Exceedingly Mundane

Weekly boring update, take three!

Glad that… – We had some winter weather early in the week. Most people don’t like the cold or the rainy or dreary days. I do, as long as I get to stay home and enjoy it! Fires, hot cocoa, snuggling under blankets, reading or watching tv. I try to get in as much hibernation as I can in January and February. I love this time of year, especially since we have such a long hot summer. By the weekend, it felt like spring, since the highs on Saturday and Sunday were like 73-74 degrees. Yikes!

Sad that… Tim is already half out of the walking habit with me! We walked two days this past week, not as much as previous weeks. Oh well, it was good while it lasted and I still haven’t given up hope. He has his walking challenge for wellness with work until late Feb or early March. However, he’s back to doing P90X workouts at lunch, rather than going walking with me. I mostly expected it though – he gets bored easily with just walking! The sad part for me is that this time of year, I’d much rather just sit at home and eat/read/watch tv/surf/etc rather than walk! 🙂

Good thing that happened… Tim had his yearly checkup this past week. Now, this doesn’t sound like a big deal to anyone, right? Well, it took me 16 or 17 years to convince him to go to the doctor for a checkup. I’m over the moon that he goes yearly now, to get things checked out and make sure he’s ok. I love him more than life itself and just want him to be healthy. And happy, but that’s more something I can do than the doctor. He got a good report, and he doesn’t need blood pressure medicine! Yippee!

Book I’m reading: “The Crimson Cord” by Jill Eileen Smith. Finished that one (really good!) and started another free one for my Kindle, “Critical Pursuit” by Janice Cantore.

Things we ate: Lots of leftovers and salad Sunday-Tuesday. I made potato soup on Wednesday. It was a really cold day and I had a bag of potatoes! Thursday, I made eggs in purgatory, black pepper bacon and grits. Tim loved the eggs, so those will be a keeper. Friday, I made sloppy joes and oven fries. (I gave him a choice of 3 things and predictably, he picked the sloppy joe’s, one of his favorites!) Saturday we were gone all day to my in-laws and so Sunday we ate leftovers. Maybe Monday too! We stretched last weekend’s leftovers through Tuesday with salads, so I like that (I try not to cook on Sundays).

TV and Movies: Regular stuff on the DVR. I made a concerted effort to clear off some of my Hallmark movies. First I watched The Gourmet Detective, then an Aurora Teagarden mystery (Real Murders). I really enjoyed both, but especially love Candace Cameron Bure and that cast. Then, I got Tim to watch the second Gourmet Detective with me (at least they are clean!). Tim and I also watched Transcendence with Johnny Depp, something we had recorded from a free preview weekend. I’d call that one…. weird. It did keep my attention though 🙂 The highlight of the TV viewing week: we rented The Martian from iTunes on Friday night. At home date night, complete with hot cocoa. Good movie, we had tried to see it at the theater and missed it, so we were glad to stream it at home. 🙂

Something that makes me happy: – We built our house over a year and a half ago and I really haven’t blogged about much of it 🙂 There’s so many things in the new house that make me happy. Here’s one:

This is the cabinet above my microwave and wall oven. It’s just a tall cabinet with slots, and I use it to store a ton of cookie sheets, muffin tins, sheet pans, pizza pans, cutting boards, my toaster oven pans, a cast iron griddle and my Emile Henre pizza stone that I love. This stuff used to take up so much room in the old kitchen. But, I seemed to stack it on the bottom of a shelf, so it was a royal pain to dig through to get down to what I wanted. Now, it’s easy to store and easy to see and grab what I want. It makes me happy 🙂

Random Thought du Jour: I need a new wallet. Funny how that is something I never think to shop for, either online or when I venture to a department store. And I’m very particular about things like wallet and my purse. It has to have the right configuration, be the right size, etc. Picky, I am!

Hope everyone is having a great day!

Boring though it might be, I’m going to give this another try 🙂 Nothing really going on around here to blog about, but the blog is called “exceedingly mundane” for a reason!

Glad that… – Tim is still walking with me! I’m determined to enjoy every minute (even though it’s nearly wearing me out!) until March 13. The time changes that date and I magically turn into a golf widow till the fall. 🙁 Of course, the end of this week turned out wet and COLD, so we didn’t get to walk all that much. But next week looks much better, so I’m still hopeful 🙂

Good thing that happened… The Bible Study I attend at our church started back up on Thursday Jan 21. I go to the one called Manna and this time, we are doing “Armor of God” by Priscilla Shirer. I think it’s going to be really good!

