/need to read, thereby killing two birds with one stone. Here’s the link to the blog Annie setup for this challenge, and here’s the basic guidelines:

“What’s In A Name?” Reading Challenge

Dates: January 1, 2008 through December 31, 2008

The Challenge: Choose one book from each of the following categories.

1. A book with a color in its title. Examples might include: The Amber Spyglass, The Red Pony, Blue Blood

2. A book with an animal in its title. Examples might include: The Hound of the Baskervilles, To Kill a Mockingbird, Julie of the Wolves

3. A book with a first name in its title. Examples might include: Jane Eyre, the Harry Potter books, Anne of Green Gables

4. A book with a place in its title. Examples might include: From Russia with Love, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Out of Africa

5. A book with a weather event in its title. Examples might include: The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Red Storm Rising, Tornado Alley

6. A book with a plant in its title. Examples might include: Where the Red Fern Grows, The Name of the Rose, Flowers for Algernon

–You may overlap books with other challenges, but please don’t use the same book for more than one category. (For example, you can use The Red Pony for either a “color” book or an “animal” book, but not for both.)

Here’s my choices:

1. Color in the title – “Windy City Blues” by Sara Paretsky — Completed January 2008

2. Animal in the title – “The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog” by Elizabeth Peters– Completed September 2008

3. First Name in the title – “Julia’s Hope” by Leisha Kelly– Completed September 2008

4. Place in the title – “Home to Holly Springs” by Jan Karon — Completed January 2008

5. Weather Event in the title – “Light on Snow” by Anita Shreve — Completed February 2008

6. Plant in the title – “Sweetgrass” by Mary Alice Monroe — Completed April 2008

Thanks, Annie, for hosting this challenge. I look forward to reading these during the year, and knocking a few books off my TBR pile 🙂

I had so many books I wanted to blog about, but I think rather than blogging about them separately, I’ll just do one “skim over” post. I’ve read a lot of books since the last time I chatted about them, so there’s a lot of ground to cover.

First, I’m happy to report that I met my personal reading goal I set for myself this year. Last year, in 2006, I read 70 books, so I started off by setting a goal of 75 books. A nice round number! When I reached that goal, I still had a few months left in the year, so I stretched my goal to 100 books. Another nice round number. Secretly, I was shooting for 104. Not a round number, but a good one. With 52 weeks in the year, that works out to an average of 2 books a week. I’m happy to say that I did that this year, and I’m very happy about it 🙂 I did read several “smaller” books. Some short novellas and short, sweet Christmas books. But as I was chatting with one of the librarians a couple of weeks ago, she said “a book is a book. If they sell it in the bookstore and we have it on our shelves, it counts as a book. It doesn’t matter if it has 125 pages to it, or 475 pages to it. It’s still a book”. And she’s right.

I did read several Christmas books this year, which has become a yearly tradition for me. I like the shortness of them, when my time is limited and everything else is so busy and hectic. But more than that, I like the message and story that they tell. They are usually uplifting, happy little books and I enjoy those. Especially at this time of year. I read the following Christmas books this year, and enjoyed them all:

The Christmas Shoes by Donna Van Liere
The Christmas Blessing by Donna Van Liere
The Gift of Christmas Present by Melody Carlson
Once Upon a Christmas (2 books in 1) by Lauraine Snelling and Lenora Worth
The Christmas Pearl by Dorothea Benton Frank

Before I started reading these, I read and thoroughly enjoyed some very sweet, very old-fashioned Christian fiction books, called the Tales from Grace Chapel Inn. These are Guidepost Books that apparently were issued quite a while back, and I believe they are updating and re-releasing them. I have read the first four, the two that were released in 2006 and the two released in 2007, and I just loved them. They are not for everyone though — they are very very old-fashioned and straight-laced type of books. I thought they were charming, and they were very easy to read and very predictable. For me, they were just the kind of books I was in the mood for at the time. I am hoping they release two more this year, as I love the characters and am wanting to read more from this series. The first four I read were:

Back Home Again by Melody Carlson
Recipes and Wooden Spoons by Judy Baer
Hidden History by Melody Carlson
Ready to Wed by Melody Carlson

