What big companies do you admire? Here is a list of the Top 20 Most Admired American Companies as compiled by Fortune magazine.

I know, I know…for some of you, that’s a loaded question. You hate all big companies; you only like mom and pop outfits that don’t want to make a profit.

But there are some big companies that you probably still like or admire something about, whether it’s their products, their service, or their charitable activities.

That’s the topic of this week’s question.

• First to play last week: Donna of Just Me. Congratulations!

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:
Name the seven companies you most admire.

Either answer the question in a comment or answer it in your journal and include the link in a comment. (To be considered “first to play,” a link must be to the specific entry in which you answered the question.) You may include this link in the URL space when leaving your comment, or in the comment itself. As long as it’s there in one spot or the other.

For loyal viewers of the CBS comedy All in the Family, it probably wasn’t particularly surprising to see the show take on a controversial topic. But some who were used to watching TV during a much more “tame” time than we have today, the evening of September 15, 1973 was about to be a shock.

The episode was called “We’re Having a Heat Wave,” and focused primarily on Archie Bunker’s efforts to join forces with neighbors to keep a second minority from moving onto the block. Ironically, when it is learned that the would-be home buyers are Puerto Rican, the Bunkers’ neighbor, Henry Jefferson, who is black, agrees to sign the petition as well, all under the auspices of “looking out for number one.”

In a side story of the episode, from which the title comes, the Bunkers are dealing with high heat in an energy crisis, and tempers are flaring. In an early scene, Michael “Meathead” Stivic is arguing with Archie over the Watergate affair. Exasperated, and after hearing Archie complain about the constant discussion of “Richard E. Nixon’s” darkest moment, Meathead starts yelling, “Watergate, Watergate, Watergate, Watergate!”

With faithful wife Edith looking on, Archie yells, “Don’t say that no more, G– D— it!”

Edith shreaks. The studio audience gasps. And the censors at CBS, oddly enough, did not bleep the word.

While it may still defy explanation as to why censors actually allowed the word to air back then, it immediately becomes apparent why the word was written into the script: for the rest of the scene the word is mentioned only by initials, was part of the dialog, because Archie then begins a humorous tirade on why the word isn’t a “swear word:”

EDITH: You shouldn’t swear like that.

MEATHEAD: You swore! You swore!

ARCHIE: I didn’t swear…

EDITH: Ever since this Watergate thing, it’s ‘G.D.’ this and ‘G.D.’ that.

ARCHIE: That’s not swearing, ‘G.D.’ The first word there is God. How can that be a swear word, the most popular word in the Bible? The second word, that’s damn. That’s a perfectly good word. You hear that all the time, like “they dam the river to keep it from flooding”. And even in the Bible you read where some guy was damned for cheating or stealing or having ‘insex’ in the family. And who damned him? Who else? God. God damned him. Edith, beautiful words right out of the Holy Book, don’t show your ignorance!

Here at Patrick’s Place, I try to keep the language to “broadcast standards,” which means that certain words don’t get in, even through comments. (Yes, I reserve the right to edit for content. Don’t like it? Then write your own blog.) Despite that historic broadcast of 1973, the curse word G.D. hasn’t made its way into broadcast television very often. I don’t use the word personally, and it doesn’t get used here.

I make mention of this because there is a difference between G.D., the swear word, the ultimate taking of the Lord’s name in vain, and Archie’s of the phrase “God damned him” to justify a swear word as anything but.

That is why I am still surprised that there are media outlets — particularly national ones like CNN or MSNBC (which one did it most recently I do not recall, but I saw it on one) — that bleep the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s tirade.

What he said was this:

“When it came to putting the citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters. Put them on auction blocks. Put them in cotton fields. Put them in inferior schools. Put them in substandard housing. Put them scientific experiments. Put them in the lower paying jobs. Put them outside the equal protection of the law. Kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education, and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ Naw, naw, naw. Not ‘God Bless America.’ ‘God Damn America!’ That’s in the Bible. For killing innocent people. “God Damn America” for treating us citizens as less than human. ‘God Damn America’ as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is Supreme.”

