Exceedingly Mundane

Cool, the bookworms over at Booking Through Thursday have a new site, go check it out here.

This week’s topic: R.I.P.

No, not THAT kind of R.I.P.

Do you do it? Why or why not?

My Answer: I will read in public, if I’m waiting. Like, I take my book to the salon and read while I’m waiting, or the doctor’s office, or while I’m waiting on something or someone. I love going to the coffee-shop near our house and reading, but rarely do that anymore. I’ve even been known to sit in the truck and wait on Tim for something and read in the car, while he goes in a store to take care of something. So, yes, I do RIP 😀

Judi, over at Mommy of Two‘s blog, wrote me last week, and suggested a couple of great questions that I can ask here on my blog, as a “Question of the Day“. Thanks Judi! We asked the first one last week (here) and I wanted to ask the second one and see what everyone else had to say. Leave us a comment and let us know!!

Here’s her other question – do you wash all of your clothes/laundry in cold water or do you follow the instructions on the garment label?

And here’s my answer – I wash almost everything on cold. The only notable exceptions, that I can think of, are that I wash towels on warm and anything Tim wears outside when he sprays chemical get washed on hot (in the sanitary setting on my new washer). I would normally wash sheets on warm, but the tag on my sheets actually call for them to be washed on cold and delicate. I wash all of our regular, every day clothes (t-shirts, jeans, underwear, socks, etc) in cold water.

So, how about you? Jump in and answer today’s “Question of the Day” – do you wash your clothes on cold or whatever the garment label calls for?

I’m not quite sure why, but several of you asked to see what my new fridge looked like, once I had moved all of the food into it. I thought I’d go ahead and do this while it’s all nice and shiny and clean, and most of all – organized!

Remember my new fridge on Sunday, totally empty, waiting to cool off for the required amount of time:

Here’s what it looked like late Monday night after I had moved everything from old small refrigerator into the new side by side:

And this is a built in slot area on the door, that I’m not quite sure what it’s meant for. We don’t buy canned drinks, so I don’t even have a can to test to see if they fit in the slots. Tim thinks it’s too small for cans and I think he’s right. Irregardless, it seems like a perfect place to put my yogurt, so that’s what it is for NOW!

What I really like about this refrigerator is that it’s so adjustable. Almost all of the shelves on both sides are adjustable, I can move them up and down and rearrange them. All of the drawers on the door are movable, and I’ve moved them up and down several times trying to get stuff to fit. Same thing on the freezer side. The freezer has two pull out drawers, but the shelves are able to be moved up and down. And the openings on the door side of the freezer tilt out, which is really nice. All in all, very customizable, which is one reason we picked this one.

OK, I’m going grocery shopping later today, so I’ll have to see what I can do about filling it up more! 😀 I wanted to go ahead and post a picture, because it will probably never look this good again, LOL!

Now that the weather is really warming up, I’m trying to fix more salads with our meals. I know, this is something I should do year round, but in the winter, I mostly want to make comfort foods like soups, stews and lots of bread 🙂 This time of year, we grill out more, and I try to buy more fresh fruits and vegetables.

I’ve bought lettuce the last two weeks and have been trying to fix a “side salad” with our nighttime meal. But, I seem to just be putting the same thing in our salads. I need some new ideas.

Here’s the problem – I don’t eat tomatoes and Tim doesn’t eat cucumbers. I know, I know – I could buy cucumbers for me and tomatoes for him, but it just seems easier to skip those since half of us don’t eat them. I have some things on hand (croutons, craisins, etc) that I could add, but I’m trying to watch the calorie content of what I put in the salad. You know, trying to stay healthy. So, I’ve been adding these things to our green salads: carrots, mushrooms (marinated, usually, not fresh), olives, pickles and sometimes hard-boiled eggs, and if I have it, red onion. Sometimes we sneak in some grated cheese, too. I would like to add more veggies, but I don’t seem to buy them often enough to use them up. If I plan ahead, I like to buy a bag of fresh broccoli, cauliflower and carrots and add that to the salad, but that doesn’t happen very often. Oh, and I would add fruit, dried or fresh, but Tim doesn’t “do” fruit, especially in a salad. I have a recipe for a great Oriental type green salad that has mandarin oranges in it and Tim won’t go near it. I have to add the oranges just to mine 🙄

