Exceedingly Mundane

No, not the three little words you are probably thinking of. Although, normally, those are my favorite words in the English language. I’m not talking about “I Love You” today.

Today, I’m talking about these three little words – “Do. Not. Report.” These are my most favorite three little words in the English language right now. I have a month-long jury summons for federal court, and I have to call in every evening to see if I have to report the next day. I’ve been doing it since August 31, and so far I have not had to report. So, these three little words “Do. Not. Report.” that the little automated voice says to me each evening are now music to my ears.

I don’t mind the thought of jury duty. I have no problem doing my civic duty. The thing I have a problem with is this not knowing. I don’t know until each evening if the next day I will be able to do whatever I have planned or scheduled, or if I will have to shuck it all and go to the federal court. This involves getting up about 2 1/2 hours before I normally would (YUCK – and yes, I know, I’m spoiled that I get to sleep in on a regular basis). Then, there’s the whole morning getting ready thing, and then the fighting commuter traffic thing that I have gotten really used to avoiding.

Anyway, I’m just really hoping to hear “Do. Not. Report.” again today. Wish me luck!

Oops, I stayed so busy over the long Labor Day holiday weekend, and didn’t get on the computer hardly at all. Come to find out, Claire over at Cooking is Medicine tagged me with a food meme. There is an ongoing “project” going on in the blogosphere called “5 Things to Eat Before You Die“, which you can read about here at the Traveler’s Lunchbox blogsite.

Hmmm, I’ve read skimmed through the posting info and I think I get the general gist of it. We’re to list “things you’ve eaten and think that everyone should eat at least once before they die“.

So, being decidedly Southern, mine will be along those lines! Here we go…

1. Good ole Southern sweet tea
2. Beignets from Cafe du Monde in New Orleans
3. Homemade chicken n dumplings, like my mother-in-law’s
4. Fried catfish, french fries, and hush puppies
5. Homemade banana pudding with meringue

Honorable Mention: crawfish cooked at a “real” crawfish boil, complete with potatoes, corn and mushrooms, and some French bread on the side. Yummy!

That was fun, thanks Claire!! I won’t tag anyone specifically, but if you’d like to play along, go right ahead! 🙂

{a day late because of the holiday – sorry about that!}

Laura over at OrgJunkie sponsors this great meme each week. I love planning menus or meal ideas for the week – it really helps with the grocery shopping (cuts down on impulse buying) and saves that frustration every afternoon of staring into the fridge or freezer thinking “what can I cook?” 🙂

Here we go:

Sunday – turkey burgers

Monday – Labor Day; we ate at my in-laws (chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, etc)

Tuesday – Black Bean & Cheese Enchiladas, pinto beans, Spanish Rice

Wednesday – our “light night” – either eggs, oatmeal and toast or else tomato soup and a sandwich (Yes, I’ve had tomato soup on the menu for the last couple of weeks, but we have yet to have any!)

Thursday – spaghetti with meatballs, steamed broccoli, homemade bread

Friday – Crockpot Chicken Santa Fe

Saturday – Pizza

Sunday – TBD

Happy, Happy, Happy Birthday to our nephew Zack!

Zack was born on Labor Day, eleven years ago today. Tim and I were at the hospital all afternoon, waiting for him to make his big arrival into the world. He’s a great kid, and we love him to pieces. Happy Birthday Zack – hope you have a terrific birthday!

As busy we’ve been the last two days, I was hoping for a more “quiet” day today. 🙂 So far, my wish has been granted!

Read the rest of this entry »

This is going to be a very busy weekend for us, this Labor Day weekend. Friday was very busy, and today is shaping up to be even more so.

Tim took the day off Friday, and we got a bunch of things done around the house. Then, Don and Gail came down, and the guys went to play golf late Friday afternoon. Gail and I hung out and watched TV. The guys played till dark, then we all went to eat a late supper at our favorite Mexican place.

We’ve got a really busy day ahead, and I’ll try to catch up here on the details tomorrow or Monday. I also need to blog about my month-long jury summons that started for federal court. So far, I haven’t had to report. More later!

I stayed up late last night and finished a book I had borrowed from my sister Gail, “Montana Sky” by Nora Roberts. I really enjoyed it! Gail’s review is already posted here on Hambones.org, so I will try to add my comments later this weekend.

I had only read one trilogy by Nora Roberts before this book, which I also enjoyed, but this one was a bit different. This book had a bit of murder mystery to it, and I really enjoyed that aspect of it, mixed in with the romance. I didn’t like the references to the gore and other murderous aspects, but they weren’t that bad and I was able to pass over them without it bothering me. Unlike a lot of other, more “hard-core” murder mystery or forensics type thrillers.

For the record, that makes #53 so far this year, with a total of 18,781 pages read. Up next is a paperback I picked up in Borders a few weeks ago called “16 Lighthouse Road”. I’ve checked out several Debbie Macomber books from my library before, and noticed that she has a series of books set in a small town in Washington state, called the “Cedar Cove” series. I wanted to start with the first one, and after searching and searching with the librarian, we discovered that the library’s one copy of the first book in the series had been lost or misplaced. So, I bought the first one in paperback, and plan to check the rest of the series out of my local library. I think I will really enjoy these books; I always like Macomber’s characters and her style of writing. Good “women’s fiction”, as I like to call it! 😀

Feast One Hundred & Nine
Friday, September 01, 2006

Appetizer
What are some lyrics you have misheard (such as, instead of “Gettin’ Jiggy With It” you heard “Kick a chicken with it”)? I do this a lot, and I always try to “cover” for it and sing along with whatever lyrics I think fit. I can’t think of a single thing right now, but maybe something will click later 😆

Soup
What is the worst movie you have ever seen? Let’s see, recently we rented “The Matador” which was horrible. Probably in my lifetime, the two worst movies I have ever watched were “Reds” and especially “Any Given Sunday”. We thought it was going to be a good football movie and it was just horrible. Debase, excessively bad language, etc. I wish I could get that time back from watching those movies 🙁

Salad
Using the letters from your favorite number, write a sentence. Example: Tomorrow has really easy experiences. Well, my favorite number is eighteen, so let’s give it a whirl: Excellent Invited Guests Have Time Every Evening Night. OK, that was bad, I know it

Main Course
What was the most interesting news story you have heard this week? Maybe not most interesting, but I was glad to read about gas prices,they think they are going to come down more before the end of the year. The article I read in the paper said they would be closer to $2 a gallon rather than $3 a gallon by Thanksgiving. Yippee!

Dessert
Which word(s) would you choose to describe your wardrobe? Um, boring? Plain, tomboyish. I wear shorts, tshirts, capris, sleeveless tanks in the summer, jeans and sweatshirts in the winter.

The previous post (Snack Time #1), where I blogged about the Arizona Tea and popcorn, is actually an older post. I had made it a couple of weeks ago, and saved it to post later, then promptly forgot about it. 😳 Anyway, I still like those, but in the mean time, I’ve found some more new products I like!

One is a splurge, and the other is an attempt to try to make better choices:

Can you tell which is the splurge and which is not? Hehehe, thought so! The granola bars are a splurge. Each bar is pretty small and has 140 calories, but OHMYGOSH, they are so good! I found them in Kroger the other day, and they were completely sold out of the chocolate ones. I had a coupon (!!), so I bought the Vanilla Latte ones, and I just love them. They have just the right touch of coffee flavor. Yummy.

The cookies are my attempt to try to give us healthier choices for snacks. I have a whole post brewing about organic, but I haven’t been able to complete it. I am still really torn on the whole organic thing. But, these seemed like a good choice – they have no trans-fats, no high-fructose corn syrup and no preservatives. This is the second box of them I’ve bought. I like them and Tim thinks they are “just ok”.

Oh, and a cute story on these cookies, well, more of a running joke! The first time I offered them to Tim, I made the mistake of calling them “organic” cookies, which they are not. Tim’s brain translated the word “organic” to earthy or something, because now he calls them “dirt cookies“. 🙂 He’s not very fond of them, and would rather have Chips Ahoy or homemade, but hey, these are a good alternative. Better than Chips Ahoy (or so I convince myself) and less work for me to have them on hand and not make a big batch of cookies – where we totally feel compelled to eat every one of them.

I’ve blogged before about food we like to eat and new things I have tried. There were the soy nuts, the pita chips and hummus, the Veggie Chips, the Brownie Fudge Fantasy frozen yogurt, and even the Lipton green tea that my buddy Julie turned me onto. {Thanks Jules! :grin:}

Yes, folks, this blog ain’t called “Exceedingly Mundane” for nothing

So, to continue the pattern, here’s a couple of things I’ve bought lately, and liked:

The Arizona tea I really like, and I think I’m going to start buying it for two reasons. 1) My Walmart seems to be not carrying the Lipton bottles as much now. I’ve seen Nestea on the shelves, so they may be switching products and mostly because… 2) I’m the only one who drinks them and I’m just as happy with a big jug as the individual bottles. Tim acted like he liked the green tea blends at first, but now he won’t touch them at all.

