Exceedingly Mundane

I have a long standing love affair with Chinese food. I never tried Chinese food until college, but liked it then. I didn’t get to go very often – until I started dating Tim. He goes through phases now, but when we met, he really loved going to eat Chinese. He taught me to eat with chopsticks on about our third or fourth date. To this day, I always eat that kind of food with chopsticks. We always ask in restaurants if they don’t bring them out, and we have a nice set at home that we use.

It’s funny, because Tim knows how much I love Chinese. We go to restaurants, and we get take-out, and I even do some easy Chinese type dishes at home to satisfy my cravings. Tim always knows that if he asks, I will always accept his offer to go out to eat Chinese. Tim has called on the way home from work before, with my having already started or finished cooking supper and said “Do you want to go eat Chinese tonight?” The answer is always, always – Yes! I have put up supper in tupperware containers for the next night and washed a sink full of dishes from cooking, then gone out to eat Chinese, LOL!

Anyway, like most people, we always have fun opening up our fortune cookies at the end of the meal, to see what we got. We went to a Chinese buffet for lunch a couple of weeks ago, when my dad was here and Tim’s dad was in the hospital. We all opened our fortune cookie before we left, and we were dumbfounded by one of them. We still can’t figure it out. It has to be some kind of misprint. I just don’t get it. Like I told Tim, maybe it means something in Chinese, but it is totally lost in the translation. Then again, it’s probably just a crappy fortune 🙂

See if you can decipher it, and see who lucked out with the bad one!

My Dad’s says – Find release from your cares, have a good time.

Mine says – Fame and fortune are coming your way.

Tim’s says – I spent the time prepare the song, while the song is not being sung.

And for bonus points, vote in the poll!

[poll id=”12″]

We always look forward to seeing a couple of “big screen” movies at our local theater in the summer. This year is no exception. In fact, I think there may be even more movies than usual that we are interested in seeing on the big screen! 🙂

How about you? Are there any movies you, or your family, are looking forward to seeing this summer? Leave me a comment, or vote in the poll. I’m sure there are more movies than this, but these are some of the ones we are interested in, or that I thought others might be interested in!

[poll id=”11″]

I think we’ll try to see Wolverine, Star Trek and Terminator at least, and maybe a couple of others. I’m sure there will be plenty that I’d be willing to wait on, for them to come out on DVD (for example, Night at the Museum 2). And I know we won’t see Harry Potter. I haven’t read the books and neither of us have seen any of the movies. I know, I know, we’re oddballs on the Harry Potter front 🙂

Have a great day 😀

I seem to have lost most of the month of April. My father-in-law went into the hospital on Wednesday, April 8 for surgery and was just released yesterday, Wed 4/22. We’re very grateful that he was able to go home and is doing good. After surgery (he had a hernia on his esophagus), he developed a blood clot that moved to his lungs, called a pulmonary embolism. He spent his birthday and Easter Sunday in ICU. After coming out of ICU, he spent over a week, trying to get his meds regulated. They could never get it all right, so they finally discharged him with shots and pills. He’s taking Lovenox shots twice a day (heparin shots) and is on Coumadin as an anti-coagulant to prevent more clots. Apparently, Coumadin is a “finicky” drug and is hard to regulate, as each person is different. Anyway, we’re just glad he’s doing well and is at home now.

It’s warmed up here in the last few weeks. It’s nice outside, the breeze is blowing and it smells so… fresh! After spending so many days in the hospital, breathing antiseptic laden recycled air, it’s so nice to smell fresh spring air! I’m also amazed at how things are growing. And how much I’m looking forward to getting some flowers to plant. And how many weeds have sprung up in my flower beds. I mean, really, why do those things have to pop up where they don’t belong?! 😀

Today it’s supposed to hit 88 degrees here. Which makes me sad, because I’ll have to break down and turn our A/C on in the house. I just hope it works!

How about you? Anything exciting going on in your neck of the woods? What’s the weather like where you are, and if you live in the South, do you have your A/C running yet?

Have a great day! 😀

When I met Tim, I didn’t drink coffee or tea. When we were dating, I started drinking sweet tea (it has to have sweetener in it, I can’t drink it unsweetened). I learned to drink the occasional hot tea over the years, mostly in the winter to warm up, or if I wanted something for a sore throat. I went about nine long years before I ever ventured into the coffee world. I remember it clearly – we were on vacation in Texas and for some reason, Tim kept badgering me to try coffee. I have learned to drink it over the years – again, like tea, it has to be highly sweetened and it must have a lot of creamer in it. Tim jokingly calls it “hot cocoa” because he said it doesn’t resemble coffee by the time I’m finished with mixing stuff in it. I call it “beige” or “khaki” because it has to look a very light color and not smell much like coffee for me to be able to knock it back 😀 Tim, on the other hand, only drinks it black.

When Tim started working part-time from home, we started making more coffee on a regular basis. When he proceeded to working full-time from home, our coffeemaker went into overdrive. We make, on average, 12 cups a day, 7 days a week, in our trusty little Cuisinart coffee pot. In case you’re math-challenged, that’s 84 cups a week. Needless to say, we go through a lot of coffee! And not just any coffee. Tim is very particular about his beans. He likes them dark and rich, a very good roast. We started out with Community Coffee and he was okay with that for a while. Somewhere along the way, he decided that wasn’t what he wanted, and we progressed to other beans and brands. We settled, surprisingly enough, on a whole bean from Sam’s Club – their Marques de Pavia brand (however you spell it!). We’ve been buying beans there, faithfully, for several years. The main thing I liked about buying our coffee there, was that it was in larger quantities, which we so desperately needed. Not to mention that it was cheaper than other brands. When our Fresh Market opened a year ago, we started buying beans occasionally in there, just to try. So far, Tim has liked all of them (no flavored beans, no decaf beans, please). But, they’re pricey, 9.99 a pound.

Then, around Christmas, I started having trouble finding our whole beans at Sam’s Club. I thought, it’s Christmas, they’ll get them back in soon. We bought beans at other places and “made do.” Then weeks turned into months, and we could never find our favorite beans. We had to even go so far as to start buying Starbucks at Sam’s Club. Much more costly, and honestly, I don’t like their coffee as much. I think the beans themselves smell bitter and too strong and I was not fond of the final product either (although Tim liked it). We were both so tickled to go into our Sam’s this past weekend, and find that they were once again carrying the Marques brand of bean. They had a breakfast blend, a medium blend, a French Roast blend, and Tim’s favorite – the dark roast. I tried to talk him into trying a different one, but he was happy to go back to his old standard. We “only” bought two bags. I’m hoping we didn’t make a mistake and they stop carrying them again, or they run out. We were both so happy to find them again – we’ve both mentioned it several times to each other since shopping there that “oh, I’m so glad to have our coffee back”. 😀 Yes, we’re nerds on a much grander scale than you know!

So, how about you? Are you a coffee drinker? A tea drinker? Both? Neither? Vote in the poll and leave me a comment if you want. I’m sure none of you are as avid about your drinks as we are (don’t get me started on the obscene amount of Coke Zero we purchase, that’s a whole ‘nother post!!!) 😀

Cheers!

[poll id=”10″]