An Arizona Cheesehead's Thoughts

I was browsing around for some management/leadership type articles and found this quiz on CareerBuilder.com. Apparently, your color preferences are supposed to indicate what career or field you should be in. Hmmmm. My results were pretty good, actually. Good in that I think they're close. And, somewhat in conflict. I want to be creative but it has to be organized... Best Occupational Category You're a CREATOR Key Words:Nonconforming, Impulsive, Expressive, Romantic, Intuitive, Sensitive, and Emotional These original types place a high value on aesthetic qualities and have a great need for self-expression. They enjoy working independently, being creative, using their imagination, and constantly learning something new. Fields of interest are art, drama, music, and writing or places where they can express, assemble, or implement creative ideas. CREATOR OCCUPATIONS Suggested careers are Advertising Executive, Architect, Web Designer, Creative Director, Public Relations, Fine or ...

The Arizona Parrot Heads have participated in the Salsa Challenge for years and years. I'm not even sure how many. I've been a member since 2000 and we were doing it then. Because we're so, ahem, colorful, they ask us to do some TV promo spots for the Challenge. We always say yes. It's not just about being on TV though that is cool, the event benefits the Hemophilia Association which is why we're involved and happy to promote it. It's all about the Party with a Purpose for us. I'm usually working when these gigs come up because they do the spots on the local morning shows. This year, I looked at my calendar and had no meetings, they only wanted us from 9 to 10 and it was at the Depot Cantina in Tempe which is at most 10 minutes from my office. Sweet - I got to participate ! Check out the segment . I had a speaking role, probably to no one's surprise. Somehow, Rick who showed up at nearly the last minute managed to gab, too. Also, to no one's surp...

We have a bug making its way through our company. It knocks you on your butt for a few days and, if you're unlucky, makes you violently ill while it's doing it. Not nice. At some point on Wednesday, I realized that not only did I have a splitting headache but my stomach also hurt. Not cramping or like I was going to throw up, just a dull ache. It got worse as the day went on and I even left a little early to go home and try to nap it off. That would have been a brilliant idea if George had gotten the memo. Apparently, there's no napping around kitty in the evening. She mostly attacked my toes but also demanded pets and applied little bits to my hands if they were over the covers. If they were under the covers, they got pounced on. I must have gotten some sleep because I opened my eyes and it was dark out. My head and stomach both still hurt. I watched a little TV then decided to take a sick day on Thursday if I wasn't feeling 100%. I have a big weekend ahead o...

George is one year old! My baby is a grown up. A bratty one, but a grown up none the less. I am so happy to have her despite the demon behavior. I remember, fondly, how cute and little she used to be. Funny, I think that way about Steven, too. Believe it or not, he used to be cute and little. One month old and still with her birth Mom. She had pretty blue eyes. Two months old and just moved in. I miss the bat ears. One year old and the Queen of the Castle.

I think it's the very rare girl who doesn't group in our society with fantastic dreams of her wedding and the centerpiece of those dreams is the dress. The gorgeous white and beaded gown with a huge train for the bride. The colorful, classy or horrible (face it, some brides pick those) dresses for the attendants and maid of honor. It all starts with the dress. And, the dream is about the wedding, not the life after that. It's like the screen fades to black at the end of the reception leaving you with no view of the future. Even the less romantic of us have thought about it. My girlfriend Cheryl and I amassed collections of bridal magazines with page corners turned down to mark our favorite dresses. We were buying those into our 20s despite having no groom prospects at all. It was just to enjoy the fantasy, I guess. Kind of like buying a lottery ticket because my odds are about the same in either arena. I've long given up those dreams. Probably because I think m...

I couldn't find the charger for my camera battery. It wasn't in the usual spot, in any of the luggage I've used lately and not in the cupboard above the spot I plug it in to. Vanished! I did a quick search online but didn't find my specific charger in the first two pages of Google results. That's a sign from the technology gods, right? That I just need to buy a new camera? There was a little bit of "gee, you don't really need a new camera" thinking though. My current one has served me well despite being lugged around in my purse at all times. It's an Elph (Canon Power Shot SD500) and it takes great pictures still. However, it's been dropped a lot, is scratched up, has a smallish viewer and it's starting to pull apart in the middle. And, it's not cute. It's silver, bigger than the new ones and did I mention the scratches? So, I decided I needed someone to tell me it was OK to get a new one. I IMd Sugar Daddy and asked, ...

test message Sending a post from my phone. Hope it works!

