Ho Hum Weekend

Not much going on around here this weekend.
It's hotter than hell today so I am staying indoors with the a/c on after a trip outside to check on the garden.

I haven't gone anywhere since Friday when I hit the bank and Weis(PMITA)Markets to do that paper products deal again.  And yes, I got another $3 Catalina for doing the deal. 8-)

Hubs on the other hand, has made 5 trips out this weekend and even went down the mountain for 3 of them.

I called Sonya and Eldest son yesterday but evidently they both have a life on weekends, unlike me...... 8-(

I rode my bike another 8 miles the last 2 days.

I saw on the news last night that it was 109 in Shreveport Louisiana the other day.
OMG!  I think this plan to move to LA has to be rethought..............

I made a cheese grits and country ham casserole with leftover ham we had for breakfast Saturday. Served that with fried apple slices.  It was ok but nothing great.  As we don't eat much of a breakfast during the week here, I might pan fry slices of it in bacon fat and serve that for dinner one night this week to use it up.  That plus sometime green and healthier would make a right proper meal.

Speaking of food, I am working on both my July food spending post and my Savings Challenge post, as well as my Monday menu post this weekend.
Is it really time again to make another weekly menu??  Didn't I just make one 2 days ago? lolz

I might even start in on my May road trip series of posts too.

I did do a bit of genealogy digging on Saturday as I haven't been doing much with that hobby lately.  Found some interesting information on another "new to me" dead relation.  Might make a trip somewhere while on the Family Reunion excursion in September to flesh this info out and have something proper to post on it.  I also need to work on Part 2 of the genealogy post on my paternal grandfather but just haven't been "feeling it" lately.

We do have some excitement coming up in the coming week around Chez Sluggy though.

* Later this week finds us making a trip to Pittsburgh PA and then to Fredericksburg VA to move Eldest son.  The weather is suppose to be muggy and questionable those days which doesn't bode well.  I hope things turn out for the best even so.

* Then next week it's a quick visit from a blogging friend on her way through this area.  I will try not to poison her with my cooking and OMG this means I have to CLEAN THE HOUSE?....doesn't it???!!!
Oh, now I didn't think about that when I offered her dinner.  Maybe I can talk her into wearing sunglasses(better yet, a blindfold!)inside the house so she doesn't see all the cobwebs.......ya think?

Hubs and I need to go over some retirement type paperwork that he sent off for a couple of weeks ago.  Maybe we'll go through that tonight if I can stay awake.....stuff like this just makes me want to sleep. lolz

Ok, I am off to see what I can offer Hubs for dinner here tonight and get some more miles logged on the bike.
I doubt if he will think highly of leftover baked beans from the July 4th picnic which I really need to pitch out!

What's going on in your world?

Sluggy

Well I Lied & Other Randomness

*  I went out to Ollie's(Good Stuff Cheap!) yesterday for a mop but I didn't come home with one.

If I buy a mop I like to buy refills(sponge heads)that fit it.   Though they had some cheap mops, there were no refill heads and I won't buy a mop when I don't know where I can replacement heads for it.
I guess I'll continue to be the Queen of "spray the floor and use a rag/paper towel with my foot to clean" for awhile longer. 8-)

I did however, at Ollie's, buy FOUR books, a bath rug and a few food products(hummus dip/corn oil/dried refried bean mix/grated cheese shaker).  The food was $7.44 to add to my grocery spending.

Then I stopped at the Shursave grocery for a couple of things.....

1 x Flounder fillets on sale=$3.99
3 x mushrooms on sale=$5.00
6 x roma tomatoes=$2.26
Total.....$11.23

I used my last $10 store scrip from a deal I did in May so $1.23 OOP for this transaction.

I didn't go in for the mushrooms or fish but it was a good price so I snatched it up.
I went for slicing(sandwich)tomatoes but they all looked anemic so I got these roma ones instead.  Romas are known for being meaty with less seeds and goop so that suited my purpose for sammiches.

So another $8.67 bringing my weekly grocery spending this week to $56.78.  Just over 1 more week to go in June for shopping and I've spent $423.74 on food/toiletries.

*  I pulled a chunk of smoked brisket out of the freezer and dumped it into the crockpot yesterday, added a little barbecue sauce near the end and we had pulled beef bbq sandwiches with leftover cole slaw from the other night when I made flounder.
I also put that big pack of chicken leg quarters I got earlier in the week for .50¢ a lb. on the smoker yesterday late afternoon after I applied a dry rub and barbecued up those suckers.  Hubs doesn't know what he wants to do this weekend yet as the weather forecast keeps changing so if he wants to cook-out at some point all I need to do is heat those legs up on the grill and slap on some sauce and then worry about scrounging up some side dishes.

*  There is also 6 bags of mulch sitting on the front porch so if the rain holds off we'll hold Mulchfest 2015 sometime this weekend.  Come on over!

*  I am up to 46 miles on the bike so far this month with another 11 days to go.  Not bad considering I didn't bike 2 days out of the month to this point.  That's almost 2.5 miles a day average.  I'll reach my goal of 50 miles easy this month and will up the goal for July.

*  One of the books I got the other day is called "The 5 Years Before You Retire" which I have already finished.  While I get the premise, if you wait until 5 years before you retire to do ANY saving/planning for your retirement, man, are you screwed! lolz

There is a lot of helpful information in here, especially about Medicare and Social Security that is hard to find in a digestible way in any one place.  It's a good book to refer to as you wind down toward retirement.
Being a "worrier" about all things financial, parts of this scared the hell out of me(the SS and Medicare/Health stuff). 8-O

*  The weather here has been cooler than the last couple of weeks, more in line with June weather in these parts.  Cooler being in the 70's/80's as opposed to the high 80's/90's.  I'll take 70's any day over the latter.

