Exceedingly Mundane

I just finished book number 3 in a series of 5 books, the “Redemption” series by Karen Kingsbury and Gary Smalley. These are really good books, and really easy to read. This one just took me a couple of days to read, a quick but really good novel. I love books that track characters through their lives, trials and tribulations, but that always end with a positive message (gotta love Christian fiction). I am looking forward to reading the last two in this series soon. I like to space them out though, so I may read something else in between them, so I don’t get burned out. 🙂

For the record, this makes #20 on the year, with a total of 7,318 pages read. I went back to the library today, and got more books. I’ll add them to my sidebar soon – I got:

Tim and I went shopping after we left the library, and also had dinner out. I’ll blog about that tomorrow. Oh, and I bought a book at Family Christian Bookstore, which I will also add to my sidebar soon. As always – so many books, so little time!

Do you play Sudoku? We go through phases, but we’re back in a full-on Sudoku playing phase. They have started printing them in our daily newspaper, and then there’s the website I like to get them from, Brain Bashers. I prefer to play them on the PC, but have been printing them out lately (or doing the ones in the paper), so that I can be in the den with Tim. We played quite a bit last night while watching TV, and are playing now, on a quiet Saturday morning.

So, today’s question is… do you play Sudoku? 🙂

Tim went this morning, while it was still partly sunny, and rented an aerator. It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for a while, but just keep putting it off each spring. Our grass has gotten really bad, lots of thatch, more weeds than grass, and it just really needs a lot of TLC. Aerating it is the first step. We’re going to get sand soon, and spread it out, and it also needs a heaping dose of fertilizer and lots of water.

Here’s the first step – Tim aerated it this morning:

And, thankfully, at long last – we’re forecast to get rain today. We got one good shower around lunch, and are getting some light showers most all afternoon.

Here comes the rain!

This week’s assignment from the lovely Kristine:

Stuff Portrait Friday: April 21st, 2006 – Your Initials

My initials, S, K, H – click on the extended entry to see my pictures…

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We went out to eat tonight, to one of our favorite places – Cock of the Walk, out on the Reservoir. We don’t splurge very often and go here, as it’s not healthy (all fried foods). But, man, it’s good!

They basically serve one thing – fried catfish. They actually have fried chicken on the menu, I think, but we’ve never gotten it. We just order fish, for two. You get a skillet of cornbread (flipped tableside by your waiter), fried catfish, french fries, hush puppies, coleslaw and pickled onions. We sometimes get the fried dill pickles as a side, but we didn’t tonight.

Click on the extended entry for a few pictures, courtesy of my Razr phone…
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FYI: I added some photos to the Hambones photo section (remember, you have to be a registered and approved member to access family pictures). All of my photos from Easter are up now in their own album, as well as some that Shanna had emailed of the kids on Easter (they are in their own album, Grayson and Ava Clair). Such cute pictures! Thanks Shanna! We miss you guys 😥

I also added a few silly, scenic shots to my Flickr album. You can access it from my sidebar (on the right). I use Flickr for pictures of flowers, birds, silly things. Most of the “people pictures” are on Hambones.

Check them out, and enjoy!

I finished another book last night, “A Circle of Grace” by Penelope J. Stokes. It was good, although not great, but I really enjoyed it. I need to add a review to Hambones, but basically, this book is a story of 4 college friends, who spend 4 years together, then go their separate ways to live their lives. They keep in touch through the years with a “circle journal” that they pass around between them, to write about their lives and relationships. Except, no one completely tells the truth until they have an unexpected reunion some 30 years later. I love books like this that traces a character’s life, where you get to see what happens to them and those around them.

This book had an oddity to it – it made me shed a few tears at the ending. I don’t normally cry a lot at books (The Notebook being the notable exception, I bawled at the end of that book), but this one was a tearjerker at the end. A good tearjerker, but a tearjerker none the less. 😥

This brings my book count to 19 so far for the year, with a total of 6,972 pages read. Up next to read is the third in the Redemption series, by Karen Kingsbury with Gary Smalley. This one is entitled “Return”. I was on the waiting list at the library for several weeks for this book, so I guess I better get busy and get to reading… and then take it back, someone else may be on the list behind me, waiting for it. 🙂

If you’ve read my blog much, or know me personally, you know that I have developed a new-found obsession for obtaining and burning Yankee Candles in the last couple of years. I love them, can’t get enough of them. I buy different ones every time, and yes, horror of horrors, I’ve even been known to burn different smells in different rooms at the same time. I know, it’s not right, but I do it sometimes.

Tim indulged me at both my birthday last fall and at Christmas and bought me new jar candles. No, I have not burned all of those up yet. In fact, I haven’t even started burning the Farmhouse Apple I got at Christmas. No, that doesn’t stop me from coveting more, from wanting to try new scents, and yes, actually purchasing some. I got a small one a couple of weeks ago at Bed, Bath and Beyond (using a coupon), called Juicy Orange. I haven’t burned it yet, so I don’t know if I will like it. I loved the Juicy Cherry one I got last summer, so if I don’t like this one, I will probably go pick up a Juicy Cherry one again.

