An Arizona Cheesehead's Thoughts

There are lots of places that I love to visit time and time again and Vegas is firmly at the top of that list. I find it hard to resist any slight offer to go. The lure of gambling for eight hours at a time is overwhelming. I'm heading off to Sin City tomorrow but I probably won't be doing much gambling at all. Seems a little blasphemous, actually. However, I'm still going to have a blast. Ashley and I are going to the NASCAR races up there. It's one of Jimmie's better tracks so I'm looking for a win for the 48 team. We're also going to see KA . I tried to put in a bid for Spamalot but I don't know of many 16 year old girls who would bite at that one. The gambling urge will still be satisfied this month. Sugar Daddy and I were at our friends' house on Saturday and they said they were going to Vegas on the weekend of the 21st. They suggested we come along. I asked SD if he was free to go and he came back with "I have no life but you...

I saw this headline on my Yahoo! News: JT will induct Madonna into hall of fame My first thought was, "Why would James Taylor introduce Madonna?" Yeah, I'm a bit behind the times. Turns out, it's Justin Timberlake .

I gots me an acoustic bass! It was only a matter of time. The Rocket Scientist told me last week that he had to go to the music store so I asked him to check if they had any acoustic basses there. He countered with, "Why don't I just take you with me?" That pretty much guaranteed in my mind that, if they had some, I was buying. We went yesterday and they had four of them lined up on the wall. We started with the least expensive one. It was too big. I would have really struggled to work on the lower frets. We moved on to the next one up the price list and it was still too big. We got to the third one and it felt just right. The neck wasn't too long and the body wasn't very deep. We didn't even take the most expensive one down. The body looked deeper and it wasn't appreciably shorter. My new baby. It has a built in tuner and a pickup so I can hook it up to an amp if I want to. I think I'm probably loud enough without that at this point. Of ...

I'm not a fond user of cruise control. Though the people behind me on the freeway may wish I use it so I keep a steady pace, I like being in constant control. However, there have been a couple times on the way Tucson that I've thought I should use it just to keep myself under 80. The road is soooooo straight that, unless you get behind a semi trying to pass another semi that's going 1/2 mile an hour slower than the first, it's easy to lose sight of how fast you're going. Every once in a while during my many journeys, I would hold in the button to set my speed but it never took. I figured I was doing something wrong and never looked it up in the manual. It also occurred to me that maybe it didn't work at all and I needed to get it fixed but I've got no time for car repairs (or oil changes, or washes...). This morning, I was getting back into my car after filling up the tank. I happened to look down on the left side of the dash and saw a few buttons. On...

D. U. M. Dum. Don't bother.

I found an Onion meets NASCAR website. The articles are hilarious! Check out Black Flagged Online to see what I'm talking about.

I have inconsistent eyelashes. The lashes on my right eye are perfectly curly. The ones on the left stick straight out. If I put my glasses on too soon after applying my makeup, I end up with mascara all over the left lens . It's annoying so I developed a plan to correct the issue. I'm a planner, it's what I do. I bought an eyelash curler. I've never used one of those before so I read the instructions. Here's what they say: Open the curler with your thumb and middle finger. Rest the soft pad gently on the base of upper lashes. Gently press finger loops together for 5 to 10 seconds. Release lashes by slowly spreading finger loops apart. OK. I figured I could do that. Except, I couldn't. I couldn't figure out whether pad goes on the top of the lashes or underneath. I couldn't figure out what angle to use while placing the curler against the lashes. I couldn't even figure out whether I was holding it right side up or not. Every way I tried...

I don't pay for extra blog tracking services so I can't tell why people come to this site. I can tell what their entry page is though and I've gotten lots of hits from this . I have no idea what's so fascinating in that group of posts but something is high on some search engine. If anyone can tell me, I'd be most appreciative. I suspect it's my rant related to illegal immigration but who knows?

I can't believe I've waited this long to see Jerry Jeff Walker . I've had my chances, though, with only myself to blame for not getting to it earlier. He played at Meeting Of The Minds in 2006 on Thursday night. I had worked about 13 hours at registration and it was pouring rain so I bailed on the show. Everyone later told me it was the best of his that they'd seen in a long, long time. He plays out here at Casino Arizona every so often and it just hasn't worked out for me to go. This year, however, Woody said, "Hey, let's go." So, we did and it was great! I've heard so many stories about Jerry Jeff being, well, cantankerous, crabby and curmudgeonly on stage. He was pretty much a crabass at MOTM when I saw him on Thursday during his soundcheck so I've seen him not so happy and I believe every story about him telling audience members to eff off during a show for various reasons. I think it's almost expected of him now. Well, I gotta s...

I can get here from there! I was driving home tonight and was startled to see that I wasn't getting detoured off on to Rio Salado. I was almost scared to keep going but I was actually able to get through University at McClintock. The water leak has been fixed! I was so excited that I felt compelled to call The Rocket Scientist and tell him about it (you can take a moment and feel sorry for him). The detour has been making me crazy. I've had to get to University via Perry which is very narrow, dark, lacks lane markings and gets flooded every time it rains. Which it has done quite a bit of late. Having the intersection finally open again is going to take 10 minutes off my nightly commute. And, it's going to make it a lot easier for everyone to get to my place.

