Exceedingly Mundane

Sunday, June 12

Are you game?
“Computer games don’t affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.” -Marcus Brigstocke

1) What is your favorite board game? Trivial Pursuit! I also like the new Scene It we got at Christmas, same type game but with a DVD in addition to the board.

2) What type of games are your favorite? (ie, board, card, participatory, dice, word games) Some of each – I like Trivial Pursuit, Mexican train dominoes and Tim’s card game of Liverpool rummy

3) How many games do you own, and if possible, list them. We own quite a few but rarely play them. Some of them, Tim won’t play with me (like Boggle, Upwords, any kind of word games). We have 2-3 Trivial Pursuits, Scene It, Uno Attack, Parcheesi, and a couple of others.

4) Do you enjoy computer or video games? Which one is your favorite? Yes, but I don’t play them as much as I could. I went through a Zuma phase (online) and then a Text Twist one. I haven’t played much lately, except the odd game of Mah Johngg now and then.

5) Describe a great childhood memory of an outside game. Well. I don’t have a lot of childhood memories, certainly not of playing games with other people. I have a vague memory of playing crochet, but I think I mostly played alone.

P.S. I can’t wait to see Gail’s answers, I know that Scrabble is going to be in there somewhere!! 🙂

I blogged yesterday about what we planned to do, and for the most part, it was pretty accurate. Well, except for the weathermen, who we all know are never accurate. We didn’t get one drop of rain, nary a sprinkle. Everyone south and east of us did, but we didn’t get a thing from Tropical Storm Arlene. Time to drag back out the hoses and sprinklers and start watering flowers and things! 🙂

Yesterday, as previously reported, Tim went outside to work in the yard, and then came in a bit later to say “I’m going to the parts store, the weedeater isn’t working”. Then a little while later, he says “I don’t think I can fix it, I’m going to go buy a new one, do you want to go with me?”. So, off we go in the truck to Home Depot. After what seemed like a really long time, he finally decided on this one (if the link doesn’t work, it’s a Ryobi string trimmer/brush cutter). Click the -More- link if you want to see a picture of Tim using it later on in the yard! 🙂

After he finished everything outside, he came in and later tried to work on Hambones. He took the main site down for a while, so no one would write anything new to the forums, recipes or reviews systems or their blogs. He got a full backup then started to install his new software on his “development” box. Well, apparently that didn’t work. He emerged a few hours later rubbing his eyes and saying “let’s watch a movie, I’m tired of fiddling with that”. So we watched Oceans Twelve! 🙂

The moral of the story – we got a new weedeater, and Hambones will be down again, more, in the future, as he continues to work on it. Sorry guys!

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We woke up to some wind outside, but the sun is shining and so far we don’t have the slightest hint of rain. I hope that Tropical Storm Arlene doesn’t go completely east of us and we don’t get any rain at all. I love rain this time of year – I consider it free water for the grass and flowers! It keeps me from spending an hour outside in the yard, dragging the hose and my watering wand around, watering everything!

Today is going to be a busy day. Tim is out mowing the grass and doing the yardwork, since we still think (or hope) that it will rain later. He wanted to get that out of the way first. Then, he plans to come inside and work on Hambones, so the server may be down for a while today (and this blog). I just hope all goes well and we don’t lose anything!

I have a long list of chores to do while he’s working inside and out. Among them, cleaning up the house, laundry, making my chocolate-eclair icebox dessert, cooking, working on some things on the laptop, doing research for our upcoming D.C. vacation, working out, and some other things. Going to be a good day, I think! 🙂

I just scanned in the baby photo and announcement from my friend Wendy, of her new baby Nathan. I added them to his photo album here at Hambones. I realized as I was scanning it, that I never did scan Miss Abby’s in, and I feel terrible! Mark and Amanda – please forgive me! I thought I did, but I just poked around my hard drive and couldn’t find the scan for it, so I pulled it back out and scanned it in also. It’s in Ethan and Abby’s album, although I put it on the last page, since it’s the oldest and very first photo we have of Miss Abigail! 🙂

Go check them out, lots of great new pictures of all the wonderful babies and toddlers we have in our extended family.

