Exceedingly Mundane

Today’s “Question of the Day” is short and sweet – do you text on your cellphone?

I think Tim and I are pretty up to date on most things electronic. We both love gadgets and are both fairly geeky, in a techie kind of way. However, the one area that we are woefully behind the times is that we don’t text on our phones. We use our phones to talk on, never texting. Occasionally, someone will text us, and we’ll call them back. I’m like, we don’t text, we have to pay per message and we just don’t use it. It doesn’t seem to stop people though, since it seems almost everyone we know does text.

So, how about you? Do you text on your phone? If so, do you text occasionally or are you an addict?!

The proverbial good news – my laptop arrived home today, from the repair center. The video was out and they apparently replaced the LCD bezel (whatever that is), and the system board. It arrived safe and sound, and appears to work.

The proverbial bad news – for some unapparent reason, they felt the need to wipe my hard drive and restore the PC to “system defaults”. Which means like new out of the box. So, all of my programs, all of my data – GONE. For no apparent reason. I can understand that they might have needed to load new drivers for a different video card, but come on. They erased everything. My programs, my emails, my photos, my documents, everything for the last 10 months. All gone.

I am SO not a happy camper right now. It’s going to take me dozens of man-hours to recreate most of this. Some of it I won’t be able to get back because I didn’t have it all backed up. I had the biggest stuff (photos, etc), but because it broke just a day or so into the new year, I didn’t have the previous month’s worth of stuff backed up. Or my email folders, which is my bad, but still. Who thinks to backup their email folders on a regular basis. So, if you’ve emailed me in the last 10 months, sorry. It’s gone too.

Ugh. Send happy thoughts my way, please. I desperately need them. 🙂

I think I better go find some chocolate, before I get started. It’s all gone. All of it.

I wish that I had a “real” menu to post this week. But, with Tim being out of town some on business and hunting the other days (before deer season ends around here), I’ll be alone for dinnertime almost every day this week. Which is ok by me, because that means less cooking! But it doesn’t make for an interesting post. 😀

The general idea when Tim is not here for supper is that I don’t cook. I don’t know how those of you who cook for one do it!!! I can’t seem to bring myself to cook when it’s just me. I can barely cook some days for the two of us, but most of the time I do, and I enjoy it. 🙂 Tim is a great guy to cook for. He likes to eat, always says something nice about what I prepare, and is always open to trying something new. When it’s just me though, I’m happy with something simple. A bowl of cereal or oatmeal. Some popcorn. A can of soup. A Lean Cuisine. Easy and no cooking required. This week, I plan to eat some leftover Chinese food for supper one or two nights, breakfast food one night and probably a Lean Cuisine another night. I’ll probably get back to cooking later in the week or next weekend, but right now I don’t have anything planned.

That said, I thought I’d ask a menu-planning/cooking “Question of the Day“: Let’s say you participate in Menu Plan Monday, or you occasionally browse online for recipes. What do you do when you find recipes you might want to try one day? Do you print them out and file them somewhere? Do you save them to your computer? If so, how and where do you save them (to a Word document, a cooking program, an email folder, etc)?

As for me, I do a mix of those things. Sometimes I go ahead and print them out. They get put in one of my infamous and ever growing “piles” in the kitchen or office. (The piles are for placing in a binder I started last year but am already behind on 🙁 ) Sometimes I go ahead and put them in my Mastercook software, in a “to-try” type cookbook. But, the majority of the time (and overwhelmingly so, probably 95% of the time), I put them in an email folder called “Recipes”. Which is great, except those are stored on my laptop that died. Which is supposed to be delivered back home to me today. So, we’ll see later today if I’ve still got all of those recipes, and a thousand other things, I had stored on my laptop. Sigh. 🙂

Leave me a comment and let me know what you do when you find a recipe online that you might want to try. And, have a great day!

I’ve seen this on a couple of blogs, and goodness knows, I normally love these little quizzes. This one, however, couldn’t be further from the truth!!!

What Stacy Means

You are the total package – suave, sexy, smart, and strong. You have the whole world under your spell, and you can influence almost everyone you know. You don’t always resist your urges to crush the weak. Just remember, they don’t have as much going for them as you do. You are a seeker. You often find yourself restless – and you have a lot of questions about life. You tend to travel often, to fairly random locations. You’re most comfortable when you’re far away from home. You are quite passionate and easily tempted. Your impulses sometimes get you into trouble. You are usually the best at everything … you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic “Type A” personality. You are very open. You communicate well, and you connect with other people easily. You are a naturally creative person. Ideas just flow from your mind. A true chameleon, you are many things at different points in your life. You are very adaptable. You are a free spirit, and you resent anyone who tries to fence you in. You are unpredictable, adventurous, and always a little surprising. You may miss out by not settling down, but you’re too busy having fun to care.

