Exceedingly Mundane

Whew, I’ve been working the last 3 days on all of our pictures from our trip to Washington DC, here in the Photos section of Hambones. It takes quite a while to go through them and add a “caption” at the bottom, which describes what the picture is. Whew – I’m so glad to finally be finished!

Now, the next task is to edit them on my local PC, and then decide which ones I want to have printed. Then to upload them somewhere and get some or all of them printed. I want to *try* to get back into my scrapbooking, and this seems like a good place to start.

Whether I get them scrapped or not, I would like to go ahead and get them printed. I’m so behind on printing digital pictures. At least 2 1/2 years behind, maybe more!!! I haven’t even printed out the pictures from our two vacations last year (to Texas and Gatlinburg), much less holidays or everyday pictures. So, I have a lot to do! That’s the thing about having a digital camera – I sure seem to be a lot less diligent about printing them!

It’s Raining! I haven’t been this glad to see rain in a while!

I resisted the urge yesterday to pull out the sprinklers again and water all the grass, flowers and shrubs. This morning, I really struggled with it, because everything is so dry, but the Weather Channel kept saying it would probably rain here. Ha, they are usually wrong, but this time they got it right. It’s raining right now, and I’m so glad. Everything needed water so badly, and I’m so grateful for the rain!

We might get more in the next couple of days from Hurricane Dennis, but you never know. They predicted we would get rain 3 or 4 days ago from Tropical Storm Cindy, but we were too far west and didn’t get a drop. Dennis is much bigger and stronger though, so hopefully we will get some more much needed rain from him. I am so glad we don’t live in an area that will be impacted by the hurricane, and I feel for those who do. We’re so north and west of where most of the storms make landfall that we don’t get much bad weather, just rain.

Well, the rain is about to abate, but that’s ok. A good 10-15 minute shower is probably better for my grass than an hour of running the sprinklers! 🙂

And, another one that I swiped from Stacy’s blog “Outwit, Outblog, Outsnark.” I love her blog! Thanks Stacy!

Aloha Friday Meme

Everyone’s got a closet or drawer full of t-shirts. What do some of yours say or where are they from?

Let’s see… one of my favorite ones is an old soft Peacekeeper t-shirt of Tim’s from (oh, about) 15 years ago. 🙂 Another one that I have almost outgrown (and Tim used to wear it, in the military), is a red one with his nickname on it — Hambone! 😀 Also, I have tons of Old Navy flag t-shirts, as we buy a new one every year for the 4th of July. Some of my other faves are ones from the Gluckstadt German Festival here every fall, some USM ones, and an old one from an Eric Clapton concert we went to in the late 90’s (97 or 98).

What are some of your favorite movie quotes?

I have mosted of them listed in the Random Quote file on the homepage of Hambones. Tim and I love several of the ones from O Brother (Do NOT Seek the Treasure, and “Those coppers will never take me alive”). I also love a bunch from Lord of the Rings, including the one where Strider (Aragon) explains about the Nazgul and how they seek the ring. I love Boromir’s line as he is dying, to Aragorn “I would have followed you My Brother, My Captain, My King”. Oh, and “As you Wish” from Princess Bride. And I love doing the “Ghost” thing and telling Tim “Ditto” when he says he loves me or says something sweet. 🙂 And the list goes on and on. There are several from Matrix I like, and “You can’t HANDLE the truth” from “A Few Good Men”.

Go to the homepage of Hambones and keep hitting refresh and it will cycle through several of them. I have lots of other quotes on there, from books and poems and stuff too, but a lot of them are from movies. We watch a LOT of movies!

Spread the spirit of aloha…whom should we visit this week? Why, Stacy of course!

I haven’t done a meme in a while, since before we left on vacation. I sorta miss doing them, I like some of them a lot!

Here’s two for today… The first one comes from this site:

1. How did you learn about yesterday’s bombings in London? Tim and I got up and went walking at 6 AM. When we got in, we got a bowl of cereal for breakfast, and we always sit down in the den and turn on the morning news (or Tim will often watch ESPN or the History Channel, but I prefer the news). It was, of course, splashed over every national and cable channel. Horrible.

2. Do you have any personal connections to the area? None, except a lifelong desire to visit London, all of England and Scotland. The one place I want to go before I die. I’m a serious Anglophile.

3. Do you use public transportation? Not normally. However, we just got back from our vacation to Washington DC, where we rode the Metro several times a day. There weren’t any men toting rifles when we were there, or police with bomb-sniffing dogs, although I know they are there now.

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It should come as no surprise to anyone that knows him, to know that Tim is a very hardworking individual. I’m always calling him a Type-A, because he is. Very focused. Very driven. Even in his off-time. He usually feels the need to fill his time with something, usually productive and workaholic in nature. Not me – I like to kick back, enjoy life, watch the birds, smell the flowers, that kind of thing. I love nothing more than curling up in one of our big chairs by the fireplace with a book. Not Tim – things like that drive him NUTS!

So, it came as no surprise to me that on his first day back to work yesterday, he didn’t make it in until about 8:30 PM. They had problems at work and he stayed to work on them. He got in, changed clothes, grilled some chicken for us outside, ate supper, then immediately got up and went to work on Hambones. I went to bed about 10:40 and I was sound asleep not long after. I asked him what time he got to bed last night (this morning) and he said, “I don’t know, 12 or 12:30 maybe?”. That’s my Tim. Focused, driven, hard-working. I love him to pieces and even though it irritates me at times, I am very happy and grateful that he works so hard on things for us. He’s a wonderful provider and a great handyman and lots of other wonderful, mooey-gooey, gushy things that I won’t elaborate any further on. 😀

I took it and was surprised to find that I am a classic, like good ole Apple Pie! 🙂

Click the link below the picture and go see what flavor you are. Post your answer in a comment, if you dare 🙂 Have fun!

find your inner PIE @ stvlive.com

I have gotten things like this before in email, but these, I swiped from Tommy’s blog. Thanks for letting me steal, I mean borrow them! 😀

1. Why doesn’t glue stick to the inside of its bottle?

2. Why are there flotation devices under plane seats instead of parachutes?

3. Why are cigarettes sold in gas stations when smoking is prohibited there?

4. Why do you need a driver’s license to buy liquor when you can’t drink and drive?

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OK, here we go again! What three things can you not leave home without?

