I'm sitting in the Alaska/Horizon terminal at LAX right now. It's almost 10:30 am and I've been here for about an hour. Why am I sitting in this terminal? Good question. Generally, I make it my policy to avoid this airport as if it were a rabid, plague-ridden rat. Normally, I only enter the LAX zone when picking up/dropping off passengers or when flying to an international destination.

You see, LAX is not a friendly place. But I can handle unfriendly. I do live in LA, after all. LAX is not efficient. But I can handle inefficiency. I did take the 405 to get here. LAX is big and overcrowded. But I can handle big and overcrowded. I am a member of a rather large church.
Do you know what the problem with LAX is? It is the perfect storm of all of those things in combination.

)

Besides that, I live within 15 minutes of the wonderful, the relaxing, the friendly Bob Hope Airport in Burbank. So, why did I drive an hour into the heart of LA to fly out of the worst airport known to man? Because the stars aligned and decided to torture me.

Ok, that's a slight exaggeration. But things did work out just right. This time it made sense for me to fly out of LAX and I'm flying for a very good reason. J just happened to be attending an orchestration seminar near the airport and there just happened to be a perfectly timed flight for which I could use my miles. But more importantly, I'm flying up to Seattle for my Grandma's 84th birthday party!


(Williams Family Reunion 2006)

I don't see my Grandma nearly as often as I'd like so I am very excited to be going to her birthday party. I plan to get lots of pictures and write a post about my wonderful Grandma after tomorrow night. Stay tuned. This should be a great, classic Williams event - which means lots of food and lots of pictures of people eating food.

Alright, back to waiting for my flight, but before I sign-off, I have to tell you one more story. I've just moved to a new seating area for the 4th time since starting this post. Why? Well, this time I moved because I was sitting on my suitcase at one of the "power poles" (I don't think that's what they're called, but they are poles with several outlets on them for charging computers, cell phones, ipods, etc.) continuing to write this post while charging my lappy, when I felt someone staring. You know that feeling, right? I look over my shoulder and sure enough. A small Japanese man, who shall henceforth be known as Mr. Miyagi....



...was standing about a foot away from me, reading my post. Hm. I made eye contact with him, with a "can I help you?" expression. Mr. Miyagi looked back at my computer and then at the power pole and then back at me. I closed my computer and began the process of gathering my things to move, yet again. In hindsight, I should have written this paragraph while he was still standing there. After all, if you're going to readsdrop, you should expect to be blogged about. Maybe that was his plan all along...