So, that’s today’s Question of the Day – what do you add to your salad? What kinds of things do you keep on hand to put in a salad, and what healthy items do you add to your salad? As you can see, my vegetable crisper in my brand new refrigerator is very empty:

Help, I need some ideas! 😀

First, a quick update from last week. I tried two new recipes, both good. I liked both of them and Tim liked one of them. The crockpot lime chicken tacos were good and I’d have them again, but Tim said he preferred my regular salsa/taco seasoning recipe. I should have known better than to try something with lime. Tim generally doesn’t like citrus stuff in food. I know not to make orange or lemon flavored anything. I should have known better on the lime flavor 🙂 The crockpot Italian wedding soup (which I renamed crockpot MEATBALL soup so that Tim would try it), was good. I am going to make a few changes on it next time, to suit our tastes more. All in all, a really successful week.

This week is going to be less adventurous (no new recipes) and more in line with our new purchase over the weekend (See this post below to Ooh and Ahh at my new appliances and Tim’s new grill). I’m putting several things on the menu that Tim can grill out 😀

Finally, as always, thanks to Laura over at OrgJunkie for hosting this every week. Be sure to stop on over and check everyone’s menu!

Sunday – Loaded Potatoes

Monday – Spaghetti, tomato-basil breadsticks, salad

Tuesday – Grilled teriyaki pork chops, rice, green beans

Wednesday – Light Night before Tim weighs in – tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches

Thursday – Grilled Chicken, butter peas, potatoes

Friday – Steak Fajitas, pinto beans

Saturday & Sunday– TBD – Date Night or more Grilling Out!

I blogged back in late December, when we had to buy a new washer and dryer, that I thought that 2007 was going to be the “Year of the Appliance“.

Boy, is that turning out to be true! My clothes washer went out in December, and we got a new hE washer and dryer. I said then that my dishwasher was going out soon, and I was right. It has broken twice this week, and the first three times, Tim used a parts kit we had bought to fix it. After it broke for a fourth time on Saturday, we decided to go get a new one. We were just going to get a dishwasher, mind you.

You guys don’t know my husband.

Here’s what we came home with:

I honestly think Tim would have bought me a new stove/oven if I had let him. After all of this, I was near coronary stage, seeing all of those dollar signs. I thought I was going to hyperventilate after we got the grill today (we ordered the dishwasher and refrigerator on Saturday afternoon and they were delivered Sunday). We had to run back to Lowe’s to get a fitting for the dishwasher, and Tim said “let’s get a grill too”. 🙂

To be fair, the dishwasher was broken, our old fridge was small (17 cu ft) and old (14 years) and our old grill had rapidly deteriorating grates that had already been replaced two times. We grill a lot, year round, and Tim absolutely loves to grill. I call him the “Grillmaster”. Now, the only things left (knock on wood) are the stove, water heater, AC unit for the house and the roof. I hope those hold out a lot longer, so they don’t need upgrading or replacing.

In the mean time, I’m running my first load in the new dishwasher right now, and trying so hard to be patient and let the fridge and freezer cool off before moving all of the food from the old one to the new one. We’ve moved the old refrigerator into the garage for a day, till the new one cools off. After that, we’re going to donate it to a church. We had the delivery guys haul the old dishwasher off, since it was dead as a doornail.

All in all, a really exciting weekend. If you like to spend money and buy shiny new appliances, that is!

