Exceedingly Mundane

Well, I still seem to be in a bit of a slump as far as blogging goes. Both in coming up with something to write about here, as well as visiting other blogs. I’m wondering how long this downslide is going to last. 😥

I’m still posting over at my Project365 blog. Check it out here.

Gosh, is gas way up where you live, or what? It’s gone up at least two times already this week at the gas station closest to our house. Last night, it was up to 2.99 a gallon. Ugh. And of course, we both drive gas guzzling larger vehicles. Tim has a big 4×4 truck and my Explorer doesn’t get the best gas mileage. All of this coming up at the time of year when we drive more than normal, with holidays and hunting season for Tim.

My doctor’s appointment on Tuesday was just ok. Some of the tests were fine, but one was not. I’m having to do additional testing and see how things go. If they don’t go well, I’ll have to go in and have a test run at the hospital. I’m feeling pretty down about that, needless to say. On the one hand, I want everything to be ok, and if it’s not, I do want to have it looked at and hopefully fixed. But, on the other hand, I don’t want anything to be wrong and I really don’t want to go into the hospital 🙂

We’re having wonderful weather here. It’s been in the mid 30’s the last two nights, so really cold in the mornings. I love it. It’s going to warm up starting today, but at least it won’t get any higher than the 70’s. Our days of 90’s are over for the year, thank goodness.

I seem to be in total denial about the upcoming holidays. I haven’t given a single thought to either Thanksgiving or Christmas. Sigh. We have Tim’s birthday coming up, so I have to focus on that too. I’m sure everything will get done and turn out fine, but it does sort of bother me that I haven’t really even thought about anything yet! 😀

OK, one quick question for you guys. I’m trying to eat more fruit. It’s harder this time of year, because I don’t like paying the higher prices for most of the fruit I like (strawberries, grapes, etc). I have been buying bananas and apples. My question is this – do you leave these fruits out on the countertop, at room temperature, or do you refrigerate them? And for bananas, do you have one of those hanging tree things? Do you think it helps keep the bananas from ripening as fast? I try to grocery shop once a week, and if I buy bananas and try to eat one a day, after about 3 days, they are really too ripe to eat. So, leave me a comment and let me know what you buy, and how you store it.

Oh, and if you want to play along, let’s see how much gas is where you live.

Have a great day, everyone! 😀

Today, I have to go to that doctor, so I’m not a very happy camper this morning. I know I’ll feel better later on, when it’s all over with. I like to plan something a bit fun to do after it’s over, so you know what? I’m going grocery shopping this afternoon 😀 I love to go shop for food, so that will be sort of like a reward for me.

Ok, today’s Question of the Day is short and sweet – are you a klutz? Are you clumsy like me? Are you forever tripping over things, running into things, slipping while chopping vegetables and slicing your finger? Yep, I do all of those and more. I burned myself on the waffle iron a couple of weeks ago, when I was making waffles. I ran into something (I have NO idea what!) and had a big purple bruise on my leg for several days. I came around the corner of the bathroom brushing my teeth, and whacked my elbow into the door frame. I’m forever doing things like that. Our coffee table in our living room has been in the same spot for years, but that doesn’t mean I don’t stub my toe on it every few months!

How about you? Do you consider yourself clumsy? Or is anyone in your family like this? Leave me a comment and let me know 🙂

We stayed pretty much on schedule last week. The weekends are so hard, and this past weekend was no exception. We just tend to get busy and eat out a lot. I’m not really sure about this week… for some reason I don’t seem to be able to come up with a lot of meals that appeal to me right now. Here’s the general plan though 🙂

As always, thanks to Laura over at OrgJunkie for organizing and hosting this each week! Go check out her blog and you’ll find tons more recipes and menu plans.

