Exceedingly Mundane

We’ve been seeing a few robins here, but I’ve been having a hard time getting a photo of them. They tend to just flitter down to the ground, and then they fly away rather quickly. From the windows on the back of our house, where I normally shoot photos of the birds and squirrels, I have a hard time seeing parts of the ground because of our deck. So, I’ve had trouble photographing these pesky robins. I was really excited last week to see a robin perched on my fence. I ran to get my camera, then had to change out the lens to my telephoto lens. I was sure he would be gone by the time I got all of that done… but no, he was still sitting there. I realized why after I transferred the photos. He seems to be a pretty old, slightly grizzled robin! I guess he was tired and not in a hurry to fly off! Oh well, at least I got a couple of photos of the robins this year!!! 🙂

P.S. Saturday morning early, I got up to let Beau out to go to the bathroom. I saw a beautiful bluebird perched on the edge of one of my hanging baskets. We rarely have bluebirds here. I have bluejays here all the time, and mockingbirds too, but hardly ever a beautiful bluebird. I think I’ve only seen them in our yard maybe 3 times in the last several years. This time, I wasn’t fast enough. By the time I got my camera, he had flown away. Boo-hoo. 🙁

Feast One Hundred & Eighty Five
March 28th, 2008

Appetizer
What does the color dark green make you think of? The bath mats in our master bathroom, a favorite set of bath towels… My comforter, along with burgundy in it also.

Soup
How many cousins do you have? Well, isn’t that a straightforward question for most people. I really don’t know. I think I have 3, but I’ve never met them and I don’t know their names. My dad had one brother that he was estranged from, and I never met them. Now, Tim, on the other hand, would be the perfect one to answer this question. He has tons of cousins! I think he has about 24 or 25 first cousins. If we started counting second cousins, I’m not sure we could count them all!

Salad
On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how honest are you? I think I’m really honest. I don’t try to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I do try to be very truthful. I’d say about an 8.

Main Course
Name something that is truly free. I’d love to say our freedom as Americans, but that is paid for every day by our brave and unselfish military forces. I’d also like to say the library, which I love and adore, but I know that our taxes go to that somehow. I guess maybe air?! 🙂

Dessert
Using the letters in the word SPRING, write a sentence. Stacy Prays Regularly In Nightly Garb!

This week’s topic: Cover-Up

While acknowledging that we can’t judge books by their covers, how much does the design of a book affect your reading enjoyment? Hardcover vs. softcover? Trade paperback vs. mass market paperback? Font? Illustrations? Etc.?

Well, that’s a good question! As far as it affecting my reading enjoyment, that’s probably close to a zero. How it affects what catches my eye at a store, or more importantly, a library sale, now that is more important! I definitely love cute covers and those with good colors and those that are eye-catching. But it really has to be the author or story or content that affects how I enjoy the book. I like to “collect” hardcovers of certain authors, like John Grisham. I prefer holding the trade paperback size the best, and probably like the regular mass-market paperback the least. But I have plenty of those, as I tend to pick them up at library sales for 50 cents each. I’m trying to get more of those, with the intention of one day joining paperbackswap.com. But back to design – certain books just catch my eye, and might make me look at the back cover or inside excerpt and read what it’s about, whereas I might not have picked it up if the cover or title didn’t catch my eye.

Case in point – the books I’m currently reading. Don’t they have the greatest covers?

Happy Reading!

Just a quick, albeit late, recap of our Easter weekend. We had thought my Dad would come visit and go with us to church, then to Tim’s family get-together, but he ended up staying at home. Tim and I spent Saturday doing chores. Something we’ve been putting off for a while finally got done – we cleaned the grout in our kitchen and breakfast room, and then reapplied the sealant:

It looks all nice and new again!

Sunday was busy, with an early church service, then driving nearly an hour and a half to visit with Tim’s extended family. His mom’s family has a get-together every holiday and we try to go at least a couple times a year, so Tim can visit with all of his aunts, uncles and cousins. There’s always a lot of people there, and tons of good food. We took a few pictures after church:

Hope you’re all having a great day!

