An Arizona Cheesehead's Thoughts

One would think with all the traveling I do, I'd be smarter at it. One would be wrong. I got/had to go to Germany again for work. We decided to get in ahead of when we needed to be in the office to sightsee and overcome jet lag so we flew into Frankfurt with plans to drive to Hamburg a few days later. After leaving Phoenix at 12:15 PM on a Thursday, we arrived in Frankfurt at 11:45 AM on Friday. I did manage to catch some winks on the plane but I wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed upon arrival. We checked into the hotel and decided to shower and change then go explore. One of the first few things I did when I got to my room was to unload my clothes and to plug in my phone but the charging bolt didn't show. I tried it in another outlet and it still wasn't getting juice. I then thought I needed to flip on some switches so I hit every single one in the room. No lights came on anywhere. Thinking to myself that it would suck to have to change rooms with my stuff ...

The last few weeks have been filled with too many work problems to mention, some big, some small. I've come in to work several times to find myself in the middle of a storm. I've been hit up with issues before I've even got out of my jammies. I've had days of meeting after meeting with no time for actual "work". Many of us have also felt the pressure of getting a major project done that went live this week. Oh, and scheduling our next trip to Germany for another major project has been time consuming. That's just the work stuff. I've had delivery issues with Amazon that have been infuriating. First, packages that said delivered but never showed up. Then a replacement package that said delivered...to the Dock and signed by Doyle. I have no dock at my condo and I also have no Doyle. (That wouldn't be a bad pet name, though.) That package showed up the next day which saved Amazon and UPS from a wrathful harangue but they're not off the hook yet...

I never remember to prep a #TBT picture and am surprised every week when other people are posting theirs. I should probably put something on the calendar, because if it's not on my calendar, it's not on my radar. A while back, one of my Uncles scanned an old photo of all of the grandkids on my Mom's side and sent it out to a bunch of us. Just in time for a #TBT but I think that was a coincidence. He's cool but I don't think he's that much in to social media. I threw the picture up and saw later that one of my cousins had done the same. Thanks, Uncle Myron, for helping us represent! Descendants of Don and Jean Terry I showed the picture later to co-workers. A sign of how old I am is that I was just damn excited it was in color because my early pics are all in black and white. Not because it was cool but because that's what they had back then. Sugar Daddy tried to pick me out and picked my cousin Cathy. Close. I reminded him that I was always the ...

For years on end, my social calendar has been full. Really full. Because I love doing things and being with my friends, I wouldn't turn down invitations. And, because I'm an extravert, if I saw too many blank days in a row, I'd seek out activities on my own. There was a very real level of anxiety if my schedule wasn't jam packed. I was also a total PITA to make plans with. People learned that they had to get my time way in advance. They also assumed I was always busy so they often didn't think to ask if I could join them for last minute plans. A few months ago, I slowed down enough to take a look at what I was doing. Being busy all the time was great until there was a schedule disruption. A couple unexpected long days at work or getting sick and I was suddenly behind on things like laundry and cleaning and club work and everything else I needed/wanted to do. My DVR filled up and I had overdue but unread library books. Oh, and sleep. I really didn't get any...

When you're sharing your home with another living creature it's easy to blame any strange noises you hear on said creature. I used to get woken up at oh-dark thirty by the sound of something going bump in the night. I would call out, "George, knock it off!" and go back to sleep. To be honest, I didn't look to see if it was George, she just seemed to be a likely candidate. Now that I'm alone, I keep hearing all those same noises but there's no one to blame them on. Maybe I was deluding myself before that it was George and it's been the axe murderer all along. Maybe he thought George was a big, strong, baseball bat wielding protective brute. Maybe, the only thing that kept him from killing me was me calling out to George. Maybe I'm going to be hatcheted in my sleep one of these nights.

We started an event at work last November. Every other month, we've had one of our Senior Management team speak at what we call a Brown Bag event. Any employee can come and eat their lunch while listening to (and, hopefully, participating in) a conversation with a bigwig. We don't buy the lunch to keep out the riffraff who just want a free meal. ;) We're averaging nearly 30 employees at each session. There's a core group that comes to all of them and then we get some add ons depending on the speaker. Career tip - if your big boss is speaking, you should be there. The first one was with our VP of Sales and Marketing. No one really knew what to expect and the start lulled so I then asked him to talk about our implementation of The 4 Disciplines of Execution to get the conversation going. He eventually gave quite the business lesson including explaining what a cash cow was. The second event featured our VP of Finance. We learned a lesson from the first event and pu...

And, you know what, life is good. I removed myself from all social events over the weekend because I knew I was not fit for company. I put all of George's items into storage and her kitty condo made its way to my parents' house where their cats are enjoying it. I've managed to blink back the tears when I'm with someone but there were several spontaneous bouts of sudden and extensive sobbing while I was home alone. I suspect that may happen for a while but with decreasing frequency. Everyone at work has been very kind and trying not to upset me. Yesterday morning convinced me it was time to exit the pit of despair. It started out great. I had good hair and a great fitting pair of jeans on. When I slid into my car, my thought was, "Yeah, still bitchen!". When I started it up, I was serenaded my Eddie Money. Good times. The day kept getting better, too. I went to a going away Happy Hour for a dear co-worker. She was smart enough to use our tuition reimb...

A friend of mine posted this picture on Facebook today. Fat Tuesday, Belize, 2013 It's very familiar to me as I look at the post card every day since it's hanging on my cubicle wall. You may remember the story how that came about. It seems like so much longer than a year ago because so much has happened since then. This was literally (said in Chris Traeger voice) the best Fat Tuesday I ever experienced and I'm so excited to do it again. Next year. Sigh. Have to wait. We were on Ambergris Cay with a little over 30 Parrot Head friends and it was the best vacation ever as well as the best Fat Tuesday. We roamed that Cay for a week and I'm pretty sure every citizen knew us by the time we left. Or, at least they knew Crash and Goat AKA Jesus in the liquor store.