Loved them! I am currently reading the first book in the Alaskan Quest series by Tracie Peterson. A year or two ago, I read and really liked the three books in the Yukon Quest series, and I had these follow-up books in my Amazon wish list for a while (the Alaskan ones). I was happy to see them at my library’s website listing of new books, so I am on the wait list for them. I have the first one, and have started it, but won’t finish it before the New Year. I am hoping to get them all read in January. I have so many series books that I want to read, but I’m trying really hard to limit myself to how many series I start, before I complete some others already in progress 😀

I also won a book from Deena at “A Peek at my Bookshelf“, a book by Lisa Samson, who is a new-to-me author that I have been wanting to read. I won a copy of “Hollywood Nobody” and I’m looking forward to reading it sometime in 2008. I also signed up for and won an advance copy of “Firefly Lane” by Kristin Hannah, as part of LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program. I haven’t gotten that one yet, but that’s ok – I have plenty of books to keep me busy in the mean time!

Lastly, I think I am going to participate in a reading challenge. That post to follow….

Happy Reading!

Well, I’m not totally prepared for the menu this week, but I really *want* to be! I am ready to try to get back to normal. Back to a normal routine, especially where our eating is concerned. As most people do, we’ve really over done it in the food category this holiday season. I have been too scared to go near the scales in our bathroom, but I sure feel like I’ve gained 6 or 8 pounds. Ugh. 🙁

This is still a work in progress, but here’s a general idea:

Sunday – yesterday, we had Pigs in a Blanket for the football games, and then ham and cheese omelettes and biscuits for supper

Monday – New Years Eve….still trying to decide! I have some shrimp and nibbles or we might do Chinese food

Tuesday – New Years Day – black-eyed peas, cabbage, cornbread

Wednesday – it’s supposed to be cold here, so some kind of soup. If I make it to the store to get potatoes, I’ll probably make this Sausage-Corn Chowder. If not, I will probably make chili, since I already have all the ingredients on hand

Thursday – hoping to try a new recipe for Cheeseburger Pasta, butterbeans, another veggie

Friday – Date Night or TBD

Thursday –

I have now officially taken the longest break – ever- on my blog. I am wanting to get back into blogging, but I’m not sure I remember how! 🙂

I hope everyone has had a great holiday season. Tim and I have had a really good Christmas. We got to see all of our family, on both sides, over the course of several days. We got to spend our first ever Christmas morning in our own home, opening presents. In all years past, we’ve always gotten up and traveled on Christmas day and we had to open our own presents to each other on another day. So, that was very nice and very “Christmas-y” to me! Tim got me a new telephoto lens for my Canon Digital Rebel. I can’t wait to play with it more! I got Tim a lot of little stuff – some gadgets and toys, some golf stuff, some clothes, a movie, and things like that. A nice Christmas all around.

I’m looking forward to getting the rest of my Christmas decorations down, and trying to get back to normal. I always love Christmas, but after it’s all over, I’m usually yearning to get back into a routine. I thrive on routine, you know I also need to take some time to get my blog “back to normal” and get back to my red look. 🙂

I’m struggling with what to cook this week, but hope to be back tomorrow or later with a menu of sorts for the week. I also *still* have some book chatter to talk about. I think I’ve also just about decided to join a reading challenge. This is something I did a year or so ago, then decided that challenges really don’t fit my reading style. But I do like them, they’re fun and I like to participate, so I’m going to give another one a try 🙂

Oh, and I hope to get a little more “down time” in over the next couple of days. We have some movies we want to watch, lots of football, then I’m going to do my best to persuade Tim to join me in a ritual I’ve loved doing for years. I love to work jigsaw puzzles this time of year, between Christmas and New Years. Here’s a link to the photo of the one we did last year, which also happened to be my very first photo post for my nearly completed Project365 photo blog project. 🙂 I’m looking forward to wrapping up that project as well, and that feeling of accomplishment for completing something that was quite difficult at times. But, I persevered 😀

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas to all of my friends and family out in blog-land. I will be checking in some over the next few days, but I don’t plan on posting much of anything else. I am going to take a break and enjoy the time with Tim and my dad, who is here at our house for a couple of days. We plan to go see my sister Gail on Christmas Day, then over to see Tim’s parents next weekend. I’ll be checking in some before the end of the year, probably with a Christmas update, and also some book chatter.