Book I’m reading: I finished “Random Acts of Malice” by Christy Barritt (my January prime loan book) and started “The Girl from the Train” by Irma Joubert. Finished it last night and started “The Crimson Cord” by Jill Eileen Smith. I have usually loved every single historical Christian fiction book I’ve read by Jill Eileen Smith, so I’m very hopeful that this one is great too.

Things we ate: Worked on leftovers, chili and restaurant leftovers from the weekend. Tuesday I made fish and veggies. Wednesday I made homemade chicken meatballs, sauce, noodles, roasted broccoli and sauteed green beans (Liz was here and we had cheese toast with ours, no bread or cheese for Tim). Thursday I made party cheeseburgers and fries, as Elizabeth was here again hanging out with us. Friday lunch we ate at Tim’s favorite place, Dickie’s BBQ, at lunch before the movie. Tim’s mom fed us two meals on Saturday, since we spent the whole day there 🙂

Pot of Chili, yum!

TV and Movies: I watched a Murder She Baked from Hallmark, and we watched some regular tv shows on the DVR. NFC and AFC Championship games today, Sunday January 24. Which means the Super Bowl is two weeks from today! We went Friday afternoon to a second viewing of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Loved it just as much the second time around 🙂

Weather – Cold in the early part of the week, some days I had a hard time warming up! Tim even broke out a hand warmer one day and let me keep it in the front pocket of my hoodie all day, LOL! Really rainy on Thursday, grey and rainy all day. So much so that I wore my rain boots to Bible Study and out running errands 😀 Friday it was SO cold, and snow flurries on and off all day. We were in and out and I froze to death – temps in the mid 30’s and wind chills in the low 20’s. BRRR!

Random Thought du Jour: Very grateful for family. We spent the whole day on Saturday with Tim’s family. It was so great to see everyone and catch up and just hang out 🙂

Hope everyone is having a great day!

I’m trying to get back to more of a regular schedule of blogging. It’s harder than you would think! 🙂 Even for someone as verbose as me 🙂

Going to copy some of my blog friends and try to come up with some sort of weekly, or maybe bi-weekly, wrap-up. Categories subject to change at any given time! 🙂

Biggie for the week: Last week was a really busy one for Tim and a really quiet one for me! He had a big project at work that started Sunday evening (1/10). He slept Saturday night, got up and we went to early church, and he started working about 9 PM Sunday night. He came to bed for 45 minutes around 4:40 AM Monday morning and then they called with a problem about 5:30 AM. He worked all day and then finally stopped around midnight Monday night. So, by my random calculations, he worked off and on for nearly 27 hours. He took that one nap, stopped once for food (the rest of the time, I took him food into the office) and I got him out of the house once to go walking, he had been sitting so long and said he was starting to hurt in his shoulders and back. The rest of the week was busy, but not as bad. They are still working on problems, but it’s getting better every day. He’s working a lot of hours and a lot of nights, but this was a huge deal. This was the third time they had tried to implement this huge system, years of code that he rewrote. Big deal! There’s several more phases to this project, but this one was far and away the largest chunk. Yeah for Tim!

Glad that… – my yearly ob/gyn appointment and mammogram are over! I got a good report on all my numbers – blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, etc. Happy that maybe all of this trying to eat better and walk are helping 🙂

Fun thing I found… I have rediscovered my love of Hallmark 🙂 We switched to AT&T UVerse many years ago, probably 5 or 6 years. They were in a dispute with Hallmark and we didn’t get that channel. Sometime last year, we finally got the Hallmark channel added. And much to my surprise, another channel called Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. Both in hi-def, yippee! I have also discovered that there are a slew of movies on the mystery channel made from cozy mystery series books, some of my favorites. I’ve already recorded and watched a couple of Murder She Baked, based on the Hannah Swenson books by Joanne Fluke, of which I’ve read a lot. And I’ve watched a couple of Garage Sale mysteries with Lori Loughlin, even though I haven’t read those books. And I’ve got set to record some Flower Shop Mysteries (starring Brooke Shields) and Aurora TeaGarden mysteries (starring Candace Cameron Bure), both based on book series I’m pretty sure, although I haven’t read any of them. Looking forward to lots of cozy murder mystery movies in my future!

Book I’m reading:I finished “Danger on the Mountain” last Saturday, then got Rogue Laywer by John Grisham from my library’s Kindle download site. After I finished that one, I started my Kindle Prime loan for January, the third in a trilogy by Christie Barritt, “Random Acts of Malice”. Love her books!

