title: javascript / jquery - get and hold element's initial html content
body: <p>This is probably very basic but I'm stalling ...</p>
  
  <p>On page load, I need to save the html content of my element into a variable.  I have other code in the page that will change the html content of the element.  So I need to be able to revert the value back to it's default (what it was on page load). The issue is that my variable's value is being changed to most recent value.</p>
  
  <p>How can I make the initial value I assign to the variable "stick"?</p>
  
  <pre><code>currentElementsHTML = $("#myDOMElement"),
  currentElementsHTMLDefaultValue = currentElementsHTML.html()
  ... do stuff that changes currentElementsHTML 
  ... revert to currentElementsHTMLDefaultValue whenever i need to
  </code></pre>