Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Not Really Wordless Wednesday

I used my entire kitchen counter (tiny as it is) & parts of the sink & stove-top to assemble the ingredients for my lunch the next day.


Worth it? Oh yeah!


Ingredients: spinach, grilled chicken, feta cheese, almonds, strawberries, blueberries, chopped apple.

Monday, July 15, 2013

50x50 Update



Oh I am so not really paying attention to this list! The very first item is: Review this list every Sunday & plan which items I can do that week. Well THAT hasn’t happened. I’ve had items on the list vaguely floating around my head, but there are a number of things that I’ve totally forgotten – like cooking something new once per month. Oops.

So, in the interest of trying to figure out what they heck I’m doing, here is the whole list, with some commentary. Completed items are in red (I've done 15!). Feel free to just skim or totally skip – I wanted to have a post with all 50 items on it.

1.       Review this list every Sunday & plan which items I can do that week. I am seriously going to start doing this again!

2.        Go see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center.

3.        Visit the Leo Petroglyph.

4.        Go to an exhibit at the local historical society museum.

5.        Check out the Serpent Mound again.

6.        Make exercise as much of a habit as brushing & flossing my teeth! (I have come up with some mini goals to make this happen). I am working on this one – my new bicycle is already motivating me!

7.       Corral my sweet tooth. Your guess is as good as mine as to how I do it, but I’m going to start by writing down everything I eat – especially since most people who lost weight & kept it off used a food journal. I’ll reevaluate this goal in June 2013 to see how things are going. I am off the rails on this one, but I’m trying again. This time it’s “no sweets during the week.” We’ll see how that goes.

8.        Stay in a cabin in Hocking Hills.

9.       Work a jigsaw puzzle in my own home (this will require sacrificial use of the kitchen table). I have the puzzle – now I’m just waiting for winter because why would I sit inside & work a puzzle when I have a back yard to enjoy & bicycling to do?

10.      Watch the rest of the Thin Man movies.

11.     Go see Les Misérables in the theater.

12.      Go to a Cincinnati Reds baseball game.

13.     Reduce our debt by $10,000 (more would be better!).

14.     Eat fast food no more than twice per week. This has possibly happened on some weeks, but I haven’t really been keeping track

15.      Reduce my use of frozen dinners for lunch – no more than two per week (less would be better!). This is also a work in progress – I’m trying to take more leftovers for lunch, or eat sandwiches.

16.      Turn the computer off & crochet more in the evenings (I’ll need an action plan for this one – perhaps a buzzer that goes off at 8:00 so I have to get off of Facebook?). I did ok with this until spring – but now for some reason I’m back to my bad ways.

17.      Drink 36 ounces of actual water a day (more would be better!). I recently switched to a 25 oz. cup at work, so this is actually happening now.

18.      Do the jar of notes about good things for 2013 (Note: Find a jar for the notes). I love this! It’s so much fun to sit down at the end of the day & write something to put in the jar. Can you guess what the last one was? (Actually, getting my bicycle was the next to last – the last one was finishing a book that really touched my heart.)

19.      Organize the spare room (I might have to do this in stages).

20.      Get my hair trimmed at least twice! Trim #2 is scheduled for next tomorrow!

21.      Finally go see my Aunt Mimi’s house & property.

22.      Visit the site of Henry River Mill Village.

23.      <!Visit my cousin Scottie & her husband John.

24.      Find a pair of short black boots suitable for work and snow. I don’t EVEN care about this right now!

25.      Text my brother once per week
26.      Visit Carillon Historical Park

27.      Visit Huffman Prairie Flying Field

28.      Try to crochet a garment for myself (not a hat or scarf. Maybe this.)

29.      Get rid of my stamping & scrapbooking things (to make room for yarn – ha!)

30.     Try to grow lettuce.

31.      Finally visit Rita & Mike. This is scheduled for next month – woot!

32.      Meet K, J & S in the mountains like we’ve planned for two years now.

33.      Stop drinking diet drinks. This means giving up caffeine because I know I won't drink enough tea to make a difference.

34.      Finally clean up all the clutter at the office (I know my boss would be thrilled about this one). Well this is definitely going to happen by December because our office is moving!