He is clearly not using the phrase as an adjective, like “Awful America,” in which case the G.D. would be a curse word; he is using it in a statement as a verb, in a call to action for God to punish the country for the injustices it has committed to some of its people.

Whether you agree with Wright’s comments or not, whether you agree with his approach or not, his choice of words, while incindiary, is not profanity, and should therefore not be bleeped on the air.

Many people take offense to the words, because they believe that any time the name God is placed side by side next to the word damn, it must automatically be profanity, and in fact, the worst kind that a Christian can use.

Most broadcast outlets that are still bleeping the word are most likely either trying to avoid offending their audience, or trying to avoid members of the audience filing indecency complaints accusing them of airing profanity, even though this usage isn’t profane.

But there are times when Christians need to think before they react. This is one of them.

Set a spell…kick your shoes off…and let’s talk about your feet. That’s the theme in this week’s edition!

• First to play last week: Connie of This is Connie. Congratulations!
  (According to the rules, “First to Play” requires you to be the first to include the link to the specific entry in which you answered the questions, not just the general link to your blog.)

Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your journal…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! To be counted as “first to play,” you must be the first player to either answer the questions in a comment or to provide a complete link to the specific entry in your journal in which you answer the questions. A link to your journal in general cannot count. Enjoy!

1. How many pairs of shoes do you own right now? Over the course of a single week, how many of them are you likely to wear total?

2. At what store do you buy the majority of your shoes?

3. How much did you pay for the most expensive pair of shoes you own? How much was the cheapest?

4. Take the quiz: What do your feet say about you?

5. What’s your preference: dress, casual, sneaker, flip flop or sandal?

6. Have you ever had or considered getting a pedicure?

If you have a Reader’s Choice question you’d like to see asked (and answered), send me an email! I’d love to be able to include it in a future edition of the Saturday Six.

Today is the first day of the all-important May Sweeps. So I’ll post this week’s edition of Ten On early so that I can keep my eyes on Channel 37.

1. UNPLUGGED: While those of us who work in television are already up to our hips in sweeps planning, there’s a group out there that hopes all of that work goes for naught. They used to call their annual effort, “TV Turnoff Week.” But now it appears that they have set their sights on more than just the “boob tube.” TV Squad explains what else they want you to stay away from for the rest of the week.

2. STILL THE KING: After rumors that Katie Couric might be pushed off of the CBS Evening News and tapped to replace Larry King, who might be ready to retire, the CBS brass stepped up and denied the Couric was going anywhere anytime soon. Then CNN stepped in and extended King’s contract into 2009. At close to $7 million a year, it is less than half what Couric is bringing in.

3. WHAT THEY PAID FOR?: And speaking of Couric’s salary, the week after the aforementioned rumors about her anchoring demise, the CBS Evening News brought in a new record low in terms of viewership. Last week, the Eye’s evening news attracted 5.39 million viewers, putting it more than 2 million behind second place World News on ABC. NBC Nightly News had 8.17 million.

4. CYBER CAMPAIGNING: Obama is winning the race to the White House…at least as far as online video streams are concerned. According to Nielsen, who this month is measuring television viewership, Obama had 518,000 unique viewers on his site accessing more than 800,000 video streams at 16 minutes per stream. Hillary Clinton drew 351,000 unique viewers and John McCain trailed at a mere 38,000 viewers. I’d call that a landslide for the Democrats; wonder if that will translate into actual numbers in November?

5. CIRCUS FREAKS: Remember the old show Circus of the Stars? It went off the air years ago. Probably for a reason. That notwithstanding, NBC has dipped deep in creativity to create an update of the show. Celebrity Circus premieres in June, well outside of May sweeps. Probably for a reason. The incredible list of “celebrities” who’ve signed on so far promises to insure the Peacock network with a blockbuster that you won’t forget for at least 18 seconds. Maybe CBS will bring back its defunct Pirate Master. What a week for TV that would be!

6. AND THE EMMY® GOES TO…: Beginning this year, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences will hand out an Emmy award to recognize the best host of a reality show. Anyone care to toss in their guesses for the first win? (And please don’t mention that Seacrest guy!)

