An Arizona Cheesehead's Thoughts

I had to say a sad goodbye to my most faithful traveling companion of the last 15ish years. One who's been with me to several countries, two continents, many states and countless trips. One who never complained about being abused, being forced to squish into small spaces, getting rained on, being used as a pillow nor having to carry lots and lots of stuff including my jacket, purse and computer. Sniff, sniff. Good thing you always had a tissue for me because I needed it. I bought this classic to replace an almost exact same one that was stolen out of my residence four places ago. Someone broke in, dumped its items then used it to carry out the contents of my ring drawer and my rock CD's from A through K. Jerks. The only difference between the two was that the first was a green plaid. I loved that one but I grew to love this one, too. With only three pockets, there was plenty of space for all of my gear while allowing it to be crammed under the airplane seat in front of...

Last Saturday, I had some long-time friends over for late lunch and shenanigans. To prepare for the event, I decided to make a passel of food from scratch. Three soups, a couple of dips and a dessert. My backup plan if it all sucked was to order Spinato's Pizza so we weren't going to starve. It was nearly three hours total of chopping, dicing (which is different than chopping for you non-chefs), mixing, heating, spicing and tasting. It was also two loads of dishes, three pans, one crockpot, a micro-plain, a Spiralizer and too many mixing bowls to count. I really could have used a kitchen assistant. All for four people. Definitely one of my crazier ideas and a lot of kitchen time. But, I wore an apron the whole time so that's the thing that tips me into professional Chef status now, right? Everything I made was a low or 0 Weight Watcher's Freestyle point food and I don't think it was readily apparent. As in, it didn't come across as "diet" food....

So, I did a 5K race event. Totally makes me an athlete now, right? Our company sponsored participation in the Rock 'n' Roll  race events last weekend by paying the full entry fees for employees and partially for their friends and family. In all, we had 191 participants. Much to the shock of many, I chose to be one those 191 and signed up for the 5K. Me with some actual athletes. (Photo courtesy of SmartPractice) When I told people about it, their natural response was to ask, "Are you going to run it?" My reply was consistent, "I'm not even sure I know how to run anymore." I literally can't remember the last time I ran so walking was my plan. While I did walk a 5K in November in the Walk To End Alzheimer's, I knew this was going to take more effort than that leisurely stroll so I did some prep work. I didn't want to let anything be an excuse for not successfully completing the task. First up was getting some decent shoes as I was...

Every few days, I go back through my Facebook timeline to see if there are any comments or reactions that I've missed and need to respond to in order to not be rude. I care that way. My eyes bulged (figuratively but they probably widened a lot) as I saw this post about  Goodreads : Set my goal for 100 books in 2018 with at least 50% non-fiction. I mean, how many vampire books are there left that I haven't already read. What. The. Hell. Was. I. Smoking? I checked the timestamp to see if this was a late night after drinking post and, nope, stone cold sober at the time. Here's why I'm finding it incredulous that I wrote this lofty goal of 50%. I read over 100 books a year and, in 2016, I decided to evaluate how many were non-fiction. My initial guess was 20 but then my inner self said that was giving me way too much credit so I revised my guess to 15. When I actually counted them it was 10. Out of 122. Pitiful. So, in 2017, I set a goal of 20% non...

Have you ever caught an odor in the air and have it transport you to a memory of your past? It's a real thing and I was surprised at how powerful it can be. The backstory is that I ran out of my Cover Girl brand foundation and headed to Ulta (one of my happy places - so many eyeshadows!) to replace it. They were out of Albino in my usual formula so I ended up getting Cover Girl Clean instead. When I applied it the next morning I noticed it was scented and moments after that the picture of my Grandma's dresser came to mind. What was on the dresser, you might ask? Well, it was this: Do you remember? It may have been your Great Grandma, Grandma, your Mom or maybe even you but this was the be all, end all of cold cream among other uses. I remember it being especially soothing on sunburns but I never used it to remove makeup. I'm not that old. I tried to validate that my memory wasn't faulty by searching for the ingredient listings for both the Clean Foundat...