What I did on Saturday

Stacy and I drove to the Sheraton on Courtland downtown and met up with Russ. From the outside, this is a hotel clearly built in the 50s or 60s. On the inside, it has a pool, lots of trees, and the balconies make it look like New Orleans. It's really really cool.

Anyway, we went down there to try out with Russ for the VH-1 World Series of Pop Culture Trivia. Russ has a full breakdown of the experience, but he has left it to me to tell the story of my middle name.

If there's any question about my connection to and love of pop culture, it is put to rest when the story of my middle name is told.

When I was born, my parents did not give me a middle name. There's a bit of a legacy here, but just for simplicity's sake, I'll leave it at that. Anyway, when I was about six or so and going to school, I realized that everyone else had middle names. At the same time, I was a big fan of The Facts of Life, and tomboy through and through. I thought Jo was the coolest girl ever. Today, she'd be a lesbian, but back then, she was just a cool tomboy with a motorcycle. So, in school, I started putting Whitney Jo on everything. The school even sent my progress report home with that name on it. My parents had no idea where it came from and why I started using it. I kind of moved on beyond it for a while, but in the seventh grade or so, starting using it again. And as a Christmas gift that year, my parents legally changed my name. This is not expensive, but also not an easy task, and they went to a lot of trouble to do it. It was such a great gift.

So that's the story of Whitney Jo. It's not, like most people think, because I'm from the South, but because I loved Jo on Facts of Life. Actually, there's an irony there that I've never realized before. And it goes back to the reason I never had a middle name in the first place that I wasn't going to tell. My grandmother and some of her 10 brothers and sisters all had good small town southern names like Betty Ruth, Emma Lou, Hugh Frank, etc. My grandmother hated it, so when she had children, she insisted on only giving them one name. Because of that my mom and her sisters only have one name. And, when my parents had me, they only gave me one name. Then, I ended up with a very southern name, when in fact the single name thing goes back to my grandmother's distaste for the classic southern double-naming tradition. I never thought of it that way.

OK, moving on. It's time to do lots and lots around the house: laundry, clean the kitchen and bathroom, vaccuum, and catch up on my DVR watching. Hope you have a nice Sunday.