Sunday – we had Chinese that I put together really quick – fried rice and potstickers

Monday – Crockpot Chicken and Veggies over biscuits

Tuesday – Black Bean chili, cornbread muffins

Wednesday – light night before Tim weighs in: eggs, oatmeal, toast

Thursday – Fish Sandwiches, Sweet Potato Fries

Friday – Date Night or if we stay in, Sloppy Joes and Oven Fries, maybe coleslaw or pasta salad

Saturday – TBD

Sunday – Game Day food – maybe burgers or grilled chicken sausages, chips, dip

This rather offbeat Question of the Day is about the color of your underwear. Now, no minds drifting to the gutters, here. I’m not asking about what kind of underwear you wear (if, heaven help me, you DO wear them!), just their color. I don’t particularly want to know if you wear a thong or “granny panties”. I just want to know if you have lots of colors to choose from. Are all of your underwear one color, or do you open your underwear drawer and have a rainbow of colors to pick from?

Me, I like choices and options. I like lots of colors 😀 So, yes, if you were to sneak a peek into my underwear drawer, you’d find not only white, but also pink, peach, blue, green and even a stripe or pattern thrown in for good measure.

There, was that more than you EVER wanted to hear about my underwear? Goodness gracious, don’t worry… I don’t plan to talk about this any more, or again in the future 🙄

Feast One Hundred & Sixty Seven
November 2, 2007

Appetizer
How much money do you plan to spend this upcoming holiday season? Well, we don’t set an overall budget, but we do set a budget range for each person in the family. As for Tim and I, we don’t budget for each other. I think we’re going to spend more this year though, based on what Tim said he wants to get for Christmas

Soup
What was the last television show you watched, and was it good? We watched Survivor: China last night. I really enjoyed it! One of the players thought she had the immunity idol and she didn’t, and it was a hoot.

Salad
If you had to paint the walls of your living room tomorrow, what color would you choose? We’re actually going to do this soon, hopefully over the winter months. Probably just a nice normal khaki or beige color. We have textured walls in this house, which I detest and Tim loves, and paint doesn’t go on the same ways as it does on smooth walls. We’ll have to see how it looks and might have to get a different color. We’re thinking about painting one wall a different color, but not sure about that right now.

Main Course
Name something clever or practical you have thought of that should be invented, but hasn’t yet.Tim is always thinking of things, me not so much. I’m not very inventive. Ok — I asked Tim and he said he didn’t want to give away any of his inventions, so I will have to pass on this one

Dessert
List 3 things you would like to receive as gifts this upcoming holiday season. Hmm, a telephoto lens for my camera, a new winter coat and some Yankee candles 😀

This week’s topic: Oh, Horror!

What with yesterday being Halloween, and all . . . do you read horror? Stories of things that go bump in the night and keep you from sleeping?

I thought about asking you about whether you were participating in NaNoWriMo, but I asked that last year. Although . . . if you want to answer that one, too, please feel free to go ahead and do both, or either, your choice!

Well, another really easy one for me this week. No on both counts!

As for horror, I don’t want anything to do with books or TV shows or movies that are even remotely scary or suspenseful. I don’t like things that go bump in the night. I don’t like things popping up on movies where I gasp and my heart beats. I don’t like to be scared. And believe me, I’m easily scared. I can be in our bathroom, brushing my teeth and Tim can walk around the corner and say something to me. I yell, scream and spew out toothpaste because he frightened me – in the middle of the day, when I knew he was in the house. So, no – horror is not a good genre for me 😀

As for NaNoWriMo, I don’t participate. I’m not much of a writer, although I have visions of grandeur and imagine I could write a best selling book one day. Of course, I have very little interest in actually sitting down to write a paragraph, much less a chapter or book. 🙂

I was going to post a “Question of the Day“, but thought I’d better post a “Happy Halloween” post instead. Or we could combine them! Yeah, that’s the ticket, let’s do that 😀

