Exceedingly Mundane

From earlier in the summer, when I was on my blogging hiatus:

Beau was napping, and actually being a very good boy. The blanket and his bed are the dividing line for where he is supposed to be. He’s not supposed to come on the carpet side, into the den (but he cheats all the time and comes a body length over!). He seems to prefer the carpet and rug though, to the hard tile floor of the kitchen 🙂

I caught Beau napping and was able to sneak and run go get my camera and take a couple of shots. Caught napping:

And after he heard the shutter click of the camera:

You can’t sneak anything by MY watch dog!

P.S. I love when he uses his bed for a big pillow! I think it’s just so cute 🙂

Anyone remember that old song, Rubber Band Man? Geesh, I think that’s the title. I can hear the melody in my head, which probably means it will be stuck there all day 🙂

I’ve had a “rubber band ball” for at least twenty years. I kept one in one of my deep drawers at work for years, and I have had one at home for the longest time. Don’t ask me why I keep rubber bands, but I do, and twistie ties too 🙂

I’ve been doing a lot of decluttering lately (more on that in a coming post). One of the things I cleaned out was one of the two junk drawers in my kitchen. I started with the smaller one, naturally! I found this nice Oxo drawer organizer at Marshall’s and bought it. But, my rubber band ball doesn’t fit in the drawer any more, it had gotten too big. So, I had to let go of it (although, currently, it’s in Beau’s toy box!).

Here’s my rubberband ball:

A picture of Beau playing with it, he was really confused by it, it’s heavy and bounces really funny!

And one of the final product of the junk drawer (sorry, didn’t take a “before photo”, but believe me, it was messier than this!):

It’s actually nice to open that drawer and look for something now!

Well, I had decided to give up the ole blog, and stop blogging. I haven’t blogged in over a month and a half, you know. Between Twitter and Facebook, as well as the non-computer things in my life, I just didn’t see a need to keep blogging. After all, I’ve been blogging for about 4 1/2 years, so I really felt like I didn’t have anything else left to say.

Then…

I couldn’t remember when we had done something or bought something, and I went to my blog to look and see if I could find out when. And as I was scrolling through past entries, I realized it’s a great way to keep up with what we’re doing, look back at things, and remember what was going on, both the big things and little things in our life. Plus, Tim did his normal “you shouldn’t give it up, you don’t have to do it all the time, you know”.

So, if I can figure out how to do this again, I might be back with some really mundane blog posts 🙂

To tide you over, here’s what makes me smile the last couple of days. Tim surprised me with some beautiful red roses. Just because 🙂

Time for a new Question of the Day. Today, it’s all about those hand sanitizer products. You know, like Purell or Germ-x or any one of a number of brands. I see them more and more out in public places. In hospitals (that nice foamy stuff!), some public bathrooms, etc. I have been using them for a while. I always have a bottle of Purell or Germ-x in my purse. I don’t tend to keep it on the kitchen or bathroom counters, but I do use anti-bacterial soap or foam in those spots. My kitchen and bathrooms each have a bottle of Dial or SoftSoap or some other brand of anti-bacterial soap in a squirt/pump bottle by the sink. I’m not overly fanatical about it (think Monk), but I do use them. A lot.

So, how about you? Do you believe in products like hand sanitizers and anti-bacterial soaps? It’s funny, growing up, we never had stuff like this. Do you think we’re better off with this stuff these days, or it’s not a big deal. Chime in and leave me a comment, or just vote in the hand sanitizer poll if you’d like.

Have a great day! As for me, I better go wash my hands now, LOL!

[poll id=”15″]

Still not into blogging much lately. I do believe I prefer the “micro-blogging” of Twitter and Facebook more than this format. Or at least lately. I’m not ready to abandon my blog though.

My attempt to try to keep up, at least a bit. Here’s a few bulleted items, things just.right.off the top of my head! 😀

OK, well, that was a whole lotta nothin! I hope you’re having a great day out there in Internet-land! If you’re on Twitter or Facebook and we’re not connected, be sure to leave me a note. I’m definitely spending more time there lately than here 🙂

I’m always on the lookout for good music. Lately, I’ve been listening to music while I’m on the treadmill, or on the computer. On the treadmill, I mostly walk, but lately I’ve been trying to jog a little bit. Of course, a couple of days ago, I must have overdone it, because now my ankles are hurting. Between the Wii Active (that thing is absolutely in love with making me run, do lunges and squats) and the treadmill, my ankles have been sore for several days.

Anyway, back to the music. I mostly listen to country and praise and worship music. My favorites of the moment are the new Dierks Bentley CD, “Feel that Fire”, the new Keith Urban CD, “Defying Gravity”, and one by Casting Crowns called “The Altar and the Door.”. There’s several songs on each disc that I really love. Here’s the one that I love off the Casting Crowns CD, in addition to Slow Fade and the title track. This one is called “What This World Needs”. It works really well for the short amount of time I am trying to run!

