Yes, it is Super Bowl Sunday today, February 2nd, and all that that entails! Parties, food, neighbors, drinks, food, and more food. If all goes well, I’m planning to make a yummy salad I made first at Christmas and some Ham & Swiss Sliders that I read about that sound good to take to our neighbor’s annual party. It’s always fun to see current and past neighbors and watch the commercials and half-time show on a big screen TV….oh, and the football game.

It’s not just Super Bowl Sunday, though! It’s also Groundhog Day! It’s the day the nation watches Punxsutawney Phil to see whether or not he sees his shadow when he comes out of his hole so we know if we’ll have six more weeks of winter or not. It’s pretty hard in Houston to know if we’re having winter or spring so what the groundhog does isn’t really of interest to me. You can read about Groundhog Day HERE.

But there are two things that are interesting to me on this Super Bowl Sunday, or rather February 2nd. Back during my second year of college, February 2nd was the day after my dear friend/college roommate’s birthday but since her birthday was on a Thursday many, many, many, many years ago, she and her boyfriend waited until Friday night to go out to dinner to celebrate. He proposed to her and when I came back to our dorm room late that night, she told me she was engaged!

That led to a “candlelight” ceremony on our dorm floor. We would put a note under the door of the RA on the floor and she would put up a sign announcing there would be a candlelight ceremony that night, and at the appointed time ( we used to have to all be back in the dorm by a certain hour back in the day!) everyone gathered in a circle on the floor in the hall, all of us singing a song, passing a candle around until the girl who secretly got engaged blew it out and then got tossed in the shower or some such thing! I had news for her, too, about my evening, but not as exciting as a diamond ring!

That same February 2nd, I had been out for the evening, too. The girls in the suite next to mine asked me to go to the mall with them that evening and I said yes. When my RA heard that, she said no, I was supposed to go to this party with her at her friend’s apartment that she had been talking about for weeks where some boys she and her friend had met at some festival were coming to visit. So I went to the party.

These boys were pretty late getting there, I was wondering if they would ever show up, but when they did my life changed because I met my husband! He had a nice smile and looked a lot like a boy who was a family friend. He was only there because he was the one with a car that night so they drove two hours down the interstate to this party. He had two flat tires but they made it! We chatted the rest of the evening and then he walked me back to the dorm, where I think he scribbled down my address on a scrap of paper.

I went straight to another friend’s room who had gone to the same high school as this boy and we found his photo in her yearbook! I think a few days later I got a letter from him and then a valentine and that was the beginning of two shoeboxes full of letters (and maybe a few expensive long-distance phone calls) over several years until we finally got married!

All this to say, Super Bowl Sunday may be February 2, 2020, and it may be Groundhog Day, but for me, it’s about something else! But enjoy the game and all the fun!