This is a photo I found recently while digging through the packed boxes at home. That's me with my dad and brother Jeff. I was trying to remember how old I was in this photo and I'm sure I was probably 5, which would have made Jeff 3 or 4. The chair we are sitting on is inflatable furniture. We kids thought that was so neat to have blow-up furniture. The set came with a chair, a sofa (or probably a love seat), and a coffee table. I think it might have also come with an ottoman and an end table, but I'm a little fuzzy on that.

The really nostalgic thing for me in this photo is the Shakey's hats. We LOVED eating at Shakey's. At the time, they had a band there. It was a hillbilly style band with a washtub bass and everything. I always felt special when we went to Shakey's for some reason. Maybe it is because Mom and Dad both let us feel like we were dining high with them.

No, my water didn't freeze again forcing me to rinse with soda, I just poured a glass right after finishing up in the bathroom and took a huge swig of it thinking it was going to be refreshing. It wasn't.

I don't normally drink 7-Up. When I was a kid I liked it ok, but as I got older, it lost it's dazzle for me. It was relegated to upset stomach days. However, I bought a bottle of it last month for the company party because my father-in-law usually drinks Diet 7-Up, but he drank tea all night instead. So I figured I'd better get rid of it, and the other night my stomach was a little queazy, so I opened the bottle. Now I need to finish drinking it before it goes flat. I do, however, seem to like it better this go around than I have in the past 10 or 20 years. I'm wondering if it isn't because it now has more lemon-lime flavor in it?

Gonna be cold again here today. It's warmer than the past few days have been, but we are expecting up to 5 inches of snow today. I guess there is something to be said about it being too cold to snow.

Was that a great football game or what? OK, truthfully, I wouldn't know much about that anymore, but I had a great time watching. I used to be into football before I met my husband. After listening to him grumble about what a useless game it was the first year we were together, I kind of got out of it. I have managed to watch 3 or 4 Super Bowls in our 15 years of marriage without listening to too much grumbling from him.

Today, he watched most of the game with me, outside of a couple of catnaps he took in the recliner. I thought it was sweet of him to watch with me. He'd say things like, "The quarterback for the blue team looks so young. I can't believe they put someone in with so little experience..." referring to all the crappy passes that were intercepted. Or when I'd come back into the room from checking on dinner, and I'd ask what happened, he'd say something like, "The white team is going to kick a field goal," or "The blue team has finally started to figure out that the white team really only has three basic plays."

I did have to listen to a little bit of his old mantra about grown-ups getting paid so much money to play a kid's game, and how they should make it a law that you should have to play the sport for every hour you watch of it. Finally, tonight, he came up with they should put pedometers on people and you can only watch so much television for every mile of walking or running you do in a day.

When I thanked him for watching the game with me, and I mentioned that I quit watching football a long time ago because he didn't like it, he did say that we have more than one television in the house. That may be true today, but it wasn't 15 years ago when we first got married.

I loved the halftime show, although Prince didn't exactly play his guitar in time with the music (i.e., he was playing air guitar). I was a little surprised that he performed so many of the old school songs, too - you know, the ones from my college days in the '80s when I was so much in love with him and went woozy at his concert - but that's probably why I enjoyed it so much.

I think my favorite commercial was the Budweiser ad with the stray dog that got a hero's treatment once he got splashed with mud and looked like the firehouse dalmation. It was cute. I also liked the one with the rabbit and the guinea pig trying to click the mouse (owning a computer store, of course, I would be a little partial to that one).

Which was your favorite Super Bowl commercial?

I woke up this morning a little before the alarm went off but I laid in bed until it did actually sound off at 6:30. After lots of rest yesterday, including going to bed before 10 p.m., I was ready to tackle the day - tend to some laundry, shower and eat in time to make it to Sunday school and church today. I've missed church and Sunday school the past 3 weeks either because of weather or illness.

This morning, we didn't have any clean washcloths in the bathroom cabinet when I went to take my shower, so I had to go down to the basement to get the towels out of the dryer. While I was down there, I started the whites that need bleaching. Once I had a hamper full of clean towels, I came upstairs, grabbed a clean washcloth and towel, and went to take my shower. I turned on the spigots and there is no water, just a hissing sound.