How about you? What have you been listening to? And if you walk or run, let me know what music pumps you up, I’m always on the lookout for good music to walk or jog to.

Have a great day!

I totally and shamelessly stole this from Dawn, when she posted hers here. Thanks Dawn, for letting me hijack your post and steal the idea to use here!

I have several things I’m “into” right now. One of my old faithfuls is Life is Good products. I just ordered some more of their t-shirts, and I would wear nothing but those every day, if I could. They are so soft and so comfortable. I’ve nearly cleaned my closet out of other t-shirts, other than my beloved Life is Good ones. And I have quite the collection now! 😀

Recently, at TJ Maxx, a store I have “turned” Tim onto, he found me these over in the men’s section. Of course, they’re unisex and are for women as much as men 🙂 They’re quite comfy, and my favorite socks at the moment:

So, how about you… do you have a favorite clothing item or product or brand that you are totally loyal too? Let’s limit it to something you’d be wearing right now. I have a sweatshirt that I could do a whole blog post about, but we’ll save that for colder days 😀

Well, hooray for the little guy! We called out the big, ugly, corporate company that had come earlier in the week to service our air conditioning unit. The same one who said it was beyond repair, and wanted to sell us a big, expensive new unit. I had gotten the name of a local guy who has his own small business from a good friend of mine. He had replaced my friend’s upstairs unit last summer. He came out yesterday, after the big company’s guy had left, and after we told him what it was and wasn’t doing, immediately said “let me get my gauges and tools and see what we can do.”. He found the leak and fixed it. Something the big company didn’t offer and never brought up. It’s a temporary fix, but a very acceptable one to us. This guy was treating us like he would his own home, let’s get these people some air, and then we can look and see if they want to replace their unit. Let’s not make them suffer in this heat and make them think they have no options except to buy an expensive new unit from us. In fact, he gave us a ballpark estimate on a new unit, and he was more than a thousand dollars under the “big company” quote.

So, our air was fixed yesterday in about two hours, even though it took 9 hours to cool the house back down. We were able to sleep in cool comfort last night, and got a great night’s sleep compared to the night before. The man who helped us out said, let’s see how it goes, if it is cooling for the next couple of days. We’ll touch base on Monday, he said, and see what you guys would like to do. We’re probably still going to get a new unit, which will mean another long hot day with no AC, but after that, we’ll have a brand new unit. Right now, though, my A/C is running and blowing cool air. It certainly feels better in here than it did at this time yesterday!

Hoorah for small business owners with brains, heart and compassion!

Well, we knew it was going to happen sooner or later. Our air conditioning is out. The unit is old, and we’ve been having to add freon for the last couple of years. We had a technician out earlier in the week and they filled it up on freon and did a maintenance check. They told us again “it’s on its last leg”, which is the exact same thing they told us last year 🙄 However, air conditioning is very necessary in our part of the country. Today’s high is supposed to be 97 or 98, with heat indexes of 105-110. Not going to be fun here with the windows open and fans on 🙁

We have two people coming out this morning to look at our unit and give us an estimate. Keep your fingers crossed that we have cool air again soon. Last night was a really long, hot night. Not much sleep here!

and In with the new!

I’ve blogged before that we make a lot of coffee at our house. Tim has been drinking coffee (black, thank you), since long before I met him. I resisted for a very long time, but a few years ago, learned to drink it, if it is somewhere in the khaki shade 🙂 Lots of Splenda and creamer for me. Anyway, since he started working part-time, and then later, full-time from home, our coffee maker gets quite a workout. We make 12 cups a day, 7 days a week, on average. Some days, I make a second pot, although not as much lately since it’s hotter. And speaking of that, highs every day this week are 97 and 98. UGH!

Anyway, our reliable old Cuisinart, pictured below from a previous post, finally bit the dust:

Actually, it started smoking! Tim said it had a short in it, and the carafe starting boiling, in addition to smoke coming out the back. So, we went that very afternoon to get a new one. We thought we would go to Sam’s Club and buy another one like this, as I always see them in there. However, they didn’t have this one. They had a different Cuisinart, an On Demand one, that doesn’t have an external glass carafe. Tim liked that idea, and so we are giving this one a try. I’ve read some of the reviews on Amazon, and it appears that this new one may not last as long as our old one (3 1/2 or 4 1/2 years), but we’ll give it a go. Tim likes that the coffee stays hotter inside the internal carafe. It’s easy to clean up, and it doesn’t splash at all when you hit the pushbutton to stream the coffee into your cup. The only kicker for me is that it is harder to fill up an internal reservoir/carafe. It was easier to take the glass 12 cup one over to the sink and fill it up 🙂 But, I’ve adapted. You can teach an old dog new tricks!

