Exceedingly Mundane

Time for a silly, easy Question of the Day! What color is the main vehicle you drive? Is it your favorite color? Do you tend to always buy the same color of car? Is there a color of vehicle you would not buy?

My current vehicle is actually dark red, a sort of maroon. This was a big break from the norm for us – we tend to buy neutral color vehicles. The last 3 vehicles we had were either a tan or a grey color. We both really like black vehicles, but we never buy them. It’s hot here about 9 months out of the year and we hate getting into a really hot vehicle, so we tend to buy “cooler” colors, something that won’t get as hot. Silly, I know, but that’s our way of thinking and the reason we never seem to buy black. I’ve never owned a blue car or a white car, personally. I think one of Tim’s early trucks was white. We have actually both owned red vehicles before, bright red, before we met each other. This maroon SUV is our first “colored” car together 😀

What about you? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Tim and I are both simply stunned, outraged and speechless right now. Our university and alma mater has just fired their football coach. He’s been our coach for 17 years and is one of the longest tenured coaches in the country. He’s ONLY posted 14 consecutive winning seasons. We’re ONLY going to a bowl game right before Christmas – our ninth bowl game in ten years. And they fired him. We’re both just really upset right now. What on earth are they thinking? Bonehead athletic directors and presidents. Utterly idiotic.

Ok, I know most of you are not football fans, but we are in our house. We pull for USM and the New Orleans Saints year in and year out and have for eons. It’s hard to see them lose or not play as we’d like, but we stick with our teams. For them to fire our beloved coach is just unheard of to us right now.

And on top of that, our senior senator from Mississippi, Trent Lott, resigned this morning. What is up today? Ugh.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging. 😀

Well, we survived the eating and cooking free-for-all that was Thanksgiving last week! I think I’ve gained 10 pounds. I’m too afraid to step on the scales and see 🙂 We haven’t been walking as much either, so that is not helping. I’m hoping we can get back on track a little this week. Which won’t be that easy, since Tim’s birthday is this week!

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.

Last week, we had Thanksgiving at our house and the turkey came out pretty good. We had enough left for sandwiches, and I used the carcass to make a new soup recipe over the weekend. I haven’t entered it on our website yet, but I will try to do that later with my notes. The recipe I used was this one at AllRecipes. Tonight, I’m hoping to use up the last of the turkey (gosh, I hope it is all still ok!) to make a quasi-turkey pot pie.

Here’s the general plan for the week:

Monday – Turkey Pot Pie, baked sweet potatoes

Tuesday – Easy Beef Stroganoff, green beans or butterbeans

Wednesday – Light Night before Tim weighs in at work; Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese or something really light

Thursday – Waffles, turkey bacon

Friday – Steaks, Baked Potatoes, Salad

Saturday – Date Night or pizza or homemade soup if I am home long enough to make some

Sunday – TBD

Just a word to the wise… I thought I’d share some tidbits of wisdom here tonight.

Please note – if it’s late at night and you’re tired, and you happen to be plundering around on your Vista laptop, trying to find out why it keeps locking up and giving you a big ole blue screen… Do Not, I repeat, Do Not, go into Explorer and start looking around. If you did, you might mistake two entries for Music as a duplicate of one another. Not one being a folder and one being a Link or some such Vista nonsense. By deleting one, you are not cleaning up disk space. When it says you are deleting nearly 8 Gig worth of music, stop and do not click “OK”. When it then says that this is too much data to be placed in the Recycle Bin, do not click ok, allow, yes, proceed or enter. Because then you will erase every.single.entry in your iTunes library. And be sure to NOT try to hook up your iPod to said Vista laptop afterwards in order to try to sync it back. Because iTunes only works one way and you’ll overwrite your iPod with your newly zapped, empty, nada iTunes library.

Just saying… you might want to take note of this in the future.

Me, of course, I would never do this. I wouldn’t feel like a total eejit if I did do something like this. I would not have to dig out my (hopefully) old backup copy of iTunes and try to restore it. Because you know, I would never go nearly A YEAR without backing up iTunes. Not me.

It’s a good thing I can put my hands on all of the music I have purchased in the last 8-9 months. Of course, any of the free songs that I have downloaded would be gone. Because I wouldn’t think to back up those. Just saying.

OK, that concludes your Public Service Announcement for today.