No, not “pooped” in the sense that I’m tired and exhausted. Pooped in this sense:

This is what will happen if you take your brand new book outside, and sit in a chair under the trees, while the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and you can hear birds singing, and it just feels warm and spring-like. Apparently, your new book is like a big ole red target for a bird to poop on. I’m just really glad that they didn’t hit me on the head or arm 🙂

randomness…feed your mind and your blog
March 22: 100th Post

This week marks the 100th post of the Randomness Meme. Here’s this week’s questions:

A set of random questions:
1. What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?
2. What shampoo do you use?
3. How do you like your eggs?
4. What’s the first thing you do when you get online?
5. What is your favorite tv show?
6. Which do you prefer, the sunrise or the sunset?
7. When is the last time you went to the mall?
8. What was the last food that you ate?
9. What is your favorite animal?
10. Do you collect anything?

OK, great questions, but my reply is going to be fairly long. I don’t say much of anything quickly and succinctly! Click the extended entry to read all of my answers!

1. Favorite ice cream flavor – duh, chocolate! Although I do like variations on a theme – cookie dough, Oreo ice cream, Butterfinger ice cream, brownie fudge fantasy ice cream, etc. Yummy!

2. Shampoo – I’ve been using System Biolage for a while now. I use the color safe one, since I get my hair colored on a regular basis. I’ve had grey hair since I was in high school. I have a feeling that if I were to stop coloring my hair, once it all grew out, I’d probably be 95% grey, maybe more. So, I color it and I use only shampoo and conditioner for color treated hair.

3. Eggs – I like my eggs most every way! I love eggs and as long as they are cooked, I will eat them. I don’t like “sunny side up” eggs, as the white is not cooked, but I like them cooked over-easy, scrambled, poached, boiled, or any which a way!

4. First thing online – well, I crank up my laptop, then load my email and a Firefox browser to our website and my blog. I check my email, and make sure that our site is up, then I go to sites like iGoogle.

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Feast One Hundred & Eighty Four
March 21th, 2008

Appetizer
Given the choice, would you prefer to live in the country or in the city? Well, I’d say city, except to me, that means a small city, not a big place like New York or Los Angeles. I’m a suburb kind of girl! I like having stores close by, pizza delivery, a library around the corner, etc.

Soup
Who is the cutest kid you know?Well, now, all of my nieces and nephew, great-nieces and great-nephews are just the cutest things. Silly question, I cannot pick just one!

Salad
Fill in the blank: I couldn’t believe it when I heard ___________. I’m drawing a total blank on this one. I better go get another cup of coffee so my brain can function!

Main Course
If you could star in a commercial for one of your favorite products, which one would you want to advertise? Well, there’s always food products and chocolate stuff, but how about my new Philips Sonicare electric toothbrush? I love that thing. I feel like it gets my teeth so much cleaner than just a plain toothbrush. I hate using a manual brush now!

Dessert
What type(s) of vitamins and/or supplements do you take on a regular basis? I take a daily vitamin, a glucosamine supplement, a calcium supplement, and several prescription meds every day. Ugh. 😀

This week’s topic: The End

You’ve just reached the end of a book . . . what do you do now? Savor and muse over the book? Dive right into the next one? Go take the dog for a walk, the kids to the park, before even thinking about the next book you’re going to read? What?

(Obviously, there can be more than one answer, here–a book with a cliff-hanger is going to engender different reactions than a serene, stand-alone, but you get the idea!)

Well, that does depend on the book, but the majority of the time, I do turn to the next book and dive right on in. Part of that is because a lot of the time I’m reading books in a series. If I’m not reading series books, I’m usually reading light and enjoyable books, and I’m happy to just enjoy it, and turn to the next one. If I read a “deeper” book, or one that affects me more, it is often a bit harder to just let go and move to a new book. Sometimes, however, after reading a “heavier” book, I am anxious to change to something light and fun, so again, I am happy to just dive right on into the next one. Ok, I sound like a broken record. Yes, I do believe I mostly prefer to just move onto the next book! LOL 🙂

Happy Reading!

