Exceedingly Mundane

I’m always on the lookout for good music. Lately, I’ve been listening to music while I’m on the treadmill, or on the computer. On the treadmill, I mostly walk, but lately I’ve been trying to jog a little bit. Of course, a couple of days ago, I must have overdone it, because now my ankles are hurting. Between the Wii Active (that thing is absolutely in love with making me run, do lunges and squats) and the treadmill, my ankles have been sore for several days.

Anyway, back to the music. I mostly listen to country and praise and worship music. My favorites of the moment are the new Dierks Bentley CD, “Feel that Fire”, the new Keith Urban CD, “Defying Gravity”, and one by Casting Crowns called “The Altar and the Door.”. There’s several songs on each disc that I really love. Here’s the one that I love off the Casting Crowns CD, in addition to Slow Fade and the title track. This one is called “What This World Needs”. It works really well for the short amount of time I am trying to run!

How about you? What have you been listening to? And if you walk or run, let me know what music pumps you up, I’m always on the lookout for good music to walk or jog to.

Have a great day!

I totally and shamelessly stole this from Dawn, when she posted hers here. Thanks Dawn, for letting me hijack your post and steal the idea to use here!

I have several things I’m “into” right now. One of my old faithfuls is Life is Good products. I just ordered some more of their t-shirts, and I would wear nothing but those every day, if I could. They are so soft and so comfortable. I’ve nearly cleaned my closet out of other t-shirts, other than my beloved Life is Good ones. And I have quite the collection now! 😀

Recently, at TJ Maxx, a store I have “turned” Tim onto, he found me these over in the men’s section. Of course, they’re unisex and are for women as much as men 🙂 They’re quite comfy, and my favorite socks at the moment:

So, how about you… do you have a favorite clothing item or product or brand that you are totally loyal too? Let’s limit it to something you’d be wearing right now. I have a sweatshirt that I could do a whole blog post about, but we’ll save that for colder days 😀

Well, hooray for the little guy! We called out the big, ugly, corporate company that had come earlier in the week to service our air conditioning unit. The same one who said it was beyond repair, and wanted to sell us a big, expensive new unit. I had gotten the name of a local guy who has his own small business from a good friend of mine. He had replaced my friend’s upstairs unit last summer. He came out yesterday, after the big company’s guy had left, and after we told him what it was and wasn’t doing, immediately said “let me get my gauges and tools and see what we can do.”. He found the leak and fixed it. Something the big company didn’t offer and never brought up. It’s a temporary fix, but a very acceptable one to us. This guy was treating us like he would his own home, let’s get these people some air, and then we can look and see if they want to replace their unit. Let’s not make them suffer in this heat and make them think they have no options except to buy an expensive new unit from us. In fact, he gave us a ballpark estimate on a new unit, and he was more than a thousand dollars under the “big company” quote.

So, our air was fixed yesterday in about two hours, even though it took 9 hours to cool the house back down. We were able to sleep in cool comfort last night, and got a great night’s sleep compared to the night before. The man who helped us out said, let’s see how it goes, if it is cooling for the next couple of days. We’ll touch base on Monday, he said, and see what you guys would like to do. We’re probably still going to get a new unit, which will mean another long hot day with no AC, but after that, we’ll have a brand new unit. Right now, though, my A/C is running and blowing cool air. It certainly feels better in here than it did at this time yesterday!

Hoorah for small business owners with brains, heart and compassion!

Well, we knew it was going to happen sooner or later. Our air conditioning is out. The unit is old, and we’ve been having to add freon for the last couple of years. We had a technician out earlier in the week and they filled it up on freon and did a maintenance check. They told us again “it’s on its last leg”, which is the exact same thing they told us last year 🙄 However, air conditioning is very necessary in our part of the country. Today’s high is supposed to be 97 or 98, with heat indexes of 105-110. Not going to be fun here with the windows open and fans on 🙁

We have two people coming out this morning to look at our unit and give us an estimate. Keep your fingers crossed that we have cool air again soon. Last night was a really long, hot night. Not much sleep here!

and In with the new!

I’ve blogged before that we make a lot of coffee at our house. Tim has been drinking coffee (black, thank you), since long before I met him. I resisted for a very long time, but a few years ago, learned to drink it, if it is somewhere in the khaki shade 🙂 Lots of Splenda and creamer for me. Anyway, since he started working part-time, and then later, full-time from home, our coffee maker gets quite a workout. We make 12 cups a day, 7 days a week, on average. Some days, I make a second pot, although not as much lately since it’s hotter. And speaking of that, highs every day this week are 97 and 98. UGH!

Anyway, our reliable old Cuisinart, pictured below from a previous post, finally bit the dust:

Actually, it started smoking! Tim said it had a short in it, and the carafe starting boiling, in addition to smoke coming out the back. So, we went that very afternoon to get a new one. We thought we would go to Sam’s Club and buy another one like this, as I always see them in there. However, they didn’t have this one. They had a different Cuisinart, an On Demand one, that doesn’t have an external glass carafe. Tim liked that idea, and so we are giving this one a try. I’ve read some of the reviews on Amazon, and it appears that this new one may not last as long as our old one (3 1/2 or 4 1/2 years), but we’ll give it a go. Tim likes that the coffee stays hotter inside the internal carafe. It’s easy to clean up, and it doesn’t splash at all when you hit the pushbutton to stream the coffee into your cup. The only kicker for me is that it is harder to fill up an internal reservoir/carafe. It was easier to take the glass 12 cup one over to the sink and fill it up 🙂 But, I’ve adapted. You can teach an old dog new tricks!

Here’s the new one:

Which reminds me, I blogged last year about hoping to get new dishes, and I finally did! I have four colors of Fiestaware, that’s the scarlet red one. Maybe I should post about my new dishes. Love having color! 🙂

Have a wonderful day, one and all! 😀

I love this picture I took recently of Beau laying at the back door, in sunshine and shadow:

He’s my sweet baby 😀

Been awhile since my last post. Lots of topics I could post about. I’m going to *try* to be better about blogging, but we’ll see. I seem to be enjoying the “micro-blogging” of Twitter and Facebook status updates better lately. Easier to be brief and just as mundane 😀

Anyway, thought I’d jump back in the fray with a post about our credit card woes. Like most of America, we have a couple of cards that we use regularly. We don’t carry credit card debt, so we’re very lucky in that respect. I monitor and pay our credit cards online and it’s usually a very seamless process.

About 3 or 4 weeks ago, I noticed a charge on our account that did not belong to us. Just one, for about $120 dollars. No others before or since. I called the credit card company then to dispute it, and they issued me a temporary credit while they investigated the matter. I noticed today that the charge was back with a note of “reversal of credit” beside the line item. Sigh. So, after a lengthy call, they have closed our account due to “fraud”. What I want to know is how or why someone in a totally different state is charging their electric utility bill to my credit card? Or why they can’t just stop it without closing my account and issuing me a new account number and cards? I know it’s a small price to pay, but it is inconvenient to have to wait on a new card to arrive in the mail and be without it for a week or two. It’s also going to be inconvenient to notify every company and account that I have tied to this card, online and brick and mortar and get a new number established. Oh well, it could be much worse. Our card was not stolen and there was only the one charge. 🙂

So, how about you? Have you ever had trouble with your credit cards? Vote in the poll or leave me a comment. Oh, and have a great day!!!!

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