I’m neither restless nor do I love to travel. I’m the epitomy of a homebody. 🙂
I’m the polar opposite of a Type A personality. I’m perfectly content to be second, or third, or last. 🙂
I don’t connect or communicate well with others, especially at first. I don’t have a creative bone in my body.
Free spirit? Hah! Adventurous and unpredictable? Double Hah! These describe someone else with my name, but not me!

It was fun though, go check it out and see what it says about you!

Well, well, I am surprised! My laptop broke over a week ago, and it took them almost a full week to “overnight” me a box to mail it back in. I assumed that it would take equally as long to repair it and “overnight” it back to me. I appear to be wrong, thank goodness! HP received my laptop on Thursday afternoon, apparently repaired it, and mailed it back to me today (Saturday). My tracking info show that my laptop should arrive home on Monday. I hope so! I miss that little thing 🙂 I just hope my data is all still on there!

In other exciting news, I just went out to the mailbox. I was ecstatic to find my check for the Blingo prize I won back in December, thanks to Dawn! Woo-hoo, gotta go do a happy dance now!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Well, it’s been a tough time at our house lately with computers. Did you notice I was gone for over a week?

Last week, I was happily surfing on my relatively new HP laptop. I got a blue screen (which I’ve gotten before), and it wouldn’t come back on. After trying several things, we never could get anything to come on the screen except for a couple of vertical colored lines. We tried external monitors and TV’s, but nothing. I placed a service call, since it’s still under warranty, and after trying more things, they determined it had to be mailed in to a service center for repair. I’m glad it’s under warranty, but I hate being without my laptop. Furthermore, they’ve already warned me that the service center will most likely “return it to system defaults” – which means wipe my hard drive. I’m not happy about it, but maybe it was just a warning. I will say this – the shipping box that they were to have “overnighted” to me took 6 long days, 4 business days to arrive. I don’t call that “overnight”. I imagine I’ll be another 3-4 weeks without my laptop.

Which was enough to go wrong, but less than 12 hours later, our website server died. We own and operate our own family website, that we fondly call “Hambones”. It has all of our blogs on it, my photos, my recipes, and various and sundry other computer related “stuff”. We had to buy a new hard drive for it (great, that wasn’t in the post-Christmas budget!) and then Tim had a time getting it all going and data reloaded. We’ve been down a week, but many long hours of Tim’s hard work have finally paid off, and we seem to be back. I lost a post and some photos from the day the server died (we back up every night, so we lost whatever was done during the day), but still. We’re back. I had a post in draft, in my head, called “It’s Dead, Jim”, but I wasn’t sure everyone out there was old enough or geeky enough to get the Star Trek reference 😀

Maybe I’ll have some time to blog soon. You’d think with a whole week of no computers whatsoever, that I would have gotten a lot of other things accomplished. Like cleaning, sorting, organizing, purging, decluttering, things like that. Even reading, my very favorite thing to do. However, this is not the case. There’s something about the anxiety level in my life when I can’t access my computer. When I can’t get my reminders to show up on time to dentist appointments and haircuts. When I can’t remember whose birthday is coming up because all of those things are stored on my computer. When I can’t get to my photos to gaze fondly upon them. You’d think I’d get a lot accomplished, but I tend to wring my hands and wish fervently that this had not happened. Not that it’s the end of the world. It’s just one of those things – I can willingly go a week with limited or no computer time. But force me to do it, take it away where it’s not in the realm of possibility, and I go stark raving nuts. Yep, I’ve stared at the TV a lot, and flipped channels till my thumb is blue. But get something done like cleaning out and repapering the kitchen cabinets shelves? No way, Jose. 😀

Hello Blogland! Hope you’ve all had a great week and will have a super-fantastic weekend!

I’m still easing into the New Year, how about you? I haven’t done a lot of the things I want to do, to start the new year off right. I hope to get back to a *much* healthier eating routine, and hopefully back into some exercise soon. I am behind on getting the house clean, so once I get a handle on that, I need to start on my new year things. Little things like a new calendar, new files for the new year, cleaning out last year’s files and clutter, etc. Backing up files and photos from the computer. Also on that list is a new devotional.

