Since yesterday, Facebook and other social media avenues have been covered up with comments about that big football game that happened yesterday. These comments came during and after the game. To tell you the truth, I still haven't figured out why people keep saying "Who Dat?"

Here is a smattering of comments that have come across Facebook. I am not attributing these to anyone since some people wouldn't want their private thoughts on view to the entire internets, just their circle of friends.

1. is still in 'shockey.' What a grand finale!!! Dat's how you do it.
2. Since New Orleans won the Super Bowl, does that mean all the "refugees" from Louisiana will FINALLY go home now???
3. Do You Feel The BREES!!!!!!!!!!
4. They are giving all of us off tomorrow since they won and being paid... WOO HOO
5. WHO DAT!!! Enjoy your day!!!
6. Someone has to help. We don't know what to do. Call FEMA asap.
7. is sad the Colts didnt win but I got to see that good looking man on tv!!
8. Careful. The guns are about to start firing!
9. PEYTON IS CRYN LIKE A BITCH RIGHT NOW
10. Omg.... What a sucky year for football

Each day I spend a good deal of time writing. My full-time job, my journal, my blog, and my personal writing all enable me to flex my writing muscles on a daily basis. Sometimes I even stretch a little further and use a website called WritingFix.com. This site gives you random writing prompts to get your creative juices flowing. You never know what they will ask you about. Here is my daily writing prompt that popped up when I went to their site:

"What was up there?  Think of an interesting ceiling you once stared at and thought about.  Write about you staring...and what it was that caused you to stare."

I immediately thought of some of the beautiful churches I have visited in my lifetime. First in my mind is Old Saint Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco. It is located on California Street in the heart of Chinatown. It was built in 1854. It survived the earthquake of 1906 but was gutted the next day in the fires that raged through the city. The church interior was rebuilt after that. The interior is beautiful and gothic. The ceiling is high about the pews. I have never taken a picture of the interior although I have attended mass there whenever I happen to be in San Francisco. This is a picture of the interior taken in 1927...it still looks much the same today.

Old Saint Mary's Cathedral website

Today we attended an awards ceremony at the University of St Thomas in Houston. It was to recognize students in grades 3 thru 12 for their entries in a writing contest the university sponsored for all of the Catholic schools in our diocese. Our daughter won an award in her grade categoryt. It was a very nice ceremony but also very long.

When we arrived, we parked a few blocks away from the university, right beside the Rothko chapel. Now call me crazy and uncultured, but I've never "gotten" the Rothko chapel. I've been there a few times. It is soothing and meditative. It is also filled with a bunch of world-class paintings by Mark Rothko. These are a series of large canvases painted black. That's it. Plain black. Something basically anyone at all could paint. But the obelisk out front is fairly interesting.

Moving on now.

We walked the few blocks to the university. It was really chilly outside. Normally when our weather forecast here says 60-something degrees and sunny, you should dress for warm weather because it usually gets fairly warm in Houston even in the winter. But not today. So I was freezing!

The ceremony and mass lasted three hours. We sat in folding chairs that were jammed up against each other. I was claustrophic the entire time. I am not normally claustrophobic at all. But today I was and it made me really grouchy and, well, short-tempered. I also couldn't get my purse to sit right in front of my folding chair and I finally leaned over and jammed it sideways under the bottom rung of the chair so I wouldn't trip over it with all the standing up and sitting down that we were doing. Then I tried to somehow arrange the paperwork they gave us, my camera with the huge lense, and my cashmere wrap (in case of frigid temps), under the seat.

By the time the three hours was up, my claustrophobia had gotten the best of me and I couldn't wait to get out of there and walk the three frigid blocks back to the car parked by that damn boring Rothko chapel.

And now I am off to take a bubble bath and recover from my uncharacteristic grouchiness.

The End

I totally stole this idea from Avitable, one of the funniest bloggers out there. You can check out his blog but if you are easily offended, don't go there please.

My new band (if I actually decided to start a band, that is):

1. Go to the Random Article link on Wikipedia. Write down the title of the article. This is the name of your band.

2. Go to Random Quotations. Write down the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page. This is the title of your first album.