Hope everyone has a great Halloween, if you partake of this holiday in your house. Since we don’t have kids, we don’t really go out very much for Halloween. I put fall decorations out front a couple of weeks ago (mums, hay bale, scarecrow and pumpkin, NOT carved!) and a plastic lighted pumpkin and lighted ghost that I’ve had for years (and are quite faded, thank you!). We have a big bowl of candy to give out to the trick-or-treaters that we will get. We don’t get as many in our neighborhood as we have in the past. More and more kids in our neighborhood are getting to be teenagers and don’t go trick or treating. I’ll post a photo over at my Project365 blog of the before and after of the candy bowl, later today and tomorrow. 🙂

In years past, we have dressed up a little on Halloween, but it has been a while. I’m wearing an orange Halloween t-shirt and jeans today, and that will be the extent of it 🙂 Tim won’t wear anything remotely orange though 🙂 I went and got my hair cut this morning and the owner and stylists were all dressed up in full costumes! They were a hoot, and I wish I had taken my camera 🙂

How about you? Are you wearing anything today that is remotely Halloween-themed? Will you go to a Halloween function tonight, or take your kids trick or treating? Will you stay home and give out candy? Will you turn off the lights and pretend that today is not Halloween? Or do you just not recognize this day at all? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Let’s see, I haven’t written much lately about what all has been going on with us. Nothing exciting, but I thought I’d do a quick bulleted update 🙂

We did good last week, sticking to the menu plan, for every day but Friday. We ended up eating at home, but not what I had planned. Tim wasn’t feeling well, so we just had some souped up ramen noodles. We did eat out a fair amount over the weekend though. Seems like we end up doing that almost every weekend! Oh, and the one new recipe I tried last week worked pretty well. We both liked it. Didn’t love it but we did like it 🙂

Thanks to Laura over at OrgJunkie for organizing and hosting this each week! Go check out her blog and you’ll find tons more recipes and menu plans.

Sunday – we had Chinese take-out (sesame chicken for Tim, shrimp egg foo yung for me)

Monday – Chicken Soup with Barley & Mushrooms, homemade bread

Tuesday – Grilled Chicken Sausage Wraps, baked sweet potatoes

Wednesday – light night before Tim weighs in – Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese

Thursday – Waffles, turkey bacon or sausage

Friday – Date Night, probably eat out

Saturday/Sunday – TBD

Feast One Hundred & Sixty Six
October 26, 2007

Appetizer
Name a great website you would recommend to others. Nothing new here, but I really like AllRecipes.com and RecipeZaar for recipes. Tim likes the Kim Komando site for PC and electronic related stuff (www.komando.com).

Soup
On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 as highest), how often do you dream at night? Probably just a 3 or so. I don’t think that I dream a lot. I know for sure I rarely remember them.

Salad
Did you have a pet as a child? If so, what kind and what was its name? When I was really little, my sister Suzanne had a dachshund named Dusty. We didn’t have him all that long, because he got run over by a car. I got a golden retriever when I was about 12, and she was all mine. I loved that dog dearly. She passed away of old age after I had graduated college. I still miss her 🙂

Main Course
If you had the chance to star in a commercial, what would you choose to advertise? Gosh, I don’t know! Maybe Walmart or Sam’s or Target, since I go there all the time!

Dessert
What is your favorite kind of hard candy? Hmm, not big on hard candy. I don’t like hard peppermint (but I love the soft ones), but I do like cinnamon and sometimes butterscotch. I bought some Werther’s coffee flavored caramels a few weeks ago, and I love those. So yeah, those!

This week’s topic: Read With Abandon

I would enjoy reading a meme about people’s abandoned books. The books that you start but don’t finish say as much about you as the ones you actually read, sometimes because of the books themselves or because of the circumstances that prevent you from finishing. So . . . what books have you abandoned and why?

