An Arizona Cheesehead's Thoughts

...but not over it. It's been three months since I lost George. There hasn't been a day I haven't thought about her nor a week that I haven't cried at least once. Usually, it's more than once.  I'll see or hear something and the pain of her loss all comes back to me. I can't even count how many times I've relived her last breaths. The reminders have been even stronger this past week as one of my friends had to say good-bye to her cat and three others lost their dogs. It just plain sucks. My cat friend wrote an eloquent post about people thinking/saying "it's just a cat" that explained just how much her cat meant to her. Yes, that made me cry. I was lucky enough that no one ever said that to me but I thought about it. I felt like there were people out there who were judging me. People who were thinking, "it's not like you lost a human, quit being such a drama queen". I've lost humans, too. It sucked, too. And, I s...

I've posted before how about how much I don't like my friend Jeff's shirt. It is the ultimate ugh and I see it often. He wears it to every Buffett show and event. I've asked his wife to "lose" it, hell, I offered to pay her to do so, but she said she couldn't because he loves it so much. At our regional Parrot Head event, they held an Ugly Hawaiian Shirt contest. Jeff was a shoo-in, in my opinion. He also very much wanted to win so he told me if I made it happen, he would give a Viking funeral to the atrocity. Well, never give that challenge to the social butterfly who knows everyone! I soon sussed out who the judges were and cajoled, pled and probably threatened them for their votes. Alcohol may have been involved. The Finalists And, we have a winner! Yep, it all worked out. Jeff won the contest but I won the war against the ugly shirt. By the time we got to the end of the evening, he was backtracking from the Viking funeral and suggesting h...

Excuse me while I wax philosophical with thoughts from a work travel day. I was at the Houston airport on my way to Frankfurt, Germany and engaged in two text conversations. One was with a colleague who had left Japan the night before and was scheduled to meet up with me in Frankfurt the next day via Los Angeles. (Yes, he's crazy, there is a shorter way to get there but he's obsessed with getting to the 1K Club with United.) The other was with another co-worker whom I had seen earlier at the Phoenix airport in the check-in line. He had made it to San Francisco on the first leg of a journey to Singapore with his family. (His adorable children were running amok, BTW.) I then logged into a Wi-Fi Hotspot to work and also started an IM conversation with someone back in Phoenix and gave him an update on what the other two were doing. It occurred to me (sans any alcohol) how amazing this all would have seemed to previous generations. And, how it's all so matter of fact t...

So, I went to visit the new babies on Sunday. Steven went with me and we thought they were totes adorbs, all of them. Which is good because one of the "girls" that I was going to take turned out to be more of a late bloomer in the naughty bits area. So, Starbuck is the only girl in the bunch. Rhonda and Chuck were great about telling me that I needn't feel obligated to take one of the boys because they knew I really wanted just girls. But, I also really want two babies so they can entertain each other when I'm gone (which is always, seems like) so I decided to take one of the boys, too. The hard part was trying to figure out which one to get. One of them is gray and fluffy and the other two are solid black and one of those has the potential to be a longhaired cat. Starbuck is almost all black except for some random white hairs on her legs so I foresaw a challenge telling her apart from the black boys and Steven really like the gray one so, decision made. It help...