Happy Birthday Jeff Gordon!!

Man, I had so much fun over the weekend that today is a major bummer!! I really wanted to throw myself on the floor this morning and have a temper tantrum and scream 'I don't want to go to work!" but didn't figure anyone would listen. The cats would just run and take cover and the hubby would probably kiss me on the forehead and step over me on his way out the door! Wish I could stay home and play every day :( Of course it wouldn't take long before we would have no food or money for gas! But, gas was down to $3.67 today! woohoo! Still sad that those prices seem like a bargain... Was suppose to be a sunny day without too much humidity. Cracks me up as I sit here looking out the window at the rain. I used to tell my kids to be a psychiatrist or a weather anchor...no wrong answers! Did they listen to me? Ha!

We got to watch a decent race this week. Came down to fuel mileage. Carl Edwards won but a handful ran out of gas coming to the checkered flag. Jeff Gordon being one of them but he managed a 10Th place finish. Jimmie Johnson ran out too but he was closer to the line and finished 3rd with Dale Jr. coming in 12Th. Not too bad of a day but would have like Jeff to win one. He is listed today on the 'Today in History' site. Today is his birthday (along with my daughter-in-law ;) was the only way I could remember her birthday for a long time!) the funny thing is it's listed in Automotive and not Sports! NASCAR gets no respect as a sport. Happy Birthday Jeff!

The Nationwide race on Saturday was a hoot. Didn't get to watch it live as we were babysitting but I taped it and we watched it after the girls were in bed for the night. They were in Montreal on a road course and it began to rain. NASCAR had put in place several years ago that if it rained on the road course then the cars would have to put on rain tires. (tires with grooves) It was pretty hilarious to watch. Some went off-course but mostly they just drove slow. Some cars had windshield wipers and some didn't. Really felt for the ones without because it was raining pretty good. Officials finally called the race 26 laps early because of visibility.

Today in History:

August 4, 1892

Borden parents found dead

On this day in 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden are found hacked to death in their Fall River, Massachusetts, home. Andrew was discovered in a pool of blood on the living room couch, his face nearly split in two. Abby was upstairs, her head smashed to pieces; it was later determined that she was killed first. Suspicion soon fell on one of the Bordens' two daughters, Lizzie, age 32 and single, who lived with her wealthy father and stepmother and was the only other person besides their maid, Bridget Sullivan, who was home when the bodies were found. Lizzie Borden was arrested and charged with the double homicide. As a result of the crime's sensational nature, her trial attracted national attention.

Lizzie Andrew Borden was born on July 19, 1860. Her mother died when Lizzie was a young girl and her father, who became a bank president and successful businessman, married Abby Gray, who helped raise Lizzie and her older sister Emma. The sisters reportedly despised their stepmother and, as adults, argued with their father over money matters. Lizzie claimed she was in the barn at the time of the murders and entered the house later that morning to find her father dead in the living room.

The evidence that the prosecution presented against Borden was circumstantial. It was alleged that she tried to buy poison the day before the murders and that she burned one of her dresses several days afterward. And, although fingerprint testing was becoming commonplace in Europe at the time, the Fall River police were wary of its reliability, and refused to test for prints on the potential murder weapon--a hatchet--found in the Bordens' basement. The fact that no blood was found on Lizzie coupled with her well-bred Christian persona convinced the all-male jury that she was incapable of the gruesome crime and they quickly acquitted her.

Lizzie, who inherited a substantial sum after her father's death, moved from the murder site into a different home, where she lived until her death on June 1, 1927. Today, the house where the Borden murders occurred is a bed and breakfast. Despite Lizzie Borden's acquittal, the cloud of suspicion that hung over her never disappeared. She is immortalized in a famous rhyme:

Lizzie Borden took an axe, And gave her mother forty whacks; When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one.

August 4, 1944

Anne Frank captured

Acting on tip from a Dutch informer, the Nazi Gestapo captures 15-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family in a sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse. The Franks had taken shelter there in 1942 out of fear of deportation to a Nazi concentration camp. They occupied the small space with another Jewish family and a single Jewish man, and were aided by Christian friends, who brought them food and supplies. Anne spent much of her time in the "secret annex" working on her diary. The diary survived the war, overlooked by the Gestapo that discovered the hiding place, but Anne and nearly all of the others perished in the Nazi death camps.

August 4, 1942

Holiday Inn premieres

Audiences around the country are introduced to a new holiday classic as Bing Crosby croons "White Christmas" in the film Holiday Inn, which opens on this day in 1942.

Crosby was born Harry Lillis Crosby in Tacoma, Washington, in 1903. As a child, he was such a fan of a cartoon character named Bing that the nickname was pinned on him. During college in Spokane, he began singing and playing the drums with a band and abandoned an interest in law to pursue a career in show business. He and a college friend, Al Rinker, moved to Los Angeles in 1925 and started a vaudeville act.

Impressed by the act, bandleader Paul Whiteman hired Crosby and Rinker to tour with his band in 1927. Three years later, Crosby made his film debut as part of the band. Meanwhile, he married a starlet named Dixie Lee, with whom he had four sons.

Crosby became one of the most beloved entertainers in history. In 1931, he landed his own radio show, which ran in various forms until the mid-1940s. Radio boosted his popularity, and before long he was a hit at the box office as well as on the radio.

Crosby signed with Paramount in 1932 and appeared in The Big Broadcast the same year. His comic flair surfaced in the 1940s with the Road movies that co-starred Bob Hope. During the same period, however, his dramatic work also gained attention: He won an Oscar for his performance as a priest in Going My Way (1944) and was nominated for his performances in The Bells of Saint Mary's (1945) and The Country Girl (1954). Widowed in 1952, he later married actress Kathryn Grant, who was 30 years his junior, and had three more children. He had a short-lived TV sitcom from 1964 to 1965 called The Bing Crosby Show, in which he played an aging singer trying to settle into domestic life. Years later, his daughter Mary Crosby played the girl who shot J.R. Ewing in the TV soap Dallas. Bing Crosby died on the golf course in 1977.

August 4, 1971

"The Kid" is born

Jeff Gordon, a stock-car driver known as "The Kid," was born on this day in 1971. Gordon raced onto the NASCAR scene in 1997 by winning the Winston Cup season points championship for a prestigious second time at the age of 26. "The Kid" was also the first driver to win the Southern 500, NASCAR's oldest race, three years in a row. His clean-cut California image was initially disliked by many racing fans, who tended to prefer the gritty personas of traditional stock-car drivers. However, Gordon had talent, an aggressive driving style, and a knack for publicity, which drew many new fans to the sport.

They didn't say on This Day in History that it was Dale Earnhardt that gave Jeff the nickname 'The Kid'. Some people did, and still do, think Dale and Jeff didn't get along but they were very close friends and business partners. They were also very competitive drivers. Which made for some reeeeeal good racing! :)
I gotta scoot...storm cell moving in (imagine that!)....until next post....