P.S. I have to figure out where to put all of my food in the new refrigerator. We had a small one before, and not a side by side. This one is completely different, and so much bigger. I’ve never had a humidity controlled drawer for my fruits and vegetables. 🙄 I have to figure out where to put everything. Maybe in the next couple of days, if I’m really bored, I’ll show you guys a before and after picture. 😆 Right now, it looks like this:

I was tagged by Kim, over at Kim’s Candor, to participate in this “Show Me Your Handbag” tag that’s going around. So many of you guys have cute purses! I like purses ok, but I absolutely hate shopping for them! I will see a purse I like on someone else, but I can never seem to find one that I like and that fits me. I don’t want one that’s too big and I don’t want one that’s too small.

Here’s the purse (or handbag) that I’ve been carrying since I bought it for myself, for my birthday, last October:

Here’s another picture, with my PDA and phone in the front pockets… this is why I like this purse, and I’ve decided that this is a feature I want in any new purse I get in the future. I like having my phone in a front pocket where I can just know where it is and grab it. Before, I had my phone down in my purse and I would have to go digging for it, and it would drive me nuts. Now, I know it’s tucked up front in a pocket.

I won’t tag anyone specifically, but I’d love to see your purse, so feel free to play along if you’d like! Just leave me a comment so I can come see yours 🙂

Feast One Hundred & Forty One
April 27, 2007

Appetizer
How fast can you type? Hmm, I haven’t got a clue! The last timed typing test I took was in high school and it was fairly high. I think I type average to moderately fast. We won’t talk about mistakes and having to backspace though 😀

Soup
What is your favorite online game? I don’t play a lot of online games. A bunch of games came on my new laptop and I’ve been playing those. I like Zuma and MahJongg, and I play Bejeweled every now and then.

Salad
On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 as highest), how intelligent do you think you are? About a 7, maybe?!

Main Course
Name three of your best teachers from your school years. Here we go again with the memories and reminiscing. If you know me in real life, you know I can’t remember much of anything from childhood, growing up, school or even college. I’ve effectively blocked it out. I don’t remember any teachers, much less good ones 🙂

Dessert
What are your plans for this upcoming weekend? My dad turns 84 tomorrow and we hope to celebrate with him. I think he’s going to drive up and visit with us, but I’m not totally sure. Since my mom died almost 5 years ago, he likes to be footloose and fancy free and make decisions at the last minute. She was a planner and I think he enjoys making last minute decisions 🙂

Judi, over at Mommy of Two‘s blog, is so sweet! She wrote me and suggested a couple of great questions that I can ask here on my blog, as a “Question of the Day“. Thanks Judi! I hope everyone has a chance to stop by and leave us a comment!

Here’s her first question – do you eat the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables a day? Do you come close?

I did a quick Google search on fruits and veggies and found the following info at this site:

Fruits and Vegetables

Fruits and vegetables are rich in nutrients. Many are excellent sources of vitamin A, vitamin C, folate or potassium. They are low in fat and sodium and high in fiber. The Food Pyramid suggests 3 to 5 servings of vegetables each day. One serving of vegetables can be:

1 cup of raw leafy vegetables
1/2 cup of other vegetables, cooked or raw
3/4 cup of vegetable juice

The Food Pyramid suggests 2 to 4 servings of fruit each day. One serving of fruit can be:

One medium apple, orange or banana
1/2 cup of chopped, cooked or canned fruit
3/4 cup of fruit juice
Count only 100% fruit juice as a fruit, and limit juice consumption. Many commercial bottled juices come in containers that hold more than 2 servings – which can add lots of sugar and calories to your daily diet. Punches, ades and most fruit “drinks” have only a bit of juice and lots of sugar. Fruit sodas are sugary drinks, and they don’t count as fruit, either.

Me first – I try, I really do, but I think most days I fall really short. I honestly am not sure if the info that I posted above is up to date (I admit, I didn’t spend that long searching!). I actually thought they had raised it to a recommended 7-9 servings a day. Irregardless, I don’t think I get enough. I want to eat better and try to make healthy meals for us. I try to make better choices when we eat out, but that is really hard. When we eat out, it’s sort of a splurge and I tend to make bad choices. However, I think I do better than Tim does, just because I love fruit and eat more of it than he does (as well as yogurt, dried fruit and other things he won’t touch). I also drink a glass of orange juice every morning with breakfast, and I think that counts as a serving. I’d say on a good day, I might eat 3-4 servings of fruit and vegetables a day, but I would fall really short of 7-9.

