Exceedingly Mundane

Another one of those weekends where we are so busy working hard and having fun, that I didn’t ever stop to take a minute and blog about it. Saturday was work day, and Sunday afternoon we went to see Star Wars and run a bunch of errands. Click the -More- link if you want to read all the gory details! 🙂

Saturday morning we slept a bit late, then took our time having coffee and reading the paper. I got Tim to look with me at some issues on Hambones, and we spent a while working together on the PC’s (yep, there are 3 back here!). We also did some research on 5.8 megahertz expandable phone systems. We have been wanting to get new phones for the house for quite a while. We looked at it last year and never did it, then said we would do that as part of our Christmas gifts, and didn’t do that either. We spent quite a bit of time reading reviews at Amazon and epinions.com, but it was frustrating. For every good opinion, there was a bad one! Hard to find a clear cut winner.

Anyway, we had a late lunch (we grilled chicken outside, then had on whole wheat buns with honey mustard, and some Sun Chips), then got started outside. I had wanted Tim to use the pressure washer we borrowed from Fred and work on pressure washing the deck and the gutters and siding, but he was determined to work in the back flower bed. He attacked it with gusto, and dug up every single shrub back there. All my cleyeras, all the boxwoods (Gail calls them yaupons) and all my beautiful lorapetalum. We wanted to move the larger ones to the back and re-arrange, and I also wanted to maybe redesign the bed while we were doing this. I definitely wanted to work over the soil, getting some of the weeds out, adding organic matter back in, then getting everything planted and mulched. No such luck. Things never go the way I want or definitely the way I plan. After Tim got them all dug up (and while I was working in the other flowers and beds, weeding, deadheading, watering, etc), he got out the tiller to start turning over the soil. But, the tiller wouldn’t crank. So, Tim started to work on that and ended up spending several hours (until after dark), trying to get it to run. He cleaned out the old gas, cleaned the gas line, did something with the spark plugs and carbureatur (sp??) and I have no idea what else. After a while, I gave up and went inside and read my book for a couple of hours (A Year in Provence). After dark, I got Tim to stop work on the tiller and try to help me plant the shrubs. We had to put them in just plain holes, no tilled dirt, no new topsoil or organic matter, nothing. I hate, hate, hate doing that. My dad always taught me to put a $1 plant in a $5 hole, not a $5 plant in a $1 hole. Something that has always stuck with me, because it usually works. I didn’t want to lose any of these plants, but Tim didn’t like the way some of them were growing, so we drug three of them out to the curb for the trash pickup. We stuck the others in holes, but a couple of them are already dying.

Anyway, we were late, after 10 pm, getting in and getting cleaned up. I had originally planned for us to finish by dark and then sit down and watch the 2nd Star Wars, in preparation (and anticipation) of the new movie! After we got a shower, it was 10:15 or so, and I thought we were ready to pass out, but Tim still wanted to watch the movie with me, so we popped popcorn (we had never had supper), and watched it till nearly midnight. We didn’t quite finish it, as both of us were exhausted. Tim, understandably, more than me.

Sunday, we went to an early matinee of Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith. Let me just say one thing for those of you who don’t know, I am a total Star Wars fan. I love these movies. I have watched them all my life. I own all of them and watch them a lot. It’s hard to disappoint me with them. I’m one of the few people that didn’t despise Jar Jar Binks in Episode I. Even though I wished for more, I was happy to get anything. And this one, this one, did not disappoint. It was visually stunning. The special effects are just breathtaking. It’s amazing how far they’ve come and how “primitive” the first trilogy is. Mostly, I wanted things tied up, tied together between the two trilogies, and I left very happy. I only had one question/discrepancy, about Padme and something Leia said in a later episode. Otherwise, I was totally enthralled! 😀

After the movie, we went to Sam’s and bought these phones. We started off with the base station (with answering machine) and one expansion unit. We’re going to keep them a couple of months and see how they hold up and if we like them, then if we do, we’ll buy two more expansion handsets. We also got some pest control stuff for the house, and Tim has promised to spray for bugs inside and out. We still have our termite contract, but have let our pest control go for the last couple of years, and we really need to spray. We also got Tim an Izod polo at Sam’s. Then, we headed to Office Depot and got more memory for Hambones. We hope that helps with some of the speed issues. Tim has not installed it yet, but will soon, and we’ll have to take Hambones down for a few minutes to install it.

Then, we went to Blockbuster to use one of my free rental coupons. We were going to get Ladder 49, which we have still never seen, but decided to go a bit lighter, and rented Taxi instead. Then, Tim offered to go with me to Walmart, and we went and got more stuff that I wasn’t expecting to buy, plus groceries! After that, we tried out the new Subway in Madison, near Home Depot, and got the 1.99 specials – 6″ meatball marinara. Like I told Tim, by far the cheapest thing we had bought all day!

Tim played with the phones for a long time after we got home, and I washed fruit, lettuce and produce. We got online and started the setup for Vonage, but when ordering our “free adapter”, we discovered they were going to charge us 9.99 to ship it. Plus the activiation fee, which we will have to pay anyway, but it did add up to more than we expected. So, we got back out all the ads from CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City and the Office supply places, and found what looks like a good deal from CompUSA. The adapter will be free after rebates, and no shipping charge. So, Tim is going to swing by Monday on the way home from work and buy the adapter there. Then maybe we can set it up soon. We will have a temporary phone number through Vonage while our other number is being transferred from BellSouth. We’ll send that out as soon as we have it. 🙂

We watched Taxi, and enjoyed it. It was light, and actually cleaner than I had thought it might be (still some bad language, but really no overt violence). It was funny, and even had a couple of sweet, heartwarming moments to it. A good rental, made infinitely better by the free rental coupon I had! I need to go enter a review for it on Hambones.