"It's like listening to cats fall off a roof..."

Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage is wonderful in many ways. The South Terminal is spacious, inspiring, and full of trendy little restaurants and shops which keep you entertained.

On the other hand, except for the free wireless internet access, the North terminal is truly hands down the core of airport music hell. It's dirty, beige and full of dead animals. To make it worse, they are selecting the absolute worst music that the season has to offer. Some examples: The "Magic Bus" version of the first Noel, the "Some nice lady and the tone-deaf choir" sing "Silver Bells", "Stevie Wonder underwater singing some song that sounds like "I'm your lady" by Celine Dion", "Little Drummer Boy" by Ray Charles channeling our dog Galileo, and, my favorite, "It's a marshmallow world outside your window". GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Even the stuffed caribou head is looking for earplugs. Every once in a while, we get a reprieve with the TSA announcements or the intercom system which keeps breaking up.

On the Frank and Lori vacation train, we are starting to feel a bit slappy. It's midnight, and we are having trouble holding it together, and are starting to talk back:
"The fire is slowly dying"...well, so are we!
"Noel, noel, noel, noel"...no-more! no-more! no-more!

Across from us is a guy who is suprised by his coughing. My guess is that "Ah-CHU?" will be seated right behind us for the zillion hour flight to Salt Lake City.

I am wide awake but slightly batty due to the multiple coffee beverages I have had today (6? 7?). Bad idea? Perhaps. Certainly my grammar tonight is suffering.

Anyhoo, here is a neat fact that I found in Make Magazine:
In 2003, 9 billion human hours were spent playing solitaire. 7 million (6.8 hours of solitaire) were all it took to build the Empire State Building. 20 million hours were needed to build the Panama canal.

Interesting, huh? Hope you all are having a great Thursday -- whoops-- Friday!