Exceedingly Mundane

Hit his head and he went to bed and he didn’t get up till the morning… Anybody remember that old song or nursery rhyme?

I love the rain. I’m weird that way. But this time of year, especially, I love to see it rain. It rains so rarely here. We have been the last 3 or 4 weeks with only minimal rain. Now, for two days in a row, we’ve gotten a nice summer shower. Yesterday, about 5 PM, it came down really hard for 15 or 20 minutes. It even knocked over this planter out front. Which, by the way, doesn’t look like this any more. It was starting to look peaked before we left on vacation and it basically shriveled up and died since then. It’s not bloomed at all in the last couple of weeks. I think it may have some kind of bug or fungus in it.

Anyhoo, I digress. I love the rain, because of how good it is for all my plants, but mostly for this reason: I love to see my back fence.

HUH? Click the -More- button to find out why and the story behind it!

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And here I was, priding myself on being observant and noticing the little details in life. Boy, this proved me wrong! Take it and see what you score, and post your results in your own blog, or in a comment here! 🙂

Have fun!

Overall, Your Observation Skills Get: C+

You tend to notice the big things in life… But the details aren’t exactly your forte

Well, I just wrote a long, boring post about Jolly Ranchers, and went to post it and got an error, and POOF, now my entry is gone. Serves me right, I should save things more often!

OK – Jolly Ranchers are a faint memory from my childhood, that I have recently rediscovered. When I was a kid, I was allowed occasionally (when I got older) to walk by myself one street over to the “Tote-Sum”, which was a local convenience store. I would save my money and then go over and splurge on junk food or something. I don’t remember all that I got, but two small things stick out in my memory banks. I would buy these small, individually wrapped foil footballs, made out of chocolate. They were sort of egg shaped, but they weren’t eggs. When you unwrapped them (and the foil wrapper looked like a football), they had lines in them like the actual laces on a football. Me being me (aka Miss Tightwad), I would bring them home and then ask to use a plastic knife, so I could cut them up and make them smaller. That made the chocolate last longer!

Anyway….

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Test post for Tim and the new improved backup system. How bout them apples? 😀

Oh well, they just broke in on the news and said the shuttle launch for this afternoon has been delayed. They are still having problems with a fuel sensor, which apparently was part of the problem of why they couldn’t go up a couple of months ago. Actually, I’m rather glad, I don’t want them to launch until they have covered every possible angle and know that they have nothing wrong that they can find. Too much can go wrong, too quickly.

And in other news… 😀

Bernie Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in jail. Mixed feelings on this one, but I won’t comment on that here.

The highlight of today for me will definitely be watching the launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery. I’ve been reading quite a bit lately about the space shuttle, including the little mishap they had yesterday with a cover falling off and striking the thermal shield. Oops. They seem determined to launch today though, barring weather problems, and I hope that everything is ready and they are good to go.

I have always been an astronomy and space nut, whether it’s the real thing or sci-fi tv or movies. I spent lots of summer nights growing up, outside in my yard, looking up at the stars and planets. I spent lots of late August nights watching the Perseids (meteor showers) and the same in November to watch the Leonids, wrapped up in a blanket, laying outside on my mom’s full-length patio chair (she called it a chaise lounge!). I grew up wanting to be a pilot, and for a long stretch in there, I decided I might as well fly into space and be an astronaut. 🙂 I was a small child when man first walked on the moon, and while I’d like to say that I remember it and it shaped my life, I honestly don’t remember seeing it! I was only 4 1/2 or 5 at the time, so I’ll use that as my excuse.

I do, however, remember when Challenger blew up.

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Tim is working so hard this week. He basically worked all weekend, with them calling him Friday night, Saturday afternoon and night, and Sunday evening, where he worked till 2 AM Monday morning. He got called twice on Monday evening, but was able to just get away with a phone call, not logging in and working for a while.

Tuesday was a different story though. He was at the office until nearly 7:30 PM and then got on the conference call last night a little before 11 PM. They just called and woke him up and he’s back at it again this morning. I don’t think he quite got 7 hours of sleep, but I could be wrong. Tim can get by on less sleep than I can, so we’re just really lucky that it’s not me doing all this late night and on-call work!

I hope that his week gets better from here on out, but I’m starting to really have my doubts. He says they are really having a lot of problems with this conversion, and as long as there are problems, he’ll be working.

I just added another movie review to the Hambones Reviews section. These, as always, are just our personal opinions and might not agree with everyone else’s. Well, I think it’s established that we don’t always agree, which is what makes the world go round. 😀

I entered a review here for Ladder 49, which we got this weekend and finished up Monday night. As I said in the review, I don’t want to ruin it for anyone, but we didn’t like it. If you haven’t seen it and want to know why, you can reply and ask, or email me and I’ll let you know why, but it will probably give the plot away. One of those! 🙂

They were all out of a few others on our list – namely, The Pacifier, Miss Congeniality 2, and a couple that Tim is interested in that I probably won’t watch. I want to get some of the early seasons of Alias and be watching them, but our local stores only have one season at best. We’ll have to join an online service to get those, and most other of “the entire season of some TV show” type DVD sets. I still have several “one free rental” and “rent one, get one free rental” coupons left, so we’ll definitely be using those before we consider joining either Netflix or Blockbuster Online.

I’ve been playing around with iTunes and my iPod a little more this morning. I told myself yesterday that I was going to work on editing and uploading pictures today from our recent vacation. I seem to be procrastinating on that one, a common theme for me! Maybe I’ll work on pictures this afternoon….

