"You can't deny people the right to go to the airport."

Huh?

That's a quote from some LAX/LA official arguing that two gates cannot be closed at LAX. The argument is about fixing LAX, which hasn't been updated in the last ten years (boy, did I get out just in time!). Some people think it should be fixed, and many of its problems should be addressed: the noise, the horrendous environmental impact, the delays and congestion. Other people, like said official, think fixing the problems can't be done: heaven forbid people should be inconvenienced when a problem is being fixed.

What is it with people and their inability to "look forward to the long term" as another person commented on the other side of this argument? Closing two gates. Two. Gates. WTF?

Of course, the only reason I even noticed this story was because I can't find KQED in the radio cast on iTunes. So, instead of listening to San Francisco's public radio, I'm listening to Los Angeles' public radio.

It's terribly strange to hear about the old freeways I used to drive. "The worst place to be this hour is heading north on the 605. Congestion near the 10 has traffic backed up to the 405."

The walk from my house to the Bergeron-Gull house involves dodging bullets, dancing around dangerous brush, skipping over potholes the size of the Grand Canyon and jumping over dead rodents. On my over this morning, the bullets were in rare form: the form of stinky, smelly, icky ginko bilbo seeds.

Kris and I used to have a female ginko tree in our front yard. We had quite the surprise the first fall when we unknowningly walked over a few of the seeds and they crunched under our feet. When they broke, peeeeeeeeee-yewwwwwwwwww! Didn't take long before we nicknamed the seeds little shit-balls.

Ginko might be great for the memory, but it's awful for the nose. We accidently tracked the stench into the house, and, oh my lord, did our house smell like crap for a long, long time.

My bullet dodging on the way to Kate and Mike's house involved dragging a rollerbag through the ginko seeds littering the sidewalk in front of one of their neighbor's houses. We suspect they don't realize the city will replace the trees if they end up being female ginkos instead of male ginkos. I thought my dodging in the early morning to be successful, but, well, my sense of smell is a bit off, so I'm never quite sure.

Fast forward six hours, when I'm in Kyle's office, talking to him about his web application and work I've been doing for him. He didn't have a seat in his office, having just moved into the office space less than two weeks before, so I plunked my butt down on the stepstool in his office and started talking to him.

After about 10 minutes, I noticed Kyle looking up at me sideways. I kept talking until I noticed an unpleasant smell. Now, for me to notice the smell, lord, it has to be an overwhelming smell.

And it was.

Turns out, I wasn't as good with the shit-ball dodging, and caught one in the grooves of my shoes. When I sat on the stepstool, I squished the seed on the step, and crushed it. By the time I noticed it, I had smeared the seed in the grooves of the stepstool and into the office rug.

In Kyle's office.

No amounts of apologizing and cleaning up was going to get that smell out any time soon. Poor Kyle. His office smells like crap now.

I'm heading to Chicago at the end of January for the 37 Signals Workshop entitled Getting Real. I think I'm more excited about this one than I am about heading to my first SXSW conference.

I wonder if it'll be as good as Cal's was...

Eh, the best non-technical part will be seeing Dad and Jess and Jenny again. Whoo!

Well, assuming I don't convince Jess to move out to SF before then.

While on a walk with the dogs tonight, Kris and I walked past a huge house in the neighborhood where a family of six live.

"I hereby dub their extra two children, our contribution to society. There. We're done."

"How many kids do they have?"

"Four."

"They're probably Catholic."

"Indeed."

"We need to have more to dilute them!"

"Yeah, right."

"We do, we can have twenty!"

"Heh. That wouldn't wreck my body at all!"

"We could have five sets of quadruplets!"

"Uh huh."

"Think of the tax benefits!"

"That's me! A tax credit factory!"

Just finished up a project that has sucked up absolutely all of my time for the last three weeks. In those three weeks, I've managed to miss two doctor appointments, leave three parties early, skip out on dinner a dozen times, sit on my butt wiggling my fingers for over 130 hours, miss running for 14 days in a row, lose the chance to drive cross county with my high school boyfriend (and, yes, that would have been an amazing trip), and write a dozen half posts, all without finishing any of them.

Ah, but done.

Er...

Except for those six bugs still remaining.

Let's ignore those for the moment, shall we? My butt, back, shoulders, and neck are sore from last night's mega-hack fest attempt to finish this up with Mike and a new e-contact Harshal. I say "last night" but it really was "this morning." Before yesterday, I couldn't say I had ever worked an 18 hour day before. But,, well, I can say that now. As of 6:30 this morning, I have.

First thing I'm going to do now that I'm alive and back?

Laundry.

Then give the stinky dog a bath. Then wander outside and rip up the garden I haven't touched since August, and plant a winter garden. Yeah, that will be nice.

Oh, and snuggle Kris.

That'll be nicer.