3. Go to Flickr and click on "Explore the Last Seven Days." The third picture will be your album cover.

Today was Groundhog Day here in North America. I have always been a little skeptical of this tradition, even when I was a child. Who decided the groundhog was a good weather forecaster? Well, according to a little research I did on the ever-trusty Wikipedia, those wacky Germans who settled in Pennsylvania came up with the groundhog plan.

The roots of the custom can be traced all the way back to Pagan festivals but I suppose the Germans had to clean it up a bit for the Christians and so they renamed the Pagan holiday orignally called Imbolc and made it Candlemas in the old country. Upon settling here in the new world, they cleaned it up even more by calling it Groundhog Day.

For all you lurkers and others out there, the groundhog in the mecca of Punxsutawney (yep, I had to look up how to spell that one!), Pennsylvania saw his shadow this morning and now we will have six more weeks of winter. My mother has a groundhog living under an old log cabin on her property in northern Mississippi but he did not emerge from his burrow this morning and give her the weather forecast.

My takeaway from all this: It is February 2. Chances are extremely high that we will have more winter weather. We don't need a groundhog to tell us that. Although it is probably a fun tradition in parts of the country and gives people a perfectly valid excuse to throw a party.

Today I was standing in line at the CVS. Directly in front of me was a petite woman wearing jeans, high heel boots, and a cute jacket with a scarf thrown over her left shoulder. Her hair was dyed a perfect blond with highlights and cut in a bob with the ends flipped up.

Then she turned around.

And OMG! She was probably 70-ish years old. With all the wrinkles to prove it.

I think I stood there with my mouth open. I even turned and looked at the woman behind me and she had the exact same stunned look on her face. Here's my take-away from this incident:

1. On the one hand, I think more power to ya! to this woman for not dressing like a grandma and for keeping her hair looking so nice and groomed.
2. On the other hand, I think this is just deceiving the general public. I don't like standing around with my mouth open. A fly could happen by and end up flying into my gaping mouth.
3. And just think if this woman went to a bar: she'd be standing there leaning against the bar with her back to the pool tables. Some young buck would spy her and saunter up to offer to buy her a drink. Then she'd turn around. And the poor fellow would have to figure out how to get the heck out of that situation.
4. This reminds of one time when I was in San Francisco. I was walking down the street behind this woman who was perfectly dressed in a elegant wool coat with killer-nice heels on and a great hair style. She was navigating the San Francisco hills with great skill considering the heels. Then she stopped at a red light waiting to cross the street and I caught up with her. Turned out it was a man. Dressed as a woman.
5. This tells me I should stop judging people by how they look from the back.

I grew up in the country. And I spent many happy hours and days of my childhood at my grandparents' house which was located down the road from our own house. My grandparents house sat on a piece of land that was hilly and wooded. There were several gardens and small fields around the house. If you took a walk down an old trail through the woods, you would come upon another set of fields that everyone called the Estes field.

The Estes field was also accessible from the main road by a field road but, as children, we rarely went there by the road. We always just cut through the woods on the trail. The Estes field wasn't visible from the road or from my grandparents house. The trail we took to get to the field wound down through dense woods, across a tiny spring-fed brook, through a meadow, and then we would arrive at the first part of the field.

The Estes field was actually three fields. The largest field sat on the highest section of that land. The other two fields were much smaller and were cut as terraces into the hill at the side below the larger field. I remember the family planting corn in the Estes field always, with some watermelon vines also at times.

The land at the back side of the Estes field dropped off into a couple more terrace areas but these were heavily grown over with pine trees. The nice thing about having lots of pines is that the pine needles blanket the area under the trees and prevents lots of small plants and briars from taking hold. My cousins and I loved to play there. Our grandfather would be plowing the Estes field sometimes and we would play nearby. As we got older, we went to the Estes field by ourselves.

One time, I guess we were about 10 years old, my two girl cousins, Cindy and Steff, and I decided to make a picnic lunch and go sit under the pine trees at the back of the Estes field. We walked down the trail through the woods and around to the back of the Estes field. We spread an old blanket and took out our lunch.