Happiness is a new shopping center that opened today, right down the street from me. It has our first “nice” grocery store, a Fresh Market. It has a big new Barnes and Noble and several other shops that I didn’t visit. YET. I’m a simple kind of girl – books and gourmet foods are enough to make me positively giddy! I browsed to my heart’s content at all of the books and magazines, then cruised through the bookmarks and bookends and odds ‘n ends. I have got to get some bookends for my bookcase. 🙄

I also cruised every single aisle in Fresh Market, picking up my free coffee and tasting all of the free samples they were giving away. I had some fresh pineapple, some pistachio nut and fruit mix, some organic yogurt with granola, a cheese wafer and some yummy cold sesame noodles from the deli. I read labels and looked at gourmet ingredients and generally had a nerdy-girl good time.

Anything exciting going on in your world today? Books and food, Dancing with the Stars and Idol, tomorrow night’s Lost… such happy things!

Hello out there! Long time, no blog 🙂 I don’t seem to be able to think of anything to blog about. Not a whole lot going on around here. We’ve had a lot of company, my sister and then my niece, here visiting. Tim and I had a busy, but fun weekend. We were really bad and ate out all weekend. We also went to see the movie “Vantage Point” and that was good. We watched a couple of movies from Netflix too. A newer one, “Dan in Real Life” and a classic, “The Maltese Falcon”. I’m not cooking a lot this week, so I didn’t post a menu. I didn’t particularly like the topic on today’s Ten on Tuesday (10 places you’d take a tourist to see in your home town). I don’t live in a touristy kind of place 🙂

So, instead, I thought I’d post a few pictures that we’ve taken lately. Tim actually came and got the camera one day a week or two ago. He saw one of our two woodpeckers up in the tree and got some good pictures of him. Here’s the red-bellied woodpecker in our tree:

More pictures on the extended page…
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Feast One Hundred & Eighty Three
March 14th, 2008

Appetizer
On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 as highest), how much do you like your own handwriting? Somewhere along a 5 or 6. 10 or 15 years ago, I would have rated it much higher. I used to have really nice penmanship. On some of my college forms and papers, the professor would ask me if I had typed the answers, but the answer was always no, that is my handwriting! However, with the advent of computers and other technology, I tend to type more and more and write less and less. My handwriting has become sloppier, and more hurried as well. It often frustrates me to write out something long hand, because it seems to take forever. I know I could be doing it so much faster if I were typing it!

Soup
Do you prefer baths or showers? Both about the same, although I’d probably lean towards baths more. I love a good warm bubble bath! But, the way our bathroom is setup, our bath doesn’t have a shower head, so if I need to wash my hair, I have to take a shower. So, I take as many or more showers than baths, out of practicality.

Salad
What was the last bad movie you watched? Hmmm, I can’t recall one off the top of my head. We’ve been getting some movies in from Netflix lately for just Tim, and I don’t even attempt to watch them because I know I wouldn’t enjoy them. I don’t like a lot of violence, bad language and scary stuff. Let’s see, I keep our movies listed here, and some of the ones we haven’t liked lately are: American Gangster, Tim watched and didn’t even finish it; we didn’t like an older movie I rented called “Someone Like You” and I didn’t watch “Disturbia”, “Beowulf” or “300” because I knew I wouldn’t like them. Of those 3, Tim only really liked Disturbia.

Main Course
Name something you are addicted to and describe how it affects your life. Addicted to, like this computer and the Internet? Or a food addiction, like how much I adore chocolate and how I want some every single day? I don’t have “bad” addictions, but those are bad enough!

Dessert
Which instrument is your favorite to listen to? That’s a toss-up between piano and acoustic guitar. I love the sound of both on certain types of music. I can’t play either, so I really appreciate them!