We were talking at poker Saturday night about our personality types. I couldn't remember for sure what I was except for the Extraverted part. I was thinking I was an ENTJ though and I knew I had taken the test a while ago. At little search through the blog and voila! I was indeed an ENTJ (Extraverted, Intuitive, Thinking and Judging) back in July of 2005. I decided to take the test again to see if I've changed at all. I really think I've mellowed a bit of late so it wouldn't surprise me to get different results. ENFJ is how I came out this time. The Thinking part went to Judging. Correction (why didn't someone tell me it was wrong?) - I came out as ESFJ which means I changed two parts. However, they're both borderline values, as if that makes any difference to the existence of the typo. There was a description to my type that I thought was pretty much dead on: The Portait of the Provider (ESFJ) Provider Guardians take it upon themselves to arrange for the h...

Last night I had chick poker and my other gang was at Margaritaville. I stopped by there for a couple of beers to say hi then headed off to my game. Apparently, they had a lot more beers after I left. I was in the midst of the game when the text messages started. At one point, I was fielding messages from three people of suspect sobriety while playing nearly every hand. Hey, I had good cards and I was pretty aggressive as well. It was a good night for cards. I should qualify that while I was getting messages from three phones, I'm not sure that only three people were on the other ends of the phones. I know some of my responses were collaborative efforts from my gang and I suspect the same was going on in Glendale. Despite the distractions, I ended up turning my $20 buy-in into $43.

Some us went to see The Vander Project play at Aunt Chilada's on Dreamy Draw last night. Pirate Rick, Julie and Woody had gone to see them a couple weeks ago and thought they were great. They were! The played an awesome mix of music. Some examples were If I Had A Million Dollars by Bare Naked Ladies, Layla which everyone should know is a Clapton classic, a couple Tom Petty songs and, for us, Margaritaville. I went to the bathroom during the latter as is my tradition (I mean, come on, how many times can you hear that song?) but I could still hear Julie yell "Bullshit" at the appropriate time. There were lots of other great songs that I could (quietly or at least trying to be) sing along to, too. One of the guys played a song for us called Sex And Beer. It's an 8th Floor song if I ever heard one. Funny stuff. BTW, I've made no secret of the fact that I want to learn the bass. I think the bass players are the coolest members in a band. The Rocket Scientist...

This news story is about my former boss. It's a neat story so check it out.

We need these .

I wrote quite a while back about winning our company's Challenge Cup from the Print Mfg. group. That was so awesome! The rules (which we made up) said you can't challenge back until another group has issued a challenge that's played out or six months have passed. We did get a challenge from one of the sales groups but there are only four of them so we couldn't figure out what to play that would be fair. They ended up getting busy and losing interest so Mfg came back at us. With Softball. Which I knew we wouldn't be good at nor could I even field a willing team from the department so I vetoed the idea. That was totally against the rules (again, that we made up) because you are supposed to accept whatever challenge comes your way. They finally called me on it so I polled our group to see how many would play. I got 6 firm Ayes. Clearly, not enough to field a team. I tried to change it to a home run derby. No dice. I had no choice but to fill the team. The negotiations...

I just got done watching this week's Boston Legal . Scott Bakula is still incredibly hot. I'm just saying.

Sammy and Elizabeth have been talking about Pier 54 for a while now. It's a restaurant on the Lakes in Tempe, literally on the lake. You can pull up in your boat to get to it. They have live music on Friday night, a bar and tables all overlooking the water. Sammy thinks it would be a great place for a club happy hour and he really wanted me to check it out. The Rocket Scientist and I joined them there for dinner last night and it was just as cool as advertised. We had a great view of the water and Christmas Island in the middle of the lake. The food was good and my Miller Lites were only $2. Sweet! Of course, it being me, they were out of my first drink choice of Four Peaks Hefe. As a digression, apparently I am nothing without The Rocket Scientist anymore. I went to dinner last week with some of the gang and Woody greeted me with, "Where's The Rocket Scientist?" I'm not even sure he said hello first. I told him TRS was working on the float. On Friday night at th...

The Arizona Parrot Head Club had its annual Mardi Gras party on Saturday night and it was a blast. Our hosts, Barb and John, had their place decorated to the max and the revelers did just that, they revelled. One of the traditional events is the Shoebox Float contest. I made one the first year we had the party and it was a Ken Doll in a sea scene. Of course, he was wearing Parrot Head gear: swimsuit, coconut bra, decorated hat and a gold glitter mask. He's still sitting on the shelf in my bathroom and The Rocket Scientist thinks it's sick and wrong. Apparently, he's got a thing against men in women's apparel. Anywhoo, I decided to rope The Rocket Scientist into helping me build a float this year. I thought the theme Beach House On The Moon was a good idea for us. I figured I got the Buffett stuff covered and I knew TRS would be all over the moon piece. Boy, was he ever! Forming a moon crater. I thought I was going to be the creative force and he would be my construction...

