An Arizona Cheesehead's Thoughts

Did you watch Dark Shadows as a kid? If so, you probably remember it as creepy and downright nightmare inducing scary. It aired from '66 to '71 and it's been interesting to hear people's memories of the show. Just a few years difference in age and it's a whole different viewing experience. I only remember seeing it one time after school when I was someone's house (not my usual babysitter's). It scared me so much that I watched it from behind a piece of furniture. My friends who are just a few years older than I, remember gathering every day after school to watch the latest episode and letting themselves get scared. Or, scared by someone like Jello-Shot Queen's Dad who would walk in and yell "Boo!" at them during the show. Some of that group either watched it with their parents' knowledge or snuck around behind their parents' backs to watch it. I haven't talked to many people who watched it in syndication. Probably because by t...

Some of you may remember how I got George. I had been thinking about getting a cat but hadn't made any real effort. A friend of mine said that the stray cat she'd taken in had kittens and she was looking for homes for them. I waited a while wondering whether I was ready for the commitment then cast my fates to the wind with a "Do you have a girl left, because, if so, I'll take her?" message. She did and I ended up with the most interesting demon cat in the world. On Tuesday, my friend Rhonda posted this message and picture on Facebook. And this is how my earthday started. 5 tiny kittens, hoping to find and trap the moma cat. They are just starting to open their eyes. Mike named the grey one Ernest I liked her post then tried to put it out of my mind. But, then she called me out directly .  Kathy Pfister , ready for a new kitten the end of may? I tried a little deflection saying I wanted two girls and that I had to wait until the end of June because of wo...

I hosted Book Club tonight and we have a new member. This is only her second month and I didn't know her before that. I felt badly for her last month because I announced to the group that George had died and then pretty much tried to hold back tears the rest of the evening. We were wrapping up tonight when she said to me, "Is there a kitty here?" I assumed she saw some toy that I had missed in the cleanup and said, "There used to be." She came back with, "Yeah, I just saw it go into hiding." Or, something really similar to that because I was too much in shock to record it all. What I'm sure she saw was the A/C coming on or going off and moving the door into George's room. For a pet owner (and she is), that's easy to extrapolate as a furry creature making a movie. However, wouldn't it just be like George to actually be haunting me?

I was out with a group from work last night and one person asked the question, "What's your guilty TV pleasure that you're embarrassed to tell people you watch?" Some answers were The Hills and Maury Povich. I get those as being good answers to the question. When it came time for me to answer, I didn't have one. Not only do I think I watch good TV shows and quickly jettison the bad ones, I tell everyone about what I watch so there's nothing I need to keep secret. I think it helps that the only "reality" TV I watch is cooking shows. However, I started thinking about channel surfing and coming across movies that I've seen many, many times but I find I can't move the clicker off of them. Some of them are great movies like Die Hard, Ghostbusters, Caddyshack and The Princess Bride. Others, however, are not great movies. They are, in fact, really bad movies. But, something in me keeps me on the channel. The worst one that comes to mind: ...

I was in Germany when this text came from a colleague from my office: Did you grab a wand the last time you were here? In Universal Studios. My reply: No. But I want one! I'll pay you back. I ultimately paid $.89 a minute at international calling rates to discuss which one I wanted. Hermione's, of course. When I got back to the office, this is what was waiting for me. So awesome! It's actually quite pretty with vines and leaves on it. And, it has a bit of a heft to it as well so it feels "real". All of us nerds have taken turns swinging it around while reciting Harry Potter spells. None of which have worked, by the way. Ripoff! He also brought me a Ron Weasley pin. Gotta love the Gingers!

On my first trip to Germany, the "Dad" in our group was a seasoned veteran of overseas travel. The first thing he did after we got through security was to find an ATM to get Euros. I made note of that for this trip because I could see us taking a cab to the hotel and the driver saying upon our arrival, "No, I don't take credit cards." and us trying to persuade him to take USD off of us. We did look in Houston at a currency exchange place in the airport and, well, let's just say you'd have to be really desperate or so rich you don't care about money to use one of those. The exchange rate and fee were wack. So, after we collected our luggage and went through customs in Frankfurt (fastest custom inspection ever, btw), we were in search of an ATM. We found what looked like one but we couldn't figure it out. Fortunately, there were also people at a teller station right next to the ATM so we decided to go with a human assist. How much to get was ...

