Exceedingly Mundane

I love winning things in online contests! I haven’t won anything big in a while (well, big is relative, of course). I have won a few books lately (and believe me, I LOVE to win books!), but nothing much “bigger” than that, money wise.

Just a few minutes ago, I got an email from the Rachael Ray Show’s website. I have watched (recorded to DVR and watch at my leisure) the Rachael Ray daily one hour show for several years now. I signed up when they first launched their “Club Rachael Ray” which is where they offer give-aways. They give prizes to their studio audience pretty much every show, and many of those they offer online. I try to enter them regularly, and have never won anything.

Today, they emailed me that I had won a Shark Steam Pocket Mop! Now, for someone who likes to keep house and cook, this is a great thing to win! The email said to watch my mail in the coming weeks, so I imagine it will just show up on my doorstep one day in a few weeks. Which will mean I get excited all over again! I’m sure I’ll post again then, with a photo 🙂

I’m pretty excited! It will steam clean my tile floors, without using any chemicals. On the Target website, it’s listed at about $120 bucks, so a nice prize to win 😀

I’ve decided that my handwriting has slowly evolved over the years, and now it borders on…. atrocious. Yikes. I used to have really nice handwriting, in school and then college. I remember going to an orientation type day at the small private, Christian college I attended. The professor or office attendant looked at the form I was turning in, and she commented “You didn’t have to type this dear!”. And I was like, it’s not, that’s my handwriting 🙂

But, then I started work, with all men (first in electrical engineering and then in IT) — who do not really write very well or very legibly, as a general group. And I began working almost exclusively on computers. As the days and years rolled by, I used my hand and a pen and paper less and less to write things down. Post-it notes here, scribbles there, thank-you notes at birthdays and Christmas, but that was about it. And now, today, I’ve decided that my handwriting is truly truly bad. I mean, some days, I can barely read it myself!

What brought this on, you ask? (no, I know you didn’t ask that, but thought I’d throw a little lagniappe in). I’ve been watching the new cooking show “Mad Hungry” on Hallmark channel since it premiered last week. I don’t really enjoy Martha Stewart’s show, but I do like her food editor, Lucinda Scala Quinn. I’m really enjoying her new show, and have tried to look up several recipes online to save in my “to-try” file. But — a lot of the recipes are not online yet, as it’s a new show and new website. So, with my handy DVR, I thought to myself, I’ll just write them down!!! And now, I can barely read what I wrote. Hence, the blog post 😀

This is what happens when you talk your husband into stopping at the grocery store, after church. You know, for necessities and healthy food (milk, orange juice, fruit, veggies). These just “jump” in the cart:

What you don’t see is the 6 or 7 bags of potato chips we already have at our house. Plus now we have 4 bags of Who Dat chips (which are “regular” flavored, not even a special flavor). Good grief. I try not to eat many of them, so Tim has some serious chip eating to do 😀

We’re huge TV junkies. I always have been and Tim has become one (not much choice when you live with me!). Of course, football is on now, and that is our most favorite thing in the whole wide world. 😀 We’ve just finished up with several “summer” shows that we like, including Leverage, White Collar, Covert Affairs, Psych, Royal Pains, etc. I believe most of those will come back in January (when we’ll be missing 24, I imagine).

We have a ton of shows that start back in the fall, that we like to watch. Many nights, our DVR is nearly smoking from the exertion 🙂 There are even a couple of new shows that I would like to check out, but we already have 2 things in that time period, and that’s all the silly DVR can handle. Wouldn’t it be nice to have it record more than two at one time, LOL!

Some of the returning shows that we like and look forward to are:

Survivor
NCIS
NCIS: Los Angeles
The Mentalist
V
Chuck
Fringe
Human Target

Some of the new shows that we are wanting to check out are:

Hawaii 5-0
The Event
Undercovers

I miss watching Dancing with the Stars and Amazing Race, but those never work out for me. I love DWTS and would love to see Kurt Warner this season. But alas, those shows are on Sundays and Mondays, and we have football on those nights. And we have a lot of shows on Tuesdays, when I think the DWTS results are on. Sometimes I might record them and watch later, but it doesn’t happen often. I just keep up with them online and watch some clips.

How about you? Is there a returning or new show that you are looking forward to seeing this fall?

I’m a complete oddball, because my favorite thing to shop for is… food! I actually love to grocery shop, love to go to Sam’s and stock up on food and household supplies, and when we travel, I love to go to new grocery stores. Yes, I’m weird, and I know it 😀

When we went to the beach before Labor Day, I got to get in two food stops. We went to a Publix to shop for food for the beach house for everyone while we were there. This particular Publix had a nice organic section in the produce and several healthy options on the shelves. I didn’t buy anything here, but I easily could have 🙂 In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Publix chain store, or if I have, it’s been a couple of decades.