The canister of English Toffee Caramel Corn was a splurge from Target. I think it’s great. It was a bit pricey at 3.99 for the container, but I was in a splurging mood the last time I went to Target (got a few other happies also!). Tim, while he likes it, made a face when I called it a splurge. He said “why don’t you just buy that stuff in Walmart in a cardboard box, I think it’s called Crunch N Munch”. So, the $1 box from Walmart it is, once I devour the remainder of this canister. 🙄

I did this meme a couple of weeks ago, and then missed last week. This is a relatively new meme hosted by Laura and Jess. There’s a new theme each week and this week’s theme is:

Show Me Your Green Thumb. Soil, water, sunshine, love… that’s what this week’s theme is made of. Outdoors or in, whether it blooms and grows beneath your watchful eye and nurturing touch…. or just plain exists at the bare threshold of greenness…. Show Me!!

I’ve posted many pictures here in the past of flowers blooming in my yard. Unfortunately, by the time late August rolls around, my flowers ain’t looking very splendid! I plant all of the summer annuals in either late April or early May, so by late August and September, they are really past their prime. As are most of the perennials in our yard that bloom in the summer. However, in the last couple of weeks, I did snap a couple of shots that I’ll use here.

My crape myrtles out front are about to fizzle, but a couple of weeks ago, they still looked pretty good (and that’s yellow purslane blooming beneath them):

I had some petunias planted in a planter on my deck in the backyard. Most of the petunias are about gone, but in their place, some moss rose have popped up. I didn’t plant them, but they do tend to pop up in other pots that I have growing. I also have a geranium in a pot on the deck and it has moss rose that has sprouted in it as well. Those seeds must travel easily and root easily.

OK, I showed you mine, now I’m off to check out other participants and see their entries. You can check out the other players here.

We got up early this morning, to go walking, and saw that we had yet another coon in our live animal trap. So, instead of walking, we had to go relocate him, as we have the other animals we’ve caught. I blogged about this earlier (here about the coons and also here about the possum), and wanted to report on our “critter count”.

First, here’s the big coon we had to go relocate this morning… Tim says he is the largest one yet. He called him “big guy” all while we were moving him 🙂

So, here’s the official count so far:

Coons – 3 (caught and released in a wooded area miles from our house)
Possum – 1 (caught and released in same area)
Rats – 4 (dead as a doorknob, not moving those suckers)

I shudder to think how many more critters are out there, waiting to be caught or walk into the rat trap. Ewww! But, at least they are not eating as much of the squirrel’s corn (I actually had squirrels yesterday, for the first time in a couple of weeks), and are not pushing down the bird feeders every night. I have a lot of grass that is dug up from my back yard. Each time we put down the trap, the critters all try to dig their way out, so we are having large sections of grass being dug up all over the yard. 🙂

I finished the last book in the Lori Wick trilogy “The Tucker Mills Trilogy” last night, “Leave a Candle Burning”. Wick is a Christian writer and these are very clean, very charming, very old-fashioned books. They are set in Tucker Mills Massachusetts in the 1830’s, and cover many of the same people in each book, but each book focuses on a new couple that meet, fall in love, and get married. My review of the trilogy is up here on Hambones.org.

For the record, that makes #52 for the year, with a total of 18,343 pages read. Up next is a book I borrowed from my sister Gail, that she recently read – “Montana Sky” by Nora Roberts. I hope I enjoy it as much as the three books I just read by Nora Roberts – they were really good, easy reads.

Laura over at OrgJunkie sponsors this great meme each week. Go check out her new design by Susie at Bluebird Blogs — it looks great! I love planning menus, even though I don’t always stick to them 100%. Mine often have things rolled over from the previous week, and have to stay flexible on the weekends. We sometimes eat out a lot on the weekends, so you’ll often see TBD (to be determined!).

Here we go:

Sunday– tacos, refried beans for lunch. We splurged and had a big breakfast for supper – eggs, cheesy hash browns, turkey bacon and biscuits

Monday – grilled turkey cutlets, garlic smashed potatoes, sesame green beans

Tuesday – Easy Baked Fish (using tilapia), baked sweet potatoes, mixed veggies with cheese (frozen bag I’m trying to use up)

Wednesday – Light Night (my husband weighs in at work with his weight loss group on Thursday mornings) – either soup and sandwich or eggs, oatmeal and toast

Thursday – Stroganoff over yolk-free noodles, butter peas, homemade bread

Friday – Date Night probably 😀

Saturday/Sunday – TBD

Monday – Labor Day, not sure yet