P.S. Originally I planned to blog a bit about our weekend, but that’s just gonna have to wait. I seem to be really busy with life and not with taking or posting photographs over at my Project365 blog. I’m {gasp} over a week behind over there. At least I’m attempting to get something posted here every few days. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up some soon. Have a great weekend! 😀

Howdy! Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We really did – we ate lots of food, and have lots of yummy leftovers left. I’m going to try a new soup recipe later today using the turkey carcass, hope that works out. We had a blast visiting with everyone yesterday, and most of them are still here today. The guys are going to play golf in this very chilly weather (high in the mid 50’s today). Gail and I are going to run to Target later, no Black Friday shopping for us. Elizabeth has to study 🙁

Hope you all have a good day-after Thanksgiving and weekend. I don’t think we’ll get to any Christmas decorations yet, maybe next weekend. We have a birthday party to go to this weekend, our youngest nephew turned 5 yesterday. Happy Birthday Ethan 😀

OK, I got this email a week or two ago from Tim and really liked it. I thought I’d post it today and let you guys enjoy! I’ve always said that the English language must be so hard for someone else to learn. I know I struggle with it enough, as it is!

—————–
English 101

If you’ve learned to speak fluent English, you must be a genius!

Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to
present the present..

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail

18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.

19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests

21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor
pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or
French fries in France (Surprise!). Sweetmeats are candies
while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.

Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither
from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers
don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One
goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can
make amends but not one amend. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get
rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats
vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite
at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by
ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a
wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a
language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill
in a form by filling it out, and in which, an alarm goes
off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the
creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That
is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are
out, they are invisible.

P.S. – Why doesn’t “Buick” rhyme with “quick”?

Still busy here, but having a blast. Tim is on vacation all week, and my sister Gail came Monday and stayed 2 days with us. She’ll be back tomorrow (Thurs) with her family, and my dad will drive up, for the big day. Or maybe I should say, the “big meal”. Because after all, Thanksgiving is mostly about the food, isn’t it?!

Here’s what we’re having tomorrow:

Cheese and Crackers for an appetizer
Turkey
Gail’s Squash Dressing
Cranberry Sauce
Broccoli Casserole
Sweet Potato Casserole
Green Bean Bundles
Rolls
Pecan Pie
Creme Brulee Cheesecake

Hopefully, we’ll all get to watch a little football, before or after, and maybe get a little exercise in after eating. I’m hoping to either get out and walk a bit, or get out with the guys and watch them hit golf balls in the backyard. I know the weather should be pretty good tomorrow – we’re expecting a line of thunderstorms to move through later today and drop our temps from the high 70’s to the low 50’s. It should feel more like Thanksgiving tomorrow 😀 Hopefully, the rain will be gone and we can all get out and get a little bit of fresh air and exercise after the feasting 😛

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I’m not posting my regular “Menu Plan Monday” post today. I haven’t really got a menu planned this week, nor do I have a lot of motivation to make one 🙂

We had a really busy but fun weekend. Tim went deer hunting on Saturday, and Beau and I went along for the ride. I spent the day with my mother-in-law and niece, which was fun. We went shopping 🙂 My father-in-law shot a deer and sent my dad home with a lot of deer meat. Tim didn’t shoot one, but he will. He usually waits until December or even January before he shoots us one. He likes to go and see his brothers, dad and friends and hang out. 🙂 Sunday was busy with church, football and running errands. Unfortunately, our Saints did not play well and lost their game. Tim was bummed the rest of the day.

We watched a couple of movies from Netflix. Our viewing time has dropped dramatically lately, and probably won’t pick up this week. We finally saw “Miss Potter” which I really liked and Tim suffered through with quiet grace and dignity. We also watched a really old movie called “The Spitfire Grill” that we liked, but it certainly didn’t end like we wanted.

Tim is on vacation all week. He usually takes either this week off or the one after Thanksgiving (his BIRTHDAY week!) to go deer hunting. It’s so warm that he wants to go play golf some, then maybe hunt later in the week. I’m hoping to get him to help me some around the house. We’re having my side of the family here at our house for Thanksgiving this year. This is the first time we’ve had it here since my mom died over 5 years ago. I hope I remember how to cook a turkey! 🙂

So, I’ll be busy all week, most likely running around “like a chicken with my head cut off”. Cleaning, cooking, shopping and what not. I don’t imagine I’ll have a lot of computer time this week, so if you don’t see me for a few days, don’t worry 🙂

As for the menu, we’re just going to have a couple of easy meals early in the week – things like loaded baked potatoes, waffles and turkey bacon, maybe tomato soup and grilled cheese. I’ll spend a lot of time on Wednesday PM cooking, so supper won’t be much. Thursday evening we will have turkey sandwiches! Friday and the weekend are totally up in the air.