My answers:

1. wallet
2. sunglasses
3. cell phone

Although, my new iPod might make that list soon! I don’t always have keys, because half the time I’m riding with Tim and I don’t take my car keys.

Post your answers in a comment if you’d like to play along! 🙂

Well, I’m a bit behind on memes, blog surfing and such… since we were gone for a week and I’m still catching up! This one would have been perfect to do closer to the 4th of July, but heck, I’m very patriotic, so here we go!

You Are 77% American

You’re as American as red meat and shooting ranges. Tough and independent, you think big. You love everything about the US, wrong or right. And anyone who criticizes your home better not do it in front of you!

Click the link above, take the quiz for yourself, and post your results in a reply, if you’d like! 🙂 Have a great day, and God Bless America!

Tim headed back to the office today, and I’m trying to get back into some sort of semblance of a routine. I imagine it will take me a few days to get back into some kind of rhythm. I still have too many mounds of laundry and piles (piles of newspapers, piles of mail, piles of stuff we unloaded from the car that hasn’t been put up yet, etc) around to feel like things are calm, peaceful and back to normal. But that’s ok! We had a great time, and are glad to be home safe and sound.

We watched some of the news this morning about the subway and bus bombings in London today. So sad, especially considering they were jubilantly celebrating yesterday, after having been awarded the 2012 Olympics. I also heard that they have raised the alert level in a lot of our transportation systems here in the U.S., including the Metro in Washington DC that we rode constantly while we were there. I think I’m just a tiny bit glad that we went last week and are not there this week with all of this going on. I didn’t see a single dog or armed security person in any of the subway stations. We saw snipers at the White House and lots of security around The Mall on July 4th, but nothing out of the ordinary. I hope nothing else happens here, or anywhere else for that matter. I imagine it will, one day, somewhere, but I’m still hoping. 🙂

Greetings Mr President:

Happy Birthday! We hope you had a great day today. We heard that you had a slight accident on your mountain bike today in Scotland. Hope you and the guy you collided with are both fine. Hope the G8 summit is going well. 😆

We certainly are sorry that we missed you Sunday afternoon at the White House. We saw Marine One flying back towards the South Lawn, bringing you back from Camp David. We had hoped you might have time to pop down from the residence and see us while we were in the West Wing. But we understand and appreciate how busy you are. Tim is almost over it now, he doesn’t talk and cry about it nearly as much as he did the first couple of days.

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We actually arrived back home last night from our trip to DC, but we still had today off, so we consider this a vacation day too! Tim doesn’t have to go back into the office till Thursday, so we had today to play too. Fun!

We slept late (8 AM), then got up and went walking. After we got back, we started working outside. Our grass is withered and has tons of brown spots. We watered for over 2 1/2 hours and it is still dry and brown in places, but better than it was! We asked one of the neighbors this evening, and he said we didn’t get a single drop of rain the whole week we were gone! Tropical Storm Cindy blew into the coast this morning, but we didn’t get any rain from her, it all went east of us.

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Well, we’re back home safe and sound, after a very busy vacation. We got up at 4 AM Central Time, 5 AM Eastern, got ready and hit the road by 6 AM (Eastern). Arrived home about 7 PM Central Time (Yes, Tim drives REALLY fast! 🙂 ) Had a very uneventful trip home, except for the persistent problem with the flooding of the rear floorboard in the car due to a clogged AC line somewhere. Tim seems determined to buy me a new car soon!

We still have to unload and unpack and there will be lots of laundry and catching up tomorrow. I will have to go get groceries – we have nothing in the house, no bread, no milk, nothing. 😀

I’m also very saddened to report that apparently we didn’t get much, if any, rain while we were gone and most of my flowers are dead. The grass is very dry but hopefully will bounce back with the sprinklers on them tomorrow. The new maple tree that we planted in April is looking withered, but hopefully will also bounce back. The lorapetalums we relocated appear not to have survived either. I hope after several hours of watering in the morning that some things do try to come back. I imagine I’ll spend Saturday morning at Lowe’s, picking out new plants to replant all my deck and fence planters with. 🙁

I’m looking forward to a good nights sleep in my own bed. Will try to write an update tomorrow about our final day in DC, which was yesterday, Monday (July 4th). Check back later!

Well, we’re up and almost ready to go out on our last full day in Washington DC. It’s Independence Day and we’re hoping it’s a great final day.

We’re headed out soon to the International Spy Museum, where we plan to spend most of the day. We’re thinking we’ll head back over on the subway to our hotel late afternoon, to rest, clean up and maybe do some packing and loading stuff in the car. Then, we’ll head back over for the fireworks, which is going to be very crowded. We’ve heard stuff on the news about how bad it will be, and we’ve known since the first day that the Smithsonian metro stop will be closed today. They are supposed to be adding extra trains, so hopefully that will help out.

This will be our last entry from Virginia. We’re going to try to get up and leave really early in the morning to drive back, so I won’t get the laptop out to get online and blog. We’ll talk to everyone when we get back, after we’ve had a really good, long night’s sleep!

We have tried some new foods on this trip. As Tim loves to say “I’ll try anything once. If I don’t like it, I won’t eat it again!” So, in the spirit of that, we tried several new things and places while on our trip. So far….

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