Here it is, Thursday already. I did a “Book Chatter” post on Thursday of last week . But last week, I had not posted about books in quite a while, so I had a lot more books to post about! I’ve only read two books since then, but I thought I’d go ahead and do another quick post 🙂

Since this time last week, I’ve read “Lost in NashVegas” by Rachel Hauck and “As I Have Loved You” by Nikki Arana. Both of these are books that my sister Gail loaned me to read (thanks Gail!). Both are Christian fiction books. Both are the larger trade size paperback, which I really like reading. Surprisingly, there was one hit and one miss. Hit: “Lost in Nash Vegas”. Miss: “As I Have Loved You”.

I personally really liked “Lost in NashVegas”. I really liked the characters, and I loved the story because it involved country music, songwriting, and Nashville. Although I’ve never visited Nashville, it’s still very Southern, and I’m a Southern girl through and through. I do love country music, so that is probably why this book appealed to me so much.

The other book, “As I Have Loved You”, just didn’t resonate with me at all. I didn’t like the characters. I didn’t feel empathy for them when something went wrong, nor joy for them when something good happened. I understood the message that she was trying to convey and while “I got it”, I didn’t like the way she wrote the story. I thought several of the characters were underdeveloped. There was a couple of issues that she brought up, and then didn’t flesh out. I’m sure it was just me, but I just didn’t really like the story or the characters. Even though I didn’t hate it, I wouldn’t really recommend it.

For the record, I’ve read 17 books so far this year, for a total of 5,691 pages. Up next is the first in yet another series of books. I don’t know why I have this “thing” for series books, but I do. And unfortunately, I have this anal sort of completion thing about a series. I like to have them available, and I like to complete them. Well, if I like the first or second book. Anyway, I digress. I’ve started the first Hannah Swenson cozy mystery by author Joanne Fluke, “Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder”. I normally like cozies, so I think I will enjoy this one. It’s a small paperback, but hopefully I will be ok! After this one, I’ll try to start getting the others (in order!) from my library system.

What are you currently reading, if anything? Have a great day, ya’ll, and Happy Reading!

I’ve been on a mini baking spree lately. Not as much as I used to bake, years ago… but then again, we’re trying to watch what we eat and not go overboard. I used to bake a lot more than I do now. When Tim worked full-time in the office, I baked fairly often. We could have a taste or two, and then he could take the rest in to the office. He used to tell me, “they love to see me coming in with that Tupperware container under my arm”. That always made me really happy! 🙂

I made a loaf of banana bread a couple of weeks ago, then last weekend, I made some Buttermilk Whole Wheat Bread. I use my bread machine for the dough, then take it out, knead and shape, then let it rise again in the loaf pan. We like bread better that way (I think Tim loves to smell it baking in the oven, and you don’t get as much of that with the machine doing the whole thing).

I’ve also made this bar cookie two or three times in the past couple of weeks, and we really like them. I “found” that I had a couple of bags of butterscotch chips in my freezer, and they worked wonderfully in this recipe. I want to make it sometime with either cinnamon chips or semisweet.

They’re called “No-Fail Pan Cookies”. I found the recipe on Anna’s blog – Cookie Madness. Here’s a photo of mine in the pan; I didn’t take a photo of them cut out. They don’t rise much, so they look sort of flat. But, boy, they have a great flavor! We really like them. As always, be sure to read my notes at the bottom, although I didn’t really make any changes to this one. It’s simple and easy and good just the way it is 🙂

I just posted the recipe on our main site, Hambones.org. Click here to get the recipe, and I’ll also paste it on the extended page.

Happy Baking!

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Happy Anniversary Baby, gotcha on my mind….. who sang that song, the Little River Band? Gosh, I’m old! 🙂

Twelve years ago today, Tim and I stood in a little chapel in the Smoky Mountains and promised to love, honor and cherish one another all the days of our life. I’m happy and proud to say that we do, and we will continue to do so as long as we both shall live. I love you sweetheart, more every day that passes. You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I love you more than words can say. Happy Anniversary, sweetheart!

Back later, I’ve got a day off coming, I think! The most strenuous thing I plan to do today is a load of laundry and a trip to the grocery store to buy steaks for Tim to grill out for us tonight. Hope everyone else has a great day, I know we will here

P.S. If you’re really bored, you can read last year’s post about our anniversary, or the year before that, or the year before that. LOL!