One of my co-workers came up to me on Thursday afternoon to tell me that I had a brake light not working. I emailed The Rocket Scientist and told him we (and, well, he) needed to fix it before our next outing with the gang and drinking excursion which was set for Friday. The last thing you want to do is give the cops an excuse to pull you over. He told me to swing by after work and he'd take care of it. I got to his house and he asked which light it was. I said I thought it was the left but I really wasn't sure. He made me step on the brake and told me it was the right. Whatever. He told me to pop my trunk but I didn't know why. Then he started unscrewing something in there and it became clear - that's how you get to the lights! I never actually gave it much thought and, what little I did, I thought the lens just popped off or something. It's good to learn things. Oh, so that's how it works! We headed off to Checker. He'd already looked up the part number f...

Blood Rites by Jim Butcher My review rating: 4 of 5 stars Wizard Harry Dresden gets hired to find out who's using an entropy curse (basically you end up dead but it looks like a freak accident) to kill the women near a skin flick movie producer. While solving that mystery, he also gets to know more about his own family tree, sees Lt. Murphy in a dress (if you read the books, you know how unlikely that sounds) and gets a puppy. And of course there are still vampires gunning for him, this time Mavra from the Black Court. Thomas the vampire returns to the story as does Kincaid, the Archive's bodyguard, and Ebeneezer McCoy, Harry's mentor. Lots of secrets are revealed and we're left with more questions to be answered. Harry actually ends up happy at the end of the book which is a nice change. He's usually beat up and depressed. View all my reviews.

Death Masks by Jim Butcher My review rating: 4 of 5 stars I'm really enjoying this series and glad I came to it late so I don't have to wait around for the next book to get published and can read them as soon as the library has them available. In this book, Wizard Harry Dresden is beset by hitmen, challenged to a duel to the death by a very powerful vampire, hired to find a very important stolen religious relic and gets reunited with his girlfriend who's still fighting to not become a vampire herself. Lots of action, lots of witty self deprecation by Harry and lots of demons. Mean and nasty ones, too. Really fun stuff to read and I like that Jim Butcher keeps developing Harry's story as we go along. View all my reviews.

George loves to sit at the front screen door and check out who's going by the house. Not many people or creatures do so I would think it's pretty boring but she always appears to be fascinated. She was in her usual place tonight when I heard some kitty crying. Bordering on wailing, actually. I ignored it for a bit but then I realized that it was way too loud for George to be making that noise so I investigated. When I checked on her, she was pressed up to the screen door and peering intently outside. I walked over to see what was going on and saw a new cat on the other side of the door. New to me, anyway, as I've never seem him before. I assume it's a him because she's a girl and of course she would attract a boy. He ran away when he saw me but he came back again when I walked away. They started dancing with each other on their separate sides of the screen. Maybe it was some sort of cat gang thing. Of course, George, being the not very brave creature that she...

The House at Sugar Beach: A Memoir by Helene Cooper My review rating: 3 of 5 stars This was a selection for our book club but I didn't get it read in time for our meeting. Too bad because I would have liked to have participated in the conversation. This memoir is written by a woman descended from the premier founding families of Liberia. She was quite privileged and all around her were signs that the country was ripe for ruin that she was too young to notice. The initial coup was devastating to her family and friends. The following ones even more so. Cooper moved to the US with her sister and Father and tried her best to leave Liberia, its issues and her issues behind her. However, an accident while reporting in Iraq led her to return to her birthplace and face her demons. Besides the truly interesting personal issues, this book was a great source of information on Liberia and its history. Not the stuff that the mainstream media chooses to tell you so I didn't know much of it...

I've had some domestic parts failures of late. Two lights in the bathroom, the wine cooler, the light bulb in the fridge and, finally, the dishwasher. I managed to replace the bathroom lights without an issue and I started looking for a new wine cooler. My old one held 12 bottles which isn't quite enough so I wanted a bigger one. The Rocket Scientist found one for me at a pretty good price. Only problem - it was at Home Depot. Ugh. I'm so not a Home Depot girl and it's not just because Lowe's sponsors Jimmie Johnson. I find the stores too rough and intimidating. Lowe's is cleaner and more inviting for some reason. But, a deal is a deal so we headed off to Home Depot. The one he saw was actually on sale so it was a really, really good deal. But, there was this one thing...I wanted a better one. What I really wanted was a dual zone unit so I could let me reds age while keeping the whites nicely chilled. I know, it's hard to believe I could let a bot...

I wish I could take credit for this creation but I'm not that crafty. Tkay made it. I have decided this is an acceptable use of Peeps. But, I still think you should be eating them.

