I haven't worn my contacts since last year.

I have not taken a bath since last year.

I have only taken one shower since last year.

I have not eaten pasta since last year.

I have seen my parents since last year.

I did warn you and it is really bad in the extended entry. Consider yourself warned...

Tomorrow we fly out of DFW at 8:30pm, fly to John Wayne in California, get a rental car, find our hotel 1 mile from the airport, go to sleep, toss and turn, get up, pick up our friends staying in Downtown LA, find parking at one of the train stations that will take us to Pasadena (we may get to meet CalTechGirl or at least park in front of her house), take the train to Pasadena, pass some time before the shuttles to the Rose Bowl start at 11 am, tailgate before the game, go to the game at 7pmish, enjoy watch the game, about 4 hours later walk back to the train station since the bus stuttles will be packed, take the train back to wherever we parked, drop our friends back at LA, drive back to the hotel, sleep, get up in time to catch our 6 am flight back to DFW, which has a layover (bleh), pick up the girls at my anti-In-laws, go home, fix dinner, put the girls to bed, go to bed.

Did you get that?

The lowest price I could find for a ticket is $1200. (I looked here and here.) Face value is $175. That is a hell of a return. We were able to get ours at face since we are Season ticket holders and donate enough above the cutoff. Whew! Cause if we didn't, we would have paid $1,200 a ticket. Whew!

And we have good karma on our side since we are selling our two extra tickets to some friends at face value. Gotta love good karma!!!

We WON!!!!! If you check the sports sites you can read the details of the BEST College football game ever! Still catching up with sleep, work, and other duties, but I will be writing more later. Lots to share, lots to share!!!!!

Hook'em Horns

Since my husband is very into Texas football, everything that potentially could or actually did go wrong on our way to the game were intensified by 100%. (Note to hubby: I am not trying to downplay my mistake, just pointing out you were really on edge.) Much more than a normal game. But we made it.

Since the rain reduced the amount of parking around the Rose Bowl (something about messing up a golf course), we drove into Pasadena and parked in front of CalTecGirl's house. Walked to the train station and took it to the stop closest to the Rose Bowl. We had to walk more since the shuttles were not running at 8:30am. But that gave us a chance to stop at a grocery store and pick up some breakfast. Deli sandwiches and chips. Yum!

Once we got to the Rose Bowl, we found our tailgaters. Chatted football and the game. The general consensus was Texas would win. Overall the atmosphere was pleasant. USC fans were good and no one got out of hand.

We walked towards the stadium to find ticket holders to wear around our necks. The tickets were to big to fit in any pocket. We took some pictures in front of the stadium since we knew it would be crazy later. Bought the ticket holders and headed back for more tailgating.

The team comes in about 2 hours before game time, so we went to greet them. Along with a bunch of other fans. Probably 4 times as many who greeted the team last year at the Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowl was ready and had plenty of staff and barriers to keep us back. Back again for more tailgating.

During all the tailgating we were able to see our traveling friends. These are people we had gotten to know over the last seven years going to the games and meeting up at HornFans.com events. It was great to see them all and know that our dedication to traveling to the games may have influenced our team getting to this point. It was also hard seeing some of them without tickets knowing that not so dedicated fans were going.

We also saw some interesting things. One guy was dressed as Bush and selling USC signs. He had a boom box playing hoe down music. It didn't want a picture of that.

But I did get a picture of the Tower replica. The real tower is on campus and they light it up when Texas wins. If they win a Championship then they turn on the office lights to make the shape of a #1, like this.

Then there was the marketing for the TV show "Beauty and the Geek 2". They were handing out Nerds candy, geek glasses, tshirts and tiaras. My friend and I got some things and she even took a picture with the geeks. I kept my tiara but sat on it during the game. My friend gave hers to my husband and he wore it the rest of the time. (LOL) We ate our nerds and I gave my nerd glasses away.

Then we have the super bong made by some Mechanical Engineers. With 8 valves it held 32 beers. They stopped by our tailgate and coaxed some UT and USC fans to do it. The guys who had it did it every time they ran it and I am positive they were not in any shape to watch the game. Here they are pouring in beer and here it is in action.

I was not suprised at the number of Texas fans there. We travel well.

FINALLY it was time to go to the game. We headed on about 2.5 hours before the game and the stadium was already a mad house. We started at one gate, but it was very slow going. We decided to walk around to another gate and had better luck, but still had to wait to go through our tunnel to get our seats.

Stay tuned tomorrow for THE game.

Update: I forgot about the Gnome!!!! More about him here.

