Exceedingly Mundane

My branch of the library in Madison is closed this week for inventory. I went last Friday to drop off books and get more to read. I found one that day, but two others that I was looking for were at another branch. So, I headed over there this morning to look for these books.

This branch is older, but it’s bigger. I do believe there are a lot more books, videos and other material available at this branch. I might have to go here more often and check it out.

Anyhoo, I had read on another lady’s blog that she had read and enjoyed some of the “Harmony” books, which she likened to the Mitford series. Now, I’m a huge Jan Karon fan and I have loved every single one of the Mitford books, so I’m hoping these are as good, funny and heartwarming.

I checked out two from this series – Home to Harmony and Just Shy of Harmony. They had two or three others, so maybe I’ll have more to look forward to this fall. 🙂

My happy for today…

I spent a little while outside this morning. I planted a fresh flower in a pot to put on my deck. Yellow, a sunny happy color! I also filled up my bird feeders with more birdseed. We have tons of birds here and I very much enjoy watching them attack those feeders and see how many we have at one time and how long it takes them to clean it out. So, my bird feeders make me happy today!

I was sad to see that the Sunday Brunch meme (which I liked and have done many times) is closing. Seems to me that the way of the meme is disappearing. I hope some of my other favorites keep on going! Here’s one I like to do most of the time:

From

Appetizer
Briefly describe your living room.
We are going for an overall theme of comfy and cozy in our house, so I hope that’s what it is. Oversized couch, oversized matching chair, chair and a half with ottoman next to the fireplace, entertainment center with too many electronics to mention, surround sound, dark wood tables, area rug, lamps for cozy lighting, Yankee Candles, lots of family pictures on the walls and tables.

Soup
List 3 things you’d like to accomplish before the end of 2005.
1) Blog on a daily basis. I haven’t missed a day since we went out of town over Memorial Day weekend and didn’t have Internet access
2) Read at least 5 more books before the end of the year
3) Go to as many football games with Tim as he wants 🙂

Salad
When you’re online, what do you spend the most time reading/playing/doing? Suggest a site for us to visit.
I am on our family site all the time, I visit several scrapbook message boards, I have a lot of blogs I check out (some daily, some every week), and I window shop at scrapping sites, Amazon, etc. Every now and then I play online games at Real Arcade.
Check out Blingo for all your searching. They use the same engine as Google, but you can win prizes. We have!

Main Course
What would the title of your autobiography be? Wouldn’t be written, I haven’t led an interesting life whatsoever. The name of my blog sums me and my life up to a tee – Exceedingly Mundane.

Dessert
What time do you usually go to bed? Normally, I shoot for 10:30 or 11:00. But, I tend to mold my schedule to whatever Tim is doing. If he’s up later, I usually end up staying up later as well. Or at least I try. I seem to require more beauty sleep than he does 😀

Awww man – I just read in yesterday’s paper that our new Cold Stone Creamery in Madison opened yesterday! I had so wanted to go when they opened and sample everything. I had already driven by there last week and saw a huge red “Coming Soon” sign out front, so I was hoping it would open soon. It’s next door to our new Abner’s and I have already forewarned Tim that I am going to plan a trip to eat chicken at Abner’s then walk next door and get ice cream for dessert as soon as Cold Stone opens. Guess that will have to be this coming weekend, after Tim weighs in next Friday. Yipppeee!!!

P.S. If you’ve been to one before, let me know what you like and what’s good (not that they aren’t all good, sorta like picking a cheesecake at Cheesecake Factory!). Or do what I’ve been doing and check out the link and drool at all the choices!

OK, my happy for today is that Terry and Zack spent the night last night, so we got to see them again today! We all had breakfast together (I made waffles), and then, Tim, Terry and Zack went to the Wildlife Extravaganza at the TradeMart. Tim loves spending time with his brothers and nephews, doing guy things, so I know he will be really happy when he gets back. And when Tim is happy, it always makes me happy!

Yesterday was fun – well, for those of you who like hanging out with guys and doing football related things! The big enlightenment of the day for me was that I learned that when they are promoting a “Black and Gold Scrimmage Game”, they are really doing false advertising. Scrimmage = Practice. Plain and simple. Stretching Exercises, Drills and a few fake plays. In the beginning, they weren’t even tackling each other, just touching each other on the shoulders. Lightly. Later on it got better, and then we had the autograph session. Boy, was that an experience.

Click the -More- link to read more about the Saints Family Fan Fest, and the rest of the day overall (yesterday, I’m a day behind!). Consider yourself warned, it’s very long and rambling, but does include lots of photos!! 🙂

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OK, today’s happy would have to be family and football.

My dad is on his way up, as well as Tim’s brother Terry and our nephew Zack. We’re all going to the Saints Fan Fest at the stadium this afternoon, then the Saints scrimmage game tonight. Hopefully it will be fun. I know Tim and Zack are excited!