7. JUST IN CASE: If you were a Jew who managed to slay a dragon, would you be able to indulge in a feast? The answer to this all-important question can be found on a “comprehensive analysis” of mythical animals and whether they would be kosher. Why? I’m still wondering.

8. MONTANA MEMOIR: Miley Cyrus, better known as “Hannah Montana” — and no, I’m not remotely familiar with her work — is writing her memoir. Seriously. The girl is 15. How long can the memoir be? If Cliffs Notes ever produced a summary, it might run a full paragraph.

9. HOW THE WORLD WILL END?: No, it has nothing to do with global warming, and I’m not trying to disasterize here, but I can’t help but wonder in the back of my mind if a story like this one might one day explode into something even the world’s finest doctors and researchers can’t stop. I refer to a story of a “genetically distinct” virus discovered in a remote part of Bolivia. The highly-deadly organism appears to be carried by rodents. This one has a 30% fatality rate, so it’s not time to sound any major alarms…unless you live among rodents in the remotest parts of Bolivia. I was amused by one of the comments: “It’s about time someone posted a piece of news like this. I was almost feeling safe for a minute there….”

10. PAIN AT THE PUMP: The question isn’t, “How high are gas prices?” but “How affordable is gas for the average American?” So says Charleston’s Post and Courier. They did some research to compare the rising price of gas over time in relation to per capita income. Yes, you know how this one ends. But what might be amazing to you is how recently the average price of gas was just a few pennies over a buck. Those were the days.

I almost spilled my coffee when I heard Hillary Rodham Clinton say today that if Barack Obama doesn’t win Pennsylvania, people should start to ask why he can’t close the deal.

After the near catastrophe, I stood there watching the screen, waiting for the laughter I assume she would then offer, confirming that it was, indeed, some joke.

Because for Clinton to suggest that people should ask why Obama can’t close the deal is a big joke.

The same question should be applied to her, a candidate regarded as a “shoe-in” for years, before most people had ever even heard of Barack Obama. A candidate who has been trailing for most of the campaign. A candidate who is hoping to hang on with just enough popular vote so she can make the case that she should get the nomination to special voters in a highly-dishonest system known as “super delegates” that is designed to produce the nominee “they” want, no matter who “we” vote for.

With all her experience, including single-handedly dodging gunfire in Bosnia, she should have been able to close the deal by Super Tuesday.

So what’s her excuse?

I was just reading the most recent edition of West Of, a local newspaper devoted to covering the West Ashley neighborhood of Charleston.  One of the stories describes how an elderly woman fell victim to a “flim-flam” scam at a local post office.

As George Carlin might say, this story is “full of things that piss me off.”

Here’s what happened, according to the article:

“The victim said she had been approached by two unknown suspects….  She said both were well-dressed, and the man was wearing attire similar to a preacher, and he told her he led a church in North Charleston.  The suspects told the victim that they had seen a man in the parking lot drop a box that contained $64,000 in US currency, and when they tried to give it back to him, he refused to take it.”

Let me pause for a second.  If you dropped a box that contained $64,000 in any currency, would you refuse to take it back?

The story continues:

“The suspects told the woman they would give her $20,000 if she would give them some money in return.”

Let’s think about this for a second:  here are two strangers, apparently church leaders, who just found money.  Why wouldn’t these characters give the money — all of it — to their own church?  (That’s of course if they were adamant about not doing the right thing, which would be turning it in to the police.)

And if they’re going to hand you $20,000 of money that isn’t theirs to begin with, and will then keep the remaining $44,000 for themselves, why would you need to give them anything in return?  If they want you to hand them $5,000, for example, why not just take this “fee” out of your “share?”

If they approached me with such a scheme, I’d say that I’d be fine with taking just $15,000…or even $10,000.  They could keep the other half of my take with my complements.

If that didn’t float their boat, they could just give me $100 and I’ll go have a hell of a nice dinner.  And they can negotiate some screwball trade with the next average Joe who walks by.

The woman, unfortunately, then handed these people almost four thousand from her Social Security check, but the suspects said that wouldn’t be enough for them to be motivated to give her $20,000.  So she withdrew more money from her bank, gave it to one of the suspects, who promptly disappeared.