...at least she didn't post the...uh....uh... Let's just say it could have been worse!!!

I won't talk about the technical aspects of the game. There are plenty of others who do it much better than me. So this will be a chic's point of view of the game....

The atmosphere in the stadium was electric. Everyone was smiling, happy, and pleasant. It seemed like a huge get together of friends. I am sure that the pre-game drinking did not hurt!

Our seats were OK. A little low to see what we needed and way to low to take pictures. We had a little conversation with some ladies two rows in front of us about their sign blocking our view. They tried to use the excuse that no plays were going on, but stuff goes on in between the plays. No problem with timeouts or half time, but not when there is action on the field. I told them I did not want to miss anything since this was a NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP. Once my husband told them they could hold the sign in front of themselves, the conversation ended and all was well.

The pre-game show was good, with fireworks, parachuters with flags for the Rose Bowl, USC, Texas, United States, and one other I could not see, and a jet fighter letting his afterburners go. Leeann Rimes sang the National Anthem. Since she was twanging it all up, you could hear everyone in the stands singing. Very cool.

The game itself was a rollercoaster ride. The last 8 minutes were amazing. Things went our way and we were able to come from behind. With 8 seconds left on the clock, USC had the ball and could have scored. But with two plays the clock ran out and we were now the National Champions.

And the Texas fans went crazy!!! People were high-fiving, hugging, and kissing anyone and everyone. I was standing still, but since everyone else was going crazy it felt like I was moving. Grown men cried. People ran down to get closer to the field.

I put together a little graph showing the scores of Texas, USC and "My Emotions". Should help give you an idea of how the game went. If you notice that I never went negative on the scale with my emotions. The game was close and since it never looked like a blowout, I would be OK with it. I would not like it, but USC was ranked number one. Here is the graph.

One thing I noticed last year when Texas won the Rose Bowl, they shot orange and white confetti into the air. I wondered what they did with Michigan's colored confetti and how much that cost them. (We played Michigan last year.) This year they just shot multicolored confetti. No color coordination or wasted confetti!!!

We stayed to watch the presentation of the trophy and sing the "Eyes of Texas". We visited with our friends who sat close to us and let the crowd die down.

Here are some links on the technical/sport aspect of the game:

Burnt Orange Nation

Stats from Texas Football Site (BORING!!)
ESPN.com
Fox Sports

Up tomorrow: Getting home and a blogmeet with CalTechGirl!

Despite being on our feet since 8 am that morning, the walk back to the train station, then our car, did not seem so bad. Despite sore feet, legs and backs, no one wanted to complain.

When we got back to our car, we stopped to visit with CalTechGirl. I figured it would be crazy to come that far to borrow part of her street and not meet. Luckily she agreed. We visited with her and her husband. Made friends with her dog. Talked about the highlights of the game and they answered some questions about things we could not see from our seat.

We were starving, so we followed them to an IHOP that was closed. WHAT?!?!?! A IHOP not open 24 hours?!?!!? Luckily there was another place and it is a good thing we were with locals. We probably would not have found it on our own.

The company was great and we got to learn more about their USC tradions and history. And a little more about Mr. and Mrs. CalTechGirl.

We found out way to drop our friends off and back to our hotel by 2:30 am. With a 6:45am flight, my husband did not even try to get any sleep. I dozed for about an hour or so. Nothing spectacular about our flight home, except there were lots of other Longhorns on the same flights. And they were happy like us.

Today we all worked on Oldest's homework for Kindergarten. She had to read a small book she brought home. So we all sat on our couch and looked over her shoulder as she read. Very nice.

Busy with sleep since I had a few after hour calls this week. If they don't fix the main problem today, I am taking matters into my own hands.

TBS has more commercials than actual show? You can barely use Tivo to get around it.

Which reminds me of the time they showed "The Exorcist". I had never seen it and my hubby was looking forward to me getting freaked out. But we ended up turning it off since the FREQUENT commercials ruined the whoe suspense/scare/freaking out/drama build up.

......start freakin'.....

funny commercial, funny commercial, commercial, another funny commercial, commercial, funny commercial, commercial, funny commercial, another commercial.....

.....almost freakin'......

commercial, funny commercial, commercial, another funny commercial, commercial, funny commercial, commercial, funny commercial, another commercial.....

.....should be freakin'......

commercial, funny commercial, commercial, another funny commercial, commercial, funny commercial, commercial, funny commercial, another commercial.....

uh.. freakin' not going to happen.

You get the idea.