Hopefully I can get some good pictures and post later on in the Photos section of Hambones, or on here. 🙂

Nothing like tooling around in a shiny new red car (SUV) to make a girl smile 🙂

I went to the library today, and returned 3 books and checked out one more. My little branch of our county library system is going to be closed next week for inventory, and I had a hard time finding some books I wanted. I checked the computer and they have them at another branch (that will be open next week), so I just got one today and plan to go next week to the other branch and check out one or two more. I’ve read on other blogs and message boards about the Harmony books. Several people compared them to the Mitford books by Jan Karon, which I love and adore. So, if the Harmony ones are half that good, I’m really looking forward to reading some of them.

I also went to Tuesday Morning and Big Lots…

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It’s Friday, so that always makes me happy. I always look forward to spending more time with Tim on the weekend. He goes on-call today, but that’s ok, we still get to be together, even if he ends up having to work. Which hopefully he won’t.

Anyhoo, it’s Friday and I’m headed out to some of my favorite spots. The library. That’s a very happy place for me – books, movies, magazines, all for free. I’m also headed to Tuesday Morning to look for some scrapbook stuff for me and Amanda. Scrapbook stuff always makes me happy.

So, I’m overflowing on the happy stuff today. Hope everyone else has a wonderful day too! 🙂

“I’ve got you…
…under my skin”::

Onesome: Under– Water? Have you ever gone scuba diving? Any interest?…or does that sort of thing just not work for you? Never been scuba diving. If I have my way, I won’t ever go. I can barely swim and the water plainly terrifies me. So do sharks and jellyfish. So no, that sort of things just does not work for me! 🙂

Twosome: my– gosh, it seems to have been hot since forever! How are you doing with the weather this Summer? OK, as long as I stay inside in the AC. That one week when it was so unbearably hot, I didn’t want to go out at all. It’s been better lately, but heck, August just started! It’s warm here through October. Lots of times I hand out candy on Halloween in shorts with my short sleeve orange pumpkin t-shirt!

Threesome: skin– Do you ‘skin’ your site? What styles do you prefer when you have the option at someone’s place? Simple? …or loaded with graphics? Well, I “borrow” premade skins/themes from other sites (most notably Alex King’s WordPress site) and either use them as is, or modify them slightly. I haven’t learned CSS yet, but I hope to. I want to work on that and make more designs for my blog and for others that we host on our site. One day. I seem to have too many hobbies, too many interests and not enough discipline!

Tim and I went for a walk tonight before supper. It was partly cloudy, but we took off wearing sunglasses. After we turned off our street, it started to sprinkle lightly. I suggested we turn back, and Tim turned around and then took a few steps and said “If it was up to me, I’d like to go walking in the rain”. Well, phooey. How can I refuse that? 😆 So, we turned back around and headed back off. It rained on us almost the entire walk. It wasn’t a pouring-down, driving kind of rain, just a good steady solid light rain. It actually felt really good. We were just really wet when we got home and my hair looked like a really bad poodle doo. Otherwise, it was all good!

Nothing like making memories with my sweetie-pie, walking in the rain.

I just added 4 new reviews to the Reviews section of Hambones. Three of them are movie reviews, of movies we watched this past weekend. Hostage, Coach Carter and Princess Diaries 2. The other is a book review for the book I finished last night, “Big Stone Gap” by Adriana Trigiani. 🙂

Our family and friends website turns one year old today. Happy birthday, or should I say anniversary (???) to you, my little website – Hambones.org.

I’ve spent most of the day so far working on the celebrations at the website. We have several games and fun things going on over there. I hope everyone enjoys it. I know we really love having and maintaining the website, and love it when people get on and play games, post in the forums, look at and submit photos to share, use the recipes, read our book or movie reviews, or anything else they use the site for. That makes us really happy.

I already posted this in the Forums at Hambones, since we are playing there too! 🙂 The more the merrier.

Well, today’s happy will be easy for me. I’m happy that we have this website, Hambones.org.

Tim and I have put a lot of time, energy, (money), effort and love into this site. We set out to put together a place on the Internet where both of our families could come, spend time, share photos, chat, exchange information, and just generally connect with one another. We work very hard at maintaining the site and that intent, and hopefully we’ve succeeded. It gives us a lot of joy to do it, and we hope everyone else enjoys it as well. So today is easy – Hambones makes me happy!

Here’s an excerpt from the book I just finished, “Big Stone Gap”. It has a subplot running through it about certain character’s mothers getting sick and passing away. These words really hit home to me. I still struggle a lot with missing my Mom. I asked Tim last night at supper (we were at Cock of the Walk), if he still missed his grandmother a lot. He said he did, but that it gets better with time. He told me he thought I was a lot better, and I told him that I thought I was just a lot better at hiding it from him. 🙂

Anyway, this really got to me. Read on, if you’re interested

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