Here’s the new one:

Which reminds me, I blogged last year about hoping to get new dishes, and I finally did! I have four colors of Fiestaware, that’s the scarlet red one. Maybe I should post about my new dishes. Love having color! 🙂

Have a wonderful day, one and all! 😀

I love this picture I took recently of Beau laying at the back door, in sunshine and shadow:

He’s my sweet baby 😀

Been awhile since my last post. Lots of topics I could post about. I’m going to *try* to be better about blogging, but we’ll see. I seem to be enjoying the “micro-blogging” of Twitter and Facebook status updates better lately. Easier to be brief and just as mundane 😀

Anyway, thought I’d jump back in the fray with a post about our credit card woes. Like most of America, we have a couple of cards that we use regularly. We don’t carry credit card debt, so we’re very lucky in that respect. I monitor and pay our credit cards online and it’s usually a very seamless process.

About 3 or 4 weeks ago, I noticed a charge on our account that did not belong to us. Just one, for about $120 dollars. No others before or since. I called the credit card company then to dispute it, and they issued me a temporary credit while they investigated the matter. I noticed today that the charge was back with a note of “reversal of credit” beside the line item. Sigh. So, after a lengthy call, they have closed our account due to “fraud”. What I want to know is how or why someone in a totally different state is charging their electric utility bill to my credit card? Or why they can’t just stop it without closing my account and issuing me a new account number and cards? I know it’s a small price to pay, but it is inconvenient to have to wait on a new card to arrive in the mail and be without it for a week or two. It’s also going to be inconvenient to notify every company and account that I have tied to this card, online and brick and mortar and get a new number established. Oh well, it could be much worse. Our card was not stolen and there was only the one charge. 🙂

So, how about you? Have you ever had trouble with your credit cards? Vote in the poll or leave me a comment. Oh, and have a great day!!!!

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Just some random thoughts…

Life is busy, but life is good! I just need to blog more often, LOL!

I fix breakfast food for supper regularly at our house. Both Tim and I love breakfast food, of all kinds. He grew up having a large, homemade breakfast every morning. His mom got up before they got on the bus and fixed the works for him – homemade biscuits, eggs, bacon or sausage, grits, etc. Tim would *love* to have that every morning, but I’m just not a morning girl. So I asked him years ago if he’d compromise, and have that kind of food once or twice a week, for supper. He did, and we have breakfast food often.

I go through stages on making pancakes and waffles, in addition to the other typical breakfast fare. I’m in a waffle stage right now. However, my waffle maker is going on 14 years old, and I am thinking it might be time for a new one. If you have a waffle iron that you use and like, would you let me know the brand, and how long you’ve had it? I don’t really care if it’s round versus square, a belgian one or not, I just want one that works well, preferably easy to clean, and hopefully can store upright (when you fold it up, it has a base that will allow it to be stored vertically instead of horizontally). Mine is an Oster brand, and I’m not even sure they make them anymore. It works ok, but it is not browning as well as it used to. Plus, the no-stick is long gone. I spray the iron each time with cooking spray before pouring on the batter. Or else, I have a mess on my hands!

Oh, and since I’ve been on a roll lately, let’s do a poll too:

[poll id=”13″]

I have a long standing love affair with Chinese food. I never tried Chinese food until college, but liked it then. I didn’t get to go very often – until I started dating Tim. He goes through phases now, but when we met, he really loved going to eat Chinese. He taught me to eat with chopsticks on about our third or fourth date. To this day, I always eat that kind of food with chopsticks. We always ask in restaurants if they don’t bring them out, and we have a nice set at home that we use.

It’s funny, because Tim knows how much I love Chinese. We go to restaurants, and we get take-out, and I even do some easy Chinese type dishes at home to satisfy my cravings. Tim always knows that if he asks, I will always accept his offer to go out to eat Chinese. Tim has called on the way home from work before, with my having already started or finished cooking supper and said “Do you want to go eat Chinese tonight?” The answer is always, always – Yes! I have put up supper in tupperware containers for the next night and washed a sink full of dishes from cooking, then gone out to eat Chinese, LOL!

Anyway, like most people, we always have fun opening up our fortune cookies at the end of the meal, to see what we got. We went to a Chinese buffet for lunch a couple of weeks ago, when my dad was here and Tim’s dad was in the hospital. We all opened our fortune cookie before we left, and we were dumbfounded by one of them. We still can’t figure it out. It has to be some kind of misprint. I just don’t get it. Like I told Tim, maybe it means something in Chinese, but it is totally lost in the translation. Then again, it’s probably just a crappy fortune 🙂

See if you can decipher it, and see who lucked out with the bad one!

My Dad’s says – Find release from your cares, have a good time.

Mine says – Fame and fortune are coming your way.

Tim’s says – I spent the time prepare the song, while the song is not being sung.

And for bonus points, vote in the poll!

[poll id=”12″]