So, how about you? Do you eat the recommended amount per day? About how many do you think you eat?

Seasonal reading

Does what you read vary by the season? For instance, Do you read different kinds of books in the summer than the winter?
If so, do you break it down by genre, length of book, holiday, or…?

Very interesting question. I had never really thought about this before. I sort of do this, at least a little. I like to read a Christmas type story at the holiday season, but that’s about it. I don’t change what I read the rest of the year, based on season or weather or holiday or whatever. I like to read new/bestseller type books, series books, new books by favorite authors, trying new authors, etc. I have a huge list of books I want to read, based on recommendations from friends, family, bloggers and fellow bookworms. I literally have over 100 books on my list to read, and I don’t let the time of year dictate what I want to read when.

I haven’t been posting a lot here lately about my flowers and things growing in the yard. Nor have I been posting all of the cute pictures I take of our dog Beau. I’ve been posting those over at my Project365 photo blog for a while now. In fact, that blog is often more of a chronicle of what’s going on with our daily lives and the things growing in our yard, and where we go and what we do, more than this blog.

I thought it was time to post some pictures of Beau over here though. Of course, he’s had quite a few posted on the other blog (you can click here, here or a ton of them here to check some of them out).

You see – we had a very important event occur in the Exceedingly Mundane world yesterday. We took Beau to the lake in our subdivision for his first swim. When we rescued Beau last October, we felt it was getting a little chilly to let him go play in the lake in our subdivision. And even though it’s been warm here for a bit, we wanted to make sure the water had warmed up enough. Plus, we had an extra reason yesterday. Tim was out back hitting golf balls and then he heard “whoosh” and realized Beau had gone and jumped in the ditch behind our house. He’s starting to do that a lot, unfortunately. Which means we have to give him a bath afterwards, since he comes back in at dark and snuggles up on his bed. Anyway, he was already wet and dirty, so we took him to the lake.

Tim is not sure that he had ever been swimming before. He was very hesitant at first, and Tim said he “had to get his confidence up”. But, he is a dog after all, and swimming is fairly inborn. He took to it in no time! Tim threw his ball out and he swam out to get it over and over, and he just looked the happiest we’ve seen him look in a long time! Maybe ever – Tim and I think this might be his most favorite thing he’s done since we’ve had him 🙂 Beau had a blast, so we’re going to try to take him more often. He had to get another bath, at dark, of course, but he was so happy, he didn’t even mind!

I took a couple of MPEG movies, but I haven’t figured out how to edit them down and post them here. So, I’m going to post a boatload of pictures instead Click on the extended link to see them all.

Read the rest of this entry »

OK, I’m going to piggyback off of yesterday’s random post, the one where I talked about turning off the water when brushing your teeth, and also that I’ve read that you’re supposed to brush for the same amount of time it would take to sing Happy Birthday 4 times through. You guys are really funny – several people left comments about how hard and how messy it is to sing while brushing your teeth! Maybe humming or singing silently to yourself is what I should have written. 😆

Anyway, another quick Question of the Day: Are you brand loyal where toothpaste is concerned? Do you, your spouse, your kids all use the same brand and flavor or type of toothpaste? Have you always used the same kind or did you change brands when you got married, had kids, etc?

My answer: I’m a Crest girl. I grew up using Crest and still do. Thankfully I married a guy who also grew up the same way. We both still use the plain types of Crest (paste, not gel, and none of the flavored stuff). I’ve bought some of the gel and some of the flavored stuff (Cinnamon Burst or something) and Tim never likes it. I am not opposed to trying a new toothpaste or flavor, but I honestly don’t know what to buy and what we would both agree to use. We don’t use the whitening stuff, but we probably should with the amount of coffee and soda we both drink 🙄

How about you? Leave me a comment and let me know what you and your family do on the toothpaste front!