I bought and used a Guideposts daily devotional last year and I liked it. I have a copy of “My Utmost for his Highest” by Oswald Chambers that I am thinking I might use this year for my daily devotional. I need to get to the bookstore soon and see if I can find one I like better, or one geared more toward women or something. I’m really not quite sure what I want to use this year. So, I thought I’d throw this question out and see what you guys had to say.

So today’s “Question of the Day” is about a daily devotional – do you have one that you use? What brand or company or person authored it? Do you have a new one for this year, or a favorite from years past? Do you have an online devotional that you use or a site that you reference? Do you get a Scripture or thought every day by email? Do you have something else you do or would recommend? Leave me a comment and let me know. 🙂

Happy 2008!

I don’t have anything monumental to report on this New Years Day. Another new year (or as I like to say, “another day in paradise”!) It seems they are flying by at record speed!

2007 was a good year for us, and we’re looking forward to an equally wonderful 2008. We are very blessed and so very grateful for everything we have. Tim and I have each other, we’re healthy and happy, and we have Beau to keep us entertained. Tim has his golf and I have my books to keep us occupied, and we enjoy doing most everything else together. What more could you ask for? 🙂

I thought I’d start off the year with a quick and easy “Question of the Day:” Did you stay up last night to ring in the new year? Did you immediately go to bed after the stroke of midnight, or are you just a party animal?!

For us, we stayed up. Chris and Elizabeth came over to hang out and work on our annual New Years jigsaw puzzle with us (picture soon, when we finish!) We made it till midnight, and we even sat up later playing Text Twist on the computer (new high score for us, yeah!). As you can tell, we’re not big on partying or celebrating. 🙂

So, leave me a comment and let me know – did you stay up or not?!

Happy New Year to you!

I do love to read, but I’ve been resisting joining all of the great reading challenges out there. I’ve decided to make an exception to that, and participate in Annie’s “What’s In a Name” reading challenge for 2008. I decided to go through my ever-growing TBR pile and find books that I have bought and want/need to read, thereby killing two birds with one stone. Here’s the link to the blog Annie setup for this challenge, and here’s the basic guidelines:

“What’s In A Name?” Reading Challenge

Dates: January 1, 2008 through December 31, 2008

The Challenge: Choose one book from each of the following categories.

1. A book with a color in its title. Examples might include: The Amber Spyglass, The Red Pony, Blue Blood

2. A book with an animal in its title. Examples might include: The Hound of the Baskervilles, To Kill a Mockingbird, Julie of the Wolves

3. A book with a first name in its title. Examples might include: Jane Eyre, the Harry Potter books, Anne of Green Gables

4. A book with a place in its title. Examples might include: From Russia with Love, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Out of Africa

5. A book with a weather event in its title. Examples might include: The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Red Storm Rising, Tornado Alley

6. A book with a plant in its title. Examples might include: Where the Red Fern Grows, The Name of the Rose, Flowers for Algernon

–You may overlap books with other challenges, but please don’t use the same book for more than one category. (For example, you can use The Red Pony for either a “color” book or an “animal” book, but not for both.)

Here’s my choices:

1. Color in the title – “Windy City Blues” by Sara Paretsky — Completed January 2008

2. Animal in the title – “The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog” by Elizabeth Peters– Completed September 2008

3. First Name in the title – “Julia’s Hope” by Leisha Kelly– Completed September 2008

4. Place in the title – “Home to Holly Springs” by Jan Karon — Completed January 2008

5. Weather Event in the title – “Light on Snow” by Anita Shreve — Completed February 2008

6. Plant in the title – “Sweetgrass” by Mary Alice Monroe — Completed April 2008

Thanks, Annie, for hosting this challenge. I look forward to reading these during the year, and knocking a few books off my TBR pile 🙂

I had so many books I wanted to blog about, but I think rather than blogging about them separately, I’ll just do one “skim over” post. I’ve read a lot of books since the last time I chatted about them, so there’s a lot of ground to cover.

First, I’m happy to report that I met my personal reading goal I set for myself this year. Last year, in 2006, I read 70 books, so I started off by setting a goal of 75 books. A nice round number! When I reached that goal, I still had a few months left in the year, so I stretched my goal to 100 books. Another nice round number. Secretly, I was shooting for 104. Not a round number, but a good one. With 52 weeks in the year, that works out to an average of 2 books a week. I’m happy to say that I did that this year, and I’m very happy about it 🙂 I did read several “smaller” books. Some short novellas and short, sweet Christmas books. But as I was chatting with one of the librarians a couple of weeks ago, she said “a book is a book. If they sell it in the bookstore and we have it on our shelves, it counts as a book. It doesn’t matter if it has 125 pages to it, or 475 pages to it. It’s still a book”. And she’s right.