My other stop is one of my all-time favorites – Harry & David. Whenever we travel and go near an outlet mall that has a Harry & David, I always want to stop. Years ago, I would browse a lot and not buy much. These days, I have finally realized that I don’t get to go very often, so I better buy while I’m there and it’s available 😀 We normally only go near a Harry & David every 2 or 3 or sometimes 4 years, so it’s a nice treat for me to go in and find something new to buy, or pick up an old favorite. One of our all time favorites there is their tomato and pepper relish, which I use to make a dip for football season. This year, I made a pointed effort to get mostly new things, and so I am trying all new stuff this time!

Here’s the link to the last post I made about this, two years ago: click here

And here’s a photo of the stuff I bought this trip, I actually did pretty good and didn’t go overboard! 🙂

P.S. In case you’re interested and can’t see from the photo, I bought: Multigrain Tortilla chips, Sesame Garlic tortilla chips, Moose Munch decaf coffee, Raspberry scone mix, 2 kinds of salsa (habanero and black bean & corn), one jar of queso, one jar of cherry preserves and one jar of cherry butter. I like apple butter, so I hope I like the cherry kind 🙂

It’s been a long time since the Super Bowl in February, when our beloved Saints won their first ever Super Bowl. But, the time has finally arrived – the NFL season opens tonight with our Saints taking on the Minnesota Vikings!

We’re still basking in our first ever trip to the Super Bowl, as well as that magical first win. The Saints had only been to a playoff game 6 times in the history of the franchise before last season. To say it was a long time coming is an understatement 🙂

In the off season, we’ve been keeping that Saints spirit alive. When all of the memorabilia starting coming out in the stores in late February, we racked up! We bought the new flag that this morning is hanging out front, shirts (Tim got like 4 or 5 t-shirts!), sweatshirts, travel mugs, magnets, a blu-Ray of the season and Super Bowl… and most everything else we could find 🙂

When the Saints made their championship tour around the Gulf South region, we went to the stop here in our town. We got to see the rally bats, NFC championship items, and most importantly, that Lombardi trophy. We miss having the team here for training camp, but it’s right that they stay in New Orleans.

So, tonight the season begins, and we’re very hopeful. We have our rituals and traditions for every game. Chris and Liz come over and we eat lots of fattening “game day” food. We all have our shirts and jersey’s that we wear. We’ve got the Who Dat chant down, and we’re ready to go!

Who Dat! Who Dat! Who Dat say gonna beat dem Saints! Who Dat!

We left the beach a day early, so we could head home, pick up Beau from his kennel (poor baby, he didn’t eat hardly at all while we were gone), and go shopping for food for our annual Labor Day Party.

When Tim and I got married, our families did not know each other. So, we started having Labor Day parties and also Super Bowl parties, to invite both sides of the family so that they could meet each other and get to know each other. Everyone is very comfortable now (14 years later), so we really look forward to our Labor Day party every year. We had just seen most of my family at the beach, but my Dad came back early also, so he drove up for our party. Most of Tim’s family came, except his younger brother and his family, whom we really missed. We don’t see them as much as we used to and we really miss them! But his other brother came, his family and Tim’s parents, so we had a really good time. I didn’t take a lot of photos, but wanted to remember that we had our party 🙂

It was another meat fest here! Tim grilled burgers, hot dogs, sausage and ribs. I fixed corn dip for an appetizer, crunchy slaw, my mother-in-law brought her awesome potato salad and Terry and Emi brought their delicious baked beans (both pretty famous in our family!). We bought a chocolate cake for Zack’s 15th birthday (we were a couple of days late, his actual birthday was Saturday), so we got to celebrate that too. We hung out, played the Wii and had a really great time!

Tim and I have been married for over 14 years, but we’ve never been on a vacation to the beach before. We’re not really “beach people”. We’ve been to the coast a couple of times, and walked briefly on the beach, and a few years ago we went to Tybee Island Georgia, so I got to stick my toes in the Atlantic. But those were brief visits, just as a side to whatever else we were doing. This time, it was all about the beach. Well – it was all about golf for Tim!

My sister Gail and her husband Don invited us to go to the beach with them and some of their family, and their friends Jerry and Susan, over the long Labor Day holiday. Jerry and Don both play golf, so Tim went every day to play golf with them. Gail, Susan and I shopped, walked on the beach, and hung out at the beach house. We went down on Thursday and most everyone else came on Friday. When Gail’s oldest daughter Kathryn arrived (my oldest niece) with her husband Jeremy and their kids Katelyn and Sam, it was really fun to go to the beach and the pool 🙂 Kids at that age (4 1/2 and nearly 3) are so much fun to play with in the sand, the waves and the water! Liz and Chris came too, and my dad also, so we had a lot of family and friends to hang out with.

I need to finish going through my photos, then I’ll post some at either Flickr or Facebook.