Hope you all have a great week and a very blessed, happy Thanksgiving. I know we both have so much to be thankful for 😀

Lynne, over at Lynne’s Little Corner, tagged me a week or so ago with this fun “5 things” meme. Lynne included pictures with some of hers, but I’m afraid I’m not that industrious! (although I will add a couple of links) I did want to play along though, so thanks for tagging me, Lynne!

5 Things found in my room (I’ll use our living room, since I’m usually in here with my laptop):

Our Samsung big plasma TV 😀
These candles on my coffee table
Bookcases with so many of my lovely books
Big comfy chair with ottoman next to my fireplace (where I’m sitting now, with my laptop)
Seymour, perched on top of the entertainment center, since it’s football season 🙄

5 things I’ve always wanted to do:

Travel to England and Scotland
Visit all 50 US States
Go to a bed and breakfast in Vermont or somewhere in the NE during the fall, for “leaf peeping” 🙂
Learn to play some kind of musical instrument (but not enough to take lessons!)
More traveling I guess – all over Europe, Australia, etc

5 things found in my bag

(My purse is here)
Wallet
Palm and Cellphone
Sunglasses
Hand Sanitizer
Chapstick

5 things in my wallet

Driver’s license
Credit cards
Insurance Card
Library Card
small amount of cash

5 things I’m currently “in to”

Reading
Watching a ton of TV shows
Watching movies from Netflix
Blogging
Taking photos with my new camera

I won’t tag anyone specifically, but please feel free to play along if you’d like. Be sure to leave me a message if you do decide to play, so I can come check out your answers!

Have a great day 😀

Feast One Hundred & Sixty Nine
November 16, 2007

Appetizer
What was your first “realâ€? job? I got a job when I was about 13, working as a receptionist at a photography studio. I filed stuff, made appointments, showed people into the photography rooms (this guy mostly did people portraits and school portraits). I was ecstatic to be making “my own” money at that age!

Soup
Where would you go if you wanted to spark your creativity? I’m not very creative, but I do love to take photographs. So anywhere that is very picturesque, with lots of interesting things to snap, good colors, fun stuff.

Salad
Complete this sentence: I am embarrassed when… I am embarrassed when I trip and fall or do something klutzy and someone sees me being clumsy.

Main Course
What values did your parents instill in you? My parents instilled a lot of wonderful things in me – the value of a good education, that you should work hard, take care of the things you have, and be frugal. I try to be a good steward of all that I have been blessed with.

Dessert
Name 3 fads from your teenage years. Typical 80’s stuff -big hair, lovely clothes, big shoulder pads, etc 😀

I thought I’d pose another book-related question today, in addition to playing along to the “Booking Through Thursday” meme (see below).

Today’s Question of the Day actually comes from Lauren over at Baseballs and Bows — thanks Lauren!

Lauren wants to know (and I do too!) – When you finish a book, do you dwell on it for a little while, or do you immediately pick up another book and start reading?

My answer would be a mixture of both. If it’s a light and fluffy book, then I’ll just put it aside, pick up another one and get going. If it is more of a moving or “deep” type of book, then I might dwell on it a little bit. But, overall, I mostly just get another book and start reading. I love to read, all kinds of different stuff, so I love to get started on a new book.

How about you? Leave us a comment and let us know!

This week’s topic: Preservatives

Today’s question comes from Conspiracy-Girl:
I’m still relatively new to this meme so I’m not sure if this has been asked yet, but I’m curious how many of us write notes in our books. Are you a Footprint Leaver or a Preservationist?

Well, another really easy question for me. I don’t write in my books at all. I *might* neatly print my name in the front, if it was a book I thought I might loan to someone and I wanted to make sure I got it back. I never underline in my books, make notes in the margins, or even turn down the corners. I think it’s something that was ingrained in me growing up. I never mar my books in any way. 🙂 So, yes, I’m a total Preservationist!

We’re about through painting here. I forgot how much I dislike painting, especially the tedious detail stuff. I don’t mind just rolling a large surface with paint – it’s all the nooks and crannies, crevices, corners, moldings and stuff I don’t particularly like… Well – on second thought, I just don’t like any of it really! The prep work, the actual painting, the clean-up, ugh.