"Oh, no," I thought. We've got frozen pipes. I turned on the hot water and I got a hissing sound there, too. I could have sworn the water came on in the washing machine when I was downstairs. I went back down to check, and it had a small stream of water coming into it. Then it dawned on me, the hot water heater would have had water in it and that's what would have started in the machine in the first place.

So I wake up John, telling him we have no water and I don't know if it's a main break or what, but I didn't see any of  our pipes broken. He gets out of bed to help me out, because I desperately need a shower before I go to church since I didn't shower yesterday (I know, skanky).

As he's checking things out in the bathroom, I tell him the toilet flushed earlier, to which he reminds me it will the first time because there was water in the tank. "Oh yeah," is my response as I take the lid off the tank and see that there is only about an inch of water in the bottom of it.

I call the water department, who tells me we probably just have frozen pipes. He doesn't know of a main break and if they did have one, we'd still be getting some water (unless it's frozen, I'm thinking). "It is 12 below outside," he tells me. He dismisses me after taking my name, address and phone number.

John continues to think the problem is them because we have air coming through our pipes, thus the hissing sound. So he goes scouting all over the basement. He comes back upstairs to get a space heater. Apparently our pipes are empty on our side of the meter (which is in the basement) but the water department's side sounds full (he's tapping the copper lines with a hammer to hear this).

Less than 5 minutes (I honestly think it was about 2 minutes) after turning on the space heater, water begins gushing through my faucets in the bathroom, followed seconds later by gushing water in the kitchen. Yeay!!!! He's gotten them thawed out already.

I get to listen to Hubby grumble the next ten minutes about how stupid it is that the line comes into the house from outside at a 90-degree angle, and goes from plastic to copper at that joint, and how stupid someone was to install the line in such a manner.

But it's ok, because this guy is my hero. And with his tousled mousy brown hair, looks pretty sexy running around the house in his blue lounge pants and bathrobe, with his chest hairs peaking out over the top of the V. He has rescued this damsel in distress. And now that the water heater has had a chance to refill and warm up some more water, I can now shower and at least make it to church on time this morning. 

I finally took a Saturday off. It was great. I slept in until 8:30, snuggled with hubby for another hour, made a breakfast of biscuits, gravy and bacon. I love the frozen Pillsbury Southern style biscuits. They are so great.

Then we watched some TV for a while. I fell asleep in the chair again, so I guess I'm getting some much-needed rest today. I started a sinkful of dishes to soaking and will go clean up the kitchen here in a minute, as well as possibly finish laundry today so tomorrow I will only need to worry about church and meals. If the church is doing a Super Bowl thing, I may go to it. Hubby doesn't do the Super Bowl, so it might be fun.

Then again, as cold as it is this weekend, I don't know if I want to go outside any more than I absolutely have to. We have a bitter cold warning this weekend. It's 5° at the moment with a wind chill of -15°. I was debating what to make for supper, but after reading a few people's blogs, I think soup would be good. I've got lots of potatoes and onions that need to be used, so a pot of potato soup sound in order.

I always have to separate it out into two pots in the end. I grew up with a milk base in my potato soup and that's how I like it. I pour a can or two of condensed milk into my potato water. Hubby doesn't do milk products, so I have to separate the soup so he can have his with just the potato water. I had never heard of potato soup that wasn't milk based before I met him. We do like ours with chunks of potatos and onions, and lots of garlic and pepper.

How do you like your pototo soup?

Lydellphoto pointed me to this really cool site where it correlates a scripture verse to your birthday. My birth verse is:

Philippians 1:21 NIV
For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

To get your birth verse, to go http://www.mybirthverse.com/

I do need to learn to live by this verse more. I know that to live in Christ and die to myself is gain. It's that whole dying to myself process that is so difficult. Another blessing from Lydell's website, a portion of a prayer they have scrolling along the sidebar, "... while I know that I will never be a perfect child, I rest toda in the confidence that I am your child and you claim me." How awesome is that! I know I am not perfect. I struggle each day to die to myself. Yet even though the sinful me continues to try to raise its ugly head, God loves me and still claims me as his! Amen.

Yesterday is a blur and I am afraid today might end up being so as well. It is obvious to me, from the amount of people coming in for computer and cell phones, that people are starting to get their tax returns in already. January always is one of our better, if not our best, sales months. Combine that with doing end-of-year audits and financial reports, and you've got a combination for long days and high stress.

I got to the office at 6:30 yesterday morning and did not leave until 7:55 last night. I stepped foot outside the building only twice - once to carry out a bag of trash and the other to run something out to a customer's car that they had dropped on the floor at the counter.