With apologies to my pals in the cold country, winter is over here. It was 77 today and absolutely gorgeous. We were out and about in shorts and t-shirts and The Rocket Scientist took the top off the Jeep. All signs that it will soon be time to turn on the A/C and enjoy the desert heat.

A new series to replace Harry Potter? Maybe. I enjoyed the first book in this series by Angie Sage. It's got young and old Wizards, lots of good guys and bad guys, some interesting creatures and a Princess. You know I have to like the latter. Some of it was predictable and it was a tad juvenile but I enjoyed the story and I'm going to put the next book on reserve at the library.

Sugar Daddy, Andrea, Dave and I went to lunch today. I drove and Andrea and Sugar Daddy found my plastic pirate hat that I wore at the marathon in the back seat. Sugar Daddy told Andrea that he would buy her lunch if she wore the hat the whole time. Since she's a total cheapskate, she agreed. We went to Arriba's and no one said a word to Andrea about the hat. The waiter didn't even blink. One couple did spot her then whispered amongst themselves but that was about the only reaction we saw. We thought it was hilarious, of course. Sugar Daddy ended up picking up the check for all of us so Dave and I got free lunches without wearing a silly hat. Not that I would have had a problem with it. Once you've done a couple of bus trips wearing a sparkling tiara the whole time, you kinda lose your self consciousness.

We showed our film today at the company staff breakfast and it was a big hit! This year's theme (and we try to keep it secret every year) was an American Idol ripoff. Each of our twelve quarterly winners from 2007 "auditioned" before our judges and then we announced the one big winner for the year. Instead of singing, though, the winners talked about what they did to win during the year (I wrote the script for that part) then they did a post-judging interview where they got to pretty much say whatever they wanted to thank people and whatnot. The casting was great. We had one of the cool guys from Print Mfg as Randy, one of the super nice but sometimes goofy Directors as Paula and my buddy Dave as Simon. Dave can be a little crabby at times so it fit. One of the Sales Supes played the Ryan role and he was a total natural. He's definitely making into the film next year. Besides the 12 winners, we had two guest stars. One was the company's founder and we poked...

If there was ever a morning that I needed a reset button for, this morning was it. First, when I went out to get my paper, I stepped on my front matt. Since the matt was soaked through from yesterday's rain, I ended up with a sopping wet sock. Nice. Second, I had an offsite class today that started at 8 AM. Usually, it would take me 15 minutes to get there so I left at 7:30. Thanks to that frakking broken water pipe on my corner (that I will have to live with for three more weeks), I couldn't get there from here. I got stuck in major bumper to bumper traffic and compounded my problems by taking EVERY wrong turn imaginable. Really, I made not one correct turn. I ended up getting there at 8:15 and had to sneak in after it started. Nice, again. While I was stuck not moving in traffic, I decided to put on my powder and lipstick. Before you think that I'm one of those makeup divas who puts on their face in the car, I'm not. But, since I wasn't moving at all, I ...

The Rocket Scientist and I were passing the time at the bookstore on Friday night. I got a text from Unruly Julie about a band some of the gang were seeing and that we had passed on going to see. I replied that we were at the bookstore and they immediately took it to naughty land by suggesting we were at the adult bookstore. Of course, I felt compelled to reply, "How did you guess?" The conversation then went on to batteries so clearly it went downhill rapidly. A little later, I got another text from Eileen asking what I was up to and, when I told her that we were at the bookstore, her husband came back with, "Be careful of the bookworm". Yes, I think he was making a trouser snake reference there. Leave it to me and my gang to take a perfectly innocent activity and make it sound sordid...

The Supernaturalist is by Eoin Colfer (author of the Artemis Fowler series) and my latest foray into the Young Adult section of the library. I've actually got several books lined up from that area because the ones I've read so far have been quite entertaining. But, I digress. (As usual.) This book takes place in a fairly near future that is completely polluted, high tech and uncaring. So uncaring that orphans are actually kept in brutal conditions and used for product testing. Our hero is one of those orphans who makes his escape and finds he can see parasitic creatures that feed off the energy of dying people. He then joins a team that works outside the system to destroy the creatures. It was a decent book though a tad bit too juvenile for me even with some relatively mature subject matter.

My work film is done! A couple of the team members previewed it today and think it's pretty good. Of course, they kind of have to say that since I'm the committee chair. But, it's pretty funny and I think it will go over well at the company staff meeting this Friday. The last hiccup was converting it from iMovie to QuickTime. When I just converted it to a High Quality CD, it was perfect. Unfortunately, we're broadcasting in stereo and I need it to play the whole thing out of both sides. So, I needed to use the Expert Settings to make the sound mono. The result was a herky-jerky film that didn't match the sounds. Since I am far from being the expert, I've turned over the entire film and MacBookPro to someone else. He's a real Mac guy so I'm sure he'll figure it out. He's going to port it to his machine which has iMovie 8 on it and, hopefully, it will convert nicer.