Exceedingly Mundane

Look at the new banner, so pretty and springlike 😀

::External Hard Drive::

Onesome: External– What sorts of gadgets do having hanging off your computer? We’ll spot you that printer, but how about other goodies like scanners, card readers, cameras, MP3 players and such? Oh wow, it’s geek heaven here. No, not really, but we do love our gadgets. My printer is an all-in-one (printer, scanner, copies, has a card reader also). Then I have my Dazzle card reader, USB connection to my iPod, USB connection to our Garmin GPS, and an optional cable to my camera (although I use the Dazzle 99% of the time). Finally, in a few days, I will have a Bluetooth USB adaptor hooked up (just gotta order it soon!).

Twosome: Hard– What part of working with computers is hard for you? …working with one particular piece of software? Getting that camera to connect? …or dealing with the family members who don’t understand what the deal is ? Hardware has always been the hardest for me. I just don’t see things that well, to fit together and cable properly, insert chips properly, etc. I am so glad I have Tim to do all that for us now. He is much better at it than I am, anyway!

Threesome: Drive– What drives you to the computer? Is it friends? Work? News? Recipes? The weather radar? I’m addicted, plain and simple. I have been for over a decade. Email, IM, Hambones, blogging, surfing, shopping, reading message boards, looking things up, checking weather, researching travel, etc. You name it.

I finished “Warsaw Requiem” this morning – the sixth and final book in the Zion Covenant series by Brock and Bodie Thoene. It was a really long book, but good. I was really hoping that it would tie up the series more at the end, but I was rather disappointed. Each book seemed to tie up a couple of loose ends (one character would make it to freedom, another would die, bad guys and good guys alike). I had expected that the last book of the series would tie up the main characters better, not just leave them hanging like there was going to be another book. So, on that point, I was disappointed.

Overall, however, I was not disappointed in the series. They were very good, great characters, some real, some fictitious, and based on all factual events of pre-World War II Europe and Hitler’s expansion into countries like Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. I would recommend these books to someone who has the time to invest in them, 6 long books.

As for the stats, this makes #14 for the year. This book was a whopping 508 pages (of a very small typeset font), so that makes 5,113 pages read so far this year. Up next to read – “Miss Julia Throws a Wedding”, which should be much lighter and more entertaining, and a nice break from the heaviness of the Zion Covenant books.

Tim and I went to Academy Sports a few days ago. He wanted to look at the golf stuff (surprise, surprise) and also look at shoes. We both need new walking/running shoes. Both of ours are about a year and a half old, or older, and we’re trying to walk regularly. He also wanted to get a pair of Timberlands to wear to work. He has an older pair that he loves and wears all the time, but after 6 or 7 years, they are starting to show some wear!

Anyway, while he was looking at golf stuff, I looked at clothes. I have been wanting some new things to walk in. Gail and I picked up a pair of workout capris a few weeks ago in Target and I got a couple of tank tops. I still need more, so I decided to look in Academy. They have a nice selection of workout clothes for women. Nike, Adidas, Russell Athletic, BCGC or some brand, and a couple of others. I ended up getting a few things. I think most of the shorts I walk in during our long, hot summers, I’ve had since the late 90’s (maybe even the mid 90’s). It’s definitely time to start replacing them. So, I scored these:

And no, the hat is not for walking in or working out in. It might, however, come in handy when working in the yard or going fishing with Tim at his parent’s pond. I normally wear a baseball cap but Tim saw this hat and loved it and talked me into buying it. 🙂

P.S. I still need more stuff, so I think a return trip to Academy or Target is in order

I have another new project, in addition to the herbs from seeds project that I blogged about yesterday. I am learning to make sourdough bread from a starter, from scratch. Gail blogged about her bread here – which is the same bread. Gail was very kind and brought me some of her sourdough starter, so I could try to learn to make this same kind of bread.

Now, I’ve been making bread for years, probably since the late 90’s, but I have never made bread totally from scratch. I have had a bread machine since 1999 and have always used the dough cycle in my machine to do the mixing, kneading and first rise of the bread. I have made tons of kinds of bread “from scratch” using the dough cycle of the machine, then taking it out, kneading again, shaping, letting rise the final time and baking. I always considered that “homemade” bread, but this is a horse of a different sort.

Gail brought me the starter last Thursday, which we fed for the first time with a concoction of sugar, potato flakes and water. Here’s what the bread starter looks like after you feed it – it gets sort of a crusty, bubbly layer on top:

I threw out some of this starter on Thursday night, put the bowl back in the refrigerator, and pulled it out on Sunday afternoon to feed it again.

To read the rest of this saga, and see pictures of the before, during and after process, click more (including a great picture of what Tim did to MY BREAD) :)…
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Saturday, I made a loaf of banana bread and a new recipe for chicken pot pie. I was going to blog about it, but ended up trying something new. I posted about it in our Cooking forum on Hambones.org, and I’ve tried to open up that section of the site to all users, registered or not, so they can see the info there. This is the area on our main website where I post my weekly menus, and also write about cooking and food in general.

The post on this particular subject, the banana bread and pot pie is here. Please let me know if you get any kind of error on trying to read it, if you are so inclined.

Here’s the banana bread:

Monday, March 27, 2006

1. Do you use a bag/sachel/wallet? Yes, I almost always carry a “purse” with a wallet inside, along with many other items.

2. Do you use the same bag/sachel/wallet everyday or change depending on your outfit? I don’t have the patience to change it more than once or twice a year! I try to have a purse for spring/summer and one for fall/winter. I am still toting my black one from winter and I need to find a new one for summer this year. Last summer, I used the one I had carried the previous year, so it’s past time for something new and colorful for the summer. I just have a hard time deciding!

3. What do you carry in your bag/sachel/wallet? Wallet, keys, cell phone, sunglasses, chapstick, lipstick, various post-it notes and lists, pens, small address book, tylenol, cough drops, etc. Lots of junk! 🙂

4. Do you check and change the contents of your bag/sachel/wallet before you go anywhere specific or do you take everything everywhere? I just always make sure I have my keys, wallet and phone. Although on rare occasions I do leave without my phone (which stays in another spot in the house, and I have to remember to grab and throw in my purse)

5. How often do you have a good clean out of your bag/sachel/wallet? Only when I change it out for the season or it gets too junky. Not very often, that’s a chore I do NOT enjoy!

I’m going out on a limb here and trying something new – growing things from seeds. I got a little kitchen herbs starter kit at Walmart last week. Just a little inexpensive one, so I’m not expecting a whole lot from it, but I thought it would be fun to try. I want to grow more herbs, more useful things that I can cook with. I got two plants (thyme and oregano) last year, but by the time I got them going good, we left on vacation for Washington DC and they died while we were gone. I will probably end up going to the nursery in a month or so and buying some herb plants, but in the mean time – I’m going to give this starter seed kit a try.

Here’s what the kit looks like, a cheap one from Walmart:

I opened it up on Saturday and planted it… click on the extended entry to see some pictures of my latest project 🙄

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Guess what – we’ve now finished laying all of the ceramic tile in our house that we set out to do last fall! We pulled up vinyl flooring in the guest bath, breakfast room, kitchen, laundry room and master bathroom and now, all of those rooms have the same ceramic tile laid in them.

Saturday, we finished up the master bathroom. Tim applied two coats of sealer, waiting 2 hours between each coat. Then, he put all the shoe moulding back on the baseboards (using his nifty air compressor with nailer attachment, he loves that thing!), applied caulk to the wood and also around the tub and shower, then re-installed the toilet. We moved all of our stuff back in about 8 PM on Saturday, and vacated the guest bathroom. Ahh, it’s nice to be home!

Click on the extended entry to see the rest of the pictures!

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OK, I’m itching to change the look of my blog. AGAIN. Happens a lot. But, my knowledge is limited and I can’t change the standard design templates enough to suit me. Sigh. So, I have to just go with the ones that others design. I really like this one though, the colors are clean and fresh and although not overtly spring-y, at least more of what I was looking for than my previous design of my beloved reds and pinks.

Let me know if you like this one, and more importantly, if you see any problems or things that don’t work. I know the “Archived Entry” portion under Comments is not working now, and I’ve been unable to determine why not. But, I’m honestly not that worried about it at the moment. I hope that’s the only thing that is not working 100%. Let me know if you see anything, or just if you like the new look and feel at all.

I’ll try to blog more later today… lots going on yesterday, and I have lots of meaningless pictures to share. Hopefully later today or at least tomorrow, I’ll have them transferred and can get it all posted. In the mean time, have a great day everyone!

~Spring Planting~

By the way…
Do you enjoy gardening? Not as much as I used to. When I first moved into this house, I loved the idea of planting new flowers every spring and fall. I still do, but I just don’t enjoy getting out and actually doing it anymore! 🙂 I do though, and I tend to buy more flowers than I actually want to kneel down and plant.

If so, what do you plant in the spring? After Easter and the threat of frost passes, I plant several window boxes, hanging baskets, and flower beds of spring and summer annuals. Usually petunias, marigolds, moss rose, portulaca, periwinkles, things like that. I love color, and lots of it!

Do you plant flower beds, maybe a vegetable garden? Fill us in. Flowers, although I have really been wanting to plant herbs. I tried a couple last year, but they died when we went on vacation to Washington DC (too hot and no water). I am going to try again this year, I think. I want to plant herbs I can use in cooking (basil, thyme, chives, rosemary, parsley, things like that. But no cilantro. Ick. Tastes like dish soap to me!)

If gardening isn’t your forte, what other spring activity do you enjoy? I love to sit out on my deck and watch the birds, hear my windchimes singing, read a book and soak up the sunshine. I love spring and being able to be outside and not pouring sweat or melting. Which will happen soon enough. Come June, July and August, I will only want to stay inside with the AC running full blast. It just gets too hot and humid here for me in the summer to be outside all that much.

and a dollar short. I seem to be blogging consistently a day behind lately. I blog about Thursday on Friday, and now, I’ll blog about Friday on Saturday. Oh well. At least I have something to write about, and not just a meme 🙂 Although I do love memes and questionnaires.

Let’s see… Friday was another busy day (the best kind!). I had a lot to do around the house and then I had to go get my hair cut. Tim also went and got his cut, except when he came home, he looked like he had been scalped by Indians. It’s shaved down to his cue-ball head. No hair basically left on his head. I told him, why don’t you just let me shave it bald? Might as well. And he smiled really big and said OK!

Tim went to the driving range to hit balls while I was gone. He left me a really sweet note that I found when I got in, that said “don’t bother taking out stuff to cook when I got in, that he wanted to take me out to dinner.” 🙂 Anyway, he called around dark on his way home and we were talking. I said “how did it go?” and he said “Great – I hit better than I ever have!”. And I was like, well, that’s good sweetheart. 🙄 And he offers up the explanation – “that’s because I signed up for golf lessons and I had my first one this afternoon!”. So, now Tim is taking golf lessons. He had his first one and has agreed to take 4 more from the teaching guy at the driving range. He was really happy and the guy helped him a lot with his swing and his grip. The best part of it to me – his teacher told him NOT to hit balls until his next lesson. He didn’t want him messing up what they had worked on! So, that was a ray of sunshine for me 🙂

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Look what Tim came home with last night, just for me!

Yes, I know… it’s not that big of a deal. But paying that much for a trashcan is a huge deal to me, and even though I had been wanting one, I didn’t think I’d ever get one because we just couldn’t see spending the money on a trashcan. I mean, it’s a garbage can, people. But it looks sooo much better than the old dirty yellowed plastic Rubbermaid one. (I blogged about it here and showed a picture of it, on an older assignment of Stuff Portrait Fridays).

Click on the extended entry to see a couple more pictures and answer a question for me, I’m not sure I want this shape (semi-round) or a rectangular one. Let me know what you think!

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Thursday turned out to be a really busy day. Originally, I was just going to get my hair cut, and do some laundry. I know, really exciting. But, plans change, and so Thursday turned out completely different than I had thought it would. The girl who does my hair has the flu and so she couldn’t do it on Thursday (although she’s going to come in some on Friday and I hope to go today). Daddy told us last minute about an appointment at the VA, so he drove up, and Gail drove down. They both came to my house, where we visited for a while, then went to Chili’s for lunch. I meant to take a picture of our food in Chili’s (now that I have my nifty new camera phone and I can take stupid, meaningless pictures of things like food), but I forgot. I was hungry and just started eating! We got….

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You know that old line from the movie “Field of Dreams” – “if you build it, he will come”. Well, that’s what I’ve been saying about the squirrel feeder I bought the first week of January. We have a squirrel that likes to come eat out of my bird feeders, so I thought to myself … self – buy the squirrel his own feeder. So, I got one after the holidays at Walmart, a plain little thing that you mount to the fence and put a corn cob on. It looks like this (and note the date, that’s the day I got it, January 6, 2006):

And so, day after day, I watched for my squirrel, or any squirrel for that matter, to come eat from it. Days passed and turned into weeks, and weeks into months. Still, it sat there untouched. I had even gotten desperate and started pulling off the ears of corn on the corn cobs (I bought a big bag at Walmart), and laying out corn kernels on my deck railing for my birds. After all, I hated for them to go to waste and I had seen a bird or two trying to nibble on the corn on the squirrel feeder. The cardinals loved them, and would clean off my deck railing of a dozen or more kernels in under an hour. At least someone was eating them!

And then… finally — my patience was rewarded. Wednesday, we saw a squirrel on the fence, and he went straight to the feeder and started eating corn. Hooray!

Click on the extended entries to check out some pictures I took from inside the house… I knew if I opened the back door to go out and take pictures of the little scaredy-cat, he would run off. So the pictures are a bit blurry (full zoom, no tripod and looking through some slightly dirty windows!)

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Today’s questions were suggested by Christine.

1. How do you decide to read a book by an author you haven’t read before? Usually from a recommendation from a friend or family member. I have been really lucky lately with finding book recommendations at a message board I frequent, as well as several blogs I read. I have found others who read similar books and genres that I do, so I like to look at their reading lists and see what other authors they read. Helps me branch out and find something new.
2. What sort of recommendations count most highly in making that decision? Well, if I’ve heard of the author or read them before, that’s a big plus. Or a personal recommendation (see above!) Otherwise, I tend to look at books in the bookstore or library and read the synopsis on the book jacket, as well as sometimes flip through and see if it looks like a book I might enjoy. It helps that I get about 95% of the books I read from the library, as opposed to buying them in a bookstore. I don’t feel nearly as bad about picking up a book or new author to try, and if I don’t like it, then I just return the book to the library. No harm, no foul, and no money out of my pocket. That helps me branch out and try new authors more often than I would if I was funding it out of my own wallet. 😀