But really…why would anyone fall for this?  On what level does this possibly sound legit?  Am I missing something?
Folks, please call your folks or any elderly relatives who are still alive and discuss this story with them.  If any of them say they’d go for it, you might consider making sure someone accompanies them whenever they have banking business to do.

For their own sake.

In what has to be the most-blown surprise of the year, President Bush will make a “surprise” appearance on NBC’s Deal or No Deal on Monday.

The purpose of the appearance, which was taped at the White House in advance of actual game play, is so that Bush can thank an Iraqi war veteran for serving the country. The veteran, contestant Captain Joseph Kobes, is hoping to pay off his parents’ home. He is a Purple Heart and Bronze Start recipient who completed three tours of duty in Iraq.

The fact that Bush took the time to tape the message that will appear on a game show will no doubt get the Bush haters all riled up just like those silly correspondent dinners. (These same people will play dumb, of course, the next time a president of their party does anything remotely lighthearted during any kind of negative national situation.)

But let’s be clear: whether this vet supported the war or not, he felt it was his duty to serve three tours there. He deserves at least a million bucks in my book.

The only thing that confuses me is why NBC wouldn’t hold this episode until the following Monday: May sweeps begins Thursday of this week.

This week we’re doing something a little different. I’m going to give you the first seven letters of the alphabet, and you’re going to give me the name of either a blogger you visit often whose name starts with that letter, or a blog you visit whose title starts with that letter.

One of the blogs I’ve visited the longest, for example, is Carly’s blog, “Ellipsis…Suddenly Carly.” So in my case, I could list her with the “C” in Carly or the “E” in “Ellipsis.” And because I remember her AOL user name, through which she blogged the original version of “Ellipsis,” I could have listed her under “O” if that were one of this week’s options. Simple enough, right?

That’s the topic of this week’s question.

• First to play last week: Otowi of Otowi. Congratulations!

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:
List either the name of a favorite blogger or their blog’s title that begins with the first letter of each of the first seven letters of the alphabet.

Either answer the question in a comment or answer it in your journal and include the link in a comment. (To be considered “first to play,” a link must be to the specific entry in which you answered the question.) You may include this link in the URL space when leaving your comment, or in the comment itself. As long as it’s there in one spot or the other.

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t. I hope that you’re in a “nutty” mood if you’re going to play this week’s set of six1

• First to play last week: Cat of Sweet Memes. Congratulations!
  (According to the rules, “First to Play” requires you to be the first to include the link to the specific entry in which you answered the questions, not just the general link to your blog.)

Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your journal…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! To be counted as “first to play,” you must be the first player to either answer the questions in a comment or to provide a complete link to the specific entry in your journal in which you answer the questions. A link to your journal in general cannot count. Enjoy!

1. You’re ordering a hot fudge sundae. Do you order it with nuts or without?

2. You’re buying a jar of peanut butter: which brand do you buy most often? Creamy or crunchy?

3. What was the last kind of nut you remember eating?

4. Take the quiz: What nut are you?

5. This one will do a lot to indicate where you’re from: when you hear someone refer to “boiled peanuts,” are you intrigued or grossed out?

6. What is your favorite synonym for the other kind of nut, as in “a lunatic?”

If you have a Reader’s Choice question you’d like to see asked (and answered), send me an email! I’d love to be able to include it in a future edition of the Saturday Six.

I figured it was about time that I updated the Writing page of this blog.  If writing is an interest of yours, or if (for some reason) my writing is of interest, then click on the Writing button at the top of the blog and read away.

My list of ten miscellaneous items makes its first Thursday appearance this week thanks to an uninvited illness.

If you feel compelled to come up with ten of your own, feel free to leave a link to your blog. Otherwise, feel free to comment on any or all.

1. WHO KNEW?!?: My friend Jeff got a surprise while buying a gift from his wife. The surprise? A discount on an Apple product. Yes, I know…you need a moment to compose yourself after the shock of seeing the words discount and Apple in the same sentence. But wait, it gets better! Click here to read what the discount was for. Honesty definitely proved the best policy this time around! Way to go, Jeff.