Well, I haven’t participated in this meme in a week or so. I thought I’d play along today 🙂

This is a good one for me. I love to read, but I seem to be pretty settled in my reading habits. I don’t usually pick up books or authors that I don’t like. I think in the last 3 years, there have only been a handful of books that I didn’t really like or love. I can think of three off the top of my head, but I did go ahead and finish them. I didn’t really enjoy them, but I have a completion complex, so I usually struggle through until the end. I can’t think of a single book that I’ve read in the last few years that I abandoned and didn’t finish. I think I know what kind of books and authors I like, and I tend to stick with those. I don’t stray too much out of my comfort zone.

Let’s see, the ones I can think of that I didn’t enjoy (I didn’t abandon them, but I didn’t like them either) are: “Talk to the Hand” by Lynne Truss. This was just not something I’m interested in; it was more like a textbook than an enjoyable, escapism, fiction book, which is what I enjoy reading. “The Falls” by Joyce Carol Oates. Ugh. I disliked this book. I do not want to try anything else from this author. It was boring, depressing, and basically had no redeeming factors for me. Ick. The other one that I didn’t really enjoy was “The Last Days of Dogtown” by Anita Diamant. Now, I picked this one up without knowing anything about it, because I loved, loved, loved her book, “The Red Tent”. This one was just not something I wanted to read about though. Depressing and a huge downer. About a dying village and all bad things happening to the villagers. Didn’t enjoy this one. I like books that have a redeeming quality, good characters, a happy ending. 🙂

Happy Reading!

I finished a great set of books that I borrowed from my sweet mother-in-law a few weeks ago. They are by Christian author Colleen Coble, who was a new author for me. I will definitely look for more of her books, as I really enjoyed these! I think these will probably always be my favorite of hers though, since the subject matter is one I love – dogs. The main character – Bree Nicholls – has a search and rescue dog named Samson. I fell instantly in love with Samson! What a magnificent dog, and I loved reading about him, about Bree, her family and friends, and the plots that Mrs Coble wove in these three books. I’d go so far as to call them a Christian version of a cozy mystery, as there was a bit of mystery and suspense to each one. Whether it is kidnapping, murder, an unexplained death, something is always happening in the small town of Rock Harbor, located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I got totally caught up in their stories and really enjoyed them. I hated to see them end, which is always a sign that I love the books and characters.

I also discovered that not only does Colleen Coble have her own website (www.colleencoble.com), but she also contributes to a Christian writers blog called “Girls Write Out“. The group posting here includes Coble, Kristin Billerbeck, Denise Hunter and Diann Hunt. It’s become a new favorite place to lurk and read. 🙂

For the record, that makes 93 books read so far this year, for a total of 27,611 pages. Up next is a cooking themed cozy mystery by another new-to-me author, Miranda Bliss. The book is called “Cooking Up Murder” and is the start of another series. After I finish this one, I’m going to read the next in the Cedar Cove series for me, #6 (6 Rainier Drive) by Debbie Macomber. I’m trying to be good and work on series I have already started, even though I have tons of other books I want to read, and lots more new series I want to start. I hope to find some time soon to make a separate page here on my blog to track all of the series books that I have started, completed, and also hope to read in the future. One day… one day!

Happy Reading!

Today’s Question of the Day is a nosy one! What’s under your bed?

I have actually been working on this through the last couple of years. Our closets are a bit cluttered, and I do try to “hide” some stuff up under the bed. I’m ashamed to say that the biggest thing under our beds are the mountains of dust bunnies. I looked up under our master bed a few weeks ago and was so surprised to see literally inches of dust piled up. I guess I should clean up under there occasionally, but it’s just so hard to get to, and I don’t move beds. 🙄 Anyway, we have one of our guest bedrooms as the office, so we only have two beds currently. I use the space under the guest room bed for storage. I have one of those big Ziploc “big bags” under there (this is a recent project, I blogged about it here) and I have all of our old annuals from high school and college. I also have some spare photo boxes under that bed, as well as some jigsaw puzzles we have and have not worked. Under our master bed, I have one of those Rubbermaid or Sterlite under-bed storage boxes that holds memorabilia from my childhood. I also have some stuff from past vacations (I need to go through this stuff, throw some out and organize it). The other thing up under our bed are our big stadium seats. We don’t seem to have a good place to store them, and one time my husband shoved them up under our bed, and they’ve been there ever since!

