Mugsy, thanks for remebering Babe Diedriksen! The LPGA golfers don’t get the recognition let alone the prize money they deserve.

An english teacher in college told me that if I was ever going to be able to have an original thought - I had better be reading Norman Mailer.

Money is a great thing to have, but the pursuit of it and the ease of acquiring credit has bitten us in our collective asses. I think our country is going to have to hit rock bottom before confidence in regained. Spend wise and cut up the credit cards! That’s what I’m doing.

It should say…I woke up after having passed out on a car…sorry.

Just being flat out stupid brought me to the most dangerous things I’ve ever done. As kids, we would gather the neighborhood pack, divide into 2 teams, and then throw lit bottle rockets across the road at the other team. We did this in the dark and eagerly awaited to see where the rocket blew and if we hit someone! Fortunately, no one was ever hurt during one of these duels. Other situations as a teenager and young adult involving too much alocohol and not near enough good judgement. I woke up passed out on a car one night one night during a frat party. There were people everywhere and my jewelry had been stolen off me while passed out! I was damn lucky nothing else happended to me. It took me losing a good friend in college who was driving while drunk to become the designated driver - always. Still drink, just much smarter about it.

Friends are such an important part of my life and the older I get, the more choosy I become. I don’t mean that to sound like I am picky, but I have discovered that who you let into your life, especially your inner circle is a big deal. I guess the most wonderful thing about getting older for me is, I am more discerning and am looking for quality and not necessarily someone who is a carbon copy of myself - variety is a wonderful thing. I have 10 very close friends that I’ve had for a long time and from very different places and backgrounds. Some are from childhood, some from college and career. Now at the age of 42, I just recently made a concious decision to back off from friend from college. She is a wonderful engaging person, but can’t handle more than one person at a time and expects your full attention when she wants it, but is rather difficult to get ahold of when you need her. She has lived all over the world and I have visited her in every place she has lived in the past 17 years except for Suadia Arabia. She now lives only 3 hours by car away from me, but in 17 years, she has never once visited me and her reasoning has always been that I have never lived anywhere exciting enough for her. I will always care about her and wish her well, but am no longer extending to her. This experience has just made me appreciate the ones around me even more. Life is too short to spend time doing things that are not enriching your life or making a difference in someone else’s.

The crowds in Macy’s are foreigners! The Euro and British Pound are clobbering the dollar. I was in New York last month and saw the same thing you did. EU citizens can’t wait to get to NYC and start spending their Euros and Pounds.

My part of the country has been economically depressed for quite sometime and I mean for years. Gas is still relatively under the national average by a few cents and groceries is where I have seen the biggest jump. Roughly 70% of the population of the county I live in is on some sort of public assistance and we already had expensive groceries due to that, but things are slowly creeping up each week in the stores.

I was raised a Baptist in the Bible belt and damn near became a communist atheist myself, but instead became a Methodist after becoming rather disenchanted with the Southern Baptists. I have friends of all different kinds of faiths and we openly discuss what we believe and joke about the perceptions of our faiths. We’ve all heard the Pesbyterians called the “frozen chosen,” the Episcopalians are “Catholic lite,” and the Methodist fall in between the two somewhere, and Julia is right - casseroles are mandatory when someone expires down here in the South. You just weren’t raised right if you don’t show up at the deceased’s home without one. It is such a way of life here that a book has been written about it called Being Dead is no Excuse by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hayes. It is written in jest, but is a reflection of how people believe and in some ways celebrate death. Just realize if you read this - not every Southerner is like this - there are way too many misconceptions about us anyway. Back to the point about openly discussing religion, my circle of close friends includes not only Methodists, but Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Jews and Hindus. We accept and love each other despite the differences in our belief systems, but most of all, I am just glad we have something to believe in. It is good to understand what others believe and I don’t think it is my job to proselytize to everyone who does not believe what I believe. I do believe in the grace of God and in Heaven.

A friend of mine wrote an article for a local magazine earlier this year about Valentine’s Day and summed the article up about how she takes the ones she loves most for granted and was going to let the people in her life know how much she loves and appreciates them more. Suddenly it dawned on me from reading her words how guilty I was of doing the same thing and completely oblivious to it. I called her and thanked her for her words. Life often gets in the way in of living and I am trying to be more appreciative of the ones I love.

I was never bored growing up. There was a pack of kids in my neighborhood and we all played together. This was back when you could stay out all day and no one really worried about the wierdos and freaks. You came home just before the street lights came on and you couldn’t wait for tomorrow to do it all over again!

Over the past few days while watching all of this unfold in Texas, I am sickened more each day. The number of children being brought out of this compound is staggering. If children are in danger and certainly being married off at 14 is a danger, the local authorities and state should clearly enforce the laws. Polygamist sects (as well as any other religious sect which does not adhere to the laws on the books) should be made to comply. There was a man on TV last night who is a former FLDS member who said the whole premise of these compounds is about “power, money, and sex.” No child should have to suffer this and I think the eyes of our country have been opened more than we ever thought possible to this problem. I’m glad Texas has taken the first steps in getting these women and children help.

In my community, the tap water is brown and I have never gotten used to it even after living here for 8 years. They say it is perfectly fine to drink, but it looks so unappealing.

I am personally fed up with race issues and hate that it is ruling this presidential race. Our economy is in shambles, more and more kids are dropping out of school and the candidates can’t seem to catch on to that. All Obama has been saying is that he can “unite us” and “bring change”, well I want to know exactly what he means by that. I live in an area of Mississippi where race rules everything: where you’re kids go to school, where you live, what restaurants you eat in to who you vote for. In an election here last December, a black city councilman was encouraging black voters to vote for the black candidate, our sheriff was also “politicking” at the polls using the same line. When Obama visited our town last month, you would have thought Jesus had arrived. I almost felt sorry for Obama as I watched the parade of one unqualified elected official after another speak on his behalf. I don’t want to see anyone elected to a position of power just because of their skin color; I want the most qualified candidate and so should the rest of America.

Julia! Did you see the picture of Lara Flynn Boyle that Liz posted yesterday??????!!!!!!!!