Well, it’s pretty late on a Friday night. It hasn’t started to rain here yet (tropical storm Arlene is supposed to hit the Gulf Coast sometime late tomorrow), and I’m starting to have my doubts as to whether we will get much rain at all. These things usually go east of us.

Tim got home at a fairly decent time tonight, about 6:00 PM. They had some of the big bosses in from Dallas today and had meetings all afternoon. More changes coming, or so it appears. Tim, as always, is not worried. I wish I was such an incurable optimist! 😀 He came in the door saying “where can we go out to eat?”. Ummmm, dear, I still have that fish left from last night, that I didn’t cook because you wanted to take me out to eat. Which I thorougly enjoyed and appreciated, don’t get me wrong. But I do so hate to waste anything, especially food. Therefore, after careful consideration, I have very smartly deduced that either a) Tim doesn’t want to eat fish or b) whenever I get in a “we need to stop eating out so much” mood, it only tends to make Tim want to eat out more and more. Sigh. We’ll see.

Ah, I digress, as always. Not only do I write about “exceedingly mundane” things, but I’m incredibly long-winded and verbose. My apologies.

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I had a random thought earlier today that I was going to blog about. Of course, this was 8 or 10 hours ago and I just now remembered it and was near a computer!

OK, random thought / weird question of the day. For the women only (although I believe that’s about 90-95% of my readership!):

I only paint my toenails in the summer, when I wear sandals. I see no need to do it in the winter, so the nails get a “break” for a few months. They seem really clean and white in the winter and for a little while at the beginning of sandal season. Then, after a few times of cleaning and repainting, they start to get really yellow. Is it the kind of nail remover I am using (yes, I’m cheap, I use the walmart Equate brand)? Is it the type of nail polish I’m using (Avon, I love the color Amanda!)? Is it just my really bad nails? Any ideas why they get so yellowish?

Feast Fifty-One
Friday, June 10, 2005

Appetizer
Name one thing that made you sad this week. Thinking about my mom. I miss her every day, but this time of year, as we get closer to the anniversary of her death, I miss her more, and it makes me really sad.

Soup
What was the last object (not person) you took a picture of? my daylilly blooming out back. I’ve been meaning to post a picture here in my blog. Maybe I can post some this weekend. A lot of my flowers look so good!

Salad
Who do you talk to when you need help in making a decision? Tim

Main Course
If you were a weather event, what would you be, and why? A flash thunderstorm

Dessert
Suggest a website that you think your readers would enjoy visiting. Hambones , of course!

I missed doing this one yesterday, I was so busy working on the main site. Oops!

:: I could really use a shower!::

Onesome: I could really– get into what or who musically this week? Have you run across anything or anyone new to share with the gang? Musically, well, isn’t this timely?! 🙂 I’ve been on a semi-tear this week, looking for and downloading mp3’s and surfing iTunes. In my formative years, I liked pop, soft rock and a bit of heavy rock mixed in (think Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, etc). When I met Tim, he slowly but surely got me to fall in love with country, and I’ve been hanging there pretty solid ever since. The past few days, I’ve been on the hunt for music by Shania Twain, Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Rob Thomas, Kelly Clarkson and the Backstreet Boys (who I watched on the Today Show this morning). Nothing earth-shattering, I’m fairly mainstream pop and country. 😀

Twosome: Use– Hey, what do you use for most of your cooking? The microwave? …or the toaster oven? Regular oven? Weber grill? (…and Mark, opening the bag of chips doesn’t count!) I use the toaster oven the most, I think. I try to use my crockpot a lot. I use the microwave for warming things up and defrosting, some steaming of veggies, not a lot else. I use the stovetop a lot too. Tim does all the outside grilling, which helps out a lot. This time of year, we grill a lot more 😀

Threesome: A shower– …and the softball of the week: shower or bath? What’s your preference. Okay, pool or hot tub (if you had one or both )? I like both showers and baths, but I’d have to pick showers.