I did read several Christmas books this year, which has become a yearly tradition for me. I like the shortness of them, when my time is limited and everything else is so busy and hectic. But more than that, I like the message and story that they tell. They are usually uplifting, happy little books and I enjoy those. Especially at this time of year. I read the following Christmas books this year, and enjoyed them all:

The Christmas Shoes by Donna Van Liere
The Christmas Blessing by Donna Van Liere
The Gift of Christmas Present by Melody Carlson
Once Upon a Christmas (2 books in 1) by Lauraine Snelling and Lenora Worth
The Christmas Pearl by Dorothea Benton Frank

Before I started reading these, I read and thoroughly enjoyed some very sweet, very old-fashioned Christian fiction books, called the Tales from Grace Chapel Inn. These are Guidepost Books that apparently were issued quite a while back, and I believe they are updating and re-releasing them. I have read the first four, the two that were released in 2006 and the two released in 2007, and I just loved them. They are not for everyone though — they are very very old-fashioned and straight-laced type of books. I thought they were charming, and they were very easy to read and very predictable. For me, they were just the kind of books I was in the mood for at the time. I am hoping they release two more this year, as I love the characters and am wanting to read more from this series. The first four I read were:

Back Home Again by Melody Carlson
Recipes and Wooden Spoons by Judy Baer
Hidden History by Melody Carlson
Ready to Wed by Melody Carlson

Loved them! I am currently reading the first book in the Alaskan Quest series by Tracie Peterson. A year or two ago, I read and really liked the three books in the Yukon Quest series, and I had these follow-up books in my Amazon wish list for a while (the Alaskan ones). I was happy to see them at my library’s website listing of new books, so I am on the wait list for them. I have the first one, and have started it, but won’t finish it before the New Year. I am hoping to get them all read in January. I have so many series books that I want to read, but I’m trying really hard to limit myself to how many series I start, before I complete some others already in progress 😀

I also won a book from Deena at “A Peek at my Bookshelf“, a book by Lisa Samson, who is a new-to-me author that I have been wanting to read. I won a copy of “Hollywood Nobody” and I’m looking forward to reading it sometime in 2008. I also signed up for and won an advance copy of “Firefly Lane” by Kristin Hannah, as part of LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program. I haven’t gotten that one yet, but that’s ok – I have plenty of books to keep me busy in the mean time!

Lastly, I think I am going to participate in a reading challenge. That post to follow….

Happy Reading!

Well, I’m not totally prepared for the menu this week, but I really *want* to be! I am ready to try to get back to normal. Back to a normal routine, especially where our eating is concerned. As most people do, we’ve really over done it in the food category this holiday season. I have been too scared to go near the scales in our bathroom, but I sure feel like I’ve gained 6 or 8 pounds. Ugh. 🙁

This is still a work in progress, but here’s a general idea:

Sunday – yesterday, we had Pigs in a Blanket for the football games, and then ham and cheese omelettes and biscuits for supper

Monday – New Years Eve….still trying to decide! I have some shrimp and nibbles or we might do Chinese food

Tuesday – New Years Day – black-eyed peas, cabbage, cornbread

Wednesday – it’s supposed to be cold here, so some kind of soup. If I make it to the store to get potatoes, I’ll probably make this Sausage-Corn Chowder. If not, I will probably make chili, since I already have all the ingredients on hand

Thursday – hoping to try a new recipe for Cheeseburger Pasta, butterbeans, another veggie

Friday – Date Night or TBD

Thursday –

I have now officially taken the longest break – ever- on my blog. I am wanting to get back into blogging, but I’m not sure I remember how! 🙂

I hope everyone has had a great holiday season. Tim and I have had a really good Christmas. We got to see all of our family, on both sides, over the course of several days. We got to spend our first ever Christmas morning in our own home, opening presents. In all years past, we’ve always gotten up and traveled on Christmas day and we had to open our own presents to each other on another day. So, that was very nice and very “Christmas-y” to me! Tim got me a new telephoto lens for my Canon Digital Rebel. I can’t wait to play with it more! I got Tim a lot of little stuff – some gadgets and toys, some golf stuff, some clothes, a movie, and things like that. A nice Christmas all around.