The rest of the day was spent mostly behind the counter helping the sales staff with the rush, and in the office trying to finalize our new computer brochures so they will be on the floor ready for today's launch of Windows Vista. Oh, I also managed to get the bank deposit put together by the end of the day, but not in time to get it to the bank. That will be done as soon as they open this morning. I brought the final proof of the brochure home with me last night and John and I discussed it briefly while we ate a dinner I brought home from KFC. I am nearly ready to head in to the office today, and I will make the one copy edit I need on the brochure before printing it out.

I've got a butt load of work to do today, too, so I'd better get dressed and get moving. I woke up this morning before the alarm went off (it was set to go off right about now) and I've already cleaned up, so now it's just dress, pack lunches and hit the road.

I overlooked this at my sister's site earlier this week. It seems like fun, so here is mine...

The name quiz---This is fun!

1. YOUR REAL NAME:
Debra Sue Doty

2. YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (first 3 letters of real name plus izzle.)
Debizzle

3. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (fav color and fav animal)
Purple Cat

4. YOUR SPY NAME: (middle name, and current street name)
Sue Third

5.  YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name and first 2 letters of mom's maiden name, first 3 letters of your hometown)
Dotde Anosk

Sometimes the weirdest questions come into my mind. This morning, it was "When (and why) did women start to shave their legs." I, of course, was in the process of shaving mine in the shower, and for some reason, the need to know this little bit of information seemingly overpowered me.

I did find, in my search of the Internet, which I know is not always factual, that Egyptian Pharoahs believed that any body hair was unclean, so it stands to reason that their women would have shaved as well. But when did modern women begin shaving. After all, many Europrean women (particularly Germans that I know of) do not shave, so when did we begin shaving?

In my lifetime, women have always shaved their legs, but apparently that was not the case in the 1950s, when only some women shaved.

I found this excerpt at the Safety Razor database, and it makes pretty sense enough that I can believe it to be true.

As the 1920's brought forth even more revealing clothes like the short skirts and bathing suits of the "flapper" era, one presumes that leg shaving would come into fashion. Krumholz says the big swing to leg shaving began in earnest in WWII when silk stockings were at a premium and women, used to shorter hems, turned to shaving and leg makeup. Styles since then plus the images of what's "in" have emphasized the desirability of shaving even more since. It is not surprising that different countries and cultures often differ on the shaving of armpit and leg hair. The Wilkinson Razor German web site used to have an interesting article that indicated: "The changed body consciousness among women has led to the fact that they are increasingly occupied with this theme. In countries such as the USA, France and Spain, wet-shaving has long been a part of women's daily body care. In Germany, however, the market is still small, only 27% shave at all. But the trend is strongly upwards, especially amongst young women, (53% of up to 24 years old). " I guess what that says is that the trend is continuing to grow world-wide. Sounds like German women are at about where North American women were with respect to shaving in about the 1960's (?). Its all about "fashion" I guess, the right "look" we are told we should have. Still, in many cultures shaving is taboo or ritualistic, or not an issue for both men and women. Since WWI and the 1920's we have had an increasing variety of women's razors and shavers, many designed specifically for that special task rather than being a man's razor with a pretty handle.

Well, I have been tagged via e-mail by my daughter. Rather than sending to everyone in e-mail, I thought it would be more expeditious to post it here at Xanga.

How well do you know me?? For instance, did you know...

Four jobs I have had in my life:

1. Waitress

2. Insurance salesman

3. Newspaper reporter

4. Graphics designer

1. Selena

2. Dirty Dancing

3. The Notebook

4. The sound of Music

1. Okinawa, Japan

2. Fayetteville, NC

3. Copperas Cove, TX

4. Nampa, ID

 

1. Survivor

2. Grey's Anatomy

3. The Amazing Race

4. NCIS

1. Sparta, WI

2. Colorado Springs, CO

 

3. Copperas Cove, TX (many times)

 

4. Portland, OR

1. weather.com

2. xanga.com

3. dandh.com

4. mchsi.com

 

1. Mexican

2. Chinese

3. Cheesecake

4. Tuna-noodle casserole

 

1. In bed

2. Texas

3. Arizona

4. At my mother's

 

1. Mom

2. Ann

3. Sunnee

 

4. Anyone who would like to