I used to participate in the Carnival of the Recipes on a regular basis until I ran out of recipes. And then I got lazy about linking. Since I will be hosting in February, I better get back to it.

This week the carnival is hosted at "The Common Room" and I found a recipe that I want to try. It has quite a few of my favorite things in it....

Next week they are asking for tea or coffee recipes. The deadline for recipe submissions is Noon (Central Time) on Saturday. Send the link to your post or if you don't have a blog, just email the recipe to recipe-dot-carnival-at-neversendspam-gmail-dot-c0m. I don't have any tea or coffee recipes tucked away, but the following week's theme is "Potluck". That will be easy!!!

Catching up on my blog reads and Kris made me laugh twice. Check it out here and then go here. Scroll past her beautiful picture to get to the funny stuff.

When I first started grocery shopping for myself, generic brands were horrible. Over the last five years I have tried generic brands, mostly at Wal-Mart, to see of I can save money. I have found Wal-Mart to have some great alternatives to name brand.

I googled about the Wal-Mart brand and ended up finding some interesting articles.

This article talks specifically about Wal-Mart brands:

Another article has some interesting info, including this:

Here is an article about Generic brands. It quotes Consumer Reports test results of generic brands with Wal-Mart's Great Value brand part of the best in cereal and peanut butter categories.

More about Wal-Mart's private labels:

And despite what people say, Wal-Mart says:

And my last link is a list of Wal-Mart brands can be found at Wikipedia.

But the main reason for my post was to share with you the Wal-Mart brands that I use and to find out if you do also.

My favorite is the Great Value Italian Seasoned Bread Crumbs. They have a flavor that needs no additional assistance. I think that Progresso is the name brand equivalent, but it's seasonings are not as good and as much. Last week I bought a name brand chicken coating product and will never buy it again. It cost just as much as a can of GV Italian Bread Crumbs and only covered enough chicken for one meal. A can of GV can coat quite a bit of chicken, not just one meal. And it taste much better.

I am also a fan of their peanut butter, pasta, and fruit bars. And I am sure I will be trying more in the future.

Costco carries Kirkland brand baby wipes that are wonderful! They are bigger and stronger than the expensive brands at the store. And even though my kids are not in diapers, I still use them for cleanup of not just the kids, but the house. I let the girls use them when they help me clean since they don't have any chemicals. And they clean great! All this and they are still cheaper than name brand wipes. Wooo hoooo!

So, what generic brands do you use? Are there any you stay away from?

I also know there are many Wal-Mart haters out there and to each their own opinion, but I found this to be very interesting:

My sign was posted on Grouchy Old Cripple's blog on Saturday.

Note to Mom: This is a blog that Dad might like, but don't ask me why.....

I have two pair of boots with about 2 inch heels. I love the way they look but at the end of the day the bottom of my feet hurt. I am not sure what you call the part that hurts, but it is the main part you stand on when you have heels on. The balls of your feet? You know, right behind your toes and before your arches? And it hurts almost dead center of that section.

Is there any way to prevent this? Can I buy something? Does it mean my boots are to big? I usually have to go bigger than normal because of my high arches.

Note to Grandparents and family. And anyone else who will read this!

Oldest did very well on her report card! All E's and +'s!!! Wooo hooo!

Helping out a friend with a blog design and found a bug when we went live. Had to go back to his original template, but I WILL figure it out.

I am off to sleep. Maybe. I bet this problem will be rolling around in my dreams!

One of my regular blog reads was using a standard Blogger template and it just did not fit him. And since *I* was looking at it on a regular basis, I wanted to clean the place up. He gladly let me do so....

Like the new header? It is a picture of my hubby and me at the Rose Bowl. After Texas won. See that smile on his face? Very rare indeed.

Oldest has a fever and even declined ice cream.

Youngest is on a growth spurt and she wanted the ice cream offered to Oldest. After a dinner of steak, potatoes, and green beans (she at most of the can), she had a ice pop. Then she had some crackers and soup with her sister, who finally decided to eat. Then she wanted more.

Oldest needed new pants since the ones we bought 3 months ago no longer fit. We found three pairs at a Resale shop. While we were trying them on, Hubby and Youngest did a good job of picking out some shirts. We got out of there with 10 items for $36. New clothes for the girls yet satifaction to my frugal senses.

Hubby's division is being sold or spun off. He is worried. Last week they had some lay offs that were not related to the spin off. So they say.

My work is busy with an audit. Thanks to Sarbanes and Oxley. A whole post on that in the future.

This week was a good hair week. Not just a good hair day - a whole week!!! Having good hair is like wearing magic slippers. It is the icing on the cake. The hubba to your bubba. Trust me guys, it makes a big difference.