Then we all three got the worst feeling. We looked at each other and could tell something was wrong. It is very difficult to describe now but it was just this overwhelming feeling that something there was terribly wrong. We quickly packed our stuff and got out of there as fast as we could. We never went back there by ourselves again.

I had forgotten all about that incident until a few months ago my brother and I were talking about the Estes field which sits mostly on land that now belongs to me. I can hardly tell where the Estes field is anymore because it hasn't been farmed in 25 years now. The trees and brush have grown up on it. My brother was telling about one time when he and my cousin Mandy and someone else went walking down by the Estes field. Suddenly a bobcat jumped out of a tree directly over their heads. It sailed over their heads making a loud cry and scaring them almost to death. The bobcat landed on the ground and ran off into the woods. Needless to say, my brother and the others took off running in the very opposite direction. I believe there may have been murmurs of messes in pants too, but I may be mistaken.

Now I wonder what made my cousins and I feel so bad that time. We talked about it some later and think that someone may have been watching us. But we didn't see or hear anyone in the woods. I am glad that we went with our instincts and got out of there as fast as possible.

I recently made Potato & Leek Soup for supper on a cold night. It is my own original recipe that I cobbled together from other recipes I have seen and customized to be my own.

5 Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes
2 cups low sodium chicken or vegetable broth
1 cup water
3 Leeks
1/2 of a medium onion, chopped
1 tsp olive oil
Salt & Pepper to taste
1/2 cup heavy cream or half-and-half

Toppings: shredded cheddar cheese, chopped green onion, chopped cooked bacon

Place the potatoes, broth, and water in a heavy pot over medium heat. While potatoes are cooking, prepare the leeks by removing the green part and discarding, slice the white part of the leeks into thin slices. Then rinse the sliced leeks well in a colander under running water.

In a skillet combine the leeks, onion, and olive oil over medium heat and sautee until onions are translucent and softened. Add the leeks and onion to the potatoes. Once the potatoes are completely cooked and very soft, add the heavy cream, salt and pepper. Heat for 3 more minutes.

Spoon this soup into bowls and top with shredded cheese, green onion, and bacon.

The work begins on the outside of our house today. You see, we bought this house 3 years ago. It had a new paint job on the cedar siding that covers the entire outside of our house. That new paint job covered up a world of bad news. There is wood rot and pieces of siding have suddenly started falling off. It has begun to look awful. So we had to bite the bullet and get the work done.

The house was built in 1977. It is 3,200 square feet and is three stories tall in some places. It is a wonderful house that was custom designed by an architectural firm out of Houston. The siding is original to the house and it has now reached the end of its useful life. The time has come to rip off all the old siding and replace it with new siding.

I am very excited about getting this fixed. But I am not so excited about the crazy expensive bill that we'll be paying to get this work done. I suppose it is just one of the perks of homeownership: pouring our money into projects to fix and improve our abodes.

I will be sure and post pictures of the progress of the work over the next three weeks (that is the timeline the contractor has given us for this project.)

Since our town has such an excellent recycling program, I strive to recycle everything I possibly can. That includes all paper, plastics, and metals. Last night I was flattening an empty Kleenex box to put in the paper recyling when I noticed a pithy little paragraph printed on the bottom of the box:

Say goodbye to the stiff upper lip...
Tell calm, cool and collected to take a hike.  Whoop it up!
Laugh, scream, cry, holler! And when tons of stuff stuffs up
your nose, blow it loud and blow it proud!
Show your heart and show some tears...of joy and sorrow,
in awe and pride. Just let it out!

I liked that! I liked that the Kleenex box had something on it besides just maybe a list of best uses and the usual marketing banter. I like the fact that they really thought about how people use their product and put a humorous spin on it. And I bet a Southerner had something to do with the writing of this paragraph because they included the word "holler". Of course in Southern vernacular, holler is a way of speaking loudly and it is also a sort of valley or depression of the land (as in: "he lives down in that holler over yonder."

So I looked closer at the bottom of the Kleenex box and they have a website for this whole idea: www.letitout.com

Now don't confuse this with www.let-it-out.com which is a gay and lesbian accomodation service in Australia.