Exceedingly Mundane

Dear Diary,

I’m sorry I haven’t written much lately. Life, and the pursuit of it, has gotten in the way of my writing (blogging). The last few days have been very busy, and the next few weeks promise to be even busier. But I’ll do my best to write it all down, Dear Diary.

P.S. You know how I am, I am terrible at writing in my diary (not my blog). I have 4 or 5 diaries from growing up (mostly teenage years), where I wrote a couple of entries in either January or February, then abandoned my poor diary until the next time I received one as a birthday or Christmas gift. I’m still holding myself to my promise for my blog – to get at least one entry entered per day. Good or bad, boring or not, at least something.

Read on to find out the nitty gritty of what we’ve been doing the last couple of days!

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Dear Diary,

I’ve been such a busy little bee the last few days. It’s tough going out to eat all the time, spending money, watching TV and eating lots of chocolate. Not to mention getting ready to start a big project around here.

I’ll try to write more tomorrow, Diary. 🙂

Good night.

I was looking at some statistics from our website and my blog this morning, from the month of October. I’m very pleased to report that on my blog alone, I had visitors from all over the U.S. and several foreign countries. I recently signed up for Blog Explosion and that has generated more traffic to my blog. Most people just stop by for a cursory visit and don’t stay and read much, which is fine with me. My blog is not like most, it’s more personal diary than it is views on subjects like politics, religion, world views, or even movies and television. That’s me, I’m not one to force-feed my views and opinions on others. In fact, I’m very non-confrontational, and prefer to put lighter, happier, more personal entries in my blog.

Irregardless, it was interesting to see what kind of traffic the blog is receiving. In the last few weeks alone, I’ve had visitors from Malaysia, Australia, the United Kingdom, Italy and Singapore. From within the US, the most visits obviously come from Mississippi, but I’ve had others stop by from Texas, New York, Georgia, Illinois, Tennessee, Florida, Oregon, Michigan, Maryland and California, among others. Pretty cool

To everyone who visits – welcome, and thanks for stopping by!

We had so many trick or treaters that we ran out of candy! I can’t remember that happening in a while, and maybe only once since we have lived here. We had tons of kids, and most of them were in groups of 4 or 5 or more. We ran out in a little over an hour. I tried to get Tim to run to the store for more, but he wanted to turn out the lights and pumpkin and hide inside in the dark! So, here we are, out of all of that good candy, hiding in the dark, watching 7th Heaven. 🙂

P.S. Note to self, buy more candy next year! You’d think 2 super size bags from Sam’s Club would be enough, but we put a good dent in those bags over the last 2 or 3 weeks 😛

Do you see the healthy dinner of maple hoisin baked salmon, baked sweet potatoes and a veggie that I had all out and ready to cook before the trick or treaters started ringing the doorbell? (Hint, get it – salmon is sort of orange, sweet potatoes are orange, hardy har har). Anyway, does this look like that healthy supper I had planned?

P.S. We just had our first batch of trick-or-treaters. Very cute, a group of 4 boys, 2 pirates, 1 ghost and one in a head to toe black skeleton costume. Scary!

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is not a big holiday at our house, since we don’t have kids. We don’t get to do all that fun stuff – picking out the costumes for the kids, getting them dressed up, watching them get so excited, and then taking them trick or treating. Not to mention, doing “quality assurance” checks on their candy, and making sure it’s safe for them eat!

We have, however, dressed up in the past (check out a scrapbook layout here and another one from the same year here). We have carved pumpkins (a long time ago), but now we just put them out plain. Tim has dressed up as a monster and sat outside like a statue, to scare kids as they come by. He’s also hid in corners and dark spots and jumped out and scared them. These days, we just answer the door and give out the candy we have not gobbled down over the last couple of weeks! I have this wonderful habit of buying the kind of Halloween candy that I love, so that in case we don’t give it all out (yeah, right), then it’s something we would be willing to eat. Unfortunately, it never works that way. We always eat more of it beforehand! This year, we are giving out: Butterfingers, Baby Ruths, 3 Musketeers, Snickers, Milky Ways, Twix and Nestle’s Crunch. YUM!

Hope you all have a good Halloween! Trick or Treat! 😀

1. Name 1 comedy movie you’ve seen. What Women Want, I love that movie!

2. Name 2 black and white films you remember seeing. Casablanca and Rear Window

3. Name 3 dramas you thought were worth watching. The Lord of the Rings trilogy 😀

4. Name 4 television shows you watch on a regular (or semi-regular) basis. NCIS, House, Lost, Without a Trace

5. Name 5 things that, in your opinion, are advertised on television too frequently. local car dealership ads, feminine products, viagra/cialis products, car manufacturer ads, drug ads

Week 143

I say … and you think … ?