2. NATURE’S WAY: Sometimes nature is an extraordinary thing. Scientists have learned that circulating through the bloodstream of alligators are what could be the basis of powerful new antibiotics that kill E. coli, herpes simplex, and Staphylococcus aureus. The gators live in the nasty sorts of places where these nasty germs live and thrive, so Mother Nature has given them the defenses they need to survive. Now, if only a way can be developed to get those defenses for humans without destroying the reptiles, we may have more good medical news for humanity.

3. ABC SAYS NO: The Alphabet network, as the trades call it, has passed on a remake of the old Circus of the Stars. It turns out that since ABC learned that NBC was already doing a celebrity reality show that involves a circus motif, it didn’t want to run with a concept so similar. I’m in shock all over again.

4. AMERICA’S FIRST FAMILY: Remember that slogan from a few years back? It was associated with NBC’s Today show. Now, the First Lady herself is making a special appearance to cohost the 9:00am hour next Tuesday. The longer the show runs over the course of the morning, the less useful it tends to be. Last time I checked, anything past about 7:45am began reaching into the questionable area. Anything past 8:25am is almost totally useless. Laura’s on at 9:00am. You do the math.

5. FIRST TABLE: Not to be outdone, Cindy McCain, who hopes to be the next First Lady, will appear next Monday on ABC’s The View. That’s a show that is even more useless than the later hours of Today in my book: it’s on opposite The Price is Right, for Pete’s sake.

6. ANCHOR TRADE: Insiders are suggesting a trade between CBS and CNN: how about putting Anderson Cooper in the center seat at the CBS Evening News and sending Couric to host a news-related talk show or to even replace Larry King some day. Would you be more likely to give CBS a try for the national news if Anderson was the anchor? Would you be more likely to give Couric a shot in a talk format?

7. I WISH: The quiz says I’m worth $826 per hour in bed. I say that’s a little steep, even on my best day. Okay, okay…it’s a lot steep, and you’ll just have to take my word on that. How much are you worth? And more importantly, do you know anyone who’d actually pay that much? (If you do, I don’t want to know….)

8. SOME CHRISTIANS GET IT: Bishop Desmond Tutu is one of them. Appearing before the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, he spoke about the church’s homophobia and ostricizing of homosexuals: “How sad, how tragic, that the Church be so concerned with this issue when God’s children all the world over are suffering.” I suspect that Jesus would reach out to everyone in a show of genuine love and compassion, not hate. I also suspect that He certainly wouldn’t blame tragedies of the world on society’s “acceptance” of homosexuality. Where, exactly, is homosexuality accepted, anyway?

9. RUN. DO NOT GO BACK. RUN!: I saw an interview with the woman accusing actor Rob Lowe of sexual assault and harassment this morning on one of the earlier, still-somewhat-useful hours of Today. Asked a very reasonable question: why she returned to the job after she had left more than once, given the conditions she describes, she answered that she loved the kids and needed the job. If I give her the complete benefit of the doubt that everything she claims happened happened, I am still left with this unescapable conclusion: if you’re being abused, you do not need that job. No matter what it pays. No matter how great the kids are. No matter how cool it is to work for an actor. When you’re a victim, you get away. And you stay away. It’s cases like this that make it so difficult for women who are abused to find justice by defeating defense attorneys who leap upon excuses like this and convince a jury that women were “asking for it.”

10. TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING: If you remember the scene where Ross tried to flirt with the Pizza girl on Friends, then you probably recall the bit of trivia that natural gas is odorless. They add the smell. They do it so that you know when there’s a leak. A leak is a bad thing, but knowing about it early so you can keep it from killing you is a good thing. But a Pennsylvania gas company apparently pumped a little too much of the stinky stuff, mercaptan, into their batch of natural gas, prompting lots of homeowners to suddenly start panicking about potential leaks that weren’t happening. At least they learned one important lesson: given the signal, homeowners will do the right thing and raise hell.

Sometimes, you learn more about a candidate from how he or she responds to what another candidate says.

Here is what Barack Obama said recently about a growing bitterness he has sensed among voters:

“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, a lot of them — like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they’ve gone through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Hillary Clinton, always happy with smearing a member of her own party if it suits her needs, was quick to call the comment “elitist” and said it showed that Obama was “out of touch.”