I finished another book last night, in rather record time, even for me. I had some time to read in the car going to and from my dad’s house on Saturday, and then some Sunday night. Tim watched “Hoot” on HBO and I decided to skip it and read. Anyway, I finished this one pretty quick and did enjoy it. It is a book I picked up a month or so ago by Christian author Lori Wick, entitled “White Chocolate Moments”. I like reading a lot of Christian fiction because it’s clean, usually pretty predictable, and mostly, because it keeps my mind and heart on the right things. I had not read the greatest things about this book, so my expectations were not high. However, I did enjoy this book. In fact, I’d compare it to “Sophie’s Heart” and “The Princess”, two similar books by Lori Wick. If you liked those books, you would like this one.

I was a little surprised in this book, in that Wick didn’t immediately introduce characters that are already Christians. In this book, I was nearly half way into it before she mentioned God or religion, which is a bit of a change of pace from the other books I’ve read by Lori Wick. This book follows beautiful young Arcineh Bryant on her life, loves and relationships with family and friends for nearly 12 years. I like novels that allow characters to grow, and find their faith, and see where life leads this. This was a great example of that kind of plot that I enjoy.

Anyway, for the record, that makes 28 books read so far this year, with a total of 9,120 pages read. Up next is a library book I picked up over the weekend. I have been experimenting with our online reservation system, and have placed myself on the waiting list for 4 books, all new releases or bestsellers. The first one came available and I ran down to pick it up. It’s the new Shopaholic book by Sophie Kinsella, “Shopaholic & Baby”. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve enjoyed every book by this author, and I do believe I’ve read them all! 🙂

OK, I had one more random thought, but decided to sort of ask it as a quick “Question of the Day”.

I was reading some stuff in the newspaper over the weekend about Earth Day. Now, if you know me in real life, you know that I’m by no means a “tree hugger”, but I do believe in recycling, trying to save energy, taking care of the environment, etc. My sister Gail has already blogged about the CFL light bulbs. I’ve been trying to do that for a while, and we recycle every week (we have curbside where I live, so it makes it easier). And on and on, there’s lots of things you can do to save energy and take care of the planet.

Here’s one thing I read though, that I’m terrible at. The article in the paper talked about not running the water while you’re brushing your teeth. Seems most people do, me included, and if we’d all just shut off the water, we’d save water and energy. I just did a quick Google and found this:

If everyone in your family leaves the water on while brushing their teeth, as much as 600 gallons can be wasted each month (assuming a household of 4 people, brushing twice a day for 1 full minute and a faucet running at 2.5 gpm).

So, that’s today’s burning “Question of the Day“: Do you turn the water off when you brush your teeth, or leave it running? Have you ever thought about it? Do you care? 🙂 And a bonus question, do you brush your teeth for a long time? They say you should sing Happy Birthday all the way through, 4 times, to brush your teeth correctly. Sheesh, I’m probably lucky if I get through 2 verses of Happy Birthday! Leave me a comment and let me know about these 🙂

I know I haven’t done a lot of “real” blogging lately. It seems I’m mostly doing memes, posting my menu, some book or movie reviews every now and then, and my favorite, posting a “Question of the Day”. The main reason being twofold – 1) I don’t have anything all that interesting going on to blog about and 2) I haven’t been feeling really motivated lately with my blog. Either this one or my Project365 blog. I hope my mojo comes back soon! 🙂

In the mean time, here’s a few random, and incredibly mundane, thoughts:

Books, glorious books, I wish I could spend all my time reading. I have so many books I want to read, and after cruising so many blogs who are doing the Spring Reading Challenge, I’ve found tons more books I want to read. I am also loving that my library finally, at long last, got an online reservation system. I go put my name on the list for a bestseller and poof – when it’s my turn, they call me up and say “your book is ready!”. It’s enough to make a bookworm like me squeal with joy!