Things we ate: I’m not doing an awful lot of cooking. Unless you count huge salads as cooking. Tim started his healthy eating and P90X kick two days after Christmas. He lost like 5 or 6 pounds the first week! Men! This Monday, 1/11, he started a walking challenge at work which is great for me, since he’s willing for two months to walk some with me. Helps me meet my Fitbit numbers most every day. He still just wants to eat mostly salads, with some other light food thrown in. I made salmon, spinach and couscous one night. Made a chicken and rice soup another night. Lots of salads. We went out to eat Friday night. It was originally scheduled as date night, but my sister called and asked to tag along, so I won’t call it a date. We went to a local Mexican place, Taqueria de Guadalupe. Tim had a molcajete and I had the grilled shrimp and veggies. Also made a big pot of chili for the weekend. Love chili when it’s cold! 🙂

TV and Movies: aforementioned Hallmark movies, my regular daily shows (The Chew, Rachael Ray, The Kitchen, etc). I’m also so happy that Downton Abbey is back, but so sad it’s the last season. I thoroughly enjoy each new show that I record on Sunday night. The Blacklist was back Thursday, hooray! We love Red around here. Lots of NFL football on the tv and we also watched the college football championship, although with Tim working nonstop, it took two nights of DVR watching (and many naps) to make it through 🙂

New Things I’m trying: I’ve tried two new-to-me things so far this year: coloring and a scripture writing challenge. The coloring is fun and relaxing but so far I haven’t really committed to it. I have so many other things I like to do and want to do. I pulled out some old colored pencils I had from my scrapbooking days and printed off a few flower mandala pages from the internet and I’ve been working on one. It is VERY relaxing and I do enjoy it. I always loved coloring as a kid! I’m a total “inside the lines” girl, so it really appeals to me! The second thing I’ve started is a daily scripture writing challenge. This one I am hoping to keep up with. I didn’t start till 1/11, but so far, so good. I’m really enjoying it. I need to spend more time with my Bible and Bible study. And I’ve always been an advocate that anything I write down, I’m more apt to commit to memory and it helps me retain more of it. Plus, another biggie for me, my handwriting is ATROCIOUS these days! I barely handwrite anything at all, anymore, everything is electronic for me, even my grocery list. So this hits a number of good areas for me – scripture reading and writing, memory work, writing skills, quiet time, etc.

Weather – typical January weather, although a bit warmer at times than I would like. Better than our 80 degree Christmas day. Several nights this week I had to bring my herbs in from outside onto my back covered porch. A few days of sun, a few of grey and dreary and one shower. Not overly wet and not too cold. I love January and February, they are good for my hibernation tendencies!

Random Thought du Jour: do I want to order a coloring book and more pencils? Haven’t decided whether to pursue the coloring. Also, do I want to explore getting a spiralizer for making “noodles” or “zoodles” out of zucchini or other veggies. Has anyone used one and do you like it, and more importantly, do you use it often? I just don’t think I would use it more than once or twice before it got tossed in the drawer and forgotten. 🙂

Hope everyone is having a great day!

I know I haven’t updated the public portion of my blog in a long time. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years have come and gone. I was rather happy to see the end of 2015. I picked up a stomach virus courtesy of Tim’s side of the family the weekend before Christmas. I was over that but struggling with sinus issues at Christmas (since it was a blooming 80 degrees here!). Tim’s immediate family came here for our Christmas on December 26 and promptly brought me a bad case of bronchitis and chronic coughing. Today is January 8 and I still cough some, mostly at night when I lay flat in the bed, but I am feeling a lot better. I am ready to be healthy in 2016!

Let’s see, I’ve put a few pictures out on Facebook recently, but not very many. I try to stay off of Facebook, for the most part. I get worked up about a lot of things out there! I am, however, still updating my private blog daily. Sort of an online journal for me and it’s really working. I put all the boring mundane details out there for me.. things like what we ate, where we went, what tv shows or movies we watched, if I exercised at all, what book I’m reading, etc. Gives me a place to keep track of things and even vent a little, if something (or someONE) aggravates me!