John McCain, no doubt delighted by the splintering of the Democratic party from which he hopes to benefit in November, said that in the Great Depression, small town families didn’t “turn to their religious faith and cultural traditions out of resentment and a feeling of powerlessness to affect the course of government or pursue prosperity,” but rather in a search for “purpose and meaning” as they struggled to carry on.

At Wednesday night’s debate, Obama elaborated on the remarks, saying that he meant that “they end up being much more concerned about votes around things like guns where traditions have been passed on from generation to generation. And those are incredibly important to them.”

I am amazed that there are so many Clinton supporters who are just waiting for a reason to slam Obama who can’t look at what he originally said and not get what he meant without further explanation. Or maybe they do, and just pretend that they don’t.

But I think we all know what he meant.

He’s referring to voters who are so aggravated with the choices that they gravitate towards the candidate who has anything in common with them if their first choice somehow rubs them the wrong way in terms of not addressing their needs.

We’ve all seen it, whether we want to admit it or not.

We’ve seen it in the form of Christians who say they’d never vote for a Mormon, even if he were the Republican nominee.

We’ve seen it in the form of angry men who say they don’t mind the idea of a woman in the White House, but just not “her.”

We’ve seen it in the form of gun enthusiasts who would benefit from tax cuts one party is promising, but would only vote for candidate who’s “pro-gun.”

And we’ve seen it from the overly-churched who say they’d never vote for a candidate that supports abortion.

Yet to John and Jane Doe in Louisville, Kentucky, who are looking at a growing stack of bills, whether Samantha Soe in San Francisco has the baby she conceived out of wedlock or not, will have no impact whatsoever on how they’re going to pay for groceries, or even the gasoline to make it to the market. They’ll never meet this underage mother, they’ll never know her baby. So why it should matter so much to them that a candidate feels exactly their way about abortion makes no sense, other than that they have become so frustrated, so bitter, and so disillusioned about the real concerns they face (like the economy, stupid), that they’re searching for anything that they can relate to.

If Hillary had said the same thing, does anyone really think her supporters wouldn’t have immediately understood exactly what she meant? And applauded every syllable of the message?

Hillary Rodham Clinton finally acknowledged Wednesday night what many of us have been saying all along: Barack Obama can indeed win the White House this November.

With all her experience, one wonders why it took her so long to acknowledge the obvious.

Both candidates refused to discuss whether the other would be a likely pick for vice president, but Hillary then said this:

“I’m going to do everything I possibly can to make sure that one of us takes the oath of office next January. I think that has to be the overriding goal.”

Funny, but Hillary sure hasn’t been acting like Obama would be her second choice over McCain in the past. Maybe that’s something new we can look forward to.

So where have I been for the past few days?  Mostly in bed.  With two dogs snuggling up against me, aware that their master, the guy who feeds them, has been battling a nasty flu bug.

I took two-and-a-half days off from work, based on doctor’s advice, and feel guilty about every hour.  My boss and my parents remind me that the reason you have sick leave is to be able to take time off when you’re sick.  This amuses me, since it was my parents that instilled this ridiculous work ethic in me to start with.

As best as I can recall, this is the first time in nearly 10 years that I’ve actually called in sick.  I just don’t like being sick.  I think even when I had my surgery a couple of years ago, I used vacation time for that.  Maybe not, but at least then, no one could say I was playing hookey.

Of course, if they could have heard my voice, there would have been no doubt there, either.

I hope to be back up to full speed by the end of the week.

With Spring just around the corner, a good, traditional Spring cleaning can’t be too far behind. But before you go to the grocery store to load up on sprays, gels and pastes to make your home look as good as new, you might save yourself some money by taking a quick inventory of what’s already in your cleaning arsenal.

That’s the topic of this week’s question.

• First to play last week: Connie of This is Connie. Paul was first-to-play for the second week in a row! Congratulations!

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:
Name seven already-open cleaning products you already have on hand in your home right now.

Either answer the question in a comment or answer it in your journal and include the link in a comment. (To be considered “first to play,” a link must be to the specific entry in which you answered the question.) You may include this link in the URL space when leaving your comment, or in the comment itself. As long as it’s there in one spot or the other.