While in Frankfurt, my companion and I decided to take a city bus tour. When we bought the tickets, I asked if they did the tour in English as well as German and was told they did. Sweet. It was one of those double deckers with an open top. We got on and climbed to the top level and situated ourselves. I looked in front of me and saw this: Ten Languages! The only problem was that there were no headphones in sight. I had my own pair so I plugged in and I told my companion, "They must come around and hand them out." The bus then started filling up and a couple sat in front of us. The man looked at the language selection then looked for the non-existent headphones then went down the stairs. My companion started to follow, thinking the guy knew where headphones were but before he got to the stairs, the man came up and sort of shrugged at his wife and sat down. We took that to mean there were no more headphones to be found. We tried to share an earbud apiece but betwee...

I had researched the heck out of Frankfurt for tours and activities and my companion and I decided on taking a city bus tour. Everything I saw online said the tour ticket office was next to Paul's Church (Paulskirche). We asked the desk clerk at the hotel how to get to Paul's Church and she had no idea. In fact, she looked like she had never heard of it. They did have a big tourist map at the front desk and I was able to find it so she told us it was a 15 minute walk. My companion had already figured it was 1.2 miles away so more than 15 minutes for old, fat, Americans. I persuaded him to walk with promises to stop along the way for beers. Well, beers for me and Coke Zeros for him. After stopping twice, we finally made it to the area on the map where Pau's Church was supposed to be. The only problem was, there were about seven churches that we found but none of them were Paul's. He said, "I read online that it had a copper dome so look for that." I rep...

Once I figured out how to get the power on in my room (FYI, I forgot several times and tried to turn on switches without putting the key in the contraption at both hotels we stayed at), I took a quick shower and proceeded to try to dry my hair. Did you catch the "try" part? I tried the hotel supplied dryer. Its maximum effort was little better than blowing air through your mouth. In addition, it also turned itself off after 10 seconds of use then refused to turn back on until a few minutes had passed. So, I got out my own dryer and plugged it in using the same adaptor that I used in Reinbek on our last Germany trip. Instead of a gentle breeze, I got haboob level winds at a temperature near molten lava. For about 10 seconds then it turned off. Well, it didn't exactly turn off, I blew it up. Because that specific adaptor didn't convert wattage. Did I mention I used it in Reinbek with no issues? Sigh. I went back to using the hotel dryer and managed to get ...

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.

I lost my baby this morning. George woke me up at 2:30 with a little cry, the most noise she's made in days. She was lying in the doorway of my bedroom. I carried her into bed and held her as she took her last breaths. I'm so grateful I got to be with her as she left. The final blood tests results had showed it was very likely she had leukemia. However, the Vet wasn't sure if those results were skewed by the pancreatitis. I believe she had been fighting the leukemia for a while and it ended up being too much for her. Looking back, I can honestly say she didn't show anything amiss until the weekend before last when she started becoming very lethargic and stopped showing an interest in eating. I hope she wasn't in pain and hiding it but, if she were, she was a great actress and I'm comforted by knowing she didn't suffer a long time. Last night, she went to the patio door so I let her out. That must have been her last hurrah as she explored the great outd...

George has not perked up as I had hoped. She still wasn't eating or drinking by Saturday so it was back to the Vet. She was running the same fever and a physical examination showed she was sensitive in the kidney area. Very sensitive. The Vet said he suspected it could be pancreatitis and he wanted to do a blood test to verify it. They drew blood and gave her more fluids and we went home. As far as I could tell, she didn't eat or drink anything from that point on except I got her to take about four licks of yogurt. Which may have made her throw up a little while later. The blood test results were supposed to be back today and one of the Techs called me with bad news. The bad news being that the lab lost her sample. So, I bailed out of a meeting and broke many speeding laws to pick her up and get her back to the Vet before the current day's lab tests got picked up. I literally handed her off to the Tech in the parking lot and drove away. (BTW, the lab found her test late...

I watched the season finale of The Taste last night and came away inspired with a really great life lesson:  take advice from those that know more than you do. Seems like it should be a given but we see it all the time. Someone is 100% sure they have the perfect idea, plan, process, product, etc. and ignores a more experienced voice who is offering up constructive feedback. For those who aren't familiar with the show, four famous and very skilled chefs (Tony Bourdain, Nigella Lawson, Ludo Lefebvre and Marcus Samuelsson) assemble teams of four contestant chefs each and mentor them throughout the contest. Two contestants are eliminated every week and each week features a guest chef who mentors the team who wins the first challenge of the day. The ultimate winners gets $100,000 and a big trophy. The mentor for the winner also gets a big trophy. The finale came down to three contestants, Lee, Marina and Louise. They were all very different cooks and personalities. Lee was the...