So, how about you? What’s under your beds? Out of season clothes, books, memorabilia, toys, books, or you have no idea? Please tell me that I’m not the only one with piles of dust bunnies! 🙂 Leave me a comment – Inquiring minds want to know!

Have a great day!

We’ve been eating out a lot over the last several days. Time to buckle back down and cook us some homemade meals. Don’t get me wrong, I love eating out and picking up food. But, boy oh boy, I eat a lot more that way! 🙂

As always, thanks to Laura at OrgJunkie for organizing and hosting this each week! Go check out her blog and you’ll find tons more recipes and menu plans.

Sunday – we had leftover Chinese, plus potstickers from our freezer (big box at Sam’s, these things are really very good!). Tim had leftover Spicy Chicken in Garlic Sauce and I had leftover shrimp with broccoli

Monday – Panko Chicken Strips, smashed potatoes, veggie

Tuesday – Chili

Wednesday – Light Night before Tim weighs in – eggs, oatmeal, toast

Thursday – new recipe for Crockpot Pork Chops with Apples, veggie (if it turns out good, I’ll post the recipe later)

Friday – Date Night or if we stay in – Shrimp Fried Rice, potstickers, egg rolls

Sat/Sun – TBD

Well, I had a great day yesterday. I got to do what I wanted all day (no housework or cooking!), and Tim, of course, went all out for my birthday again this year. He’s such a good guy. He knows that birthdays and holidays mean something to me, even though they don’t really to him. Tim is much better with the “every day is special” kind of mentality than I am. I tend to put stock in birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, things like that.

I just posted a short entry, with photos, of what I got, over at my Project365 blog. (click here) I know a lot of you guys don’t peruse that blog, but I hate to double post, so I’ll just have to ask you very politely to go check it out over there.

We have the “birthday rules” around our house. The birthday boy or girl gets to pick where they want to go eat on their birthday, and what they want to do on their special day. In addition, we also observe extended birthday rules. Which means if your birthday falls on a Thursday through a Monday, you get the whole weekend thrown in, for free. 😀 I’ll try not to be too pushy this weekend, but it’s nice to know I can pick something.

I had asked to go to our new PF Chang’s for my birthday last night. They opened last month, and we’ve heard from lots of people that they have long lines and waits up to two hours, since they’re new. Tim called yesterday for reservations. The lady told him, we’re booked between 5 PM and 8:30 PM, but you can come before 5:00 or make a reservation for after 8:30. Well, I definitely wasn’t hungry at 4:30 and I hate to eat late (yes, 9 PM is late for me!), so I chose to go to my favorite Italian place instead. Besides, when I go there for my birthday, I always order tiramisu! Tim got me an ice cream cake this year, something new, rather than my standard chocolate cake. It’s still in the freezer since we had tiramisu last night. We’ll have to pull it out over the weekend and taste it 🙂 Lucky for me, PF Chang’s is really close to our house and maybe in a couple of months, the crowds will die down and we can go check it out. I really do want to eat there soon, but I just didn’t want to eat at a funky hour on my birthday!

Now, we have to find a way to celebrate Beau’s birthday tomorrow. I got him last year for my birthday. Hard to believe he’s been with us for a whole year. 🙂 I bought him a new Kong toy a week or so ago, and so far, that looks like it’s going to be all he’s going to get. I went to Target yesterday to get him a new bed, but couldn’t find one I liked. I’m sure he won’t mind not getting anything else. I’d like to be able to observe his birthday when he was born, but since we have no idea how old he is or when he was born, we will just have to use the day we brought him home from the rescue as his birthday. I don’t think he’ll notice 😀