TIVO is a good thing. (How random was that comment? )

One of my products on Cafepress.com has been reviewed by Lisa who has started a Cafepress.com Review Blog. I got three lightbulbs along with some others. Woo hooo!!!

Oldest has an ear infection and had a virus. The fever broke today, so we are back to normal tomorrow.

Oldest requested that we fix her hair like the best friend in the "Princess Diaries". She says "It's split down the middle with the hair going like this." as she make McDonalds arches at her hairline. "And she has red hair, but I don't want red hair." I have never seen the movie before, but we found a picture on the internet. Before dinner I gave the girls a bath and we attempted the new style. I tried to balance controlling the heat of the blow dryer and actually drying her hair while she wanted to see everything I was doing. And hug me or play with a brush or hold the cord of the blow dryer. We almost got what she wanted. All my style products are for curly hair, so I need to get something for her straightness. And learn how to fix straight hair. I have a feeling she is going to work with me on this.

This meme is going around and I have seen it everywhere. And since I have no good blog fodder, I will participate. This will be my only meme this year except for Blogcess!

Four Jobs I've Had In My Life:
Clerk at Baskin Robbins
Clerk at Seven-Eleven
Employment Interviewer
Computer Support

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over and Have:
The Iron Man
Pretty Woman
Usual Suspects
Batman - The Beginning

Four Places I have Lived:
Germany
Oklahoma
Hawaii
Texas

Four TV Shows I love to Watch
(These shows powered by TIVO!!!)
CSI
Monk
American Idol (yikes! I love it!)
Extreme Makeover - Home Edition

Four Places I have been on Vacation
Maine
Wine Country
Martha's Vineyard
Hawaii (all the islands)

Four Websites I visit Daily ( I forgot to change Bou's answers originally)
Gmail
Weather.com
My Blog to check.....
the most recently updated on my blogroll

Four Favorite Foods:
Velvetta with Rotel and beef with chips
40 Cloves of Garlic with a Chicken
Vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup. Mixed together like soft serve.
Mexican food. This covers nachos, chalupas, burritos, etc. All of it. I could eat it every day.

Four Places I would rather be right now:
In bed asleep
A road trip with my family

This one was really hard. I have many vacation spots if that is what they are talking about, but nothing really comes to mind. I am just happy where I am. (wow!)

Four People I'm going to Tag
I won't tag anyone but here are the people I joined:
CalTechGirl, Bou, Sissy, VW, Napster, 3T, and Lisamichelle.

My daughter is going on a field trip tomorrow to the Fort Worth Stock Show. I am freaking out. They will have chaperones and I think I trust that. But the Fort Worth Stock Show can get crazy crowded. What if she gets lost? What if someone grabs her?

On the instruction sheet the teacher recommened that the Chaperones bring a backpack to hold their lunches and antibacterial wet wipes, Kleenex, and bandaids. BANDAIDS!!!!!! Then at the bottom there is more in BOLD: Special Directions to Chaperones: You are repsponsible for the children in your care at all times. If they ride with you in your car, you are to make sure they are with you at all times and return back to the school with you.

I have been so reasonable about stuff before, but this is just freakin' me out. Is this normal? Or are my chic hormones kicking in? I could have went as a Chaperone but since I missed work to take care of her while she was sick, I am behind on my work.

OK - (calming down) - I just read the second sheet of the info and it has a roster on it. It lists which parents are going and who is riding with them. My daughter is in the same car as the teacher. Oh my... I. feel. so. much. better.

Please tell me I am normal!!!

Update: After I posted this entry, I was going down my blog roll and read this. Heh.

Checked in with my anti-MIL after she picked up Oldest after the field trip. She is safe.

Whew.

My "scan" reading gave me a giggle when I read the results of this trivia generator tool. Look at #3:

If you just read the first part of the sentence, it has a different meaning than the whole thing.

Prochein Amy can smell some things up .....

(trivia originally found at Bou's)

Part of my job has been ensuring complaince with SOX for my company. It is not one of those things that people volunteer for. For me it crept up on me. You can read about SOX from the link above, but I want to 'splain it to you my way.

SOX should really be called the Enron Law. Because of the bad people, our law makers passed a law that was supposed to help protect us from other bad people. So what does that mean for companies now? Executives are now responsible for the finacial data. They can no longer say they had no idea if the numbers are bad. And the auditors are under stricter laws also. And most things that the government puts in is easy, right? Having to change your password? SOX. The password has to have so many characters, a number, etc? SOX. In order for them to make sure the financial numbers are good we are audited for our internal controls related to our Finacial Applications. Many things have to be checked and I am involved with the Accounts/User Access part. This control is important because you want to make sure only the people who need access can get to your finacial data. You have to make sure that people don't have the access to "cook the numbers". So.....