I hope everyone has a wonderful and blessed holiday. Merry Christmas, everyone 😀

Today’s “Question of the Day” is all about your favorite Christmas movie or TV show that you look forward to seeing every year. What movie or TV special do you like, or what’s your kids’ favorite? Do you have any traditions associated with this movie or TV show? Do you own any Christmas movies on DVD?

Here’s my answers – I love Christmas movies and I have several that I really like. I tend to like the older movies, the classics. My favorite is probably “It’s a Wonderful Life” and I own a copy on DVD. I also love the old Cary Grant movie called “The Bishop’s Wife” and own it on DVD also. I tend to pull those two movies out and put them on while I’m wrapping Christmas presents. I try to put something Christmas-y on the TV while decorating the tree, but that never goes over very well. This year, when I was decorating the tree, Tim was either watching golf, football or basketball on TV. I clearly remember our first Christmas together. I was so excited about decorating the tree together. Tim’s idea of “together” is to put up the tree, put on the lights, then turn the TV to basketball and watch TV while I do my part, hanging the ornaments. Not much togetherness, we each have our own part to play and there’s no Christmas music or shows on the TV that even remotely resemble the holiday spirit! Are you starting to see that Tim, while a wonderful guy, is not a huge fan of the whole Christmas thing. In fact, he loves to say “Bah Humbug” and I love to call him a Scrooge this time of year! Anyway, back to the movies. “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Bishop’s Wife” are my favorites, but I also like “Holiday Inn”, “Christmas in Connecticut” and to a small degree, “White Christmas”. I also have a really worn out VCR tape of a movie I taped off TV years and years ago, called “I’ll be Home for Christmas”. It starred a very young Courtney Cox, Nancy Travis, Peter Gallagher, Eva Marie Saint and Hal Holbrook (ok, found it here on IMDB). It’s a nostalgic look at a family during WWII who loses a loved one, good movie. Anyway, I don’t tend to like the newer stuff like the Griswold movies, Elf and movies like that. They’re ok, but at Christmas, I love my black and white classics!

How about you? What movies or TV shows do you look forward to watching at Christmas? Do you have any rituals or traditions about watching them? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Today’s Christmas-themed “Question of the Day” is all about lists. You know, “making a list and checking it twice”. 🙂 I mean, even Santa makes a list! I get a lot of ribbing year round in my family, because I’m a total list maker. I carry a PDA with me everywhere I go. It has all of my lists on it. I am also a post-it junkie. I put up post-it’s everywhere to remind me of things. I believe in planning, writing things down, and making lists.

So, it comes naturally to me to make a list. I try to make a list for family members who might want ideas for something to get us for Christmas. I also make lists of things to get others, that I carry with me everywhere. So, I make lists on both sides.

How about you? Do you fly by the seat of your pants, with no lists? Do you make lists for you and yours that you give to other parts of the family, or friends, or the in-laws? Do you make lists of everything you need to do, buy, cook, etc? I hope I’m not the only list-maker out there! 😀 Leave me a comment and let me know!

Well, I didn’t really have a set menu last week, and it sort of bugs me. I still cook a lot, but with the busy holiday season, we are eating out more, and eating worse. Lots of junk food, sweets, etc. Ugh. My waistline is ready for the new year! 🙂

I’ve got a general idea for the week. The middle days are not set, but I have ideas for each day, if that makes sense! Be sure to check out Laura’s blog over at OrgJunkie for lots more menu ideas and even recipes!

Monday – Grilled Chicken (Tim) / Grilled Salmon (Stacy), rice, peas or butterbeans

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.… not sure which one which day:

Spaghetti & Meatballs, broccoli
Panko Chicken Strips, Mac n Cheese, green beans
Waffles & Turkey Bacon

Friday – probably eat out; Date Night

Saturday – lunch will be PapaJohn’s pizza ordered in, while we watch our alma mater play in the Papa John’s Bowl (USM) on ESPN

Have a great week, everyone!