Some of you sweet people left comments and were under the impression that we were undertaking a large scale outdoor painting project. Not so. We have a brick house, and have some external surfaces that did need painting every year or two. Tim was always responsible for that, so about 3 or 4 years ago, he decided we needed to put vinyl siding on our house. Which alleviates almost all of the painting (for him!). We have vinyl everywhere except some trim and the outside doors. So, that’s what we were painting.

Our exterior doors are French paned doors – 15 lovely squares of glass with small panes in between. Well, it’s one large sheet of glass, but you get the idea. Lots of detail and small spots to paint. We had all white doors, trim and “sidelights” as I call them. Now, the door is a dark brown and the trim is still white. I’ll post photos later today or tomorrow over at my Project365 blog. UPDATE , they are up now (here and here). 😛

Here’s the color we painted the doors – a dark brown. It looks more chocolate in this photo, but you know how paint is – it gets darker when it dries. I told Tim when we opened the can – now I know why I picked this color – it looks like liquid chocolate! Being the chocoholic that I am, that must be why I went for this color! It looks good enough to eat, hehehe! Oh, and it’s called “Boston Legacy” and we got it at Lowe’s.

I’m tired of painting and ready to do something else! 🙂

We’ve been busy bees around here. Too busy for me to spend ANY time on the computer, and really too busy for me to be doing my regular household chores. The dirty clothes and dirty floors and dust-covered furniture are starting to be very apparent 🙄

What have we been doing, you ask? Well, yesterday we planted the last of the pansies and also put out some mulch. We started prep work on some exterior painting. Tim is the painter in our house, thank goodness. I remember now that I don’t like painting. Actually, intensely dislike would be a much more descriptive term! 😀 Tim doesn’t like it either, but he’s better about sucking it up and getting the job done!!! 😀 We bought new locks and deadbolts for our outside doors and decided to paint the doors a different color. So, yesterday we did the cleaning, scraping and sanding prep-type work.

We got up right after sunup today (no walk, wah, I’m NOT a happy camper!) and started doing the primer coat. Tim is hoping it dries enough today to get the first coat of the new paint on. We’re having to leave the doors open, so it’s really weird to have all the outside, normally-locked doors wide open. Not to mention that Beau is rather baffled as to why the doors are left open, yet he’s not allowed to go in and out. We tried chaining him for a while this morning, and he was happy, as long as he could see us. When we were inside or at a different door, he was barking constantly, as if to say, where are you, where are you? He can’t run in and out because a) we’re painting the threshold over the door too and b) we don’t want his hair to get all in the paint!

I probably won’t be posting as much here this week. I’ll be posting some photos along over at my Project365 blog later on in the week. Hope everyone is having a great day and a great week!

Well, I don’t know why, but I’m having trouble coming up with a menu this week. I like to have a plan, but I don’t seem to be able to come up with a very good one. And with the upcoming “busy” season (more football, deer hunting season starts, birthdays, Thanksgiving and Christmas), I do imagine it’s just going to get worse! 🙂

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.

Monday – Shrimp Pad Thai, eggrolls, maybe potstickers (pad thai is a mix!)

Tuesday – Annie’s Crockpot Chicken Spaghetti, broccoli, bread

Wednesday – Breakfast Burritoes

Thursday – Crockpot Chicken Santa Fe over tortilla chips (Tim) and over brown rice (Stacy)

Friday – Sausage Corn Chowder or Cheeseburger Soup

Saturday – TBD or Date Night

Sunday – not sure… some kind of football food, probably wings!

Feast One Hundred & Sixty Eight
November 9, 2007

Appetizer
Which snack do you like to get when you go to the movies? Ooh, easy one. Popcorn. I love eating popcorn at the movie theater. I like eating it at home when we crank up a movie in the DVD player. At home, I’m good and eat plain popcorn sprayed with fat free butter spray. At the movies, we splurge 🙂

Soup
What year did you start using the internet? I think in 1995. It’s been a LONG time!

Salad
What is your first name in Pig Latin? (Here’s how to speak it if you don’t already know!) Tasy-say. I think.

Main Course
Name something you are picky about. The better question might be what I’m NOT picky about! I’m particular about being on time, about things being in their right place (towels hung up on the rack in the bathroom, utensils in the kitchen, clothes in the clothes hamper and not strewn on the floor, etc). I’m particular about quite a few things, actually. 🙂

Dessert
Fill in the blanks: I ____ ____ yesterday and I ____ ____ today. Hmmm, I stayed home and was cozy and comfy all day yesterday and I have to get out and run a lot of errands today.:grin: