An Arizona Cheesehead's Thoughts

It took me two work charity golf tournaments to succeed but I won an Amazon Echo and a Dot on Friday. Sweet! Sweet, sweet victory! While I couldn't justify flat out buying them, I could justify buying raffle tickets for the chance to win them. It's all for the kids, after all. For those that know me well, it's probably surprising that I didn't win these last year. Frankly, I should have but here's what happened. I had put all my raffle tickets into the bowl for the Echo and Dot. While there was a lull in the action between morning and afternoon golf, apparently the raffle people were bored and decided to do some "practice" draws. Draw one:  Kathy. "What a surprise. Not." Draw two:  Kathy. "Again?" I don't know how many more they may have done but when it came time for the final draw it went like this: "The winner of the Echo and Dot is....Tina!" Ripoff. I was very clear this year. "No practice shenaniga...

I came back from my Mexican Vacation to find these all over our workplace. And, I mean all over. There are free standing ones and wall mounted ones and I have several within 100 paces of my desk. I can only assume we're concerned about the Norwalk Virus because of my conditioning from my Norwegian Bliss cruise.  When you hear this song repeated multiple times a day, it sticks with you. Forever.

My Weight Watchers posse and I have been sharing recipes that we've tried and love. One of them told us about a two ingredient pizza dough. With crust, sauce and cheese, a single size pizza totals 6 Points. That's incredible! One slice of regular veggie pizza starts at 8 points so I was all about this one. The two ingredients are self-rising flour and non-fat Greek yogurt (my new favoritest thing).  You can find the recipe here . It's super easy and makes enough for two pies. You can store the second ball of dough for at least several days in an airtight container. Attempt 1 My first was Picasso inspired in shape, for sure. I used jar spaghetti sauce, low-fat mozzarella and sliced onions and peppers. The edges got a little crispy (but were still edible) and the veggies were a bit too al dente. Attempt 2 I sauteed the veggies with some garlic first on my next try and managed a shape that was more square than paramecium. I also managed a smaller surface of c...

I'm not sure why I continue to participate in NCAA Men's Tournament picks since I rarely pay attention to college ball anymore. Sure, I was all over Arizona State University at the beginning of the season (we were #3!) but then they started being unable to come back from giving away big leads to their opponents and...squirrel! Perhaps only because it's tradition, I started up the Arizona Parrot Head Brackets again this year and promised myself every day that I would start putting thought to my selections. Before I knew it, it was the night before the brackets were closing and I hadn't done a thing. In fact, I went out to dinner, watched ASU tank to Syracuse and said out loud, "I guess I should fill out my bracket soon." The reply I got was, "Yeah, because you're pretty much out of time!" I got home and jumped into bed deciding I could continue to procrastinate until the next morning. But, scanning through email on my phone before I headed to ...