I’ve been jumping up and down for the last couple of hours 😀 Wanna know why? You can go read the entry entitled “the best bad dream I ever had” over at Dawn’s blog (“Thoughts from Along the Broken Road”). Or I could just tell you!

Dawn won big at the prize-giving search site called Blingo. It’s just like Google, but they give away prizes every day to their members. I signed up way back in 2005 and won several nice little “small” prizes. I won some iTunes gift cards and some movie tickets. Tim signed up also, under my id, and so if he won, I won also. That’s the way the Blingo system works. If you win, then your “friend” wins (whoever you signed up under). WELL. Unbeknownst to me, my dear blogging friend Dawn had signed up under my id. So, if she wins, then I win. Are you starting to figure it out now? Dawn won their biggest prize last night – she had a 1 in 350,000 chance of winning her choice of a Dell Computer with 22″ monitor, or $750 in cash. She had a bad dream last night and got up to do some blog reading and surfing. Lucky for me! She used Blingo to search, and she won. And since she had signed up under my id, and she was signed into the Blingo system, I won too! I’m still in total shock. Well, except for the jumping up and down and random squealing that I do every few minutes. It’s starting to bug Tim, I think! I got my choice too, and I also chose the cash. Such an awesome thing to win, right here at Christmas.

So – many thanks to my dear blogging buddy down in Florida – Miss Dawn! Thank you so much Dawn, for searching Blingo in the middle of the night, and for winning us both such an awesome thing right here at Christmas!

Oh, and if you haven’t signed up for Blingo, click this button and sign up under me. Maybe we could both win something sometime 😀

This week’s topic: Catalog

Do you use any of the online book-cataloguing sites, like Library Thing or Shelfari? Why or why not? (Or . . . do you have absolutely no idea what I’m talking to?? (grin))

If not an online catalog, do you use any other method to catalog your book collection? Excel spreadsheets, index cards, a notebook, anything?
Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

I haven’t played in the last couple of weeks, but this week’s question is right up my alley. I actually looked at this and agonized over this very subject for a long time. I catalogued our DVD collection a while back, but I used some free software that I downloaded and did it all on my local PC. I was considering doing the same with my books. I know several bloggers who use both LibraryThing and Shelfari, and was having a really hard time deciding whether to try one of those or do it locally on my hard drive. That solution was provided by a dear friend who gifted me with a one year subscription to LibraryThing. I set it all up and entered all of my books, and I love it! I have been keeping it up to date and plan to continue my subscription next year. I love that they have a widget that I can use on the side of my blog to show random books from my library. I love how easy it is to use – simply enter the ISBN number from the back of the book and bam, it’s added to your library. The only downfall that I’ve found so far is that it is online – I don’t have this info in my PDA to have with me. I have to rely on my memory (oh, the horror!) to remember if I already own a book when I’m browsing in a bookstore. Thankfully, I do the majority of my book purchasing online, so I can easily flip over to LibraryThing to see what I have by that author, in that series, etc. I really like LibraryThing. Great question!

Today’s Christmas-themed “Question of the Day” is about nativities. Do you have one that you put out every year? Or more than one? Is it a small one indoors, or a large one outdoors? Does it have any special meaning or memories for you?

The reason I ask this question is because I do have a small nativity that I love and put out every year. My mother-in-law has wanted to visit the Holy Land her entire life, and she did go (prior to 9-11) when Tim and I were first married. She got each of us an olive wood Nativity in Bethlehem. It is all hand-carved and it’s just so special to us because she bought it for us in the Holy Land. I had never had a nativity before, and I love this one. I secretly wish for the Willow Tree nativity, but I just hate to ask for it because it is so expensive. I know that one year I will finally break down and tell Tim that I want it, and I know that he’d buy it if I really wanted it. Luckily, I don’t have room for it in this house, so it will have to be when we move to a bigger house. Whew! Anyway, I love my nativity and put it out every year:

So, how about you… do you have a nativity at your home? Or some other really special decoration that you put out that has special meaning for you? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Today’s Christmas-themed “Question of the Day” is all about your Christmas stockings. You know, “the stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there”. Love that story 🙂 So, do you hang stockings in your house? Are they on the mantle or somewhere else? How many do you have – one for each adult or just for the kids? Do your pets have stockings? Do you have stockings for your grandkids or someone else who might just be at your house on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but who might not be there the entire season? Are your stockings homemade or store-bought? And lastly – do you do all the stocking preparations, or does your significant other, or someone else, help you do the obtaining and filling (you know, helping Santa out!)