Unbreakable:: movie?
Have mercy:: Lord, have mercy on me
Do it better:: than I do
Settle scores:: even up
Comments:: posted
Craziest thing:: happened to me today
Apple:: candied apple
Halloween:: candy
Manageable:: doable
Trick:: or Treat!

Tim stayed pretty busy all weekend, helping me with some blogging stuff (and also learning about laying ceramic tile!). We upgraded my WordPress to version 1.5, setup a new blog for Suzanne, and upgraded Gail’s blog as well. We will work on every one else’s upgrade over the next few days and weeks. It takes quite a bit of work and I think I wore Tim out with all my requests!

Be sure to go check out Suzanne’s blog here 😀

My pansies aren’t doing great yet, but at least my yellow mums and Confederate rose are blooming! Scenes from outside our house today….

Good thing the time changed this weekend. Tim is on-call and the phone rang about 5:30 AM this morning. They were having problems with a gateway and so, of course, they called him. Thankfully, he was able to resolve the problem fairly quickly, and we were able to go back to sleep and get some more sleep. That extra hour really came in handy!

I know most people don’t like the time change, but I do. I’m an oddball, I know. I like it being daylight earlier in the morning, because I prefer to get up and go walking in the morning (something we don’t usually do when it’s dark in the morning). That way, we don’t walk when Tim gets in from work (which often interferes with my cooking/supper schedule). 🙂 I like it getting dark earlier, I like settling in earlier in the evenings, lighting some candles, cooking supper when it’s dark, lighting a fire before Tim comes home from work (once it gets a little colder), things like that. Total nesting type things. I didn’t like it as much when I was working and commuting, though, so I understand why most people don’t like it. But I do!

We’ve had a busy day today, lots going on! Here’s the short version:

Went to a new sports club near our house to watch the USM game on TV and eat lunch and snacks. USM ended up losing, which was a bummer, but we still had a really good time.

Went out Lakeland and looking for tile, which we ended up buying at Home Depot

Did yard work, pruning and planting flowers. Tim also fixed a cut in the landscape lighting wires and got all that working.

Lots of other little things… 😀

Now, I think we’re going to pop some popcorn and watch a movie. Hope everyone else is having a good weekend.

OH – and did anyone notice the new design on the ole blog? Tim has stayed up the last two nights late, working on upgrading my WordPress to version 1.5. This is a new theme I grabbed from WPthemes.info – I think it’s so pretty! I have to look more next week and see if I can find a seasonal one… I’d love to have a theme for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. Not sure if I can find a premade (free!) one or if I’ll have to try to alter one. Might not have time for that. Anyhoo, I’m pumped about it! 🙂

3 x 5

1. What’s the last item you mailed? Thank you notes for all my great birthday presents!

2. Who has made you smile recently? Tim. Always. Every day. Over and over again.

3. What’s the weather like outside? Beautiful. I’m so glad we’re finally getting fall-like weather. It’s been in the upper 30’s at night this week, and upper 60’s during the day. Just gorgeous!

4. Do you consider youself a good judge of character? No. I can’t read people at all. I’m totally nieve and trusting. I defer to and trust Tim completely on this type of thing though. He sizes up people really well and can read them very quickly.

5. What’s your favorite photograph? Any picture of me and Tim!

::October 28, 2005::
Folgers Fridays

1. Are you a coffee or tea hound? If so, what is your favorite everyday poison? Well, when I met Tim, I wouldn’t touch tea or coffee with a ten foot pole. I learned to drink sweet tea the year we dated, and held out on coffee till last year. Now, I drink both. I could probably live without them, but I have learned to really like both through the years. 🙂

2. Are you a Starbucks fan, or another brand? I like Starbucks, but I’m not enough of a coffee connoiseur to tell the difference. I have to add so much Splenda and creamer to mine that it doesn’t matter what the coffee was to begin with! We drink Community at home. Tried Starbucks, but for the nearly $4 more per bag, we are happy to keep drinking Community dark roast.

3. If you are a coffee drinker, brewed or instant? If you prefer tea, loose or bagged? Brewed coffee, we don’t do decaf or instant. Tea, I always use bags. Don’t have a clue how to measure and strain and steep the loose leaves!

4. What is your average daily intake? I usually have tea with lunch, and on weekends, I have at least 2 cups of coffee with Tim. Here lately, with it cool in the mornings, I have been having coffee almost every day, whether he is home or not!

Finally, my first bloom opened up today on my confederate rose. We got a cutting from a neighbor several months ago, we planted it, we’ve been watching it grow, then we finally got some buds, then the buds get bigger, and now…. drumroll please:

It bloomed today!

And one more (because I can’t take one picture of anything!) …

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