Exceedingly Mundane

Today’s meme questions from the site I like are a little different, a little more thoughtful and introspective than the others I have answered in the last couple of weeks. You can go HERE to check it out for yourself.

Do you…

1. Feel safe in your community? Why? Yes, I do. I feel very safe in and around Madison, and most of Ridgeland. I have no qualms about jumping in the truck to run a movie back at 10 PM, or going to the store to pick up something late at night.

2. Tend to be a follower or a leader? Easy for me, I’m more of a follower. My biggest desire growing up was to blend right in the middle of the crowd and not be noticeable. 🙂

3. Like where you are in your life? Why? Yes, for the most part. I have Tim and he means everything to me. I would have preferred that we had 3 or 4 kids by now, but that wasn’t meant to be. I still don’t know why, but I’m sure there is a reason.

4. Confront problems or try to ignore them? I’m not a confrontational kind of person. I tend to try to ignore things and hope they’ll go away. Tim is really good about shaking me up and trying to make me face things. I don’t like it because it goes against my nature, but most of the time he’s right. I hate it when he’s right 🙂

5. Stand up for your beliefs or keep it all to your self? Again, I’m not confrontational at all. I stand up for what I believe in and will tell people, but I don’t get in their face and shove my opinions down other people’s throats.

OK, I was reading other people’s blogs (I do this a lot, that’s where I get all of these other fun things, besides the memes, like quizzes and lists and nonsense and such). Here’s the latest one I found – a test to see if you are more Dixie or more Yankee!

Click Here to go take it for yourself! Then, come back and post a comment with your score.

My score was 83% and it wanted to know if I had any Confederate ancestors

I took it twice, and the first time I only scored 69%. Then I changed the toilet paper rolling answer from “toilet-papering” to “rolling” and it jumped way up! 🙂

Have fun!

My mood today is listed as “lucky”. Gail asked why, so I thought I would include it here. I feel very lucky today. I feel very lucky every day, but today especially so. I can remember many Valentines that I spent without Tim, and now that I have him to share my life with, I realize how lucky I am. How lucky I am to have him on this day, and every day. I remember how lonely I was, and how unhappy, and I know that those days are behind me now, since I have Tim. I feel very lucky, and very fortunate. 🙂

Well, today is a picture perfect day. The sun is out, the birds are chirping (and will soon be singing a lot more, I bought more bird seed at the store today), my windchimes are singing in the breeze, and it just couldn’t be prettier outside. I have a couple of the windows open in the house, and the temp indicator in my computer system tray reads a balmy 71º. How’s that for winter in the Deep South?

I made my weekly grocery run today, and realized that this is the first time in three weeks that I haven’t gone when it was raining. I posted some “Rainy Day Gratitudes” on those days, so I thought it only fitting to post some “Sunny Day Gratitudes” today.

– I am thankful for the sun shining down, it makes me so much more cheerful than the dreary gloomy gray days.
– I am thankful for money in the bank with which to buy food and necessities, as well as enough left over to buy happies.
– I am thankful for Tim.
– I am thankful for my family and friends.
– I am thankful for my health.
– I am thankful for the wonderful roof over my head I am proud and happy to call home.
– I am thankful for our new niece, Abby, and that she was born happy and healthy.
– I am thankful for the time that I have to stop and do little things, like look at the clouds in the sky, watch the birds eating bird seed at my feeder, listen to my wind chimes play, and smell the fresh air.
– I am thankful for my computer!
– I am thankful for Hambones, and all of the time and effort that Tim has, and continues, to put into this website, for me, for us, and for everyone here.
– I am thankful I have my eyesight, so I that I can see the computer screen, watch TV, read a book, read the paper.
– I am thankful for these things and so many more. More another day 🙂

Well, our Roadrunner (high speed Internet access) was out again last night. Just a note to self, since it was also out earlier in the week for a couple of hours. It was out last night for about 5-6 hours. Hambones was off-line as a result, in case anyone was trying to get on and couldn’t reach the website.

I hope this doesn’t start happening on a more regular basis. I am going to start making a note of it here, in case it starts getting to be a problem again. Tim and I are really leaning towards switching our house phone service from BellSouth to Vonage, which uses the high speed Internet connection from our cable company. Every time Roadrunner goes off line, I think, gee, I wouldn’t have the Internet or phone service. Of course, Tim always reminds me that we would both still have our cell phones, but still. I don’t like to be without a phone in the house.