I've been to two hockey games this season. Both ended with a tie, OT and shoot out. The Roadrunners lost but the Coyotes won last night. It was fun! Sugar Daddy, Cindy, Cheryl and I decided to hit a Coyotes game and it turned out that our schedules only permitted last night which was the last game of the season. We played the Ducks and there was a Ducks fan right behind us. I know because she had a particularly shrill screaming voice. Annoying! I was afraid I was horribly under dressed . I wore sandals, jeans, a tee and a denim shirt. It was raining as we got to the arena and I was chilled before we even hit the door. Fortunately, the seats are made for skinny (OK, maybe regular sized) people so between Sugar Daddy and the woman next to me, I was kept quite warm during the game because we were squeezed in. There's often a small world story involved when I go out and last night was no exception. They were doing all sorts of giveaways (we got nothing btw ). One of the...

The Rocket Scientist and I went to Tucson for Happy Hour last night. Nothing like a 240 mile round trip to see your homies . The only people who knew we were coming were Tkay and Russ. I would have told Norene but she surprised us at Margaritaville on Saturday with her daughter and son-in-law. I figured turn about was fair play. It was a nice evening at The Bum Steer. I even won a raffle prize. We're heading down there again next month for the club's Nueve de Mayo party so that will make three months in a row that we'll visit. We're staying overnight for that one, though. Oh, and the Happy Hour broke up promptly at 8 like they always do down South. We went back to Russ and Tkay's for a post-Happy Hour drink on their back patio and still made it home before midnight.

I loved Life On Mars on BBC. For those who don't know it, it was about a cop who gets hit by a car in 2008 and wakes up in 1973. As he tries to make his way "home", he as to deal with the very different society of 35 years ago along with a much less professional police department. Think smacking around suspects, drinking on the job and rampant discrimination. It was a great puzzle. Was he really from 2008 or just nuts? Would he make it home? Would he finally want to go home if given the chance? The final episode sort of wrapped it up while still leaving you wondering. I thought it was great TV. Apparently, other folks did, too, because they made a US version of the show. It only lasted one season and I just got to the last episode tonight. Wow. What a neat wrap up they did. It answered every question. I'm not sure that I liked that, though. While I love closure, I think I preferred the more open ending of the BBC version. Both shows were definitely worth ...

I'm not having the best of luck with appliances of late. First, my wine cooler bit the big one. Then, the light in the fridge either burned out or I somehow broke it. Haven't fixed that yet. This week, it's the dishwasher. I ran a load early last week but didn't get around to emptying it for a few days. When I opened it up, the dishes were clean but the last of the rinse water hadn't drained out. I turned the dial several times and couldn't get anything to turn on. I also reset the cycle and turned the dial with the same (non)results. My next step was to check for a loose breaker but I didn't find one. So, I did what any Princess would do and told The Rocket Scientist it was broken. We were pretty busy over the weekend so the plan was for me to bail the water and he would come check it out last night. In the meantime, I accumulated enough dirty dishes to fill both sinks so I actually had to wash by hand. Shocking, I know. He came over with his to...

White Witch, Black Curse by Kim Harrison My review rating: 3 of 5 stars I quite enjoyed the latest Rachel Morgan book. Rachel and Ivy are both recovering from the death of a mutual loved one (don't want to give it away if you haven't read all of the books) and Rachel's determined to find the killer. They also get roped into trying to find a banshee and her serial killer husband. Oh, and there's a ghost in the church. Oh, and family issues. Pretty much a full book and I was very happy to see the loose ends tied up. Closure is good. View all my reviews.

Our Kronos rep for Fight Club suggested we use an application from Lance Armstrong's livestrong .com website called The Daily Plate to track our food. I didn't check out, though, until one of my friends told me that she used it to lose the weight that she gained after she quit smoking. She talked it up quite a bit so I gave it a whirl. It's awesome! You can track your food from their extensive food list along with the time of day that you ate. It also lets you record your water, your exercise (not that I have any of that to log), your mood and your weight. Pretty much everything we're supposed to be doing for our class. Oh, it also lets you calculate your calorie allotment based on your current weight and your desired weekly weight loss. It makes the geek in me happy and helps me follow the rules and I'm all about the rules.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak My review rating: 4 of 5 stars It took me a while to get through this book, probably because of the sad subject matter. The story is narrated by Death and takes place in Germany during WWII. The title character, Liesel Meminger, is a young girl given up by her Communist parents to protect her from the Nazis and sees her brother die and that's just barely into the book. To somehow ease her pain, she steals books. Trust me, it works in the story. It was a very interesting perspective on how the general German population suffered through the war and reacted to the events around them. I grew quite fond of several of the characters. They were all quite well developed and the last section was a huge tear-jerker. You can't have war without Death and there were a lot of deaths to keep Death working as he told the tale. View all my reviews.