Here’s my answers – we do hang stockings, and they go up on our mantle at the same time the tree goes up. They are fairly new, some I bought a couple of years ago at Target that sort of coordinate with my tree skirt. I want to get one for our furry child Beau, but Tim doesn’t think he needs one. Our last dog, Sally, had her own stocking and it hung on our mantle every year. Tim thought it was silly and so far (this is our second Christmas with Beau), I have not gotten one for Beau. It’s hard though. Since we don’t have kids, I would really like to have one for Beau that I could fill. Speaking of that – I fill Tim’s stocking and end up buying a couple of things for mine. For years, I tried to get him to buy me something for my stocking, but that’s pretty much a lost cause. If I don’t get something, mine is usually empty. Sometimes, he will stuff a smaller gift in mine, but it’s not a deliberate thing. 🙂 We don’t have stockings for anyone else, and we’re often not here on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning to do ours. But we will be this year. Now, I just have to find something for Tim’s stocking and help Santa out 😀

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

I’m not going to play along to Menu Plan Monday this week, although I do have to cook some this week! Tim is out of town some on business, so I won’t have to cook for a couple of nights. I didn’t really plan a menu last week, but I did really good. I cooked every day and we only went out to eat one night – on Friday, our traditional date night. We went to our favorite Mexican place. Tim had a combination fajita plate (chicken, beef, chorizo and shrimp) and I had shrimp enchiladas. We splurged and had some guacamole, so I was a happy girl!

I got on the ball last week and got some shopping done. Yeah! I was gone one day from 1:20 to nearly 10 PM that night. Believe me, I was worn out! I got a lot done, though, and I also ordered a bunch online. I have 4 orders coming over the next few days, and I love it. I love getting packages in the mail and I love knowing that those were presents I didn’t have to go out and pound the pavement for. I do have a few more gifts to go, most notably for Tim. He wants us to get a new stove this year, but gosh, that’s hard to wrap and put under the tree!

So, my plan for Monday is Christmas-related. I hope to get a lot of wrapping done today. I hope to start on my Christmas cards. That and a ton of housecleaning and laundry are my exciting plans for the day 🙂

Oh, and I still hope to do some blogging this week. I’ve had a ton of trouble lately with my laptop and I just haven’t had a lot of time to try to fix my computer, still blog and check out your blogs. My Google Reader is at nearly 375 new posts, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that. I’ve never actually hit that “Mark All as Read” button, but I may be getting close. I still have a book-related blog post I want to find time to write, and talk about some books I’ve read lately. Hopefully later in the week! I’m also planning to ask a couple more Christmas-themed “Question of the Day” this week. They’re basic questions, but I always think it is fun to see what everyone else thinks and does at their house for Christmas. 😀

Have a great day, everyone!!

Feast One Hundred & Seventy-One
December 7, 2007

Appetizer
What was the last game you purchased? Hmmm, well we haven’t had a game console since the original Playstation. So it would have to be a board or card game. I bought a deck of Phase 10 cards last year and we have never opened them and played them 🙁 We’re not big into games here. Tim doesn’t like playing games with just the two of us. I ask a lot but always get turned down 🙁

Soup
Name something in which you don’t believe. Astrology. Evolution.

Salad
If you could choose a celebrity to be your boss, who would you pick? Hmm, maybe Rachael Ray or Robin Roberts from GMA. Got an “RR” thing going there, huh?!

Main Course
What was a lesson you had to learn the hard way? Never dare Tim. He will do everything in his power to prove you wrong 🙂

Dessert
Describe your idea of the perfect relaxation room. Maybe a cozy living room with big cushy comfy furniture. Soft music playing in the background. A big chair with ottoman where I could curl up to read. Next to a fireplace 🙂

Today’s photo for the day, Beau really likes Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash!