Exceedingly Mundane

I post about our dog Beau constantly over at my Project365 blog, but I haven’t posted much about him here. I just couldn’t resist today, though.

Beau loves to hunt for squirrels and lizards in our back yard. He stands or lays by the back door for hours at a time. We certainly haven’t discouraged it over the last (almost) year that we’ve had him. We’ve probably even fostered it and encouraged this behavior in him. He’s been known to stalk a squirrel for a while, but he never catches those. The lizards, on the other hand, are fair game. I’ve personally witnessed him maiming and even killing the poor things.

Beau must have spotted a lizard on the deck today. They often run along our deck railing, and if you open the back door, they will either scurry off, hide between the deck planks, or jump over to the tree that is right off the deck. Apparently one jumped into the tree, or Beau thought he did, because he spent 15 or 20 minutes jumping up and down on the ground, trying to get to a certain branch.

He jumped up from the deck a few times:

Then, he got smart and remembered he could jump up on the glider. I didn’t get a photo of that, because I stopped to GASP when I saw what he did a split second after jumping up in the glider. Something he’s never ever done before, and really scared me a little! But, my big Lab boy WANTED his lizard!

No, he didn’t get the lizard, and no, he thankfully did NOT break a leg getting down. I threw my camera down right after taking the last photo. I could see his legs starting to quiver and he looked a little worried about jumping down. I was afraid he was going to be a big dummy and jump down to the ground. About the time I opened the back door, he realized he could jump back down the same way he came up, via the glider, so he was fine. He still wanted to hunt for that lizard for a long time after that though 🙂

P.S. I had already posted a photo for today over at my Project365 blog, but I just can’t resist posting the last one over there too 🙂

Today’s Question of the Day is all about your watch. 🙂

Do you wear a watch every day? Do you wear it on your left wrist or your right? Do you have more than one watch? Do they bother you, or do you feel naked without yours on?

My answers: I wear a watch most of the time. I always wear one when I leave the house. I have two watches – a nice one and a sports one. I wear the sports one if I am going walking, going somewhere really casual, etc. Otherwise, I wear my nicer watch. I always wear mine on my left wrist. I have always heard that you do that if you are right-handed. Not sure. 🙂 I sometimes wear one around the house. It all depends. I am wearing one more now because we’ve taken down our clock in our living room. We’re looking for another one, a bigger one, and right now, there is not a clock hanging in the spot where there has been one for over 14 years. I find myself glancing at that spot all day long, trying to find the clock. So, I’ve taken to wearing my watch instead. Make sense?

How about you? Do you wear a watch regularly, and if so, which wrist? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Have a great day

I updated my Project365 blog last night, and it seems that I’m doing more blogging over there than here. Go figure. I assume that once this project is over, I’ll go back to more “normal” blogging here, whatever that means. I’ll go back to posting photos here, and talking about what we are doing or did. I just don’t seem to have an interesting enough life to maintain entries on two blogs 🙄

Let’s see… I blogged here and here about what all we did over the weekend. This past weekend had a lot of golf! I went with Tim on Friday afternoon to the golf course, to hang out with him. It’s Tim’s most ardent desire in life that I learn to love golf, want to play, and that we can go together to play golf 5 or 6 days a week. Sadly, this is not my goal in life! I really don’t like golf that much. The idea of taking that piece of metal and swinging at that little ball holds absolutely no appeal to me at the moment 🙂 Saturday was also a day of golf – for Tim. He went to the PGA tournament that took place near our house. Sunday, my dad drove up and we all went to the German Fest near our house.

We’re back into a decent slate of watching TV most every night. We’re trying a couple of new shows – Chuck on Mondays, Bionic Woman on Wednesdays and Tim started watching and liked “Life” on NBC on Wednesday night (right after Bionic Woman). We’ve cut way down on our movie watching from Netflix, now that all of the fall shows have started. We have, however, picked up a new TV show, via Netflix. Tim watched several episodes of “Heroes” last year and was always trying to get me to watch. This year, as last year, I felt like I had enough shows that I watched and hated to start anymore, so I resisted. Now, we are renting Season 1 of Heroes via Netflix and I’m already hooked. He was right – this is my kind of show. Sigh. We’re also still watching, slowly, the Gilmore Girls on DVD. We’ve made it through 3 seasons and have ordered the next two on DVD. And, of course, there’s LOTS of football on TV! 😀

I’ve still been reading a fair amount. I’ve recently finished “1st to Die” by James Patterson – the first in the Women’s Murder Club series books. I had wanted to read one of these to see how gory or descriptive of violence they were. Nothing I can’t handle, so I’ve got another new series to read. I wanted to read one of these before the new TV show started, based on these books. I think it starts in mid-October and stars Angie Harmon. I hope it will be a good show! Let’s see, I’ve read another couple of books that were just so-so for me. I read “The Tavern on Maple Street” by Sharon Owens. I’ve read one other by Owens before, she’s very similar to Maeve Binchy, a good Irish writer. It was good, just so-so for me. As was “Underdog” by Laurien Berenson. She apparently writes cozy type mysteries with dog titles, so I had hoped I would love these. This one I read was just okay for me too. The dog is a Standard Poodle and there was a lot in this book about dog shows, and grooming dogs for showing, which doesn’t interest me at all. I might give one more of her books a chance, someday. I also finished “The Redemption of Sarah Cain” by Beverly Lewis, another good Amish book. Up next, I have another cozy mystery by Laura Levine. I read one by her recently entitled “This Pen for Hire” and enjoyed it. Hopefully I will like this new one “The PMS Murder” also. Then, after that, I have the last book in the Firstborn series by Karen Kingsbury (“Forever“) and the most recent one by Janet Evanovich “Lean Mean Thirteen“. I have been on the wait list for a long time for the latest Stephanie Plum book. I started out as number 16 on the wait list at the library, and now my time has come! 🙂 Oh, and for the record, I’ve completed 87 books so far this year, with a total of 25,855 pages read. 🙂

I have also checked out a couple of cookbooks from the library, and have been busy going through those. I’ve gone through one completely – Taste of Home Everyday Light Meals. I’ve copied out over 20 recipes that interested me. It looks like a good cookbook, but since I’ve gone through and “got what I wanted”, I won’t be buying this one for my shelves. I’ll post a listing on the extended page of the recipes I copied out. If anyone would like to see a copy of the recipe, I can email it to you. I haven’t made any of these recipes yet, so I can’t vouch for how they taste!

I’ve still be in a bit of a fall cleaning mode around here. Heaven help me, but I’ve even started cleaning windows! Gasp. That doesn’t happen very often. I wonder if the earth stopped rotating on its axis for a bit 😀

Hope everyone has a great day!

Click for recipe listing… Read the rest of this entry »

Last week went pretty much according to plan. I made everything on my menu that I had planned, except for the beef stew (which was a stand-by meal, anyway. I want it to cool off a little more before I make some stew). We stayed really busy all week with football and golf, and then the German festival yesterday. I hope we can stick to plan this week too!

Thanks to Laura at OrgJunkie for organizing and hosting this each week! Go check out her blog and you’ll find tons more recipes and menu plans.

Monday – Maple BBQ Chicken Sandwiches, fries or chips, broccoli for Stacy

Tuesday – Grilled Chicken (Tim) / Grilled Fish (Stacy), sweet potatoes, veggie

Wednesday – Tomato Soup & Grilled Cheese

Thursday – Sausage Skillet Dinner, green beans or other veggie

Friday – Date Night or Pizza

Saturday – TBD

Sunday – Game Day Food – probably either Frito Pie or wings and fries

Feast One Hundred & Sixty Two
September 28, 2007

Appetizer
How are you today? Ok! Fridays are always pretty good – start of the weekend, so enough said! 🙂

Soup
Name 3 television shows you watch on a regular basis. JUST Three?! Silly, it’s hard to pick JUST three! Dancing with Stars, Survivor, NCIS, The Unit. New shows, I think we’re going to like and stick with – Bionic Woman and maybe Chuck

Salad
What’s the scariest weather situation you’ve experienced? Nothing very scary, thankfully. The worst was Hurricane Katrina. The wind and the sound of it got to me after several hours.

Main Course
If you could wake up tomorrow morning in another country, where would you want to be? Scotland

Dessert
What do you usually wear to sleep? I have several sets of PJ’s, summer ones and winter ones. Depends, but this time of year it’s a pair of soft boxer type bottoms and a soft nightshirt that matches

Well, I’m still in somewhat of a blogging rut. Can’t seem to think of anything very interesting to blog about. I’ve finished a couple of books but haven’t felt “moved” to write any kind of book review or blurb about them. I’m enjoying all of the TV shows this week, but I’ve already touched on that. I’m trying to go through some cookbooks that I checked out from the library, and enter any recipes in my recipe software that look good. That’s ending up taking a TON of time. So, that leaves less time for reading, less time for blogging, and less time for reading my favorite blogs. My Google Reader hovers around the 100 mark all the time. It’s very disheartening 🙁

So, as a variation of the “Question of the Day”, I thought I’d ask what you’re going to have, or have already had, for lunch today. I normally eat leftovers, but I don’t have any right now, so other than a sandwich or a Hot Pocket, I’ll be scrounging for lunch. Give me some ideas – what are you eating today?

As a bonus, you can tell me what you had for breakfast also. I had a bowl of Raisin Bran Crunch and a big mug of fat free cappuccino (from a dry mix, just add hot water. What a cop-out, huh?!) 😀

Have a great day!

As seen recently on Magnolia Mom‘s blog… any meme related to FOOD is right up my alley!

1. How do you like your eggs? Any which way, as long as the white is not runny (I think that’s called “sunny side up”). I eat poached eggs, boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, eggs over easy (fried).

2. How do you take your coffee/tea? Coffee with lots of Splenda and creamer. Flavored creamer. Currently have White Chocolate Raspberry and French Vanilla in the fridge. Tea needs a bit of Splenda to sweeten it also. It’s a Southern “thang”, I guess 😀

3. Favorite breakfast food: I never met a breakfast food I didn’t like. I love cereal, eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, oatmeal, pancakes, waffles, and the list goes on and on.

4. Peanut butter – smooth or crunchy? Smooth for me. I won’t turn down crunchy, but I’d rather have creamy.

5. What kind of dressing on your salad? Honey mustard, a vinaigrette or most anything will be fine for me 🙂

6. Coke or Pepsi? COKE. Coke Zero specifically. If I go somewhere with only Pepsi products available, I want Code Red or Dr Pepper

7. You’re feeling lazy, what do you make? Breakfast food, rumien (Tim’s pumped up ramen noodle concoction), or maybe spaghetti

8. You’re feeling really lazy. What kind of pizza do you order? Tim would order supreme, but if I got to pick, it would either be a Hawaiian (pineapple and Canadian bacon or ham) or a pepperoni and mushroom combo

9. You feel like cooking. What do you make? A big pot of homemade soup and a loaf of homemade bread.

10. Do any foods bring back good memories? Chicken and dumplings or chicken and rice. I also have wonderful memories of some special meals out with Tim 🙂

11. Do any foods bring back bad memories? BEETS. I have a story that I’ve been meaning to blog about for ages. About how I had to sit at the table until I finished my plate. My plate had beets on it, even though I begged and pleaded for none to be put on my plate. I sat there for about 6 hours, until finally my mom screamed at my dad so much he finally let me get up. Which was wonderful, since I had had to pee for like 3 hours 🙁

12. Do any foods remind you of someone? Some foods remind me of Tim and others remind me of my grandmother. Oddly enough, I don’t remember any special ones from my mom, which is so sad.

More questions on the next page… 🙂
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If you’ve visited here much, you probably already know that I’m a self-proclaimed TV addict. Not so much in the summer, when there’s not much on that we like to watch. But when all of the new shows crank up in the fall, I revert right back into TV Junkie mode. I’m so glad that time has come!

Survivor: China started last Thursday and I loved it. Dancing with the Stars started last night, but I had to tape it since we watched Monday Night football. Tonight, we have Bones, NCIS and The Unit. There’s a couple of new shows that we want to check out and see if we like, including Chuck, Bionic Woman, and The Women’s Murder Club (which doesn’t premiere until mid-October). There’s a few returning shows that we’re on the fence about whether we’ll watch or not. Some of those are Prison Break, Heroes (Tim watched, but not regularly), CSI, Without a Trace, Shark and Numb3rs. We still have a lot of football through the end of the year, so that will limit some of what we watch during the week.

How about you – are there any returning shows or new shows you want to watch or are excited about?

Have a great day!

I got out my bread machine this afternoon, to make some buttermilk wheat bread. I’ve made this recipe before, and it’s really good. I opened up my wheat flour and it smelled horrible – rancid. That happens a lot to me here. With our heat and humidity, I can’t keep wheat flour for very long. I’ve tried putting it in the freezer, but it doesn’t seem to rise as much. So, I tossed the whole thing and set out to find another recipe.

I looked around on AllRecipes.com and found a similar recipe that uses buttermilk and all white bread flour. This bread turned out really good! I think we really enjoyed it with our potato soup tonight because we don’t normally have white bread – I usually make bread with at least some wheat flour.

I just entered the recipe on Hambones.org, here. Here’s what it looked like when we cut it (and yes, it was right out of the oven. Tim can’t wait. It was hot and still steaming):

Well, fall is here, but it’s still pretty warm. We’re expecting 80’s most every day this week, but I’m going to start putting some fall type comfort foods on my menu anyway. Maybe if I cook like it’s cooler, the temperature will actually turn cooler, hehehe 🙂 Last week went pretty much according to plan. I made everything on my menu but the spaghetti, but that’s always a “fall back” type of meal for me – I always have everything on hand, so I can make that anytime. This week – well, this week is another story. We have a PGA golf tournament here, two football games on TV (the Saints on Monday Night Football and our college team on Thurs PM), plus a German festival this coming weekend that we almost always go to and get brats. So — very little of this might actually get cooked! Sigh. A girl can plan though 😀

Thanks to Laura at OrgJunkie for organizing and hosting this each week! Go check out her blog and you’ll find tons more recipes and menu plans.

Monday – Golden Potato Soup, Buttermilk Wheat Bread

Tuesday – baked chicken, garlic smashed potatoes, green beans

Wednesday – Light Night before Tim weighs in – eggs, oatmeal, toast

Thursday – Football Food – Pepperoni Bread, bean dip and chips

Friday – Date Night or Beef Stew

Saturday – Date Night or Spaghetti, bread, broccoli (stand by meal)

Sunday – German Festival or Frito Pie

Wow, I’m so behind on my blog reading. As I was reading some of my favorite blogs, I found that two of my blogger buddies have nominated moi for this award, aren’t they just the sweetest thing? Both Amy and Sandra nominated me for the “You Make Me Smile” award – and they definitely both make me smile 🙂

The sentiment behind this award:
the thing that I love most about blogging is that I learn so much about a person just by reading their blog. I have met MANY wonderful people with wonderful stories to tell,and I am grateful every day for each person that I have the pleasure of crossing paths in life with.I wanted to create something special for people who have inspired me through their blogging; the stories they tell, and the lives that they lead with grace and dignity. I visit their blogs for inspiration and encouragement.Although there are MANY people I want to give this award to at this very moment, I am going to choose ten bloggers:Please grab your badge and wear it(with a smile) proudly, and pass it on because you inspire and encourage me, thank you.So, now it is my turn to pass it on

Well, I’m not going to choose ten bloggers, but I will pass this along to some other bloggers who make me smile. All of these ladies are sweet, kind, generous souls, and their happiness and joy shows through in their blogs. They always make me smile 🙂

Susie – at her new spot Georgia Bloom

Kim – at Mom Musings

Heidi – at God’s Grace in Practice

Momma – at Momma’s Mind

Karen – at Over the Backyard Fence

Stacy – at Vader’s Mom

Feast One Hundred & Sixty One
September 21, 2007

Appetizer
What is your favorite type of art? Um, I’m not really into art of any kind. How about clip art for the computer?!

Soup
When was the last time you got a free lunch (or breakfast or dinner)? Who paid for it? Let’s see, last week, my dad bought mine and my sister’s lunch when we drove down to visit him for the day. And Tim took me out to dinner, on a date, last weekend 🙂

Salad
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how emotional are you? Not overly, maybe a 4 or 5?

Main Course
Approximately how long do you spend each day responding to emails? Gosh, I don’t know, I’ve never really thought about it. Some days, I just let it pile up and barely glance at it. Then, after a couple of days and my inbox piles up, I’ll sit down and go through it, replying, deleting and filing emails.

Dessert
To what temperature do you usually set your home’s thermostat? In the summer, way up on 80. On the winter it’s way down on about 62 or something (at night, higher in the day). Our thermostat in this house was installed in the worst possible place – right outside the front bedroom, which faces west with it’s very large window. Heat streams in all summer long and the thermostat never thinks it cools off. They should have put the thermostat somewhere towards the middle of the house. At least away from a big window that lets sunlight and heat in 🙄

I have a quick question and wanted to get a little feedback. I’m starting to enter our books into LibraryThing. A dear, sweet friend sent me a one-year gift subscription she had won (but she is already a lifetime member), so I am going to get busy and start cataloging our books. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, so this is just what I needed to get me jump-started on another project.

I had looked quite a bit into downloading a stand-alone program to my computer, and using that to catalog our books. I did that with our DVD’s (although it’s not totally up to date, boo-hoo). But then I thought — what’s the fun in that? Half of the fun of programs like LibraryThing, Shelfari and others is that you can share, see what others are reading, and it’s so cute with the covers added. I don’t think the standalone program I was looking at had cover art. 🙂

Anyway, I’ve started with one of our bookcases, and I have more to go. My question is – if you were entering your collection of books (or if you already have), would you enter your cookbooks? I have a LOT of cookbooks, a couple of shelves worth. I love cookbooks. I check some out of the library (see yesterday’s photo post here), to see if I like them and would buy them. I want a lot more than I buy. I mean, seriously, as much as I love them, I am realistic. I don’t use them as much as I should. I tend to find recipes online these days, either via Menu Plan Monday or sites like AllRecipes.com. But, back to my question, if you were entering your books in an online system, would you enter cookbooks too, or just fiction/non-fiction books?

OK, I’m off to fix me some lunch. I have some leftover brown rice, so I’m going to make myself some fried rice and fix an eggroll (some in the freezer, don’t think for a minute that I make my own!) 😀

Have a great day!

P.S. When I get most of my books entered, I’ll put my LibraryThing widget on my sidebar. I currently have a list on my sidebar that contains books I have yet to read. Under my sidebar, in my TBR List. I am trying to decide whether to keep that page or just use LibraryThing. Decisions, decisions 🙄

**UPDATE**: Ok, well I decided to go ahead and enter my cookbooks. I think I have most of my books entered now. I’ve placed the widget on my sidebar 🙂

Today has been a good day 🙂

We got up and went walking this morning with Beau. We have been walking 5-6 times a week for the last week or so and I am hoping it will eventually help. I got on the scales when I got up though, before we left, and I have not lost a single pound (or even a half pound) since the last time I weighed. Boo-hoo. Must be something I am eating! Anyway, it’s so nice these days in the morning. It’s so much cooler than it was a month ago, and it’s just beautiful in the early morning when we go walking.

I tackled a project today that I’ve been putting off for a while. I cleaned my stove. I have an old coil-style electric stove and my burners were dirty and gross. I also cleaned and scrubbed some other stuff in the kitchen, so that feels really good. I think I have a fall-cleaning thing going on. Nothing major, but I’ve been doing more cleaning, purging, organizing, scrubbing and stuff lately.

I cashed in some of our points on a hotel program that we belong to, and I’m going to get a small gift card to Amazon.com. Yeah! I will also cash in some points to MyPoints.com soon and also get an Amazon card. I’ll put those together and be able to get books. Glorious books 😀

I ran to the library and checked out more books. Now, I went to the library over the weekend and checked out 4 books. But I’ve read one of those, so I stopped by on my way to the grocery to return it. You know, I just can’t usually bring myself to drop the book in the drop-box and keep on driving. No. I have to park and go in, which assures me that I’ll check out more books. I have added them to my sidebar, and I also blogged over at my Project365 blog about the cookbooks I checked out. Post here.

I also blogged about Beau and put up a photo of him for yesterday’s Project365 post (here). I just love the way Beau is with his “stuff” and how far he’s come since we got him last fall. He really and truly is a wonderful dog now. We talk about it all the time. Beau is a testament to what a dog can be if you love him, discipline him, train him and watch him blossom into a loving, devoted companion.

I caught the last 20 minutes of Oprah and got to see Kelly Clarkson sing with Reba McEntire. I like both of those, so I will have to check out the album (“Reba Duets”) on iTunes. Might need to download that one soon!

Tim went after work to play golf, and I’m having some quiet time and trying to catch up on blogging, emails and computer stuff. Then I might read some. That’s sheer bliss to me.

After he gets in, we’ll have an easy and light supper. He weighs in tomorrow at work. We might watch a movie. We’ve rented a couple of good ones lately (“The Last Sin Eater” and “I Am David”) and we got in “The Ultimate Gift” yesterday. I’ve heard that’s a really good movie and I’m looking forward to seeing it.

Hope everyone else is having a red-letter day!

Today’s Question of the Day is all about dishwashers. We’ve talked about this some before, because I was surprised to find out that several of my blogger buddies don’t have a dishwasher. For those of you who do, I have a few questions.

We got a new dishwasher back in late April, when our old one finally died. My husband had repaired the old one 3 times, but finally we decided it was time for a new one. When we bought it, it came with 3 or 4 Electrosol gel tablet things to use in it. I had a large Sam’s size of the Cascade gel that I had been using in my old dishwasher. I used the Electrosol sample tabs that came with the new unit, and I’ve also bought some of the Cascade gel “power” tabs and I do like those. I think the gel tablets are quite a bit more expensive, but I do like using them. Much less mess and a lot easier to just pop the gel pac in there and turn it on. I am not sure if they get the dishes any cleaner with those gel pacs, though. I’m still trying to decide whether to get another large jug of Cascade gel or get a large tub of Cascade power gel pacs on my next trip to Sam’s Club.

So… after all of that rambling, here’s my questions: 1) What kind and brand of detergent do you use in your dishwasher 2) How often do you run your dishwasher and 3) Do you enjoy using your dishwasher or is it just an awful chore to load it, run it, unload it and put up the dishes and then start all over again? 🙂

For my answers to these questions: 1) I use Cascade, either gel or the new action tabs 2) I normally run my dishwasher about 3 times a week. If we have company, I run it more often, every day or so and 3) I actually enjoy doing dishes! I enjoy washing dishes, and I don’t mind loading and unloading the dishwasher 😛

Have a great day, everyone!