I so enjoy reading a lot of other blogs though, that after a time, I feel bad for not having anything out here. So here’s a quick photo update:

We bought a couple of new outdoor lights this year. This house and yard are so much larger than our last one, that we are having to upsize so many things. We need more, but for me, my new angel and wreath worked out just great! The trees are very old, there used to be 3 in the set, but we’re down to 2. We’ll get new trees or something else soon:

Last year, the day after Christmas, I did my regular shopping. Some people get excited to Black Friday shop, but I never venture out then. When I do enjoy going is the morning after Christmas. I look for stuff to put up for next year. I get bows, cards, wrapping paper, bags, decorations, etc. usually at 50% off. I won’t buy anything if it’s still full price or discounted a measly 25% or 30%! LOL! Last year on 12/26, I found these pillows. I thought they were SO cute! They are not outdoor pillows, so they may not last long on my front porch, but I was diligent this year in bringing them in every time it threatened to rain! Maybe they’ll last a few years:

I still can’t believe this is our second Christmas in this house! It doesn’t seem like it. I thoroughly enjoyed, both last year and this year, getting all my stuff out and decorating. I still have to get more stuff, and bigger stuff, for the inside as well as the outside. We have two fireplaces now, and I love decorating both mantles. The one in the great room gets lighted garland and candles and a big snowman (sorry, didn’t take a good picture this year). The mantle in the keeping room is my favorite, but gets a hodgepodge of things that I love, but don’t really work well together! But I love all my stuff and can’t bear to part with most of it. So, I throw it up on my mantle (it’s a huge cypress beam, which I love) and against the brick fireplace, which I also love. The one in the great room is just a white mantle and plain tile. Anyway, last year Tim suggested we hang some twine up and hang some of our Christmas cards. I probably blogged about this last year, I honestly didn’t even go back and look. Here it is again, most of the Christmas cards hanging from the mantle:

Two quick photos of gifts we got each other – Tim got me a red bird feeder which I *so* wanted and am enjoying every single day and he got a surprise – a Zepp golf swing analyzer. He loves it and didn’t even know that much about it! Kudos to our friends and old neighbors for tipping me off about it and keeping the secret so he would be surprised at Christmas!

We went Christmas day to my sister Gail’s house. I posted a couple of pictures on Facebook, but this was my favorite (I rarely take a picture that I actually like of me!), me and Gail:

And the day after Christmas, we hosted Tim’s immediate family (we rotate and have it at our house every fourth year). We “borrowed” (aka, we STOLE), the idea of doing British crackers after the meal from my niece Elizabeth. She has been getting them for us, on my side of the family, for the last few years. Tim and I stole the idea and had them for everyone here this year. We had fun, popping them open, reading the jokes and wearing the crowns!

Tim is still surprising me regularly with new art on the chalkboard label on the front of his coffee bean jar. This one was discovered on New Years morning:

You may not can tell but the top of the label is full of fireworks! He worked on it quite a bit of time, apparently 🙂

We had a busy week between Christmas and New Years. I was mostly sick with the crud, but Tim’s dad had an episode and his brother Terry drove him to the VA hospital here to get checked out. They ended up admitting him, and he was here three days. So we spent all of our time at the hospital. Tim spent one night up there with him, the first night, and didn’t get one single wink of sleep he said. He was better by New Years Eve and Tim and I drove him home that evening. We had a quiet New Years Eve at home, we were just tired and happy to be home. I didn’t even stay up until midnight, I rarely if ever do! We had not been home to take down any of the Christmas decorations, so we spent half of New Years Day taking everything down, packing it up in the many totes I have, and hauling it all back up in the attic. I have decorated two trees the last two years, in this bigger house. I made the “executive decision” this year to give away our smaller tree and only do the one big one in the keeping room from now on. It’s just too much work to put up and decorate and then take down two trees!

Since we didn’t really do anything to celebrate New Years, the day after, Tim went to play golf and I goofed off! I ordered him an Apple Watch and went and picked it up at Best Buy, and then coaxed him into meeting me for lunch afterward. I was just going to pick a local deli, for a salad or sandwich, but he offered to take me to lunch at LongHorn Steakhouse, so we had a nice lunch out! Here’s my lunch – french onion soup and a grilled chicken and strawberry salad combo:

And one more picture. I talked Tim into a quick walk this past Sunday evening, through the new construction at the back of our subdivision. They have at least 7 or 8 houses going up, so it will be fun to walk back there for the next few months. I think when all is said and done, they’ll throw up 30 or more houses behind us. Anyway, we went late and got a good sunset photo on my phone:

This week has been good, but quiet. We have a few things going on this weekend, including Tim having a big project at work. I have a yearly doctor’s appointment and mammogram on Monday, which I’m dreading. As I do every year. I wish I could just not go, but I know better. I’m always really glad when it’s over! I have one more week before my weekly Bible Study group gets back together. I’m sort of missing it, and my little ladies in my small group, but also glad for the break. Maybe if I can get back on here and blog again before months go by, I’ll have some more updates.

Have a blessed day!