Exceedingly Mundane

Since I blogged below about some songs I like and listen to, I thought I’d ask a Question of the Day about music.

What kind of music do you listen to? What genre, how current or how old? How varied are your musical tastes? My answers are obvious from the musical meme I did below – I listen mostly to country. I do listen to some pop stuff, like Josh Groban, John Mayer, Rob Thomas, Kelly Clarkson, stuff like that. I also like a lot of 80’s music. The music I grew up with 🙂 Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and all of the good 80’s rock.

Also, how do you get your music? Do you mostly listen to music on the radio, on an mp3 player/iPod, on CD’s in your car or home stereo, or what? Me, I love my iPod but I don’t really listen to it all that much anymore while it’s on my person, with ear plugs. Ever since I got a base system for it (a clock radio in my bedroom), I mostly listen to it through the speakers. Oh, and on my new laptop, I listen to music all the time. I either play music from my iTunes library through the speakers or use the earplugs that came with the laptop, or I stream radio from an Internet site.

How about you? Leave me a comment and let me know all about your musical preferences!

Sparky Duck, the Philly transplant, tagged me with this musical meme…

List 7 songs that you are currently really really into, no matter what they are, and then tag 7 more people to do it.

I think I’m going to list the songs, but buck the tagging trend and not tag anyone else. However, if you’d like to play along, that would be great! Just let me know and I’ll be sure to swing by and check out what music you are into right now!

As for me, I’m boring. I don’t listen to a lot of popular stuff, except for country music. I know, I know, don’t throw things at the monitor. I like country and don’t keep up with a lot of other stuff. So most of my songs are older ones. Accept it – that’s just the way it is 😛

1. Hands down, my favorite song right now is “Long Trip Alone” by Dierks Bentley
2. Every Mile a Memory” from the same Dierks Bentley CD
3. “The Reason Why” by Vince Gill
4. “Who Says You Can’t Go Home” by Jon Bon Jovi and Jennifer Nettles
5. “Home” by Michael Buble
6. “Waitin on a Woman” by Brad Paisley
7. “She’s Everything” by Brad Paisley

Yep, that’s me, a weather nut! I am the kind of person who really needs to know what the weather is going to be like. I watch the Weather Channel a lot, and I load weather information on my computer. I watch the local weather forecasts and I even glance at it in the newspaper, even though I can get more up to date weather from the TV or Internet. I just like to know what the temperature and forecast is going to be – which is in diametric opposition to Tim. Tim could care less and never has a clue what the weather is going to be. He will make plans to play golf on a day when there’s a 90% chance of rain. He never knows. If it wasn’t for me incessantly informing him of the weather, he would never know. Truth be told, I think he likes it that way 🙂

Believe it or not, it was Tim that suggested that I ask this as a Question of the Day; he thinks there are two kinds of people. Those who follow the weather, very faithfully, and those who could care less. Plain and simple.

So – which one are you? Do you care about the weather and watch the forecast or not? Leave me a comment and let me know!

It’s that time of the week again! Thanks to Laura over at OrgJunkie for hosting this every week. There’s a whole host of ladies who participate every week, so click on Laura’s link and check out some of the other menu offerings. A lot of them are probably more tasty than mine 🙂

Before I get to the menu, I wanted to update on the new recipe I tried last week. It’s for a Crockpot Chicken Spaghetti, and it was incredibly easy and pretty good too. Tim wasn’t thrilled with it, but I think it’s more because he had gone out to eat lunch with his buddies from work at an all-you-can-eat pizza place, so when I had chicken with red sauce and spaghetti for supper, he didn’t get all excited. 🙂 I thought it was good though, and it makes a lot. Too much for us really, but it was good.

OK, on to this week:

Sunday – Breakfast for supper; we had Crispy Ginger Ale Waffles, deer sausage

Monday – All on the grill – Chicken (Tim) / Salmon (Stacy), grilled asparagus, grilled red potatoes

Tuesday – baked flounder, mashed potatoes, salad or veggie

Wednesday – Light Night before Tim weighs in at work – Black Bean Soup, salad

Thursday – Crockpot Chicken Santa Fe over fat-free tortilla chips

Friday – Leftovers or Date Night

Saturday – Pizza or TBD

We woke up this morning to find that our new cable provider, Comcast, has shuffled our channel line-up. And I’m not talking about a couple of random changes, or removing one channel to add another. I’m talking about a whole change up in our channel listing.

Let me tell you, for a TV-aholic like myself, this is not a good thing. We had upgraded to digital cable last year when we got our new hi-def plasma television, and it’s taken me a while to learn a lot of the new channels. There’s so many channels on here, that I don’t like just scrolling up and down through them — it takes too long. I like to memorize the channels that I watch often, and just punch in the number and flip right to them. WELL. Today, they are all different. They’ve totally moved such channels as our hi-def ABC, NBC, Fox, as well as channels like Discovery, TLC, History Channel, all of the sports channels, all of the news channels, Spike, Family Channel, Hallmark Channel, etc. It’s enough to make me not a happy camper for today.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg though, and I know the worst is coming. We also get our Internet service through our cable company. Soon, I’ll have to change over my email address and go through all of those hoops to get it all changed. I have SO many things tied to my email address, and its going to be a pain in the patoot to get it all switched over. I just hope that we don’t lose our Internet access for any length of time. I hate being without my Internet!

So, that’s my gripe for today. And it’s also a segue into today’s Question of the Day: Do you have cable or satellite TV? Do you have memorized the channel numbers of your favorite channels, or do you just surf through the channels? Also, do you get your internet service through your cable company, your phone company, or another way? We are going to look at changing to satellite later this year, so inquiring minds want to know!

Friday, March 16, 2007
Feast One Hundred & Thirty Five

Appetizer
Name two things that made you smile this week.My perennial answer would be – Tim and Beau 🙂

Soup
Fill in the blank: Don’t you hate it when ________? People pull out in front of me when I’m driving down the road at oh, say, the speed limit or under it, and make me slam on my brakes. I hate that!

Salad
When you can’t go to sleep, what is your personal remedy to help yourself drift into Lullabyland? I try to do some breathing, slow deep breaths, inhale through the nose, hold it, blow out slowly through the mouth. If that doesn’t work (and it doesn’t a lot of the time), then Tylenol PM is sometimes my friend.

Main Course
What is something about which you’ve always wondered but have not yet found a good answer? Why some people are clumsy and some people aren’t. Why I can cut back on what I eat and exercise and work so hard to lose one pound, then all I have to do is look at a candy bar and I gain that pound back. 😛

Dessert
What is your favorite pasta dish? Aww man, that is too hard to narrow down. I love pasta and I love Italian food. When I eat Italian out, I usually get something different every time. I love manicotti, seafood lasagna, eggplant Parmesan, shrimp scampi over angel hair, fettuccine Alfredo, etc. When I make it at home, I have a good Cajun fettuccine Alfredo I like to make.

Today’s question is short and sweet – when you eat spaghetti, do you twirl it or cut it?

Here’s why I ask – tonight, we’re having a new recipe for a crockpot chicken spaghetti. I make regular spaghetti a lot (red meat or ground turkey or prebought meatballs), and I’ve made chicken spaghetti (baked in the oven) before. This is a new recipe and I’m looking forward to trying it. I’ll report back on it next Monday, via the Menu Plan Monday, with my thoughts on the recipe. Anyway, every time we have spaghetti I notice that Tim and I are different. He’s a twirler, and I’m a cutter. I like to chop my spaghetti up into short strands with my fork, then scoop it up. Tim twirls and twirls and then jams a huge wad of noodles in his mouth. 🙂

So, that’s today’s Question of the Day – do you cut or twirl your spaghetti? Leave me a comment and let me know. You know, since this is such an earth-shattering topic and all. 😀

Writing in Books, Part Three

Booking Through Thursday

1) Speaking of writing in books, what about writing the entire thing? Do you write? Aspire to write? Dream about writing? I dream about writing, but I don’t think it’s anything I would ever do. I’d like to think I had the talent it takes to write some kind of book, but frankly, I don’t think I do. I’ve certainly never done anything towards that end. I didn’t take creative writing classes in college and I’ve never written that much. But, believe it or not, Tim and I have talked about it, rather often. Every time I read a book and tell him about it, or we watch a TV or movie and talk about the plot, we always joke “we could write that, we should write a book”. LOL! I don’t think it will ever happen though.

2) If you do write, do you do it for yourself, or because you hope to be published? (Or because you ARE published?) Most of my writing is done here, and I think if you read much of my blog, you’d see that I don’t have much talent for writing or any hopes of being published. A girl can dream though 😀

Click here to go and play along with Booking Through Thursday!

I finished a library book last night, “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter” by Kim Edwards. I have heard a lot about this book over the last year or so and was really looking forward to reading it. While I can’t say it was everything I hoped it would be, it was a good book and I did enjoy it. I am not completely sure why I didn’t love this book as much as others have. My possible reasons include:

1) I had very high expectations for this book. I had heard and read so much about it, and I know it’s a really popular book club choice. I think my expectations might have been a little too high. I think I expected to be totally engrossed and find it impossible to put down – and while it was easy to read and kept my interest, I didn’t experience that “can’t-put-it-down” feeling.

2) This book was harder for me to relate to because I’m not a parent. This book was so much about parents and their children and I had a little harder time relating to it because I’m not a parent.

3) The author’s writing style was a little… long-winded for my taste. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about the overall writing seemed really over-done. I think she could have said things in a more succinct manner and a lot of the passages and descriptions were too verbose for my taste.

That said, I really did enjoy the book. It had a good plot, and followed the characters through to the end, which is always really important to me. In case you don’t know the premise, the book opens with the main characters, David and Norah. Norah is pregnant and in a blinding snowstorm, David can only get her to his clinic in time to deliver the baby. His trusty nurse Caroline is there to assist, as another doctor can’t make it through the blizzard. The baby is born healthy, a boy, and then, they are surprised to learn that Norah is carrying twins. The second child, a girl, is born next, and it is apparent she has Down’s Syndrome. David gives the baby to the nurse, to take to an institution in another town, while he explains to Norah that their baby girl has died. The story goes from there, with Caroline unable to leave the baby in that horrible place, and Norah and David trying to cope with the “death” of their child.

I’d recommend the book to others to read, especially if you are a parent. But, I won’t give it my highest recommendation, as it wasn’t my favorite book I’ve read lately. If you’ve read it, and loved it, liked it or whatever, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the book.

For the record, that makes 17 books so far this year, with a total of 5,725 pages read. Up next is another book I got from the library last week, the third book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. It’s called “Morality for Beautiful Girls” and I expect it to be very similar to the other two I have read. More like little short stories, easy to read, and comforting in an odd way. Happy Reading!

P.S. I’ve changed up the way I list books on my sidebar. I’m trying to pare down the sidebar so that my blog will load faster for everyone. Rather than listing some of the ones on my TBR shelf (“to be read”), I set up a separate page for them. Then, I started going through my bookcases and realized just how many books I have here to read. It’s a sickness, buying books and checking them out of the library, when I already have so many readily available at home. A sickness, I tell ya, a sickness. We’ll see if I can make it through the rest of March without buying a book (I’ve bought 2 or 3 already, hehehe!)

You know that ole saying “O, Woe is Me”. That’s me today 🙁 My new laptop is not making my life very happy. It’s not the laptop, the hardware is fine. It’s the new operating system, Microsoft Windows Vista. Vista is, quite simply put, a nightmare! We have had problem after problem. I can’t get most of my programs to run under Vista. I can’t get a lot of my data transferred (from Outlook) into their new mail/calendar program. We’ve already had to wipe the hard drive once and start over. That worked for about 3 days and now I’m having more problems. Last night, my email locked up and I lost a lot of mail. So, if you’ve emailed me lately and are waiting on a reply, there’s a good chance I no longer have your email to reply back to. I’ve also lost all the emails I had stored in folders, to save.

I really am quite exasperated, and I don’t know what to do. I really want a laptop and I love everything about this one except Vista. Tim, I think, sort of wants to take it back, but we don’t have a lot of options. We can’t walk into a store and buy any brand of laptop that doesn’t have Vista on it. A Mac or iBook is not an option for me. Neither of us know the first thing about Apple computers. I come from a Windows background, as does Tim, as well as him being a Unix guru. We’ve both thought about wiping the hard drive and installing Linux, but we haven’t gotten that drastic. For one thing, I don’t think I can use iTunes (for my iPod) on Unix.

ACK! My head is about to explode. I’ll try to post later today with a fun question or maybe something remotely interesting. I have a book that I finished that I wanted to review, but quite honestly, I’m so distraught about the laptop right now that I can’t quite think straight. Later, alligators 😀

Here I go, swiping from fellow bloggers again! As seen here on Dawn’s blog:

Condiments

1. What do you like on a hot dog? Mayonnaise and mustard. No ketchup unless Tim makes me. I can do onion but I’m not fond of relish. I like sauerkraut on my brats, but that’s not technically a hot dog. Just lots of mayo, please.

2. What do you like on a hamburger? Lots of mayo, some mustard, one drop of ketchup. A slice of dill pickle. Some red onion. If I feel like I can have the extra calories, some cheese.

3. What do you like on a baked potato? Load it up, baby! Everything – butter, sour cream, bacon bits, cheese, anything. Yummy, I love loaded potatoes 🙂

4. What do you like on a slice of toast? Butter and jelly. I’ll eat most any kind of jelly, as long as it’s smooth, without chunks like slivers of orange in orange marmalade. My favorite would be grape or strawberry or raspberry, I guess.

5. What do you like in a cup of coffee or tea? Coffee, I need Splenda and some flavored creamer (not the powdered kind). In tea, I need sugar. In hot tea, I usually use honey or Splenda.

And, along the same lines, how about an easy Question of the Day: Spring is around the corner, and we’ll be grilling out more. Let’s say we’re having a cookout at our house, and you’re invited. We’re grilling out hamburgers and hotdogs – which would you pick? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Tim sent me an email earlier today that had some one-liners in them. Some of them were funny, some of them were crass, and a few even tried to be profound. This one was my favorite:

Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

So, I guess that’s the thought for today!

Oh, and happiness for me is what I’m doing right now — sitting out on my deck, reading my book, listening to Tim and Beau play in the back yard, hearing the birds singing, then hearing the bells at the church nearby chime and play a hymn on the hour. I just realized that it’s not going to be dark soon, and I can read for a while longer before I have to go inside and cook supper. Sounds like heaven, n’est-ce pas?!

That almost makes up for how tired I am from “springing forward”! 😀 Is anyone else feeling the effects of the time change?

It’s that time of the week again! Thanks to Laura over at OrgJunkie for hosting this every week. You can check out her site for a list of everyone playing and their menus 🙂

First off, an update on a couple of new-to-me recipes from last week. Thursday night, I made the Creamy Salmon Chowder that my sister Gail has made and liked. We liked it too, but I don’t think I’ll make it all that often. Tim is not that fond of fish and he likes his food, soups included, to have meat in them. I wasn’t able to convince him that salmon is meat. It’s fish, he says, fish. 😀

The chicken-olive calzones were a really big hit, though! I was supposed to make them on Friday, but we went out on a date and pigged out on ribs, so we had the calzones on Saturday night. They were really good. I’ve just entered the recipe here on our family website. I’ll definitely make these again, Tim loved them!

Now, on to this week’s menu:

Monday – A meal for my sweetie – Ham, black-eyed peas, turnip greens and cornbread (I’ll eat ham, cornbread and probably make myself a fruit salad).

Tuesday – Easy Texas chili, leftover cornbread

Wednesday – Light night before Tim weighs in – Grilled Chicken Salad

Thursday – new recipe for Crockpot Chicken Spaghetti (saw it a few weeks ago over on Annie‘s blog, looks yummy!), homemade sourdough bread

Friday – Date Night, yeah!

Saturday – TBD

Sunday – Frito Pie

Happy Anniversary to my darling Tim – the love of my life and the most wonderful man I know. Tim was brave enough to take me on and promise to love, honor and cherish me all the days of his life, on this day, eleven years ago. He’s done that and more – Tim treats me like the most important person in his life, every day of the year, no matter what is happening in our lives. He’s so good to me, and I love him dearly. Tim – I can’t imagine my life without you, and I hope I never will. I promise here again, to love you with all of my heart, for all of the days of our life here on earth, and afterwards for all eternity. I love you totally and completely, as I know you love me.

Happy Anniversary sweetheart!

I love Karen’s questions every week over at Blog Talkers, but darn it if I don’t keep forgetting to play {ducking head in shame}. Then, I see my buddy Stacy over at Vader’s Mom has played, and low and behold, hers has pictures of the same kinds of clothes that I would pick.

So, Stacy, I’m totally not copying you, but remember – great minds do think alike!

Here’s this week’s question: What three things in your clothes closet could you not live without?

Easy peasy. I’m a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl. I would love to say that I wear shorts all summer, but alas, my legs look downright frightful and even though it’s hotter than blue blazes here for most of the year, I tend to wear capris and some shorts in the summer, and jeans the rest of the time. I absolutely cannot live without my jeans. Love them. Wear them everywhere. Out to run errands, to the grocery, to the movies, shopping, out to dinner. So jeans, definitely.

My favorite t-shirts are my Life is Good shirts. I am slowly building a nice little collection of them. I only have one long-sleeve one, but I have quite a few short sleeve ones now. I also have some of their pj’s, socks, cap and a mug. I am totally and completely in love with their products. Going into a store that carries their stuff is like showing an alcoholic a free, open bar. It’s very very very hard to resist!

Lastly, I’d have to pick my favorite sweatshirt. I have a thick red sweatshirt we bought in Washington DC two summers ago when we were there on vacation. I love that sweatshirt and wear it whenever it’s the slightest bit chilly here.

There ya go! Even though we have a week to play, I’m horribly late again this week. Karen will put up a new question on Sunday – go over and check it out and play along if you’d like!