Then, yesterday, when I was shopping with Wendy, I found one I had been wanting since last summer – Cherry Lemonade. I’m burning it now and I love it. Tim, on the other hand, hates it, so I have it back in the office by my computer.

Here’s my newest ones:

I was gone most of yesterday (Tuesday), out playing hooky again Wendy drove over from Vicksburg, and left her son Nathan with her mom, and we hooked up to go out to eat and shop. We went to a new place for me (Wendy had eaten there before) called Roly Poly. There’s two in Jackson and one in Hattiesburg, I see from checking out their website. I’m glad we went, because when I came home and told Tim about it, and how it was wraps, and it was really good, he goes “wraps, is that all they have?” And then, “I’m not a wrap guy”. So, it’s a really good thing I got to go with Wendy! It was really good, and pretty cheap too. I had a turkey applejack wrap, which was grilled, along with a fruit cup and tea. Wendy had a Chicken Caesar wrap, and hers looked really good too (pictures on the extended page, courtesy of my new cameraphone!). After lunch, we ran errands and shopped on Lakeland for a while. Wendy was looking for some photo frames, and I was just looking 🙂 We had a great time, and hated that our friend Julie was not feeling well and couldn’t come with us. Maybe next time!

Oh, and I had another first yesterday – my first frappucino from Starbucks! Wendy and I had a caramel frappucino later in the afternoon at Starbucks and it was delicious! I think I’ve found something I will have more often in the summer, it’s nice to have a cool drink instead of a hot drink when it’s in the 90’s around here!

Pictures on the next page….

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Stolen from SusiePie:

Go to Wikipedia and look up your birthday (excluding the year). List three neat facts, two births and one death in your journal, including the year.

Births:

Death:

I still have a whole bunch of pictures to load onto the Photos section of Hambones, but in the mean time, I sized a few down to include here on my blog.

UPDATE: OK, the Easter pictures are up on Hambones, but no text under them yet. Sigh, adding captions takes a long time and I just haven’t gotten to it yet. 🙂

Click on the extended entry to check them out (dyeing eggs, hiding eggs, and some people pics)….

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Whew, it’s been a busy few days around here lately. Just felt the need to recap, for myself and others 🙂

Friday afternoon, Tim got off work a little early, so we headed out to go shopping. We went to Kohl’s and got him several new shirts for spring and summer. We ate supper at …

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~My Easter Basket~

By the Way…

What’s in your Easter basket?
Marshmallow bunnies, Peeps, maybe some Easter eggs? Well, since we don’t have kids, I don’t do baskets anymore. I tried for a couple of years with Tim, but he was totally not into it, so now I don’t do baskets or much of anything Easter related anymore. I do buy Easter candy for me though. I’m partial to anything chocolate (this year it’s Butterfinger eggs) and jelly beans. I love jelly beans and only buy them at Easter. Sort of like candy corn, only buy it at Halloween. Yum, pure sugar!

Share all the details, then share a special childhood Easter memory. I have no memories of Easter. I don’t remember anything from my childhood, you know me! I do, however, have a couple of pictures from an album I borrowed from my dad and scanned some old pictures of. I’ll include them on the extended page:

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I hope everyone has a wonderful and blessed Easter holiday weekend. We’re headed out in a few minutes to see family. We’re going down to Hattiesburg, where we will visit with my dad, and also go over to Tim’s brother’s house. They are going to have a big Easter egg-dyeing and Easter egg hunt there for our niece and nephew (Ethan and Abby). Tim’s parents are coming down also to participate. Tomorrow, we have a big get-together to go to at Tim’s aunt’s house, which he’s really looking forward to. He loves getting to see all of his aunts, uncles and cousins (his mom has 7 siblings). There’s usually 60 or 70 people there, and lots of good food too.

Happy Easter to everyone 🙂

I finished another library book today, “Beyond Tuesday Morning” by Karen Kingsbury. This brings my count so far this year to 18, with a total of 6,614 pages read.

This book was a sequel to a book I read a few weeks ago, “One Tuesday Morning”, which is a Christian-based fictionalized account of the events leading up to, during and after 9/11. The characters were continued in the second book, and I actually enjoyed this one more than the original. It was a little more believable, although it was still stretching the plot a bit. They’re very good books though, and remind us of so many of the more important things in life.

Up next is a book by a new-to-me author, Penelope J. Stokes. Gail read her book “The Blue Bottle Club” and really enjoyed it and recommended it to me. I couldn’t find that particular one on my last trip to the library, so I got another by Stokes, called “Circle of Grace”. I don’t think I’ll get much reading done this weekend, so it may be early next week before I get a chance to read much of it. I hope it’s a good one also! 🙂