An Arizona Cheesehead's Thoughts

This post could also be titled "They Pay Us To Have These Conversations". We have an IT team meeting every other week. The idea is to share any accomplishments and bring everyone up to date on your current projects or issues. This morning's meeting was off to a bad start with a conversation about the coffee tasting like "ass" so I should have suspected we'd get derailed. One of our colleagues started his update with, "I'm growing out my beard and I'm calling it Mr. French." A little background for you. This particular colleague grows facial hair like no one I've ever seen. He can have a fu manchu one day then muttonchops the next. So, it's not unusual for him to be doing something like this. A little more background for you. We have a lot of people under 40 and some under 30 in our department. They have no idea who or what "Mr. French" is. I said, "Oh, from A Family Affair. Brian Keith was the star." An...

Man, do I have a bone to pick with a lot of people! One of the movie options on my overseas flights was The Hobbit:  The Desolation of Smaug. I hadn't seen the first entry in the trilogy so I passed on the second but considered I might want to watch it next time. So, out of curiosity, I watched The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on HBO On Demand. It should be called The Hobbit: An Unnecessarily Long and Aggravating Reimagining Of A Classic Story That You Loved. Yeah, that's a long title. But, fitting for how ridiculously long the movie was. To call it bloated is kind. It was beyond overstuffed! Sugar Daddy and I were discussing the initial movie and the first thing that got to him was the Dwarves singing as they put away the dishes. I told him I thought it was in the book but it's been so long since I read it, I wasn't 100% sure. That made me think about a lot of other things in the movie that I don't recall from the book so I did some research. And, by res...

We "sell" golf signs every year at Parrot Grande. The signs are displayed on the course during our tournament then on the stage on Saturday night. People can put whatever they want on a sign - birthday wishes, embarrassing pictures of someone, business promotions, etc. Signs were a little light this year when Tkay had a great idea - a challenge of which College or University could get the most signs. I upped the ante a bit when I said I would use the winning sign as my Facebook profile picture for a week. Considering my feelings for the University of Arizona (or that school as I call it), it was kind of a big deal to me. I sent out the following challenge: The Challenge Is On - Be True To Your School! Our Parrot Grande Golf God, Russ, has thrown down the gauntlet. Who can show the most pride for their school via a custom Golf Sign for the weekend?  Russ is doing an Aggie sign. Is that actually even a thing besides a nickname for Agatha?  Tammy is countering wi...

The Tempe Center for the Arts is running a weekly series called Art After Work. The gist of it is that an instructor walks you through replicating a painting, most of them by Master artists. My Chick Poker pals, Angela and Stacey, went with me and the artist we were imitating was Monet and his water lilies. The class ran from 6 to 8:30 (we got out closer to 9) and all of the supplies were provided. It was $35 but we also got a voucher for $8 for booze or, as I like to call it, "Creativity Juice". When we walked in, this was the picture our instructor had done that we were going to copy. It wasn't quite the Monet water lilies I was thinking we would be doing but, oh, well. The first thing our instructor told us to do was to draw out the lily pads and flowers lightly in pencil. She explained how to divide the canvas into sections and how to estimate the size of the pads. Helpful. We started drawing then she gave us the next step which was to erase the flower lines...

A little more than a month has passed since Samwise and Starbuck joined the family. They've settled in well. They haven't calmed down a bit. Kittehs, what are you going to do with them? Several people told me boy cats are mellower than girls and these two are proving that out. Samwise is perfectly content to curl up on my shoulder and nap. Starbuck also wants to curl up on my shoulder and on my chest and on my leg and on Samwise when he's on my shoulder or my chest or my leg. However, she stays still for only milliseconds before rearranging herself which involves stepping all over both Samwise and me. All the while, she purrs super loud. Hard to resist that. Rare moment where they're both settled. They discovered the basket of toys within two days and quickly scattered them throughout the house. Makes a great excuse for me not to sweep or vacuum - too much work picking up mice and balls. Starbuck actually stands in the basket and picks toys out of it. In d...

One of my colleagues turned me on to the idea of 100 Happy Days . I jumped on it because I felt my 21 days of gratitude exercise a few years ago really had a positive impact on my outlook on life. The concept is to post a picture every day that makes you happy. You don't have to explain it, just post it on your medium of choice. I chose to do them all on Facebook because it was fast and easy. A few of my other friends joined in, too. It was fun to see what was making them happy. My last day was yesterday and this is my favorite picture of all. Joan, Charles, Bill and Mary - Pfister kids My Dad is turning 80 next week and three of his siblings flew out for the party. They got in yesterday and weren't expecting me to come over but I surprised them by leaving work early to go hang out. I'm lucky to have a family that I truly enjoy being with. I reviewed all of my pictures today and saw that I missed posting more days than I thought I had. Not a big surprise, those...

One of the lures of going to the Laid Back Attack event in Seattle was a chance to see the city. I've only been there once for a four hour layover at the airport. That wasn't very fun. My San Antonio peeps offered to let me tag along on Thursday as they ventured into the city to see some of the action. We started on the light rail at one end as our hotel was right next to the airport and ended on the light rail at the other end. Then, it was a monorail ride to our first destination. It sure looked tall. The idea was to have lunch at the restaurant in the Space Needle. The reality was that we should have made reservations way ahead of time. The line just to go up was super long so we made ourselves feel better that "our" towers were taller. Of course, my tower was in Berlin and theirs was in San Antonio. For the record, we were justified in that feeling of superiority. The Space Needle is 605 feet tall, the Tower of the Americas is 750 feet and my TV Tower d...

It's not an uncommon Parrot Head practice to replace the letter f with the letters ph when typing. Phriend, phlock and phlocking and phamily. Some go to the extreme and throw away their f key, some use the replacement judiciously and some absolutely hate the practice. I use it when it gives better meaning to my words. Hopefully, that helps you get what I mean by a Phamily Reunion. Every year, I try to hit a new Parrot Head event put on by another club. This year, I chose Laid Back Attack up in Seattle. I've been meaning to go for years and a friend of mine said he would attend, too. Our plan was to go in early, explore some of Washington then hit the event. Unfortunately, he couldn't get the time off from work so I just scheduled myself to get in on Thursday and leave on Sunday. Fortunately, that worked out well since I was trapped in Germany for so long. I have to admit that, even though I'm a major social butterfly, I was a little anxious about attending a wee...

On our last trip to Germany for work, we decided to fly into Amsterdam and explore the city for the weekend then drive to Hamburg on Monday. We landed on Saturday morning after the usual grueling overseas trip and, after taking the right bus the entirely wrong way, got into our hotel early to shower then head back out. Here's the first thing I learned about Amsterdam, the main train station is the center of all activity. No matter where we wanted to go, it was via the train station to get either a bus or a tram. It was actually pretty convenient once you got the lay of the land. You gotta give Europeans credit for building impressive train stations. We wandered around like aimless tourists then made our way to the Heineken Experience. I can't pass up a brewery tour. In retrospect, I could have passed this one up. It's no longer a functioning brewery and, while they did give some history lessons, it was more of a "Hey, watch this cool video promoting our beer!...