I did a lot of work today on Hambones. Lots of photos, a news story, some stuff behind the scenes, setup a new forum (exercise), and some other things. I just finished typing up 3 movie reviews from movies we have seen lately. I’ve gotten rather tardy on getting those typed up and online right after we see a movie. I don’t think anyone really reads them, but on the off chance some of you do, I try to keep current with them and offer our (or in most cases my) opinion. Tim doesn’t usually participate in the review writing exercise!

We just got back from eating Chinese. I had my menu all planned out for the week, had fish thawed out today to cook tonight. Tim got in a little before 6 and asked what we were having. After I told him, he said “do you want to go out and eat?” Which usually pretty much means he has no interest in eating what I had planned to cook! He dangled the ultimate carrot in front of my face next when he said “well, we can stay here and eat fish or we can go out and eat Chinese“. DUH. Dufus Head (as Shanna and I are now calling him), you know I never turn down Chinese. Never. Ever. Tim has come in before with supper about to go on the table and offered to take me to eat Chinese. I promptly dish up the food, stick it in the fridge, wash the dishes, and then hustle double-time to go get ready and go out to eat Chinese. That man – you gotta love him – he knows the way to my heart. Flowers work. Chocolate works wonders. Chinese food is right up there with those 😀 What a guy, my Tim!

Found this while blog-surfing, it was at Cady’s site:

Go plug in your birth date information here and (if you lend any weight to numerology and astrology stuff) you’ll find out a few things that are supposedly tied to your birthday. Some of them were true for me, but the life path of 3 definitely was NOT me!

Updated: I also just found another link at a different blog, back to this guy’s numerology website. This time, you plug in your name on your birth certificate and he tells you some things about your name. 😕 You can check that one out here. Actually, this one had one section that did seem to fit “me”:

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I’m working this afternoon on uploading all the great new photos I have from everyone. I have most of them there, and hopefully, all of the problems are fixed for the time being with the photo system we use on Hambones. I still haven’t reloaded some older photos from 2004, but I’ve been transferring new ones all afternoon.

Remember – you have to be a registered member of Hambones to see the photos. 🙂 Sorry, but we like to keep those reserved for those people we know.

Let’s see, here’s what’s new today: We have a new album off the main gallery for Nathan, Tommy and Wendy’s new baby who was born the end of May. We also have two new albums in the Photos 2005 section – one for a recent trip by Mark, Amanda, Ethan and Abby to the zoo (lots of cute pics of the kids and some great shots of some of the animals), and the second album is one for Ava Clair’s first birthday party. I have also loaded some misc new pictures of all the kids in their own albums. Shanna sent me a couple this morning of Ava Clair in the new dress her Dede (Gail) made for her and those are in Gray and Ava Clair’s personal album. Amanda has sent me a ton of great shots lately of Ethan and Abby, including some really good ones of Abby when she turned 3 months. Those are now loaded in their album, Ethan and Abby. Go check them out!

And be sure to let us know if you have any trouble accessing the photos. I’m not sure why we had these problems, and hopefully the webmaster (Tim) has fixed them all. But, we don’t always see the same things here that others see, so be sure and let us know if you have any trouble.

Tim didn’t have to work too late last night, thank goodness, and got home a little after 6 PM. I had started working yesterday afternoon on some of the photos in the Photos section at Hambones, and got some errors and had some problems. Tim came home last night and worked on the problems for me, and hopefully we now have them all fixed. We lost some photos from early 2004, but those aren’t in high demand, and I have them on my Windows PC, so I will eventually re-load them onto the Hambones site. I want to spend some time today loading all of the new pictures that I have received lately – we have a few from Wendy of their new baby Nathan, some from Trent and Shanna of Ava Clair’s first birthday party, and a bunch from Amanda and Mark of Ethan and Abby’s recent trip to the zoo. I can’t wait to get them all loaded for everyone to see! You know me, I love photos! 😆