*  My doctor's office pissed me off this week.
I had an appointment(routine semi-annual)on Thursday at 9am.  I get a phone message at 5:45pm on Wednesday from the office that they have to cancel/change my appointment and to call them back.
So I call them right back within 5 minutes and get the "the office is closed" message and you can't leave a message. grrrr

So I don't know whether I still have an appointment and now I still have to get up at the crack of dawn anyway to call them back in the morning.  The office opens at 8am so I start calling then and no one is answering the phones, they still have the "office is closed" message going.

It isn't until 8:30 when they actually start answering my calls!  So I get rescheduled for this coming Wednesday and she passes the buck as to who is too blame for this crap AND I don't even get an apology(even a half-hearted one).  I'll bring this up at my appointment with the doctor but I am sure he won't care either.  I want to know who the hell screwed up dammit!  And I want them to grovel.....  ;-)

*  Ok, I am off to take some giveaway box photos(new giveaway coming up soon!), finish putting the decluttering into bags so it can get hauled to Salvation Army and jump on that exercise bike for awhile.

What are you up to this weekend?

Sluggy


 

My Weekend with Picture & Video PORN

Well we sort of got a lot done over the weekend.

Hubs got the deck swing awning put back up and the patio chairs out of the shed.
He also got his Winter/Summer clothes switched out in the closet.

We got everything hauled out of the daughter's old room.
It is presently occupying my living room........

 

So far all she wants, that I have told her about, is a box of her baby things, a belt and the gorilla suit.
Yes a full bodied gorilla costume.
Don't ask.....

After purging all her crap from that bedroom I started in on reorganizing what was left in there.  I can now almost fit all the toiletries either in the dressers or the bookshelf and I can fit all my tubs of fabric in the closet. Yay!
I might even be able to put my out of season hanging clothes in there.  That would be nice since our walk-in closet is so crowded....mostly with photo albums of family pictures from 3 generations.  While I have very few photos of my grandmother's, my mother was quite the prolific picture taker.  I have nowhere in this house to store ALL the photo albums together. sigh.  I need to come up with a better plan with these.

In the daughter's old bedroom there are also the open shelves of fabric which is a mix of what is left after selling off all I could in 2014/2013 and some of my personal fabric which I hope to use soon.

And speaking of fabric.......I relisted about 81 pieces of fabric last week on Etsy.  Nothing wintery or Christmas, just the lighter weight and Summer-y stuff.  And over the weekend I sold 5 pieces to 2 different buyers.
Go me!!!
These new listings expire in August and I'll decide what to do then...whether to relist anything and/or add the Fall/Winter fabrics depending on how it goes the next 4 months.

Late Saturday I had to go up to Rite-Aid and spend my last $3 of +Up Rewards.  I went earlier in the week but some Load2Card Qs came off unexpectedly(to me)so I still had $3 to use by Saturday night.

I used a Rain Check for trash bags($3.99), use my $3 in +Ups and paid $1.05 with tax OOP.
No more +Ups.
Sad Face.


I did my 1.5 miles on the bike too each day, and here is what I am up to so far for April.....

It's a fancy computerized bike so it tracks lots of stuff.  Note that under distance I have gone 19 miles so far this month.  Last month I worked myself up to 22 miles for the whole month.  At this rate I'll break 40 miles probably for April!
Woohoo!


We also cleaned off the front porch and I did a little cleaning in the garage.
Then Hubs hung out his flag......

It was such a nice day on Sunday that we went out to lunch at Bob Evans just to get out of the house.
I took this video there.......




Please ignore whatever I was doing with the fingers on my right hand.
WTF was that?!? lolz

And here the food arrives......



We hung out when we got home.....reading, listening to music and relaxing.

I made a pot of "Sunday gravy" with meatballs for dinner and packed up the Etsy orders.
Before you knew it, it was time for my Sunday TV orgy.....Call the Midwife, Mr. Selfridge & Wolf Hall.

Wolf Hall has some very good acting.  It's a historical drama about the goings on of the Tudor court of Henry VIII.
I've always been fascinated by this guy(going so far as to take a history course in college on Tudor England).  In many ways he was one of the worst British rulers but he also changed the course of the world in some ways for the better.
Such a narcissist.
My interest is also heightened because supposedly one of my 5x Great Grandfathers is a descendant of one of Henry's bastard children from one of his mistresses while he was still married to Catherine of Aragon, Agnes Blewitt.
There are 7 known or suspected illegitimate children of Henry Tudor, only one of which he publicly acknowledged.

My supposed Ancestor from an illustration by John Dryden, courtesy of Wikimedia.

Yah, Agnes "blewit alright".......hehehehe

So there you have it.
My weekend.

Next weekend we have grand plans around here.  The project from last Summer we bought supplies for and never did.
Last year we made this nice surround area for our HVAC compressor on the side of the house.....

We had cleaned out next to the other side of the house last Spring......

We are going to make a similar rockfilled bed on this side of the house.  It will serve two purposes....1-to keep grass from right up next to the foundation(and impossible to get to with a mower)and 2-make it look nice and be low maintenance.  Plus we'll put a bench out in it so we can sit under the tree during the heat of the Summer.

I don't suppose it will get finished next weekend since we need so much stone we'll need to have it delivered and we haven't even began to look into having that done.  At least we can rake it out, level it, put down edging and a weed barrier(with enough stones to weight the barrier down so it doesn't blow away).

That's all I got.......

 

How was your weekend?

Sluggy