Exceedingly Mundane

You wouldn’t believe that I’ve been blogging every day, but I have! I’ve just decided to switch to private blogging, which works better for me. But sometimes I miss the community of bloggers and sharing bits and pieces of what is going on with us. So this is a quick long-winded catch-up post! 😀 Most of what I share online is on Facebook, so most of this had been shared out there.

In early October, we went on the first vacation we’ve been on in years. We’ve taken one or two quick weekend type getaways in the last 4 or 5 years, but mostly, we had not really traveled. When my dad was alive, we didn’t really want to leave him, so we never really went anywhere. This fall, we finally took a trip to a part of the country that neither of us had visited. We signed up in the spring, along with my sister and her husband (Gail and Don) and our other sister (Suzanne). It was a 7 day train trip throughout New England. We got to visit Boston, Maine, New Hampshire and briefly drive through Vermont (we had been scheduled to take a train trip on the Amtrak Vermonter, but it derailed a couple of days before, while we were on the Amtrak Downeaster. We were very grateful not to be on that train the day it derailed!). I took a lot of photos and shared over 200 on Facebook, so I won’t put any out here. We had a great time and it took me a while to get back to normal after we got home, we were so tired and really, half sick from the change in weather.

My birthday was next, I turned 51 a week and a half after we got home. We went to church and Sunday School and then out to my favorite Chinese restaurant for lunch. We ordered a lot of food and I had leftovers for 4-5 days afterwards (it was heaven!) We ordered our own buffet: Crispy Tofu (my choice), Mongolian Chicken, Sauteed Pea Shoots and Shrimp Chow Fun. Yummy!

A couple of days after my birthday, Tim came in from the golf course with this happy for me:

I don’t ever turn down chocolate ice cream!

The rest of October was mostly a blur. Tim had a huge project at work, and he worked the better part of two weeks at about 60-70 hours a week. They tried to roll a large chunk of new software and hardware all in, but had problems and had to roll all the new code back out. They have since tried again, and had more problems. They are going to try a third time in December, a week or two before Christmas. When he does these types of projects and this type of work, it really messes him up for a while. (FYI: He starts at 10 PM and works all night, the time when the least customers are on their system). He doesn’t bounce back from pulling all-nighters like he used to! We have to work with his sleeping and eating schedule for days before and days after. I really feel for him, but it’s a part of the job. So, most of the last couple of weeks of October went by with his big project looming over us.

One bright spot in late October – they released a big trailer for the new Star Wars movie. I got really excited, and still am! I got online and ordered our tickets, have never bought them this far out. Can’t wait to go, we’re actually going the night before, on December 17th. Wheeee!

So, the end of the month: We had a very quiet Halloween. We have enjoyed the last several years of having our niece and nephew come to trick or treat, along with our friends bringing their twins. Neither was able to come this year, and it was very quiet and a bit lonesome here. We watched some tv, while answering the door. We had about 60 kids, give or take, and once again, I WAY overbought on candy. I STILL have candy left and I’m STILL eating it and it’s STILL going to my hips and thighs. Sigh. Next year, I have to buy substantially less!

One morning a couple of weeks ago, we saw some new equipment in the subdivision. Instead of being in the new construction, they were moving it onto our street. From about 8 AM to 10 AM, it was so loud in the house, that Tim really couldn’t work. They were tearing up parts of the curbing and replacing it, before they come in and do the final paving:

We went to one day of the PGA golf tournament that they hold every fall nearby. Tim probably would have loved to go all four days, but we only got free passes for one day. It rained 2 of the days and they ended up playing the final day on Monday. We went on Sunday, after church. I had thought it was going to be mild and not chilly, so I dressed vaguely like Tim did (short sleeves, jeans instead of golf pants). Instead, when we got there, the sun went behind the clouds, it was 62 degrees but it felt like 50 with the wind blowing. I froze my patootie off! Still, we had a good time and made some nice memories 🙂

We’re watching football every weekend, but end up happy and sad, all at the same time. Our college team, Tim’s alma mater, is having a really good year and winning most every weekend. The Saints, however, are another story. Tim is frustrated and upset most every Sunday afternoon once the game is over, because his Saints didn’t play well and lost. And to add insult to injury, both of our fantasy teams are tanking and in the basement. I think I’m in 8th place and he’s in 9th place of a 10 team league. Yikes. Bad year for football in our house. 🙁

I’ve come in a couple of times from the store or shopping or something and found something like this:

Tim has been having fun moving stuff around on me, hiding stuff, finding my chocolate stashes and rewriting chalk board labels in my absence! Never a dull moment around here, living with that cuckoo! 🙂

I finished my first ever Bible study at church. We went through the study “Recovering Redemption” by Matt Chandler and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We launched immediately into another study (6 weeks ending right before Christmas), this one is called “The Best Yes” by Lisa Terkeurst. So far, I’m not *quite* as into it as the previous one, but we just started it. Our little small group rotates with the other small groups on bringing food. We’ve brought food twice so far (since we started in August). The first time I made donut mini-muffins and they went over ok. The second time, I pulled out the big guns and made homemade maple cinnamon rolls:

These usually get eaten up and not a one left, but unfortunately, I came home with about half of them. Now, to be fair, we have about 14-16 ladies who cook and bake wonderful food and there’s always a large table of food. So rarely does something completely get eaten, but still. I thought my cinnamon rolls would go quickly, LOL! Lucky for us that Tim and I both love these things. He doesn’t get from-scratch cinnamon rolls very often. So, we downed the remaining ones in a day or two. More ammo for my ever-expanding hips and thighs (that and all that dumb Halloween candy!)

After a really hot summer, where we set a record for consecutive days above 95 degrees, and a record drought, we are finally getting some more reasonable temps and some rain. I think it has rained the first two or three weekends in November. I know it rained Halloween weekend (they changed trick-or-treating from Saturday night, the actual 10/31 to Friday night, because of the weather). It rained the next weekend too, so we finally got some much needed rain. After the rain finished for a day or two, we have been trying to work in the yard and outside. Tim bought more gutter guards and got them installed. We bought pre-emerge weed killer and put it out (well, Tim did!). We got pine straw and put it in all the beds, and this past weekend, I got pansies and planted. Nice to be able to get outside when it’s below 85 degrees! 🙂

The new Panera finally opened and we got a chance to try it. I knew I would like it better than Tim, and unfortunately I was right! I loved what I got (Autumn Squash soup and roasted turkey and cranberry flatbread), but he wasn’t too thrilled with his. Thankfully, he said he’ll give it another try and hope that what he gets will be better. It took him a while to come around to other places like that (Newk’s, Corner Bakery, etc), so I hope eventually he’ll find something he likes. He would just rather go get a burger or steak or barbecue!

Last week, I went to the Christmas gathering of Ladies Night Out at my church. They do these fairly regularly, but I had never been to one. I heard from several ladies that the Christmas one was the best one to attend, and one of the ladies in our Sunday School group suggested that we should go and sit together at one of the big tables. We had a fabulous time! Such a good program, great speaker, good food and fellowship. I’m so happy I went!

And lastly, we finally, FINALLY, got around to getting new walking shoes, just this past weekend. Mine are what I call “Joseph’s shoes”, aka the shoes of many colors!!! 🙂 Tim got a pair and wore them today walking and said when we got back, that he should have gotten the next size up, his rubbed a blister on his foot. So I guess we’ll be making a return trip to Academy Sports to see if they will swap his slightly (one-time) worn pair out for the next size up. Here’s my Joseph shoes:

Ok, that’s just a few tidbits of what we’ve been doing for most of October and half of November. Time is flying by. Thanksgiving is next week, we’ll have to get out the Christmas decorations and do all the decorating right after that (which is always Tim’s birthday weekend, I hate he spends his time dragging out decorations from the attic for me!). 🙂 Then starts the mad rush to try to get ideas from family for gifts, get them ordered and wrapped. But it will be fun, and I’m hoping to enjoy this Christmas season. 🙂 I pulled out my winter dishes last week and have been enjoying them!

Hope all is well out there in everyone else’s world! 🙂