After Tim finished fixing Hambones for me, we watched the rest of “I, Robot”. We had watched it this past weekend, and found that our copy had a scratch on it (that we bought from the previously viewed rack at Hollywood Vide0). We had returned that one over the weekend and gotten a different one, and picked up the movie where we left off and finished it. But we wanted to go back on this disc and watch the first parts, to make sure there were no scratches or pops on this disc. I’m happy to report it’s fine. If anyone wants to borrow this one, just let us know. I need to add these new movies we bought to the DVD collection on Hambones. All of the DVD’s we own are listed here, so check them out and if there’s one you’d like to check out from our library, just let us know!

I wish I had one of these right now:

Why do I get chocolate cravings?

Why can’t I eat whatever I want and not gain any weight?

Why do I always get hungry about 3:30 or 4:00 PM?

Why is it always sweets or chocolate I crave?

I know, I’ll be good. I don’t even have ice cream in the house and I won’t go to the trouble of making brownies. I would eat this in a New York second though, if you put the thing anywhere within my grasp though. 😆

There’s not a lot of exciting stuff going on around here, as per usual. 🙂 I worked quite a bit yesterday on this blog. We lost all of the images and pictures when Hambones went down on Sunday. So I spent several hours, slowly but surely, working on piecing all of them back together. I didn’t have everything in one place on my regular Windows pc (I had them all together on the server, but we lost that entire directory structure). I’m having to find the files and images, resize them, transfer them back over and set the links back up. Slow work, but I want to do it. I want my blog back the way it was! I have several more hours left to go, then hopefully “Humpty Dumpty will be put back together again”. 😀

Tim had to work late last night, and didn’t get home till after 7 PM. We ate supper and made a couple of phone calls, then we settled in to watch King Arthur. Good movie, and I really enjoyed the theatrical version, but the one we bought at the video store is the director’s cut, and it’s a lot more graphic, bloodier and more violent. Lucky for me, it’s one of those movies where you can see the battle scenes and head chopping coming, so I can just throw my hand up and not watch! 😆

We slept late this morning, then got up and went walking. We are having so much trouble getting up early in the mornings to go walk. I think both of us would rather sleep! I did – however- finally get back to a little bit of stretching and exercise. I’ve been wanting to start back on my exercise DVD’s, but I just don’t have the willpower or discipline to do it. (I know, ducking head in shame). Today, I at least made a stab at it. I did one short segment, walking and arm weights, and at least got some good stretches and weights in, as well as a little cardio (it didn’t take long to get my old heart pumping and me sweating!). Shanna really encouraged me yesterday, so thanks Shanna! 😀

I have a long list of household and computer chores to do today, plus I’m still in an MP3 mood, so I’m ripping some old CD’s to my hard drive, and surfing iTunes. iTunes added some new country music artists to their site, including Tim McGraw, and I’m sorely tempted to do some downloading. Resisting so far, but sorely tempted!

From this site:

Tuesday, June 07, 2005
On a daily average…

1. How many hours of sleep do you get and is it enough? I try to get 8-9 hours a night, because I need that much. Normally, I get about 7-8 on most days. I love to sleep! 🙂

2. How many times do you get angry/upset and is it too much? Oh, I get upset a lot, but I get over it quick. I get stressed out about things way too easily and too often. A nasty habit I’ve tried to break, but it’s instinctual with me and hard to cure.

3. How often do you drink caffeine and is it too much? WELL. I would prefer to have tea or a soft drink at both lunch and dinner, but I’ve found that if I cut it out at night, I sleep a whole lot better. So, now I limit myself to a drink with caffeine at lunch, and water with dinner. I have coffee with Tim on the weekends, in the morning.

4. How often do you use your cell phone and does it distract from your responsibilities? I don’t use it that much. I used to use it more for long distance, but we just got the Vonage hooked up, so now I have free long distance!

5. How much time do you spend on the internet and is it too much? Oh my. Way too much time. I know it. I know I should cut back. I just can’t seem to do it. Oh well. I could have worse vices. 😀