I’m looking forward to getting the rest of my Christmas decorations down, and trying to get back to normal. I always love Christmas, but after it’s all over, I’m usually yearning to get back into a routine. I thrive on routine, you know I also need to take some time to get my blog “back to normal” and get back to my red look. 🙂

I’m struggling with what to cook this week, but hope to be back tomorrow or later with a menu of sorts for the week. I also *still* have some book chatter to talk about. I think I’ve also just about decided to join a reading challenge. This is something I did a year or so ago, then decided that challenges really don’t fit my reading style. But I do like them, they’re fun and I like to participate, so I’m going to give another one a try 🙂

Oh, and I hope to get a little more “down time” in over the next couple of days. We have some movies we want to watch, lots of football, then I’m going to do my best to persuade Tim to join me in a ritual I’ve loved doing for years. I love to work jigsaw puzzles this time of year, between Christmas and New Years. Here’s a link to the photo of the one we did last year, which also happened to be my very first photo post for my nearly completed Project365 photo blog project. 🙂 I’m looking forward to wrapping up that project as well, and that feeling of accomplishment for completing something that was quite difficult at times. But, I persevered 😀

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas to all of my friends and family out in blog-land. I will be checking in some over the next few days, but I don’t plan on posting much of anything else. I am going to take a break and enjoy the time with Tim and my dad, who is here at our house for a couple of days. We plan to go see my sister Gail on Christmas Day, then over to see Tim’s parents next weekend. I’ll be checking in some before the end of the year, probably with a Christmas update, and also some book chatter.

I hope everyone has a wonderful and blessed holiday. Merry Christmas, everyone 😀

Today’s “Question of the Day” is all about your favorite Christmas movie or TV show that you look forward to seeing every year. What movie or TV special do you like, or what’s your kids’ favorite? Do you have any traditions associated with this movie or TV show? Do you own any Christmas movies on DVD?

Here’s my answers – I love Christmas movies and I have several that I really like. I tend to like the older movies, the classics. My favorite is probably “It’s a Wonderful Life” and I own a copy on DVD. I also love the old Cary Grant movie called “The Bishop’s Wife” and own it on DVD also. I tend to pull those two movies out and put them on while I’m wrapping Christmas presents. I try to put something Christmas-y on the TV while decorating the tree, but that never goes over very well. This year, when I was decorating the tree, Tim was either watching golf, football or basketball on TV. I clearly remember our first Christmas together. I was so excited about decorating the tree together. Tim’s idea of “together” is to put up the tree, put on the lights, then turn the TV to basketball and watch TV while I do my part, hanging the ornaments. Not much togetherness, we each have our own part to play and there’s no Christmas music or shows on the TV that even remotely resemble the holiday spirit! Are you starting to see that Tim, while a wonderful guy, is not a huge fan of the whole Christmas thing. In fact, he loves to say “Bah Humbug” and I love to call him a Scrooge this time of year! Anyway, back to the movies. “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Bishop’s Wife” are my favorites, but I also like “Holiday Inn”, “Christmas in Connecticut” and to a small degree, “White Christmas”. I also have a really worn out VCR tape of a movie I taped off TV years and years ago, called “I’ll be Home for Christmas”. It starred a very young Courtney Cox, Nancy Travis, Peter Gallagher, Eva Marie Saint and Hal Holbrook (ok, found it here on IMDB). It’s a nostalgic look at a family during WWII who loses a loved one, good movie. Anyway, I don’t tend to like the newer stuff like the Griswold movies, Elf and movies like that. They’re ok, but at Christmas, I love my black and white classics!

How about you? What movies or TV shows do you look forward to watching at Christmas? Do you have any rituals or traditions about watching them? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Today’s Christmas-themed “Question of the Day” is all about lists. You know, “making a list and checking it twice”. 🙂 I mean, even Santa makes a list! I get a lot of ribbing year round in my family, because I’m a total list maker. I carry a PDA with me everywhere I go. It has all of my lists on it. I am also a post-it junkie. I put up post-it’s everywhere to remind me of things. I believe in planning, writing things down, and making lists.

So, it comes naturally to me to make a list. I try to make a list for family members who might want ideas for something to get us for Christmas. I also make lists of things to get others, that I carry with me everywhere. So, I make lists on both sides.

How about you? Do you fly by the seat of your pants, with no lists? Do you make lists for you and yours that you give to other parts of the family, or friends, or the in-laws? Do you make lists of everything you need to do, buy, cook, etc? I hope I’m not the only list-maker out there! 😀 Leave me a comment and let me know!