35.      Make an appointment to see a dermatologist just because.

36.     Finish reading the Mary Russell books. I’ve read one more – I think I have three left (of the ones I was given).
37.      Cook something new once per month (yeah – I’m not aiming for the moon here – ha!). As I’ve already mentioned I totally forgot this goal. I did make something new in April. And in May Dr. M made something that I was planning to make – does that count?
38.      Go through my closet with a fierce and brutal eye.
39.      See Anne & Ken face to face again.
40.      Write my 1000th blog post. Only 31 to go!
41.      Take Dr. M to Trader Joe’s.
42.      Write down all the movies we watch (so I can remember if I’ve watched the movie – sheesh!). Oops – another forgotten goal. Although we haven’t really watched very many movies since I started the list…
43.      Go see Spam-A-Lot
44.     Go to a performance at the Schuster center.
45.      Visit Siebenthaler Fen once per season (Spring is done)
46.      Go to the NC Outer Banks
47.     Write & post 40 poems no matter how bad they are. I’ve written 4 – hey, I’m 10% done!
48.      Come up with two more things by the time I’m 50!
49.      Ride a bicycle!
50.      Buy a bicycle! Yes, I’m cheating – this wasn’t on the list until after I’d done it. Ha!


Sunday, July 14, 2013

2013 Project 365 – Week Twenty-Eight

It was just a normal summer week in the Bug household – except for Wednesday which was extra fabulous!
Sunday, July 7th
The march of the daylilies continues…


I went to visit our neighbors – I wanted to take them the gift we brought back from our trip. While I was there I took a picture of their gorgeous hydrangea. I love this color!



Mr. Ken had a heart valve replacement (with a pig valve) a few weeks ago & his children thought this pig shaped bird house was pretty funny (so did I). Ha!


Monday, July 8th  
Flowers around the yard.


Tuesday, July 9th           
Dr. M took some lovely flower pictures today.




I love the bee which is totally covered in pollen…


Wednesday, July 10th   
Mr. Ken’s rose has decided to send an emissary to our side of the fence – ha!


When I got home from work Dr. M had assembled my new bicycle!!


The State of the Bug – thrilled!


Thursday, July 11th    
The sunflower field near us is early this year – lovely!


The moon!


Friday, July 12th   
More daylily sunshine.


I got some surprise Feryl Designs earrings in the mail yesterday so of course I had to wear them today. Sweet! If you need any interesting jewelry made by someone I actually know, check out her shop!


Saturday, July 13th     
Lots of pictures today. I went to church in the morning to set up the altar, & then did a little weeding & trimming. I brought home some lavender.


Dr. M came in & said, “You have GOT to see this!” I went out to the garden & looked at our volunteer tomato plant. We had assumed that it was an heirloom like the one we had last year. Nope – grape tomatoes! Aren’t they cute?


D. M & I deadheaded Daisy Nation. Thank goodness he helped – I might STILL be out there. Strangely, even though we had a basket full of spent blooms, Daisy Nation seemed undiminished. Ha!



We had a few accidental beheadings. Aren’t they lovely?


A picture of the progress of the cypress vine. This is from June 1st.


And this is from July 13th. The hummingbirds love this stuff – so what if we might have trouble getting in the garage door?


The moon!


Go to Mamma Fran’s blog here to see the blogs of all the other Project 365 participants. Have a great week!


Most of our photos are taken with a 12 megapixel Nikon D5000 DSLR, using a 55-200mm zoom lens. This is the camera that Dr. M takes with him most days. He also takes pictures with our old reliable 7 megapixel Canon Powershot A710.  The Bug uses our new Nikon Coolpix S6200 most of the time. If you’re interested in which camera was used for a particular shot, just ask! 

Thursday, July 11, 2013

10 on 10

Just another day in the life of the Bug...

Thought I'd straighten my hair this morning. Hair has never been part of my skill set - results may frequently vary.




I wanted to get an early morning picture of one of our day lilies - they're so cool & spiky...

Morning snack.


I wanted to try one of the new Wendy's pretzel burgers for lunch - VERY yummy. But you can see how well they listened to my "no onions" request - ha!

I tried to do something other than eat today, but our internet was glacial for a bit. Took me 20 minutes to print a UPS label!

Took a walk & listened to my audio book. The earring looks really funky - that red part is actually silver. It was just reflecting my red camera :)

We have new phones at work. For some reason I like how the number 3 shows up on the screen. Yes, I waited until 3:33 so I could take a picture. Is that weird? I think that's weird :)

Afternoon thunderstorm - glad I took my walk earlier!

My view for most of my commute home. Sigh.

When I got home Dr. M had assembled my new bicycle! I'm so excited to have it - I rode around the neighborhood twice. The silly little basket is just mostly decorative - but it will hold my camera. Ha!