Let's just take one system and review what has to be accurate. There are three levels to this system. You have the actual application and the database where the actual data is stored. All of that runs on a Operation System with accounts. Accounts at all levels *could* affect the financial data. OK, so 1 applications with 3 levels of accounts.

The Auditors come in and they want to verify that everyone who has access to any of the 3 levels is approved (since this is one of our internal controls). And since this is only our second year of being audited at this level and internal controls were not in place before, verification clean up of the accounts need to occur. Before we give the data to the auditors. Guess who is doing that?

ME! For the last month. 3 levels per application. And we have around 10. So 30 levels total. Of course I don't know what each account is for since I do not support the applications. So I get with the support person. And if there are any exceptions to our internal control it must be documented and signed by at least 5 people. 2 of them question every exception. Not that they shouldn't, but please not so much resistance to the messenger. And we can't just delete the accounts since they may be needed and it could bring down the system.

This week I have been really working on this verification since the Auditors are "in the house". I now dream about it. I see lists of accounts scrolling and hear myself talking out what the accounts are for. This account is for this, that account is for that. Do we need this account? Where did the account come from? It wasn't on our list before! My alarm goes off this morning and I think "I will work on this list later, it's time to get up." Yikes! It is bad enough to have to do it during the day, but in my DREAMS?!?!?!?!

And this stuff has to be right. If it isn't they will intesify their auditing. And if we fail significantly it could be reported to the SEC making our stock go down. I guess you could say that I am contributing to the stock value of my company. As much as a hate what I am doing and as much as it gives me a headache, I have a strong will to do a good job and get it right. If we fail, I will have failed. Maybe that is why I am dreaming about it.

having some problems with trackbacks....

I have set my blog back to the standard Moveable Type template and will be modifing it over the next few days. Kinda like Trading Spaces. Move everything out and put what you really want back in. And put it back differently.

Update on Jan. 30: Just a few more tweaks and I think I will leave it alone.

"SENATE RESOLUTION 352 -- COMMENDING THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN LONGHORNS FOOTBALL TEAM FOR WINNING THE 2005 BOWL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP."

I have not counted the number of Wheras's in this resolution yet. Unless you are a Longhorn fan, I doubt you will read it all. So here are my favorites:

Whereas Ahmard Hall, the male 2005 Big 12 Sportsperson of the Year, served his country as a Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps for four years--serving tours in Kosovo and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan--prior to joining the team as a walk-on in 2003 and ultimately rising to the position of starting fullback and team captain;

Whereas the entire Longhorns team should be commended for its inspirational work, determination, and success;

Whereas the University of Texas at Austin has a long tradition of athletic and academic excellence; and

Whereas the Longhorns have brought great honor to themselves, their university, and the great State of Texas...

I also picked up one of these today. My box won't be opened.

I really want some of these cans of Coke, but they were only distributed in Austin for a limited time. I called an Austin friend to see if she could snag me some, but I am sure it is to late.

Offical story about this merchandise here.

I love food, I love to share and I love to have people over. So hosting the Carnival of Recipes is great for me!!!

This week's Carnival of the Recipes is All About Chocolate!!! Just in time to prepare for Valentine's Day, huh? Have a chocolate recipe you want to share? Post it on your blog and send the link to recipe(dot)carnival(at)gmail.com. If you don't have a blog, just email the recipe. Deadline is Saturday at noon.

Update: Here is an blog post that my inspire you!

A blog friend and design-ee nominated my blog in the Personal Blog category for Best So Far ~ Blog Awards By and For the People at "Bloggin" Outloud"! WOW!!!! My nomination even made it through a USC fan!

Ben of "Faith and Theology" in the running for Religous Blog category. (He is the one who nominated me.) I would have never found Ben's blog on my own since I am not that interested in the serious study of religion. He wanted some blog design help and took me up on my offer of free assistance. Some of his posts are over my head, but I have learned from his blog and enjoy reading about his favorite subject matter. So I will be voting for his blog! Which leads me to.....

How can you vote in this contest? Via email at BestSoFar@RightThinking.net by Sun, Feb 5th. I am going to check out the other nominations and may have some new blog roll additions. I also noticed a few other Munuvian out there.

Thank you in advance if you vote for me!