Anyway, since I’m procrastinating, I’m playing with iTunes. I got the latest version, 4.9 which supports podcasts. I’ve been surfing around and looking at the podcast offerings on iTunes and I have to say that so far I’ve been pretty unimpressed. Maybe I’m not nerdy enough, maybe I don’t have enough specialized interests that are covered by podcasts, and I know that I don’t have a temperament for listening to people in their garages commenting on nothing. Still, I thought I would find something I would be interested in and could download to listen on my iPod. I guess I”ll keep looking and maybe find something. I am interested in some of the audio books, but gosh, these things are expensive! A lot of them cost as much as buying the book, which I won’t do. That’s why I have a library card and why I use it!

1. What book are you currently reading? Nothing at the moment. I’ve read 19 since the Super Bowl ended and although I’m ready to get back into reading, I’m going to stop for a bit and concentrate on a) going through old magazines piled up and cleaning them out and b) trying to get back into my scrapbooking

2. Have you ever experienced the loss of a pet? How did you deal with it? Would you get a new pet, and why? Yes, I took the loss of Sally very very hard. I’ve been ready to get another dog for over 1 1/2 years now, but Tim is not ready. No cats, but I want a dog!

3. Is anyone in your family in the armed services? Not currently. My father served in the Navy, Tim’s dad served in the Army, and Tim served in the Air Force, so we’re pretty well represented. Tim and I are both very patriotic.

4. If you have or have had a girlfriend/boyfriend, did you tell your parents about her/him without them prying for the information? Usually, I always tried to be fairly forthcoming with my parents about most things. I think I told them about Tim after we’d been dating a month or two and knew it was serious.

5. What was your favorite childhood pet and tell me a few things about it. Chessie, my first golden retriever. She was smart, sweet, perpetually happy like all goldens. She used to sit on the patio and put her head up on the brick ledge looking in the back glass door, and sit and watch what was going on in the den, where all her “people” were. She always looked so sad and I know she was just thinking, why don’t they come outside and PLAY with me!

6. Have you ever been in love? Yes. For over 10 years now with the world’s greatest guy. 😀

7. What’s your favorite activity? Hmm, any time I spend with Tim is great, but I’m a serious computer/Internet addict. Obviously.

1) What is your favorite fast food restaurant? Sonic

2) How many times per week do you eat fast food? We try to be good and only eat it once every couple of weeks. It varies with our schedule and time of year (during football season, for example, we eat it more often because we grab food on the drive down to football games, eat it more on vacation, etc)

3) Describe your favorite fast food meal. Give me a Sonic #1 burger (mayo) with no tomato, with fries and a cherry limeade

4) Do you always Super-Size your meal? Never. Tim usually super-sizes his drink, because he takes in a lot of liquids. 😀

5) What is your least favorite fast food restaurant? Probably Hardees or Ward’s. Ick. Had a chili dog one time at Wards way back in my college days and it made me a very sick little girl.

Tim’s free movie ticket he won through Blingo came in this weekend. That makes two free tickets we’ve won to go see a movie at the theatre. Not bad for searching online, something we do all the time anyway.

Shanna pointed out to me this morning that she read in the fine print at Blingo that only the first 10 searches of the day count towards the prizes. And I just went and checked, and she’s absolutely right. That might help explain why both Tim and I won in the mornings! Still, we’ve gotten two free movie tickets for nothing, so I will continue to use them, and encourage all you guys to sign up and try. I have a button on the side of my blog that you can use to register to sign up. It works, we’ve won, we’ve received the prize in a timely manner, and we’ve redeemed the movie tickets at our local theatre, so we know it’s all legit. “On the up and up” as my mom might have said! 🙂

Love that song title from an old song in the 80’s I think, by the Bangles. And today feels like a manic Monday. What a weekend!

Tim ended up having to work most of the weekend, although we are fortunate enough that he could do everything from here, on his laptop. Still, he worked a little while Friday night, most of Saturday afternoon and evening, and then for nearly 8 hours or so Sunday night. I finally gave up and went to bed about 11:40 Sunday night, and I asked him this morning what time he got to bed, since I didn’t wake up (which means I was in pretty deep sleep, I usually wake up when he comes to bed). He said about 2 or a little after. Poor baby.

Back to the grind today. Lots of dirty clothes, and a very dirty house to clean. I’ve been working on importing songs to my iPod more, and hope to find time later to get started on uploading digital photos to print. I’m going to give Snapfish a try and send off a few of our recent vacation pictures and see what their quality and service is like. I haven’t used any of the online places, except for uploading to my local Sam’s or Walmart. I hope Snapfish does a good job on them, or else, I’ll have to get them reprinted somewhere else. If you’ve used an online place and have one to recommend, please drop me a note!

UPDATED: Please disregard this post… I will probably delete it as most of these are not true. Shows what you get when you swipe things from other sites 😳

Here’s some “factoids” I found interesting… found them (and swiped them!) at this blog:

Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented. It was ruled “Gentlemen Only…Ladies Forbidden”…and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.

In the 1400’s a law was set forth that a man was not allowed to beat his wife with a stick thicker than his thumb. Hence we have “the rule of thumb.” 🙄

The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV was Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.

Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.

Coca-Cola was originally green.

It is impossible to lick your elbow.

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Hurricane Dennis just made landfall and we’re still waiting on the rain here. I’m sure Mark and Amanda and my dad down in Hattiesburg have been getting some good rain already, and I hope it’s not bad and that the wind is not bad. I hope they don’t lose power and don’t sustain any damage. We offered for all of them to come up here, but they all seemed to want to stay down there at home.

Suzanne called a few hours ago from Bermuda! First time I have ever talked to anyone in Bermuda. 🙄 Her trip is going well, they took 160 people and she’s been staying really busy. She sounded a bit worn out, and said they were coming home on Tuesday.

Tim has been having to work quite a bit this weekend. He worked on Hambones a bunch yesterday, then we took a break and tried to watch a movie out of our collection.

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