Sunday, July 7, 2013

2013 Project 365 – Week Twenty-Seven

As I promised last week there are a lot of pictures this week. And there would have been twice as many if Dr. M had not used a bunch in his own post from today. We took a short trip up to Lake Erie for the 4th and naturally took a bluemillion pictures (except that my camera died Thursday night – the horror! – so there aren’t as many pictures as there could have been - & only one of Dr. M).
We saw a lot of different birds on our trip – barn swallows, red winged black birds, egrets, herons, ducks, geese, swans… If you want to see those pictures go to Dr. M’s post.
Sunday, June 30th
Dr. M & I enjoyed our annual church picnic. It’s held at the lake-side home of two church members. Nice!


Monday, July 1st  
Daylily – I wonder if the novelty of having our very own lilies will ever wear off?


I went to flip my calendar to July & saw something very strange.


Can you see it now? Since when is there a 31st of June? I was afraid that the numbering of all the remaining months would be off, but July started on a Monday like it was supposed to. Ha!

Tuesday, July 2nd           
Dr. M passes fields like this all the time – ditch lilies & corn :)


Why, it’s a robin taking a bath!


Papa cardinal looks like he’s trying to remember where he left something…


Wednesday, July 3rd   
We drove up to Port Clinton, Ohio today – it’s about 3 ½ hours north of where we live. On the way we listened to Jimi Hendrix & I worked on a new shawl.


The condos next to our motel had the prettiest flowers along the fence.


We stayed at the Travelodge – very economical. The room was huge, and I loved that we were able to park right outside the door. It’s not a Four Star joint by any stretch, but suited us to a T.


Plus, this was our view!




Thursday, July 4th    
We drove out to Fort Meigs today. It's the site of a War of 1812 battle. Every year they reenact the July 4, 1813 celebration. They have an 18 gun salute (for the then 18 states) and 18 toasts. We wanted to be there for the 200th anniversary & were thrilled that it did NOT rain while we were there – score!




This was one of the three toastmasters. That’s tea in his glass – not sherry – so he gets a minus point for historical accuracy. Ha! But doesn’t he look dapper? Here’s an example of one of the toasts: “To the Day of our Freedom – Its blessings to all the world. It should admonish our ancient and inveterate enemy, Great Britain, that what was purchased by the blood of our fathers their sons will be ever ready to maintain.” No offense to my British readers :)


Dr. M enjoyed all the cannon fire.


I also “enjoyed” it. Heh.


As we were leaving Dr. M took pictures of some of the flowers near the visitor’s center – lovely!


That evening we ate perch dinners at a local tavern & then I had the strawberry shortcake – delicious!


Friday, July 5th   
Today we took the ferry out to Kelley’s Island.



We watched one of our favorite mainland lighthouses on our way out – Marblehead Lighthouse.


The island is the site of some glacial grooves which are pretty interesting.


If you look closely in this picture you can see the shorts I was wearing – I got quite a number of looks with these babies on. They’re actually Dr. M’s swim trunks. When we were packing I realized that I only had one pair of shorts to take on the trip & I was NOT going to go shopping at that late date. I really have reached the age where I just don’t care what other people think – ha! (Although I did take the trouble to find a shirt that matched.)


We drove around the island quite a bit – passed this house several times. I think the flowers are gorgeous! Kelley’s Island always has a lot of nice flowers.


One of the things we did was to rent bicycles! It’s on my 50x50 list (I promise to update you on that soon!) – glad to check that off. I had a blast. Unfortunately there aren’t any pictures because my camera battery had died the night before – and we weren’t going to lug the big one along on a bike ride! So instead, here’s this picture of me on the ferry as we’re headed back to Port Clinton. I was one sweaty chick!


Sunset on our last night there.


Saturday, July 6th     
On our way home we stopped for dinner. I nearly fell asleep before the food arrived! The State of the Bug - blissed out!


We were glad to find that apparently our flowers continue to grow just fine in our absence. Whew!


[Note: I haven’t read any blogs since Tuesday. It might be a while before I get caught up!]

Go to Mamma Fran’s blog here to see the blogs of all the other Project 365 participants. Have a great week!


Most of our photos are taken with a 12 megapixel Nikon D5000 DSLR, using a 55-200mm zoom lens. This is the camera that Dr. M takes with him most days. He also takes pictures with our old reliable 7 megapixel Canon Powershot A710.  The Bug uses our new Nikon Coolpix S6200 most of the time. If you’re interested in which camera was used for a particular shot, just ask! 

2026 Project 365 – Week Twenty-two

What a week! Worked all the hours in all the land, visited Dad & Sue extra because he has injured his knee and can’t get around right no...