On the bright side, while the Internet connection was down, I got a lot of other stuff done. Yesterday was a restful, but productive, day for me. I got some laundry done, read some in my book, got the tax software installed on the PC, and got the rebate information filled out on said tax software. Tim and I also watched a movie out of our DVD collection last night. We watched Pirates of the Caribbean, and he even agreed to watch some of the extras with me, which was great. We watched the deleted scenes, a blooper reel, and some cute little interactive stuff on the life and history of pirates. 🙂

Here’s the meme from the site I like to peruse for Sunday blogging ideas… Click Here to check it out for yourself and click on links to other people’s answers. I don’t ever reply that I have answered these questions. For one reason mainly. I don’t want to advertise my blog on the Internet and draw unwanted traffic to the Hambones site. We restrict the site from being queried by search engines (like Google, MSN, etc), so that we don’t get a lot of unwanted visitors to the site. We want to keep it quiet – you know, a good thing! Just for family and friends.

Anyway, this meme is very similar to the one I did a few days ago, on Tuesday. I guess Valentines Day is a popular topic! Some of the answers may be eerily similar! 😀

On Valentine’s Day, millions of men give millions of women flowers, cards and candy as a heartfelt expression of the emotion that also motivates men to observe anniversaries and birthdays: fear.” -Dave Barry

1) Do you celebrate Valentine’s Day with your significant other?
Yes, Tim and I celebrate, and that is almost exclusively for my benefit. Gotta love a guy who will observe a holiday he cares nothing about! Tim thinks it is a marketing ploy by the flower and greeting card people!

2) What is the best Valentine’s Day gift you have ever received? the first time that Tim sent me a dozen roses 🙂

3) Describe your best Valentine date. Any date with Tim is a great date!

4) Did you pass out Valentines to your classmates as a child? Hmmm, this one I don’t have an answer for. I don’t remember. I’m sure I did. I think I have a vague memory of having those little boxes of valentines and signing my name on the back. I don’t really remember, though.

5) What is your favorite Valentine décor? (hearts, cupids, etcetera) Hearts would be my choice, by far. Don’t like cherubs or cupids much at all! 🙂

Just a random thought, as I was doing a load of laundry. I was washing my winter pajamas (pink) and my new pajama set that Tim got me for Valentines Day (also pink) along with some other clothes. It made me stop and think – boy, Presh would be proud! She loved pink, anything and everything pink. She would love it that I have two sets of pj’s that are pink!

Dodie, on the other hand, is probably turning over in her grave that I have them. 🙂

Well, I’m still thinking about Ava Clair. Shanna IM’d with me a couple of hours ago to tell us what had happened to Ava Clair. They were at a Mexican place last night and AC pulled some hot salsa off the table and it gave her second degree burns on her leg, through her pants. I just don’t get it – I don’t think we’ve ever had salsa that was warm, it’s usually room temperature or cold. And why on earth would any place bring it out hot to a table with two small children at the table. It was so hot, it burned her through pants, that had to be hot. Poor thing. Shanna says she is being a trooper though! 🙂 Shanna said the ER doctor told them it would probably scar and they might have to have plastic surgery on it. I hope it doesn’t come to that. And I hope she doesn’t have a mark or scar left on her. I’ll be glad when they talk to their pediatrician tomorrow and find out more. I hope, in time, it will all heal and go away. She’s much too beautiful of a little girl to have a scar on her leg from salsa, of all things.

Oooohhh! Tim and I got home a couple of hours ago from eating with Gail and Don, and he decided to flip channels in the den and see what was on TV. I came back to the office to check my email, and turned on the TV back here to flip around. I scrolled up to Soapnet and found they are running an “I Love Lucci” marathon of classic AMC episodes! How cool is that! And how terrible that I think I have seen both of the old ones that have been on since I got back here 🙂 The first one was when Erica broke Jeremy Hunter out of prison to escape to Canada with him, and the second one is when Erica and Travis are in the delivery room, they think they are having a boy, but Bianca is about to be born. Adam and Brooke are married and Adam doesn’t want Brooke to work for Travis, so he is offering to bribe her by giving her Tempo if she agrees to not work for Travis. Gotta love all these old shows!!!

Fun day today. 🙂 Tim and I slept late (yea, I love to sleep!), and then hung around the house awhile. I did some chores and he trimmed (no, scratch that, massacred) the crepe myrtles and a bunch of shrubs outside. Then we left and stopped by Northpark on the way to the theatre to meet Gail and Don. We all went to a matinee of Hitch. Great movie, really funny! I enjoyed it a lot! Then, we all went to Best Buy and Bed, Bath and Beyond, and then walked over to King Buffet for supper. We had a really great time hanging out this evening with Gail & Don. 🙂

I have an RSS aggregator now, and I have subscribed to several feeds. One of which is a Quote of the Day feed. Here’s one of today’s quotes – I rather liked it:

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. — Oscar Wilde

If you have paid attention, you’ve noticed that on the front page of Hambones there is a Random Quote. It doesn’t change daily like the verse of the day or proverb of the day (those feed from a different website). It changes every time you hit the site’s opening page, or every time you click the refresh button. These are quotes stored in a text file on Hambones. Quotes that I slowly and methodically typed in by hand, word by word. All of them mean something to me. Especially my favorite “Tim thinks he is always right. – Stacy”. Gotta love that one! I think Tim’s favorite quote is “Everywhere I go, there I am. — Mike Ditka” 😀

I read this article at MSNBC a few minutes ago; found a link to it on another blog I peruse. 🙂 You can click Here to read the whole thing for yourself. I’ll copy and paste the top 10 cheesiest movie lines here, in case you don’t want to follow the link. I chuckled at most of them, including the #1 “I’m the King of the World!” from Titanic. Chuckled, if you’re wondering, because we own the majority of these movies on DVD, and I’ve seen almost all of them. 🙂

By the way, the poll was done in Britain, I doubt the #3 in the United States would be from a movie I love “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, but I guess anything is possible!

1. “Titanic”: Leonardo DiCaprio’s “I’m the king of the world!”
2. “Dirty Dancing”: Patrick Swayze’s “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”
3. “Four Weddings And A Funeral”: Andie McDowell’s “Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed.”
4. “Ghost”: Demi Moore’s “Ditto,” to Patrick Swayze’s “I love you.”
5. “Top Gun”: Val Kilmer to Tom Cruise: “You can be my wingman anytime”
6. “Notting Hill”: Julia Roberts’ “I’m just a girl… standing in front of a boy… asking him to love her.”
7. “Independence Day”: Bill Pullman’s “Today we celebrate our Independence Day!”
8. “Braveheart”: Mel Gibson’s “They may take our lives, but they will not take our freedom!”
9. “Jerry Maguire”: Renee Zellweger to Tom Cruise: “You had me at hello.”
10. “The Postman”: A blind woman says to Kevin Costner: “You’re a godsend, a savior.” He replies: “No, I’m a postman.”

I received a notice, either via regular mail or an email, a few weeks ago from the Intuit, the makers of Quicken. Politely informing me that the version I was currently using (Quicken 2001) was no longer going to be supported. That didn’t bother me that much. However, they also quickly pointed out that the financial institutions that allow transaction downloading via Quicken would no longer be using a version compatible with the 2001 product. Ack. I don’t like being stuck between a rock and a hard place, so I thought it best to go ahead and upgrade. Normally, that is not a very big deal. You install the upgrade, it reads the older versions data files, and you go merrily along your binary way.

WELL – not in my case. Quicken 2005 read my data files all right and most of them were fine. One of my accounts, however, was suddenly unable to connect to my financial institution’s website and download transactions. Something I had been doing on a daily basis for 2 or 3 years now. Stopped working, no error, just blinked and no data was downloaded. I worked on the problem for two days, night and day, reading online documentation, searching Intuit’s knowledge base, etc. I considered calling them, but their website courteously informed me that telephone support costs 24.95 per call. The idea! No way am I going to pay for phone support. I searched high and low on their website to email tech support. Nothing. I emailed my financial institution and never heard back. Ack. I finally tried a live chat with a tech support person. Took two tries to catch a time slot when they were working (they only work 12-8 PM Pacific time). I finally grabbed a tech today, and over the course of 2 1/2 hours, he was able to solve my problem (the downloaded transaction problem and also the problem with the home inventory database, not as critical, but still an issue). I was very happy at the end of the ordeal, albeit, frustrated at the amount of time it took to resolve my issues. He was very patient, however, and kept plugging away at it. And I was very grateful to have it fixed. And to not have to pay 24.95 for support. Especially since I considered this an upgrade issue, since the darn things all worked before I installed their upgrade.

I’m just really happy to report now that my Quicken is now installed and functioning as it should be. Or so I think. It’s a very different look and feel from the last one and I haven’t completely focused on learning the nuances of this program. I can get around and bang my head through the basics. Once I found the problem, I ceased learning how to work in the new version and focused solely on fixing the problem. Now that is out of the way, I can spend some time learning the new features. Scratch that – now that the problem is fixed, it’s time to install our tax software and start on the taxes. Oh, how I dread that. I dread tax time every year. Loathe it. Despise it. Avoid it with a passion. Procrastinate and stress over it. Then, always jubilant once it is over and done and e-filed.

Anyway, my imood.com indicator has been on Agitated for a day or so now, and that’s why. I changed it to Relieved a few hours ago, once the tech support guy was able to help me solve my problems. I will have to find a new mood now, one not associated with this issue! 🙂

I like this site for memes, they do a new one every Friday. Cool concept, this menu idea! Click Here to go there and read the questions and all the answers others have posted, for yourself. In the mean time, here’s the questions and my answers 🙂

Appetizer – What do you want for Valentine’s Day? Well, this is a double-edged question. On the one hand, I want (not need) lots and lots of things. I seem to be a very greedy person, there are always things that I want, for me, for the house, books, cookbooks, CD’s, DVD’s, clothes, gadgets, etc. I could make a list at any given time of at least a dozen things that I would like to have, but NOTE – I don’t need and could easily live without. So, I don’t really know. I always like most anything Tim (or I!) pick out. Love the jammies he bought me last night. Love getting my Sweetheart Shake from Sonic in Feb, which I would like to point out now, that they have revised to a Blast and it’s not NEARLY as good as the shake. Hate it when they change something I love! 🙂 And Finally – to sort of answer the question – I can’t really post what I “want” here, because then Tim will feel obliged to go buy it for me. The sweetie pie, he does anything he can to try to make me happy. 🙂

Soup – If you could change the color of something you own, what would it be and which color would you make it? I would change the paint on most of our walls. Especially in the office, I would love to have it a happy, cheery color, maybe something bright on one wall. But, it’s too much trouble to paint the office. My shelves on the walls are loaded, and the computer furniture had to be assembled in this room, and will have to be dis-assembled to take them out. Plus, we have three computers in here now. No way can we move them out. My other biggie is the kitchen floor. White vinyl floors for 12 years are NO fun. I am past ready to get ceramic tile in there. With color, white shows too much dirt. Never again, if I can help it.

Salad – What’s your favorite day of the week and why? Toughie. I like my weekdays, I love the routine of my days. But, I really love the weekends because I get to spend all (or at least most) of my time with Tim. That’s so very important to me. I love to be with him, he’s my best friend.

Main Course – What excuse do you use most often? I don’t know if it’s considered an excuse, but I say “I’m sorry” constantly. Has to do with my low self-esteem.

Dessert – Name something or someone you feel sorry for. I feel sorry for myself a lot! I miss my mom, I miss Sally, I struggle constantly with not being able to have kids. I feel bad for my Dad too, because he seems lonely down there without my mom and I wish he would move here closer to me and Gail.

Today was a busy day. Daddy came up for an appointment at the VA – he had another Doppler test run on his carotid. I didn’t go with him, but he did come by the house first, and we went to eat lunch together. I really wanted Chinese food, so I talked Daddy into going to Hong Kong Buffet (in Madison) with me. He went, and I was so glad. I got to have a few pieces of sushi, my egg drop soup, and all the coconut shrimp, general tso chicken, special chicken, seafood delight and stuffed mushrooms my little heart desired. Oh my, it was good! Daddy took home some leftovers I had for him, and I was glad. I hope they help out some. I know he gets tired of cooking and figuring out what to eat.

After lunch, I went to Target and looked around (bought nothing). Then, I went to Sam’s and picked up a few things (more on that later, hehe). Amanda called after I got in, and I told her about some Colorbok scrapbooks they had at Target. She wanted an 8×8 cream one, so I told her I would go get it. Tim ended up working late, and called me when he was leaving work, about 6:00 or so. He offered to meet me at Target, and he did. We got the scrapbooks, some target brand cherry limeade (love that stuff, a new discovery), and Tim bought me part (or all?) of my Valentines present. I picked out a cute little 3 piece pajama outfit that I had seen earlier in the afternoon. Pink, different patterns (solid shirt, printed shorts and long pants). I already have one of these sets for summer, and wanted to get another one. They were on sale this week. I seem to be in a pajama mood lately – I got a new winter set for Christmas (that I picked out and Tim got for me!)

Anyway, it’s not often that I go to Target twice in one day. Even better because I didn’t spend a penny on the first trip. 🙂 And an even better day because I got to have Chinese food with my dad.

Goodnight moon. Goodnight Hambones, see you in the morning 😎